The happy-face spider (Theridion grallator) is famous for the particularly cheery looking patterns on top of its abdomen. Ecologists in Hawaii first described the tiny, vibrantly green arachnids in 1900, and have long assumed them to be unique to the islands. However, an unexpected encounter thousands of miles away recently surprised researchers combing through the forested slopes of the Himalayan mountains.
According to their study published in the journal Evolutionary Systematics, there is at least one more smiley spider species in the world. Of course, such a discovery deserves an equally appropriate name. Without further ado, it’s time to meet the Himalayan happy-face spider (Theridion himalayana).
The meetup began in 2023 during an expedition in the northern state of Uttarakhand, a region home to many animals that remain unknown to science. Researchers from India’s Forest Research Institute and the Regional Museum of Natural History intended to catalogue ant biodiversity at the foot of the Himalayan mountains, but they kept getting distracted by the insects’ eight-legged neighbors.
“My co-author [Ashirwad Tripathy] kept sending me spiders from high altitude regions for identification,” Regional Museum of Natural History biologist Devi Priyadarshini said in a statement.
Priyadarshini recalled on “one fine day,” her colleague sent a photo of an arachnid clinging to a Daphniphyllum leaf. That was when she “froze in shock.”
“I had seen the Hawaiian spider during my master’s program…I knew instantly we had a jackpot because of its striking resemblance,” explained Priyadarshini.
Over the next few months, Tripathy continued to document every similar spider he saw during his survey. While each of the 32 examples clearly belonged to the same species, they all showcased an array of smiley dot-and-stripe coloration patterns (known as morphs) on their bodies. Once in the lab, the team conducted a DNA analysis of their specimens and discovered about an 8.5 percent genetic variation from the Hawaiian happy-face spider. This confirmed it evolved completely independent of the almost identical island spiders, thus earning the name Theridion himalayana.
“The name [Theridion] Himalayana was decided as the species name because we both wanted to pay our respects to the mighty Himalaya mountain ranges, which have been standing tall not just guarding our country but also holding a plethora of biodiversity within them,” added Tripathy.
Although the green coloration obviously helps both spiders blend into the surrounding vegetation, the exact reason for their back patterns remains unclear. Priyadarshini said this question is “definitely indicative of a deeper genetic mystery” that deserves further investigation. However, another shared trait is even stranger. Both species have a fondness for ginger plants, even though ginger isn’t native to Hawaii.
“How did the [Hawaiian] spiders choose an invasive species and ginger exactly?” wondered Priyadarshini, who theorized T. himalayan may be an “elder cousin” of T. grallator.“Although this sounds like a tall claim now, it will be our further scope of work to establish any missing links,” she said.
The post Newly discovered spider has smiley face on its back appeared first on Popular Science.
Sunburn and mosquito bites go together in the summer like a hot dog and ketchup. To keep from becoming a mosquito buffet, most of us turn to bug sprays with DEET. An acronym built from its scientific identification (diethyltoluamide), DEET was developed for the United States Army in 1946 and entered civilian use in 1957. It is generally considered safe when used as directed.
However, mosquitoes can learn to associate the repellant with food. They may even become attracted to it. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
“If someone applies DEET and the concentration fades over time, but a mosquito still manages to feed, the insect may begin associating that smell with a reward,” Clément Vinauger, a study co-author and biochemist at Virginia Tech, said in a statement. “That’s a possibility we should take seriously when we think about how repellents are used in the real world.”
Like it or not, Earth’s over 3,500 known mosquito species are pretty smart and an evolutionary wonder. They use sensory information to find hosts and can adapt to changing environments.
In previous studies, Vinauger’s team has shown that the insects remember and avoid hosts who swat them away, can combine smell and vision to precisely track humans, and even gravitate toward and away from the smell of certain soaps.
“Mosquitoes are remarkable at processing information about their environment,” Vinauger said. “What we are trying to understand is not only how they detect us, but how their brains interpret those cues and turn them into behavior.”
