Smooth, shiny balls that cling to the undersides of oak leaves often hold a grim secret inside, or, depending on how you look at it, a crunchy surprise: the dried-up corpse of a wasp, killed by a ...

There are plants which, like the vampires of Halloween legend, suck the “blood” of other plants. Parasitic plants take nutrients and water from other plants by extracting them from their host through ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Karma exists, at least for gall wasps. These little bugs deposit ...

Nature is full of fascinating interactions between plant and animal species. Now scientists have documented, for the first time, a parasitic vine latching onto and feeding off structures created by ...

An evolutionary biologists have discovered a new trophic interaction -- the first example of a parasitic plant attacking a parasitic insect on a shared host plant. The find could point to new methods ...

Two parasites, the love vine and the gall wasp, are both hosted by one species of oak tree, but on August 20 in the journal Current Biology, researchers at Rice University describe a new interaction ...

Aug. 20 (UPI) --Scientists have discovered a never-before-seen interaction between parasites. Researchers at Rice University discovered a parasitic vine preying on a parasitic wasp. The two parasites, ...

Early this spring, Rice University evolutionary biologist Scott Egan stood in a patch of live oak scrub habitat in South Florida and scanned the trees for something he'd never seen outside his lab -- ...