Little is known about Africa's elusive aardvarks, but new research says they are vulnerable to climate change like many other species. Hotter temperatures are taking their toll on the aardvark, whose diet of ants and termites is becoming scarcer because of reduced rainfall, said researchers at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Drought in the Kalahari desert killed five out of six aardvarks that were being monitored for a year, as well as 11 others, they said. The aardvarks' body temperatures plummeted during the night because they were not getting enough energy from diminished food sources, said physiology professor Andrea Fuller.

Warning system for toxic algae in lakes

Satellites in space and a robot under Lake Erie's surface are part of a network of scientific tools trying to keep algae toxins out of drinking water supplies in the shallowest of the Great Lakes. It's one of the most wide-ranging freshwater monitoring systems in the U.S., researchers say, and some of its pieces soon will be watching for harmful algae on hundreds of lakes nationwide. Researchers are creating an early warning system using real-time data from satellites that in recent years have tracked algae bloom hot spots such as Florida's Lake Okeechobee and the East Coast's Chesapeake Bay.

The plan is to have it in place within two years so that states in the continental U.S. can be alerted to where toxic algae is appearing before they might detect it on the surface, said Blake Schaeffer, a researcher with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Even without a head, worm can detect light

The planarian flatworm is a smooshed noodle of an organism with a triangular head occupied by a rather primitive version of a brain and two black dots for eyes. You can chop off this head, and it will grow back in about a week — eyes, brain and all. And you can hack away at the critter until all that's left is a tiny speck of worm dust — and the thing will still grow back.

But now this creature, famous for its regenerative abilities, may have another unforeseen idiosyncrasy: It not only reacts to light after decapitation, but it recoups an ability to see finer aspects of light as its eyes and brain grow back. And despite lacking the machinery to see colors, the worm somehow creates a workaround, essentially converting "this rainbow colored world to a grayscale," said Akash Gulyani, a multidisciplinary scientist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India, who led a new study. His team's findings, published in Science Advances, could offer new opportunities for studying how animals recover after injuries and reveal additional details about how animal eyes evolved.

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