In this new study, the team focused on the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti). This species spreads several diseases to tens of millions of people each year, including dengue fever, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya.
The team trained mosquitoes using a form of Pavlovian conditioning. Often called “Pavlov’s dogs,” this training method developed by neurologist and physiologist Ivan Pavlov in the early 20th century was used to teach dogs to associate the sound of a bell ringing with food.
The mosquitoes were restrained behind a piece of fabric mesh. They then offered the mosquitoes a bag of warm blood (yum) that was just out of the insects’ reach to see how enthusiastically the insects stabbed at it with their proboscises. As expected, the mosquitoes were interested in the blood, particularly when the team rewarded them by lowering the bag within reach. Things changed a bit once DEET entered the experiment. When the team offered the insects blood when surrounded by the scent of DEET, they initially stayed away from the potential feast.
To see if they could be trained to associate that smell with the dinner bell, the team fed the mosquitoes warm blood for 20 seconds, squirting the scent of DEET into the enclosure in the final 10 seconds of dining. They repeated the procedure three more times before noting how the mosquitoes responded to only the scent of DEET. In this trial, over 60 percent of mosquitoes tried to bite when they smelled DEET.
To examine further, the mosquitoes were given a choice between two human hands. The hand belonged to study co-author Ayelén Nally of the University of Buenos Aires. One of Nally’s hands was coated with DEET at normal concentrations and the other was bare. The untrained mosquitoes avoided the DEET-treated hand, while the trained mosquitoes were drawn to it.
Interestingly, the mosquitoes could form that same association when sugar, instead of blood, was used as the reward.
According to the team, they are seeing how the mosquito’s brain can rewrite its response based on their experiences. What they have learned matters just as much as what a chemical like DEET does.
“If mosquitoes are repeatedly exposed to DEET, it becomes less effective as a repellent,” study co-author Claudio Lazzari from University of Tours in France added.
Importantly, this does not mean you should stop using DEET completely. It is still one of the most effective ways to keep the dangerous insects away, particularly where mosquito-borne disease is common.
“If you’re in tropical regions where disease risk is real, you should use it,” Vinauger said. “Instead of applying a lot at once, you may want to reapply regularly so it’s always active and providing continuous protection.”
Treated clothing may also be a challenge since DEET concentrations in fabric decline over time. Additional study to understand their behavior is crucial for public health as mosquito-borne illnesses increase due to climate change.
“We need to understand how mosquitoes keep outsmarting our control strategies,” Vinauger concluded. “And that takes understanding how they work—at the molecular level, the neural level, the behavioral level.”
The post Mosquitoes can learn that DEET means dinner is served appeared first on Popular Science.
Tyrannosaurus rex is iconic for its ferocity and big teeth, as well as those teeny-tiny arms. The Cretaceous Period apex predator wasn’t the only carnivore with underdeveloped forelimbs, however. At least five groups of two-legged, mostly meat-eating theropod dinosaurs experienced a shortening of the upper arms over the course of their evolutionary journey. But why did they have such comically small claws? One team of researchers believes the answer is simple.
“It’s a case of ‘use it or lose it,’” University College London paleontologist Charlie Scherer said in a statement.
Scherer and his colleagues recently examined the data for 82 theropod species, including those in T. rex’s tyrannosaurid family. Their study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences argues a combination of massive skulls and crushing jaws—coupled with increasingly large prey—had many theropods relying increasingly less on their forearms.
“We sought to understand what was driving this change and found a strong relationship between short arms and large, powerfully built heads,” explained Scherer. “The head took over from the arms as the method of attack.”
The team based their conclusions on a new system of assessing dinosaur skull strength based on attributes like overall dimensions, how tightly bones were joined in the head, and bite force. Unsurprisingly, T. rex came in first place for bite force, followed by the Tyrannotitan. Almost as large as a T. rex, the Tyrannotitan lived in present-day Argentina during the Early Cretaceous over 30 million years before its famous descendent. In each example, the reason for short arms likely coincided with hunting larger and larger dinner targets.
