Odors Help Fruit Flies Escape Parasitoid Wasps.

A new study reveals how flies and their larvae avoid parasitoid wasps by "eavesdropping" on their chemical communications. Read the associated Research Article.

How Bats Land Upside Down.

A new study reveals that bats use the inertia of their unusually heavy wings-rather than their aerodynamic properties-to help them perform acrobatic maneuvers like landing upside down to roost. Read the Research Article.

Convergence on an optimal way to swim.

A study of eight independent instances of evolution of a distinct mode of swimming by animals such as rays and cuttlefish shows repeated arrival at a single optimal solution.

Resolving the flap over bird wrists.

New Developmental Evidence Clarifies the Evolution of Wrist Bones in the Dinosaur-Bird Transition

Yeast survive by hedging their bets.

A new experimental approach reveals a bet hedging strategy in unstressed, clonal yeast cells, whereby they adopt a range of growth states that correlate with expression of a trehalose-synthesis regulator and predict resistance to future stress.

Sex chromosome equality in plants.

Evidence for dosage compensation in ,a plant with 10-million-year-old sex chromosomes, reveals that dosage compensation can evolve rapidly in young XY systems and is not an animal-specific phenomenon.