An obituary for a 43-year-old spider whose study was a career-spanning work for the zoologist that first found her. The spider was given a fitting epitaph in the scientific paper written after her death – “we can be inspired by an ancient mygalomorph spider and the rich biodiversity she embodied.”
The risk posed by drug resistant infections is grave, but incidences are not being recorded properly – this investigative piece seeks to uncover the reality of the situation.
An interview with a scientist using adaptive modelling techniques to predict extremist activity.
The ocean bed is little understood and mapped by humans, and has been referred to as “the next best thing to another planet” from an astrobiological point of view. We don’t really know it at all, and yet we have figured out how to mine it.
The challenge of keeping people cool in an age of increasing temperatures risks making us ever more reliant on resource intensive air conditioning that may also be perversely making places hotter for anyone that doesn’t have them.
Whilst tactics to save rare species on the verge of extinction are well established, we may be missing another even bigger issue – the massive reduction of numbers in common species – from the skylark, to the tortoise, to the vulture.
A look at the advances being made in the gene editing of food and the opportunities, and challenges, created by this potentially transformative technology.
A look at the scientists working to identify the endless stream of synthetic designer drugs that have flooded the market in recent years.
A look at an unflinchingly brutal fungal parasite that invades the abdomens of cicadas, turning them into “flying saltshakers of death” when they then fly around releasing spores from the fungus on to their brethren on the ground. The cicadas’ obliviousness to the catastrophic loss of their bottoms is perhaps explained by the fact that the fungus has been found to contain psychedelics and amphetamines.
A leading veterinary surgeon, the perfect man if you have “a tiger with gallstones, or a suspiciously sickly beaver”, has been turning his hand to a broad array of endangered animals.