“Trying to pull and grab at a 100–foot–long sauropod with your claws is not ideal. Attacking and holding on with the jaws might have been more effective,” added Scherer.
Overall, the team identified a bigger correlation between skull strength and smaller arms than with either skull or body size. This conclusion is further supported by some theropod dinosaurs with strong heads, tiny forelimbs, and a relatively small stature. For example, Majungasaurus roamed present-day Madagascar 70 million years ago while weighing about 1.75 tons—around a fifth the size of T. rex.
Not every dinosaur’s limbs shrank in the same way, either. Abelisaurids like Majungasaurus exhibited smaller arms past their elbows as well as their hands, while tyrannosaurid arms reduced proportionally. In each case, it seems that the theropods initially had far more success latching onto prey with their powerful jaws, then evolution did the rest of the work.
As to which dinosaur had the teeniest forearms, the answer according to Scherer is clear.
“The Carnotaurus had ridiculously tiny arms, smaller than the T. rex,” he said.
The post Why were T. rex’s arms so tiny? Paleontologists finally find an answer. appeared first on Popular Science.
In late 2025, astronomers spotted an interstellar comet making a quick trip through the solar system. 3I/ATLAS was discovered in July when it was just inside Jupiter’s orbit. It’s now about halfway between Jupiter and Saturn and getting farther away every day.
Astronomers have been observing 3I/ATLAS throughout its journey inward toward the Sun and back out again, compiling the most comprehensive and detailed view thus far of an interstellar object, including the chemistry of the gases that sublimated from its surface and formed its coma and tail.
In a first-of-its-kind observation of an interstellar object (ISO), researchers have discovered that the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in 3I/ATLAS’s outgassed water is 30–40 times higher than in solar system objects. That suggests that the comet formed in a much colder environment than our own solar system did.
“It is always hard to really pinpoint where these objects form,” said Luis E. Salazar Manzano, the lead researcher on these observations and a doctoral student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “We know that they were formed in different parts of the galaxy, but it’s hard to connect what we measure with how they were formed. These types of measurements, such as the relative abundance of deuterium to hydrogen in water, are one of the best ways we have to actually [learn] about their forming conditions and their evolution.”
Water appears to be ubiquitous throughout the universe, sprinkled within distant galaxies and in star-forming nebulae. But there are different flavors of water: heavy, semiheavy, and plain old H2O. In the molecular clouds where stars form, the cold environment favors a chemical reaction that increases the amount of gaseous deuterium (D), an isotope of hydrogen, relative to regular hydrogen atoms. That deuterium then bonds with hydrogen and oxygen atoms to create semiheavy water, or HDO.
By measuring the quantity of semiheavy water relative to regular water in an object, scientists can infer the object’s ratio of deuterium to hydrogen, or D/H, and decode the physical conditions in which that water formed. Astronomers have made such measurements for baby stars, planet-forming disks, solar system comets, and meteorites, as well as Earth’s ocean.
“What is fundamentally important about ISOs is that they are physical leftovers of the process of forming another planetary system and they can give us clues to that process,” said Karen Meech, an astrobiologist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa who was not involved with this research.
“The conditions in the stellar system in which 3I/ATLAS formed may have been quite different from the one in the solar system.”
The team observed 3I/ATLAS with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile on November 2025 when the comet was 335 million kilometers (208 million miles) from Earth. It had just passed its closest approach to the Sun and was as bright as it was ever going to be. This timing was critical for the measurements the team wanted to make because the signal for HDO is very subtle, especially when it has to compete with the much more abundant H2O in the comet and within Earth’s atmosphere, Salazar Manzano explained.
Those measurements showed that for every 1,000 hydrogen atoms in 3I/ATLAS, there were about 5–7 deuterium atoms. While that’s not a lot, the ratio is still at least 40 times more than what’s found in ocean water and at least 30 times the average value in solar system comets.
