Science

In what could represent a milestone in ecological restoration, researchers have implemented a method capable of restoring peatlands at tens of thousands of oil and gas exploration sites in Western Canada. The project involves lowering the surface of these decommissioned sites, known as well pads, and transplanting native moss onto them to effectively recreate peatlands. This is the first time researchers have applied the method to scale on an entire well pad. The study found that the technique results in sufficient water for the growth of peatland moss across large portions of the study site.

Lightweight lithium metal is a heavy-hitting critical mineral, serving as the key ingredient in the rechargeable batteries that power phones, laptops, electric vehicles and more. As ubiquitous as lithium is in modern technology, extracting the metal is complex and expensive. A new method enables high-efficiency lithium extraction -- in minutes, not hours -- using low temperatures and simple water-based leaching.

Scientists have produced one of the most neutron-rich isotopes, hydrogen-6, in an electron scattering experiment. The experiment presents a new method for investigating light, neutron-rich nuclei and challenges our current understanding of multi-nucleon interactions.

A more efficient and environmentally friendly approach to extracting rare earth elements that power everything from electric vehicle batteries to smartphones could increase domestic supply and decrease reliance on costly imports.

An international team of scientists has moved beyond just 'scratching the surface,' to understand how microplastics move through and impact the global ocean. For the first time, scientists have mapped microplastic distribution from the surface to the deep sea at a global scale -- revealing not only where plastics accumulate, but how they infiltrate critical ocean systems. Researchers synthesized depth-profile data from 1,885 stations collected between 2014 and 2024 to map microplastic distribution patterns by size and polymer type, while also evaluating potential transport mechanisms.

An AI tool has made a step forward in translating the language proteins use to dictate whether they form sticky clumps similar to those linked to Alzheimer's Disease and around fifty other types of human disease. In a departure from typical 'black-box' AI models, the new tool, CANYA, was designed to be able to explain its decisions, revealing the specific chemical patterns that drive or prevent harmful protein folding.

We should protect Earth's rivers and forests with laws. But it is another matter to claim them as living beings, as Robert Macfarlane does in his new book Is a River Alive?

There’s no doubt that doing some long-distance running improves our fitness, but at what point does it become too much, asks Grace Wade

It can be difficult to work out which books count as climate fiction. Emily H. Wilson reads the shortlist for the Climate Fiction prize – and discovers Roz Dineen's powerful novel Briefly Very Beautiful

In his series The Anthropocene Illusion, photographer Zed Nelson highlights the tension between an unfolding environmental crisis and our obsession with 'curating' nature

Max Telford's new book, The Tree of Life, is a millennia-spanning exploration of the history – and future – of evolutionary relationships

Feedback notes the proliferation of AI company logos, and agrees with one blogger's claim that many bear a striking resemblance to a certain anatomical feature

When politics and science align, it is easy to think science is apolitical. But the situation in the US today shows how science has always been fuelled by politics, says Annalee Newitz

A Peruvian farmer's case against energy giant RWE will be decided shortly. But it has already made history, says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author Friederike Otto

We should protect Earth's rivers and forests with laws. But it is another matter to recast them as actual life forms, as Robert Macfarlane's new book Is a River Alive? does

Several recent scientific findings, including signs of life on an exoplanet and 'de-extinction' of the dire wolf have caused a stir but when a claim seems too good to be true it probably is

We know that our Milky Way galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in its center. Astronomers think most spiral galaxies do, and that SMBHs coexist and co-evolve with their host galaxies. However, they haven't been able to find them in all spirals. M83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, has always been puzzling because scientists haven't seen any evidence of an SMBH in its center. The JWST may have finally found some.

This paper in Science (click screenshot to read) describes a very unusual Hawaiian caterpillar (the larva of a moth): it is very rare, found only in a 15 km² area of Oahu, patrols spider webs on the ground for its prey, and then affixes the uneaten parts of insects to its body, so it looks really weird.  Its rarity in both number of individuals and habits (almost no caterpillars are carnivores) makes it imperative to save the small area of its habitat, which, to use non-metric measures, is about an area the size of a square 2.4 miles on a side.

 

You can also see a writeup of this weird insect in the Smithsonian, from which I’ve taken a few photos that come from Daniel Rubinoff, the study’s first author of the Science paper. Click below to go to the Smithsonian article:

The caterpillar has the ghoulish name of the “bone collector caterpillar”, and its species, not yet named, is in the genus Hyposmocoma, a genus endemic to Hawaii that has radiated into over 350 species on the archipelago.  Here’s the adult of this species, which is also rare because only 62 species of its caterpillar have ever been found. Photo is by Daniel Rubinoff, a Professor of Entomology at the University of Hawaii.

