What to Do About the Ants in Your Kitchen
It all started in a street median in Manhattan, not far from Mary Tyler Moore’s apartment. Marko Pecaravic decided to do a thesis on the [...]
The Wild Life of Columbus
The untold story of the species that stowed away on Columbus’s ship and how they have since changed the world. Columbus sailed to the Caribbean [...]
Life at the Margins
Some discoveries and innovations come from big labs funded incredibly well by governments in affluent countries. They come from those in the mainstream, freighters plowing [...]
The Giant Wild Life of our Giant Backyards
Today we're serving up an elephant double-feature. Click on over to Buzz Hoot Roar to get your second helping of pachyderms. Last week, I woke [...]
Fruit Flies Use Alcohol to Self-Medicate, but Feel Bad about it Afterwards
In preparation for the debut of our collaborative wasp yeast beer at the World Beer Festival in Raleigh on April 5, 2014, I revived the [...]
What If God Were a Maggot?
**Today, we’re reposting a story Rob wrote in late 2012, in praise of the decomposers that clean up our world, recycling waste back into life. [...]
A Sip for the Ancestors: The True Story of Civilization’s Stumbling Debt to Beer and Fungus
In preparation for the debut of our collaborative wasp yeast beer at the World Beer Festival in Raleigh on April 5, 2014, I've decided to [...]
Lewis Thomas and the Ants of New York City
Lewis Thomas was a doctor who wrote articles so beautiful everyone forgot he was anything but a writer. Joyce Carol Oates used Thomas’s writing in [...]
He is a wise man who invented beer
It has been a fun set of weeks in the lab. Two weeks ago I discovered ants from our lab had made their way to [...]
Coming Soon…
**NOTE 2/17/2014: Dr. Eleanor's Book of Common Ants of New York City is now LIVE -- Download your copy of the interactive eBook or pdf [...]
Why your local fungus farmer might not be your friend
My fiancé Joe and I planted a mushroom garden last year, which is to say, we drilled hundreds of holes in logs, hammered spore plugs [...]
How to turn any dataset into a glowing worm
A few decades ago gene expression, the process by which the code books of genes are turned into proteins, was invisible. It happened in every [...]
How Do Animals in the City Beat the Polar Vortex?
Earlier this week, when the polar vortex’s cold eye was taking a deep look south, I wondered how the city-dwelling animals are holding up. Where [...]
Crazy Aunts, Crazy Ants!
Dr. Eleanor has been busy working on a few new bonus chapters for The Book of Common Ants, focusing on species that are particularly common [...]
The Incredible Journey of My Dog’s Butt Worm
Today, Dr. Eleanor Spicer Rice delights us not with ants (as she does in the Book of Common Ants), but with an up close and [...]