“The conditions in the stellar system in which 3I/ATLAS formed may have been quite different from the one in the solar system,” said Paul Hartogh, a physicist and atmospheric science researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany.
The first interstellar object, 1I/ʻOumuamua, did not outgas any material, and although the second object, 2I/Borisov, did, it was not bright enough to detect deuterium. 3I/ATLAS was the first opportunity astronomers had to measure the D/H ratio of an interstellar comet. Those measurements suggest that 3I/ATLAS formed in a much colder galactic environment than the solar system did, less than 30°C above absolute zero. The team published these results in Nature Astronomy in April.
Hartogh, who was not involved with this research, said that on the one hand, 3I/ATLAS’s high deuterium enrichment is surprising because it is higher than that of any known comet. On the other hand, he added, some scientists predicted such high values for cometary water several decades ago.
Meech said she found these results “really interesting.” She never expected all other solar systems to have formed just like ours, and 3I/ATLAS fits with that idea.
“This gives us an intriguing look into the processes of planetary system formation—and that there are differences from our own solar system,” Meech said. “It is too early to tell what this implies for the formation of planets or habitable worlds. We are just at the beginning of an exciting story.”
“The fact that we were able to make this measurement with 3I will allow us to better prepare what to expect with the next generation of interstellar objects.”
3I/ATLAS is getting harder to see with telescopes, but astronomers still have a lot of data from when it was much brighter to go through, Salazar Manzano said. Teams around the world are working on creating a holistic picture of the comet’s chemistry and evolution.
What’s more, “the fact that we were able to make this measurement with 3I will allow us to better prepare what to expect with the next generation of interstellar objects,” Salazar Manzano said.
Scientists expect that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory could discover between 6 and 51 interstellar objects within the next 10 years. If objects are detected early enough in their journey through the solar system, “there may be enough time to coordinate observations with ground-based and spaceborne telescopes, taking advantage of the recent experience gained by the multiple 3I/ATLAS observations,” Hartogh said.
“These are rare opportunities to study another planetary nursery up close, and we have to take advantage of each new ISO to learn as much as we can,” Meech said. “It may be harder for a large number of individual teams to get all the data they want, so I think coordination and collaboration is needed more than ever.”
—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@astrokimcartier.bsky.social), Staff Writer
A recently discovered box jellyfish species living in near Singapore looks nearly identical to another jellyfish previously discovered by the same scientist. But regardless of whether or not you can tell Chironex blakangmati and Chironex yamaguchii apart, you’ll want to steer clear of both of them. Box jellyfish didn’t earn their “sea-wasp” nickname for yellow-and-black stripes.
Cheryl Ames, a marine biologist at Japan’s Tohoku University, collected C. blakangmati during an expedition near the coast of Singapore’s Sentosa Island. The team initially assumed the invertebrate was an example of C. yamaguchii, but later genomic testing revealed something else entirely.
“We realized they were completely distinct,” Ames explained in a statement. “I actually went back to dust off an old sample of C. yamaguchii I still had in storage in Okinawa to help with the comparisons.”
Apart from genetics, the key difference setting C. blakangmati apart from its three known Chironex relatives is its perradial lappets. This anatomical feature on the bottom of the box jellyfish’s bell-shaped body strengthens the pulsating musculature that propels it through the water. Other Chironex species include pointy canals at the tips of their perradial lappets, but C. blakangmati notably does not.
Canals or not, they are remarkable creatures. The vast majority of jellyfish don’t rely on vision and passively float in ocean currents, but members of the Chironex genus do not. Instead, they have evolved complex eye organs that help them locate prey. They then use that same musculature supported by the perradial lappets to actively swim through the water towards its target.
In this sense, C. blakangmati certainly lives up to its scientific name. Sentosa may be Malay for “peace and tranquility,” but the island once called something very different. Historically, it is also known as Pulau Klakang Mati, which translates to the “Island of Death from Behind.”
The post New box jellyfish name warns of ‘death from behind’ appeared first on Popular Science.
