Sex, lice and videotape

June 10, 2019

Access more multimedia files here. A few years ago, Scott Villa of Emory University had a problem. Then a graduate student at the University of Utah, he was stumped with an issue never addressed in school: How does one film lice having sex? Villa and University of Utah biologists had demonstrated real-time adaptation in their […]



Woodrats can’t stomach favorite foods at high temps

June 27, 2017

You’d think desert woodrats already had a lot of adversity. Besides the constant threat of coyotes and other predators and the scorching Mojave Desert heat, their primary source of food is the creosote bush, or chaparral – a plant so toxic that few other animals will even go near it. But the woodrats’ unique adaptation […]