A weird-looking parasitic plant has discarded all its photosynthesis machinery – and nevertheless has found a way to thrive.

“My long-standing aim is to rethink what it truly means to be a plant,” Kenji Suetsugu, a botanist at Kobe University in ...

Parasitic plants are notorious agricultural pests that drain nutrients from crops and cause economic losses of more than USD ...

At the base of mossy trees, deep in the mountains of Taiwan and mainland Japan or nestled in the subtropical forests of Okinawa, grows what most might mistake for a mushroom—but it is actually a very ...

Some parasitic plants can ‘steal’ genetic information from their hosts through horizontal gene transfer, which they then use to make themselves a better parasite. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a ...

Parasitic weeds extract water and nutrients from their host plants. But what makes these parasites so successful? A study led by Prof Susann Wicke from the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity at ...

For most of their lives, plants in the Sapria genus are barely anything — thin ribbons of parasitic cells winding inside vines in Southeast Asian rainforests. They become visible only when they ...

In Old Norse mythology, Baldr, the son of the god Odin and the goddess Frigg, was slain with a mistletoe spear. Some ...

A parasitic infection can cause various symptoms, depending on the organism. These can include flu-like or gastrointestinal symptoms, among others. Treatment may include medications. Parasites are ...

The black parasitic ant tricks the workers into attacking their amber queen. Current Biology / Takasuka et al. Ants are no strangers to violence. Sometimes, an outsider queen will attack a colony’s ...

Overtaking a throne sometimes takes a touch of matricide. Some newly mated ant queens sneak into other ant colonies and spray their queens with a liquid that sends workers into a murderous frenzy, ...