It would make more sense if only a few related cultures exhibited it, but the trait is everywhere. No matter where you are in the world, the humans living there are about 90 percent right-handed while the remaining 10 percent are predominantly left-handed. This curious facet isn’t seen in our primate relatives, either.
Evolutionary biologists and neuroscientists have spent decades trying to understand why the vast majority of Homo sapiens prefer using their right limb, but have since come up…well, empty handed. According to researchers at the University of Oxford in the U.K., the answer may finally be within our grasp. After comparing behavioral, neurological, and social characteristics from 41 species of monkeys and apes with humans, they say the answer isn’t found in our hands at all. It’s in our legs.
Their findings are detailed in a study recently published in the journal PLOS Biology. Using a statistical modeling framework focused on interspecies evolutionary relationships, researchers first considered some of the most prominent theories on handedness. These included aspects like diet, habitat, body mass, social structures, tool usage, and locomotion. In every case, we humans remained outliers in patterns that otherwise might explain the attribute in other primates.
They then introduced two hypothetical influences into their comparisons: brain size and the length ratios between legs and arms. That arm-leg ratio may seem arbitrary, but it’s considered a standard reference point for bipedal movement. Once these traits were included, humanity’s handedness exception disappeared entirely. Basically, big brains and long legs correlate directly with dominant hands.
“This is the first study to test several of the major hypotheses for human handedness in a single framework. Our results suggest it is probably tied to some of the key features that make us human, especially walking upright and the evolution of larger brains,” study co-author and University of Oxford evolutionary anthropologist Thomas Püsche said in a statement. “By looking across many primate species, we can begin to understand which aspects of handedness are ancient and shared, and which are uniquely human.”
The new approach meant that Püsche’s team didn’t have to stop there. With the same modeling, researchers estimated handedness preferences across extinct human ancestors. The results align with a slow evolutionary shift towards the right limb. Early hominin species like Ardipithecus and Australopithecus likely only had slight leanings towards right-hand dominance comparable to present-day great apes. However, the arrival of the Homo genus saw increasing right-handedness through Homo ergaster, Homo erectus and Neanderthals. The culmination can now be seen in Homo sapiens.
The study’s authors did note an interesting exception to the rule in Homo floresiensis, the famous “hobbit” ancestors native to Indonesia. At the same time, their physiology likely explains the outlier. H. floresiensis featured a small body and brain that specialized in upright climbing and walking, not full bipedalism.
With these conclusions, researchers now believe two phases took place for humanity’s transition to overwhelming right-handedness. Ancient ape ancestors first started walking upright, which then allowed them to use their upper limbs more frequently for other tasks. As brains continued to develop and grow, rightward focus solidified in today’s H. sapiens.
“Our findings identify bipedalism and neuroanatomical expansion as likely key drivers of uniquely human lateralization, while also revealing broader ecological patterns shaping handedness across primates,” the study’s authors wrote.
From here, researchers hope to study how human cultures further entrenched right-handed dominance, why left-handed alternatives still exist at all, and if similar limb trends are visible in other animals.
“This work provides a framework for disentangling human-specific adaptations from general primate trends in the evolution of behavioral asymmetries,” the team added.
The post Leg evolution made most humans right-handed appeared first on Popular Science.
Giant scorpions the size of a baseball bat with pincers the size of a pencil once stalked what is now England and Wales. Praearcturus gigas is believed to be the largest scorpion to ever roam the Earth, and was discovered from fossils that have been tucked away in London’s Natural History Museum for more than 150 years. The findings are detailed in a study published in the journal Palaeontology.
Praearcturus gigas stalked the region’s floodplains about 415 million years ago, during the Early Devonian. Small plants and fungi had only recently begun to spread, and more complex land ecosystems like forests did not exist yet.
“When we think of giant arthropods, people often picture Carboniferous rainforests with giant millipedes or dragonfly-like insects from later in Earth’s history,” Dr. Richard J. Howard, a study co-author and the Curator of Fossil Arthropods at the Natural History Museum, said in a statement. “But Praearcturus lived at least 50 million years earlier, well before the evolution of trees, when life on land was only just getting started.”
