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Ecologists have observed a species of nocturnal spider attracting prey to its web using the bioluminescent beacons of already trapped fireflies. This rare example of a predator exploiting its prey’s mating signal for its own gain is documented in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology. Researchers at Tunghai University, Taiwan have observed sheet…

Whale sharks, the largest living fish species, are classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Over the past 75 years, populations have declined by more than 50% worldwide, and by up to 63% in the Indo-Pacific region. Because whale sharks take up to 30 years to become sexually mature, populations can…

Clues about how worlds like Earth may have formed have been found buried at the heart of a spectacular ‘cosmic butterfly’. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers say they have made a big leap forward in our understanding of how the raw material of rocky planets comes together. This cosmic dust…

The United States could safely drop tetanus and diphtheria booster shots for adults and save an estimated $1 billion a year, according to a new review led by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University. The safety and savings depend on maintaining strong childhood vaccination rates, researchers emphasized. “By maintaining high childhood vaccination coverage, we…

Plastics play a fundamental role in modern life, but their resistance to biodegradation makes them very difficult to dispose of. New research reveals how “plastivore” caterpillars can metabolically degrade plastics in a matter of days, not decades, and store them internally as body fat – but at what cost? In 2017, a groundbreaking study demonstrated that…

While conventional computers store information in the form of bits, fundamental pieces of logic that take a value of either 0 or 1, quantum computers are based on qubits. These can have a state that is simultaneously both 0 and 1. This odd property, a quirk of quantum physics known as superposition, lies at the…

The discovery of new fossils and a new species of ancient ancestor may help shift the perception of human evolution from linear evolution to that of a tree with many branches, new UNLV research published on August 13 in the journal Nature shows. UNLV anthropologist Brian Villmoare and a team of international scientists discovered new fossils…

Artist’s illustration of the ancient reptile Kostensuchus atrox Gabriel Diaz Yanten, CC-BY 4.0 An ancient crocodile relative that lived around 70 million years ago was probably such a formidable predator that it could have eaten medium-sized dinosaurs for breakfast. “Its large teeth had serrated edges like steak knives, which is a strong signal that this…