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This towering mystery fossil baffled scientists for 180 Years and it just got weirder.
It grew almost two times faster than fungus grown in silence.
The mind-controlling fungus could inspire a novel class of precision pesticides, as well as new drugs for mental health.
It's not the first time we've had big banana problems.
"The resulting plants would grow larger and need less water and fertilizer, for instance," say the authors.
The gold rush for a unique Himalayan fungus seems to be running out.
Don't mind me, just borrowing some genes to make gravity-sensing crystals. Sorry, what?
The CDC deemed this fungus a "serious global health threat."
Broken axons are like a broken router -- no connection.
Starving your crops might seem counterintuitive, but these ants have a pretty good reason for it.
The more the merrier.
The first case of white nose syndrome, a disease that has wreaked havoc on bat populations in the eastern U.S. has been identified west of the Rockies. The disease's spread threatens to drastically impact bat populations there, altering ecosystems throughout the country.
Fungi were thought to have a minimal impact on minerals' bioweathering. A recent study suggests that fungi are a lot more aggressive than meets the eye. These use acid to access precious nutrients like iron and burrow deep into rocks using mechanical force to further their reach.
An early land lover, the Tortobu might have been a key part of the land ecosystem that eventually grew to foster complex land life.
A new study of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a deadly fungus which affects amphibians worldwide, found that it spreads by making males' mating calls more attractive to females. The pathogen alters the reproductive habits of different species of amphibians, explaining why frogs and related species continue to disappear across the globe.
Cristiano Menezes of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation has discovered farming behaviors in bees, adding them to the list of social insects that practice agriculture.
Leafcutter ants in South America grow fungus as crops, this has been known for quite a while. But their crops show clear signs of domestication, which means that when it comes to farming, the ants might have beaten us by some 50 million years. Ant farmers When people started growing crops, they unwittingly made changes […]
Nothing to freak out about. This is perfectly normal.
For over a century since it was described, a peculiar type of ice known as hair-ice or ice wool has been puzzling scientists. Now, the mystery seems to have been solved. The uncanny fine hairs of ice, which are only 0.02 mm thick and can grow to 20 cm in length, are actually caused by a fungus.
In just 7 years, a disease called white-nose syndrome has killed more than 5 million North American bats, almost wiping out entire colonies. The disease has been reported in caves and mines of 25 states throughout the Northeastern U.S. and no treatment or practical way of halting the disease has been proposed. The disease is caused by […]
A while ago, we were telling you about the infamous “zombie ant fungus” – a parasitic fungus that reproduces by manipulating the behavior of ants. It’s one of the most gruesome acts in nature – the parasite fungi infect tropical ants, literally taking control of their actions, ultimately leading the infected ant to march to its death […]
Since the 1990s, biologists have witnessed a sudden demise of amphibian species. So far, hundreds of species have become extinct after becoming plagued by a wretched fungus. From mountain lakes to meadow puddles, no matter the continent, frogs are dying everywhere – a demise that might spell an ecological meltdown. There may still be hope yet, according […]
About one in three breads is thrown away because it gets too tough and infected, and thus inedible, because of mold. Scientists at an American company have found a way to keep bread fresh for up to two months after they zapped it in a sophisticated microwave array. This killed the bacteria and fungi that […]
Last year, we reported on one of the most gruesome and horrific acts that goes on in nature; it seems so unreal, like if some sort of SciFi monstrous scenario transcended into the realm of reality, that one has a hard time wrapping his head around it. Yes, as some of you might have read previously, I’m […]
A group of students from Yale University, along with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, were on a routine trip to the Amazon’s Yasuni National Park, one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, when they stumbled across a peculiar type of mushroom capable of eating polyurethane plastics. If successfully applied to landfills clogged with millions of metric tons […]