Howard and the team believe that Praearcturus’ enormous size indicates that they had very little competition from other large predators roaming around. Praearcturus might have grown to three-feet-long with six-inch pincers simply because there weren’t any other large animals nearby, so it could dominate its environment in a way that wouldn’t be possible years down the road.
Praearcturus gigas was first scientifically decided in 1871. Scientists originally thought it was some kind of giant crustacean, similar to a woodlouse. The fossils were very fragmented, and lacked key features (such as a tail) that help classify it. To get a better picture, the team compared their fossils with some more well-preserved specimens found in 1972 and 2010.
“Praearcturus has puzzled us palaeontologists for more than a century,” added Dr. Russell Garwood, a study co-author and palaeontologist at The University of Manchester. “By bringing together material from several collections and using cutting edge imaging techniques, we’ve been able to build a clearer picture of the animal than was previously possible, which is really exciting.”
The fossils hint that this giant scorpion may have lived in the water some of the time. Some specimens have flap-like structures on the abdomen that are similar to those found in modern crustaceans like lobsters. These flaps suggest Praearcturus may have been capable of moving between water and land. Their place in the wider arachnid fossil record shows that most scorpions are unusually abundant in rocks dating back to this time period, compared with other arachnid species. This supports the idea that Praearcturus may have lived in freshwater environments, where they are more likely to survive as fossils. Excitingly, it shows that Praearcturus lived at a pivotal moment in our planet’s history, when animals were first experimenting with living life outside the oceans.
“The boundary between land and sea was much less defined at this time,” said Dr. Greg Edgecombe, a study co-author and Natural History Museum researcher. “Praearcturus gives us a fascinating glimpse into how early animals adapted to these changing environments. It may even represent a lineage that returned to the water after earlier ancestors had already begun living on land.”
According to the team, a breakthrough like this shows how important discoveries are still being made from museum collections. It also challenges assumptions about why prehistoric arthropods reached such enormous sizes. Instead of being driven solely by environmental factors like oxygen levels, a lack of competition, and other ecological opportunities may have played a crucial role.
“Confirming that this animal is a scorpion fundamentally changes our understanding of how and when these creatures evolved to such extraordinary sizes,” said Howard.
The post World’s biggest scorpions were the size of baseball bats appeared first on Popular Science.
Since the beginning of her career in A Room With a View, Helena Bonham Carter has always brought a layer of eccentricity to everything she does. Whether a dramatic period piece, an offbeat collaboration with former partner Tim Burton, or family fare like the Harry Potter films or Cinderella, you know you’re in for a dash of whimsy with Carter. When it comes to the performer’s fashion sense, you can similarly always count on the actress to serve up a trademark witchy goth moment, whether she’s photographed on a red carpet for a film premiere or just out and about in London. In honor of Bonham Carter’s 60th birthday, take a look at her most daring red carpet style moments, here.
The actor channeled a gothic English rose in a layered tulle look from the quintessential London designer Simone Rocha.
Carter leaned into the ’80s at the BAFTA TV Awards styling her voluminous polka dot Dolce & Gabbana gown with a high ponytail, red lips and nails.
Bonham Carter gave an over-the-top sequined moment when she turned up to the 26th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in a sparkling blue gown and silver sunnies.
The Crown star arrived at the season three premiere wearing a feathered black and white gown.
At the Ocean’s 8 London premiere in 2018, Bonham Carter turned up in a silver Vivienne Westwood Couture gown.
Florals may not always be groundbreaking, but on Bonham Carter at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, her full floral look—from matching headband to handbag—was certainly adventurous.
This green and black floral number worn by Bonham Carter at the 2015 premiere of Cinderella was nothing short of a fairytale.
Bonham Carter wore a simple black gown with a bodice, paired with a handbag shaped like red lips and glasses to the 2011 Critics’ Choice Awards.
