Annemarie Surlykke from the University of Southern Denmark is fascinated by echolocation. She really wants to know how it works. Surlykke equates the ultrasound cries that bats use for echolocation with the beam of light from a torch: you won't see much with the light from a small bulb but you could see several hundred metres with a powerful beam. Surlykke explains that it's the same with echolocating bats. Some have big powerful calls for perception over a long range, while others are said to whisper; which puzzled Surlykke. How could 'whispering' bats echolocate with puny 70decibel cries that barely carry at all? Teaming up with her long time collaborator Elizabeth Kalko from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and student Signe Brinkløv, Surlykke decided to measure the volume of a pair of whispering bat species' calls to find out how loud the whisperers are. They publish their discovery that whispering bats are really shrieking in The Journal of Experimental Biology on 12th December 2008 at http://jeb.biologists.org.

A newly hatched sea turtle's first swim is the most critical of its life. Having run the gauntlet of air and land predators to make it to the sea, the tiny voyager must also evade hungry fish patrolling the beaches in its bid for freedom. For youngsters hatching on the Great Barrier Reef's coral cays the risks are high: as many as 30% perish as they head for safe deep waters. But how much does this headlong dash through the waves cost the intrepid hatchlings? Curious to know, David Booth from the University of Queensland decided to measure hatchling turtles' oxygen consumption rates as they swam for safety. Booth publishes his results in The Journal of Experimental Biology on 12th December 2008 at http://jeb.biologists.org.

You'd think that if scientists were to discover a new species, it would be in some remote, uncharted tropical forest, not a laboratory in New York. But a team from the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History has done the unexpected. Looking at the genes of the African dwarf crocodile, researchers found that the group—genetically speaking—comprises three distinct species rather than one. This not only ends a long debate about the taxonomy of this group, previously thought to consist of two closely related subspecies, but also defines a new, distinct species from genetic samples.

Modern medical technologies are repairing the human body in ways never imagined only a few years ago, but they are leaving an increasing population of patients who are newly susceptible to opportunistic pathogens. Invasive and chronic fungal infections have become a formidable clinical opponent, and foremost among them is Aspergillus fumigatus, the focus of a new text from ASM Press.

A new survey of approximately 4,000 American adults reveals that fewer than one-third (29.6 percent) have been vaccinated against the flu this season. The survey is the first of its kind to measure self-reported influenza vaccination rates during a current flu season.