The Atlantic Ocean doesn't receive the mother lode of fixed nitrogen, the building block of life, after all. Instead, comparing fathom for fathom, the Pacific and Indian oceans experience twice the amount of nitrogen fixing as the Atlantic, say researchers in the Jan. 11 issue of Nature.

Cambridge scientists have discovered the stage at which some of the cells of a fertilised mammalian egg are fated to develop into stem cells and why this occurs. The findings of the study, which overturn the long-held belief that cells are the same until the fourth cleavage (division) of the embryo, are reported in today's edition of Nature.

In many animals, males advertise to potential mates with showy traits, many of which are linked to testosterone levels. However, a new study suggests that, in fish, choosing a flashier mate may cause future generations to be more susceptible to pathogens.

Young barn owls waiting for the return of a parent with prey. Fluctuations in weather and the environment affect survival and reproduction of animals. But are all individuals within a population equally susceptible? Theory on the evolution in age-structured populations suggests not – those life stages that are more important for overall fitness should be less susceptible to environmental variation than other life stages.

Waterfowl are "careful, sophisticated bargainers," negotiating not only how much effort each puts into communal rearing of ducklings, but also profit-sharing, says a new study from the American Naturalist. Female eider ducks are well known to team up and share the work of rearing ducklings, but it now appears that they also negotiate not only how much effort each puts into the partnership, but also profit-sharing. An international group of scientists used a long-running study of the eider population in a Finnish archipelago to test predictions about how each hen seeks to maximize her benefits from the partnership without making it so unattractive that other hens withdraw their participation.

A newly identified wheat gene produces proteins that appear to attack the stomach lining of a crop-destroying fly larvae so that the bugs starve to death.