Ants adjust their social interactions to accommodate changes in population density, according to researchers at Penn State and Georgetown University. The findings suggest that ant colonies are capable of maintaining their sophisticated social organization despite potentially drastic changes in their environments.
The prevalence of the most abundant species of ticks found in Pennsylvania has shifted over the last century, according to Penn State scientists, who analyzed 117 years' worth of specimens and data submitted primarily by residents from around the state.
The construction of a new multimodal optical microscope, SCATTIRSTORM, that could enable more efficient bioenergy production, is the focus of a three-year, $1.5 million, U.S. Department of Energy grant awarded to three Penn State researchers.
By temporarily silencing the expression of a critical gene, researchers fooled soybean plants into sensing they were under siege, encountering a wide range of stresses. Then, after selectively cross breeding those plants with the original stock, the progeny "remember" the stress-induced responses to become more vigorous, resilient and productive plants, according to a team of researchers.
Zombie ants clamp on to aerial vegetation and hang for months spewing the spores of their parasitic fungi, but researchers noticed that they do not always clamp on to the same part of the plant. Now the researchers know that the choice of leaves or twigs is related to climate and that climate change forced the fungi to adapt to local conditions.
Carpenter ants infected with a specialized parasitic fungus are not subjected to aggression or isolation from their nest mates, and they continue to share in the colony's food resources until they leave the nest for the last time to die, according to a study led by Penn State researchers.
Helping undergraduate students understand scientific knowledge through participation in research is a top priority for faculty in the Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
Kenneth Weiss, Evan Pugh University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Genetics, was awarded the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
Lizards living in fire-ant-invaded areas are stressed. However, a team of biologists found that the lizards did not exhibit this stress as expected after extended fire ant exposure in socially stressful environments, leading to questions about stress overload.
Researchers at Penn State have received $2.35 million from the National Science Foundation to study disease transmission among animals with a goal of better predicting outbreaks of infectious diseases within humans.
A process using human stem cells can generate the cells that cover the external surface of a human heart — epicardium cells — according to a multidisciplinary team of researchers.
A theory that uses the mathematics of a drunken walk describes ecological invasions better than waves, according to Tim Reluga, associate professor of mathematics and biology, Penn State.
Whether a wild cottonmouth snake will attempt to strike in an encounter depends on its baseline stress level, according to a team of scientists led by undergraduate researcher Mark Herr.
A new super-resolution microscope and some of the first dynamic imaging experiments it enables are being supported by two grants totaling nearly $1.5 million awarded to Penn State researchers by the National Science Foundation.
Coral genotypes can survive for thousands of years, possibly making them the longest-lived animals in the world, according to researchers at Penn State, the National Marine Fisheries Service and Dial Cordy & Associates.