(From Smithsonian article) A museum specimen of an adult female bone collector moth that was reared in the Rubinoff lab Daniel Rubinoff

 

But the weirdest life stage is the larva or caterpillar, which spins a silken web around itself that it carries with it, affixing insect parts to the silk after it crawls around spider webs eating dead or trapped insects. Look at this (photo from the paper).  You can’t even see the caterpillar, as it’s covered with scavenged body parts.

This part of the Science paper tell you how it does this, and suggests a reason:

When decorating their silken portable cases, the caterpillars are particular. Body parts are carefully measured for size before the caterpillar weaves them into its collection. Each prospective new addition is rotated and probed with its mandibles several times, and parts that are too large are chewed down to a size that will fit its case. If denied access to arthropod body parts in captivity, the caterpillars do not accept other bits of detritus, suggesting that they recognize and exclusively use corpses in nature and that this decoration is important to their survival. Given the context, it is possible that the array of partially consumed body parts and shed spider skins covering the case forms effective camouflage from a spider landlord; the caterpillars have never been found predated by spiders or wrapped in spider silk. Bone collector caterpillars have been recorded from the webs of at least four different species of spider in three different families, none of which is native to Hawaii, so adaptability to non-native elements is likely crucial to their persistence.

So it seems to be camouflage, as spiders have not been reported to go after these things, even though they hang around webs for a long time (they do move from ground web to ground web).  But this is just a guess at this point. It could also be protecting the caterpillar from other predators as well.

Here’s a bone collector caterpillar in a spider web along with a spider and its eggs; I’ve circled the caterpillar, which, as the one above, is covered with insect body parts:

(From the paper): Fig. 2. Rotting wood log broken open to expose a bone collector caterpillar resting on a clump of webbing next to a non-native spitting spider (Scytodes sp.) with its egg sac. The web is partially obscured by termite and other wood-boring insect frass.

As I said, this genus has radiated widely, and the authors did a molecular phylogeny of the group, showing that it’s most closely related to the cigar caterpillar:

(From paper): Fig. 3. Molecular phylogeny of Hyposmocoma lineages based on 38 genes and 82,875 aligned base pairs. The phylogeny was molecularly calibrated using age estimates from Kawahara et al. (17); 95% highest posterior density confidence intervals for the molecular dating estimates for nodes are indicated with blue bars. Outgroups are cropped, and the full tree is shown in the supplementary materials. Different lineages are indicated by their larval case type (8), and exemplar cases are shown on the right. Bone collector and cigar case species are the only ones that are carnivorous. Current terrestrial areas of the Hawaiian Island chain are shown in dark green; shallows that were once above sea level are shown in gray. The islands are placed along the timescale according to age and geographic position.

Although the paper says this: “The bone collector species is the only one known of its kind, representing a monotypic lineage without a sister species. Although it is related to the other carnivorous lineage of Hyposmocoma, their ancestors diverged more than 5 million years ago.” But the phylogeny clearly shows a sister species, the cigar caterpillar, so I’m a bit puzzled, unless “cigar” represents itself a whole group of caterpillars, in which case the bone collector is the sister species to this group. 

Since Oahu is only 3-4 million years old, the bone collector’s ancestor must have evolved on another island and then the adult (probably) made its way to the younger island to continue its evolution there.

Just two more show-and-tells. First, from the Smithsonian article, a series of bone-collector caterpillars. Since they adorn themselves with whatever is suitable in a spider nest, each individual will look different from the others:

(From Smithsonian): These six bone collector caterpillar specimens adorned their cases with beetle wings, ant heads, fly wings and legs, spider legs and other insect body parts. Their cases—the gray material seen through the detritus—are made from caterpillar saliva and silk. Photo by Daniel Rubinoff

And here’s a video of a bone-collector caterpillar, again taken by Daniel Rubinoff. It’s not clear to me whether it’s eating another member of its species (they are cannibalistic) or is chewing up insect parts with which to adorn itself.  But you can get a glimpse of the caterpillar’s head.

Just think about how many bizarre creatures there are like this yet to be found. Another reason to save as much natural habitat as we can.

 

We all know that walking is good for us, but growing evidence reveals that the right hike can exponentially enhance the health benefits

A global survey of microplastics in oceans reveals that tiny particles of plastic are prevalent throughout the water column, which could harm marine ecosystems and affect carbon storage in the deep sea