Susan Milius
Science News
Washington, DC, United States
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Past articles by Susan:
Honeybees waggle to communicate. But to do it well, they need dance lessons
Young honeybees can’t perfect waggling on their own after all. Without older sisters to practice with, youngsters fail to nail distances. → Read More
Orca moms baby their adult sons. That favoritism pays off — eventually
By sharing fish with their adult sons, orca moms may skimp on nutrition, cutting their chances of more offspring but boosting the odds for grandwhales. → Read More
How plant ‘muscles’ fold up a mimosa leaf fast
A mimosa plant revs up tiny clumps of specially shaped cells that collapse its leaflets, though why isn’t clear. → Read More
Meet the first Black American to earn an evolutionary biology Ph.D.
In ‘A Voice in the Wilderness,’ Joseph L. Graves Jr. discusses his scientific journey, how he debates racists, and more. → Read More
Sleeping glass frogs hide by storing most of their blood in their liver
Glass frogs snoozing among leaves blend in by hiding almost all their red blood cells in their liver until the tiny animals wake up. → Read More
Long genital spines on male wasps can save their lives
A male wasp’s genital spines can save his life in an encounter with a scary tree frog, a new study shows. → Read More
Certain young fruit flies’ eyes literally pop out of their head
The first published photo sequence of developing Pelmatops flies shows how their eyes rise on gangly stalks in the first hour of adulthood. → Read More
Video reveals that springtails are tiny acrobats
Poppy seed–sized cousins of insects, famed for wild escape leaping, right themselves in mid-falls faster than cats. → Read More
Young mosquitoes launch their heads to eat other mosquitoes
New high-speed filming gives a first glimpse of mosquito hunting too fast for humans to see. → Read More
After eons of isolation, these desert fish flub social cues
Pahrump poolfish flunked a fear test, but maybe they’re scared of other things. → Read More
‘Murder hornets’ have a new common name: Northern giant hornet
Anti-Asian hate crimes helped push U.S. entomologists to give a colorful insect initially dubbed the Asian giant hornet a less inflammatory name. → Read More
These huntsman spiders do something weird: live together as a big, happy family
Five unusual species of spider moms let youngsters live at home way past the cute waddling baby phase. → Read More
An ‘acoustic camera’ shows joining the right boy band boosts a frog’s sex appeal
Serenading with like voices may help male wood frogs woo females into their pools, analysis of individual voices in a frog choir shows. → Read More
These flowers lure pollinators to their deaths. There’s a new twist on how
Some jack-in-the-pulpit plants may use sex to lure pollinators. That's confusing for male fungus gnats — and deadly. → Read More
Invasive jorō spiders get huge and flashy — if they’re female
Taking the pulse (literally) of female jorō spiders hints that the arachnid might push farther north than a relative that has stayed put in the South. → Read More
Genetically modified mosquitoes could be tested in California soon
The EPA also OK’d more trials in Key West, Fla. Both states now get their say in whether to release free-flying Aedes aegypti to sabotage their own kind. → Read More
Mirror beetles’ shiny bodies may not act as camouflage after all
Hundreds of handmade clay nubbins test the notion that a beetle’s metallic high gloss could confound predators. Birds pecked the lovely idea to death. → Read More
Cicada science heats up when Brood X emerges. 2021 was no exception
Mating mobs of big, hapless, 17-year-old cicadas made for a memorable spring in the Eastern United States → Read More
The first step in using trees to slow climate change: Protect the trees we have
In all the fuss over planting trillions of trees, we need to protect the forests that already exist. → Read More
Focusing on ‘murder hornets’ distorts the view of invasive species
2021’s first “murder hornet” is yet another arrival. This is the not-so-new normal. → Read More