Say What? endozoochory \EHN-doh-ZOH-eh-KOHR-ee\ n. Dispersal of plant spores or seeds by an animal after passing through the animal’s gut. Endozoochory is common for seed plants, but its usefulness for other taxa is largely unknown. A Swiss study published online April 13 in PLoS ONE

found that lichen fragments in snail feces can make a comeback, too. The researchers also found that lichen passed through the guts of larger snail species regenerated better than lichen pooped out by smaller snails. Lichen (Lobaria pulmonaria shown) is a symbiotic combination of fungi and algae or cyanobacteria, and while past research has shown that the separate constituents can survive gut passage, this study provides the first evidence that whole lichen can spread endozoochorously, the authors claim.

SN Online

www.sciencenews.org

BODY & BRAIN Infants may learn speech sounds as they snooze. Read “Sleeping babies learn in an eyeblink.”

LIFE

Researchers find a natural screwlike joint — in a beetle’s hip.

See “Weevils evolved nut-and-screw joint.”

Science Past | FROM THE ISSUE OF JULY 29, 1961

RADIATION SURVIVORS — A world-wide radiation disaster might eventually give rise to two populations, research on bacteria indicates.… Starting with a culture of ordinary ordinary bacteria. Eventually a second population of survivors began to appear, resembling the original bacteria in every respect except that they had just enough resistance to copper to grow slowly in the presence of that poison. Finally, the completely resistant variants disappeared.

Science Future

August 8 Hear an anthropologist speak in Houston on the evolving relationship between humans and water. Go to www.hmns.org

MAT TER & ENERGY
An acoustic cloak made
of metamaterials reflects
sound off a bump as though
it were a flat wall. Read
“You haven’t heard it all.”

Science Stats

WHAT’S EATING YOU?

August 12–13 The weeklong Perseid meteor shower peaks. Watch after midnight. For more info go to http://bit.ly/Ln3pCr

Juvenile gators cannibalized, percent per year

August 20 In Ann Arbor, Mich., bring preschoolers on a morning hike to explore the outdoors. For more info, see www.lesliesnc.org

How Bizarre

If You Give a Slime Mold a Sedative doesn’t sound like a
best-selling children’s book, but a recent study found that
Physarum polycephalum actually prefers herbal seda-
tives and other dried plants to honey or oats. Andrew
Adamatzky at the University of the West of England in
Bristol tempted the single-celled organism with various
goodies. The yellow amoeba-like blob grew toward the
pills more often than it reached for honey or oat flakes
(honey trial shown, star marks honey). Slime mold espe-
cially liked pills that combined hops and Valerian root, an
anxiety and insomnia treatment, Adamatzky reported online May 31 in Nature Precedings.

The new range of attractive substances could be used to program and control the mold, which is used as a biological computer in maze solving and other calculations.

Eaten by other gators Alligator cannibalism may do away with 6 to 7 percent of the juvenile alligator population each year in Orange Lake, Fla., a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission team estimated. Nearly all eaters were adults.