Life sciences
12 Jun 2024
Researchers develop fully human antibodies that can neutralize the alpha-latrotoxin of the European black widow, potentially reducing the need for antibodies derived from horses to treat disease caused by spider bites
Life sciences
11 Jun 2024
Aging people commonly show a decline in navigation ability, and this has generally been attributed to worsening spatial memory. But now, researchers from the US have shown for the first time that this decline is partly driven by changes in typical exploration behavior by middle age. In a maze learning task, middle-aged people were less efficient explorers than young people. This discovery could have applications in the clinical diagnosis and therapy of cognitive decline and dementia.
Life sciences
31 May 2024
Dr Mariya Antonosyan, Dr Torben Rick, and Prof Nicole Boivin are co-authors of a new Frontiers in Mammal Science article in which they used new methods to identify fossil bone fragments housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The insights they gained could help scientists better understand the causes and consequences of large mammal extinction.
Life sciences
29 May 2024
Cutmarks on a 4,000-year-old skull could be indications that the ancient Egyptians tried to operate on excessive tissue growth or learn more about cancerous disorders after a patient’s death
Life sciences
22 May 2024
Researchers have shown for the first time that newborns of monolingual mothers respond differently to playback of a carefully selected sound stimulus than newborns of bilingual mothers. The findings suggest that bilingual newborns are sensitive to a wider range of acoustic variation of speech, at the cost of being less selectively tuned in to any single language. These results underscore the importance of prenatal exposure for learning about speech.
Life sciences
02 May 2024
Researchers observed the frequency of play by aged chicks between six and 53 days old. Males engaged more frequently in social and object play than females, but there was no difference in the frequency of locomotor play. The researchers concluded that these patterns can be explained by the strong sexual dimorphism of adult junglefowl, the ancestors of domestic chickens. This means that male chicks benefit more from practicing skills related to physical ability and social tactics.
Life sciences
19 Apr 2024
Scientists have shown for the first time that juvenile great white sharks gather in waters up to 10 meters deep with a temperature between 6 and 22 °C – a very different habitat from that of adults. These preferences may optimize their growth and minimize the risk of predation. These results can inform conservation efforts and help to avoid negative shark encounters.
Life sciences
27 Mar 2024
Materials scientists have now shown how the blood-like hemolymph of tobacco hornworm caterpillars forms clots to stop bleeding. They show that outside the body, hemolymph can instantaneously change from water-like behavior to become ‘viscoelastic’ like saliva, that is, combining viscosity with elasticity. This discovery could have medical applications, if drugs can be designed that induce a similar change in human blood, to make it clot faster.
Life sciences
29 Feb 2024
Archaeologists analyze the carbon isotope values of hazelnuts from ancient sites to see what the local woods were like.
Life sciences
26 Feb 2024
Scientists discovered eight new species of masked bee in Fiji, Micronesia, and Polynesia: relatives of Tuamotu’s masked bee from Tuamotu. For 59 years, this bee had been considered by experts to be a mysterious anomaly since its closest relatives, as far as was known at the time, lived 3,000 km further west. With the new species, discovered by sampling from the tree canopy, the mystery is solved: ancestors of Tuamotu’s masked bee reached Polynesia by island-hopping across Fiji and the southwestern Pacific. Many more new species are expected to be discovered in the canopy of islands along this route soon.
Life sciences
20 Feb 2024
Using movement behavior models, scientists tracked leatherback sea turtles to new foraging locations off the US east coast
Life sciences
14 Feb 2024
Scientists used DNA metabarcoding to show for the first time that jellyfish are an important food for amphipods during the Arctic polar night in waters off Svalbard, at a time of year when other food resources are scarce. Amphipods were not only observed to feast on ‘jelly-falls’ of dead jellyfish, but also to prey on live jellyfish. These results corroborate an ongoing ‘paradigm shift’ which recognizes that jellyfish aren’t a trophic dead-end but an important food for many marine organisms.
Life sciences
23 Jan 2024
A study of ant communities shows that using diverse plant sources for bioenergy is crucial to protect ecosystems while making more eco-friendly fuel
Life sciences
05 Dec 2023
At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed.
Life sciences
01 Dec 2023
Researchers from Spain and Turkey have shown that Vibrio bacteria are playing a role in the outbreaks of mortality of a sessile marine organism, the dark stinging sponge (Sarcotragus foetidus).