Bonham Carter gave Bellatrix Lestrange a run for her money with this witchy glam look at the London Premiere of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in 2010.
A chic glasses and plaid moment from Bonham Carter was served at the 2010 premiere of The King’s Speech.
The 2005 Venice Film Festival saw Bonham Carter in an all white ensemble paired with pearls.
Bonham Carter wore a black dress with white fur stole to the 2003 premiere of Big Fish.
Bonham Carter went for a see-through moment at the 2001 premiere of The Planet of the Apes in New York City.
Bonham Carter wore an icy purple-pink gown with tulle accents to the 1998 Oscars.
This very ‘90s look worn by Bonham Carter included a semi-sheer green cardigan and pink midi skirt.
In a blush pink custom Vivienne Westwood gown, Bonham Carter TK at the 1997 premiere of The Wings of the Dove at the Odeon.
Bonham Carter went for a sophisticated goth look at the 1994 premiere of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
A young Bonham Carter wore a velvet ensemble to the Getting It Right premiere in 1989.
Bonham Carter attended the 1987 Oscars (though not pictured, with Matthew Broderick by her side).
While every bumble bee colony has a queen, the process for becoming that queen bee may be a bit more democratic than monarchical. The worker bees appear to select which baby will be queen one day, according to a new study published in the journal Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
The key to this selection process lies in the juvenile hormone. This hormone in insects is responsible for their development, molting, and eventual reproduction. When the team gave the juvenile hormone to worker bees, they passed it along to all of the larvae in the colony through feeding. The more juvenile hormone the larvae received, the more likely they were to become queen.
According to the team, this is the first study to show that bumble bee caste is determined by the workers and shifts our understanding of bee colony dynamics. Instead of a top-down hierarchy, the colony appears to be a more decentralized system, where the caregivers and workers can alter the future of baby bees.
Understanding the fate of the bee larvae is key to understanding their social behavior. Their whole system relies on a division of reproductive labor—some females will reproduce, while the others help.
“Since all these females share the same DNA, it’s a striking example of how the same genotype can produce very different forms,” Etya Amsalem, a study co-author and entomologist at Penn State, said in a statement. “It’s also a practical question since bumble bees are important for pollination, so knowing how to produce queens could improve commercial breeding and management.”
In addition to their different social roles, queen bees and worker bees are also very different physically. Bumblebee queens are larger, live longer lives, and will reproduce. Worker bees are smaller in stature and do not reproduce or live as long.
While it was clear that hormones were involved in how workers determine the queen, the exact mechanisms behind it were more vague.
“A single female egg in bumblebees holds the blueprint for two completely different life paths: the giant, reproductive queen or the small, sterile worker,” added study co-author and postdoctoral researcher Seyed Ali Modarres Hasani. “We wanted to understand what triggers the change in the female life trajectory, when does it happen and who controls the process.”
In the study, the team used three worker bees and a cluster of larvae. They applied juvenile hormone at different doses and times, and administered it either to workers or directly to larvae. They then traced the hormone’s movement, measuring larval mass and recording which individuals became queens or workers.
“Every colony will produce many new queens at the end of the season,” Amsalem said. “These queens will leave the colony, mate and go into winter diapause, and then each queen will start a new colony in the next spring. In that sense, producing as many queens—and males—at the end of the season is the ultimate purpose of the colony.”
When the juvenile hormone was applied directly to the larvae, not only did they not turn into queens, but the worker bees ended up eliminating most of these larvae.
When the workers were treated with the juvenile hormone, they put it into the food that they make for the larvae. These larvae then ingested the hormone, and were heavier and much more likely to become queens.
“We also determined that larvae are only sensitive to this hormone on days seven and eight of their development,” Hasani said. “By tracing the juvenile hormone, we saw that the workers pass the hormone into the food they make from nectar and pollen.”
These results suggest that queen production is linked to how the colony progresses through the summer’s warmer months until it eventually collapses in the fall.
