"A farmer in the Philippines walks through his rice paddies and sees worrying orange smears on his crops. Another in Tanzania detects white blotches on the leaves of her cassava. Worried, they hold up their cell phones, snap pictures, and instantly find out whether their plants are diseased, what the infections are, and what to do about them. Here is the future that David Hughes envisions, and it’s slightly closer to reality." (Image: Reuters)
 

Why Are Your Gut Microbes Different From Mine?

"But here’s the important thing: Collectively, the factors they identified explain a tiny proportion of the variation between people’s microbiomes—19 percent in the Dutch study, and just 8 percent in the Belgian. Which means we’re still largely in the dark about what makes my microbiome different from yours, let alone whether one is healthier than the other. “With all the knowledge we’ve gathered, we made the best possible effort to capture all the factors we could imagine, and we could only explain 8 percent of the total variation,” says Jeroen Raes from the University of Leuven, who led the Belgian study. “It’s very humbling.”" (Image: Fabrizio Bensch) 
 

This Plant Bleeds Sweet Nectar To Recruit Ant Bodyguards

"Six years ago, Anke Steppuhn noticed that the bittersweet nightshade, when attacked by slugs and insects in a greenhouse, would bleed. Small droplets would exude from the wounds of its part-eaten leaves. At the same time, Steppuhn and her colleagues saw that the wild plants were often covered in ants. These facts are connected. Steppuhn’s team from the Free University of Berlin, including student Tobias Lortzing, have since discovered that the droplets are a kind of sugary nectar, which the beleagured nightshade uses to summon ants. The ants, in return for their sweet meals, attack the pests that are destroying the plant. And this discovery provides important clues about the evolution of more intimate partnerships between ants and plants." (Image: Joel Sartore)
 

More good reads

• Who debunks the debunkers? Daniel Engber on “a rumor passed around by skeptics — a myth about myth-busting”.
• What’s Behind Slovenia’s Love Affair with a Salamander?  One of my favourite people Meehan Crist writes about one of my favourite animals, the olm
• Such a good Rose Eveleth piece contrasting the RFID chip in her hand and the IUD in her uterus
• A worm that plagued the American South—and bred stereotypes about lazy Southerners. By Rachel Nuwer.
• The sixth-season premiere of Game of Thrones taps into a longstanding (and sexist) trope: anxieties about women being something other than they seem. By Megan Garber
• Audubon Made Up At Least 28 Fake Species To Prank A Rival. The prank lasted almost 200 years. By Sarah Laskow
• The Twilight State Between Wakefulness and Sleep is a Window into Consciousness. The wonderful Vaughan Bell makes his Atlantic debut
• Veronique Greenwood writes about learning Mandarin as an adult. 
• The second of David Quammen's wonderful series on Yellowstone National Park--this one on its predators and prey.