“Bumblebee workers do not reproduce when the colony is young, but they can activate their ovaries and produce males as the colony ages, which causes an increase in juvenile hormone levels,” Amsalem said. “As a result, over time, they feed larvae more of the hormone. When enough workers do this simultaneously, usually towards the end of the season, larvae receive doses that are high enough during the critical window to develop into queens.”
These results could help improve bee colony management at a hormonal level, explain how complex insect societies evolve, and how hormonal signals interact to shape colony structure.
The post Worker bees have power to pick their queen appeared first on Popular Science.
The ocean floor is covered with dead whales–but it is everything but a biohazard. When a whale dies, its body sinks to the ocean floor in a process called whale fall. The carcass then becomes its own complex ecosystem, nourishing and housing all types of marine life. Whale bones can then fossilize over time, leaving behind traces of what life looked like millions of years ago.
Now, scientists in the Indian Ocean have discovered an enormous whale graveyard. The collection of bones and communities supported by these whale falls stretches 745 miles across the seafloor 13,779 to 22,965 feet deep. The oldest whale fossil is roughly 5.3 million years old and the graveyard even includes a new species of extinct whale. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Nature.
“The deep sea is far from barren—it’s dynamic, full of life and history,” Dr. Xiaotong Peng, a study co-author and engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), tells Popular Science. “When a whale dies and sinks, it becomes an oasis, supporting unique communities for decades or centuries.”
In 2023, CAS team was studying the geology and biology of the southeast Indian Ocean’s hadal zone—the ocean’s deepest zone, extending from 19,680 to 36,000 feet-deep. While inside of a submersible, the divers spotted the first whale fossil 22,972 feet below the surface.
According to study co-author and geologist Dr. Peng Zhou, the remains were actually “quite easy to find” once the team began to search. “They looked unusual, so when the dive scientists first encountered them, they wanted to figure out what they were,” Zhou tells Popular Science.
Peng adds, “We immediately pivoted our objectives to systematically map, document, and sample these whale remains. So it really came down to curiosity meeting the technological capability to explore depths that had been largely inaccessible.”
They documented 485 whale fossil sites from five active whale falls. The whale carcasses are home to a large community of jellyfish, brittle stars, bone-boring worms, and bivalves. Some of these species living in the carcasses may even be new to science, but that has not been confirmed. The oldest have been in the area for about 5.3 million years ago (the Pliocene era).
Most of the whale fossils come from several species of deep-diving beaked whales. Some of the bones belong to beaked whales that still exist today. Others are from extinct whales, including a species new to science named Pterocetus diamantinae.
“Finding both extinct genera like Pterocetus and living species like Mesoplodon bowdoini preserved together in the same region, across 1,200 kilometres [745 miles] of seafloor at such extreme depths—that was truly unexpected,” says Zhou.
This fossil record is also continuous, so the team can track the population dynamics and evolution of deep-diving whales over time.
“These fossils give us a direct window into the Pliocene, about 5.3 million years ago,” study co-author and biologist Dr. Xikun Song tells Popular Science. “They show that beaked whales were already specialized deep‑divers in the Indian Ocean by that time. Beyond the whales themselves, the associated fossil fauna also tells us about the structure of ancient deep‑sea whale‑fall communities and broader deep‑sea biodiversity back then.”
This whale graveyard could reshape our understanding of both living and extinct beaked-whales. There are roughly 24 species of beaked-whale living today. However, their deep-sea habitat, likely low population numbers, and reclusive behavior make them difficult to study. Having such a large fossil deposit like this could help explain more about their reclusive lives.
The fossils are also shedding more light on the mysterious ecosystems living at the ocean’s deepest depths.
“Discoveries like this are possible because of curiosity, collaboration, and technology,” Peng concludes. “We’ve barely scratched the surface of the deep ocean, and there’s so much more waiting to be found.”
The post 745-mile whale graveyard found at the bottom of Indian Ocean appeared first on Popular Science.
Login