Erin Garcia de Jesús

Staff Writer

Erin Garcia de Jesús is a staff writer at Science News. She holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Washington, where she studied virus/host co-evolution. After deciding science as a whole was too fascinating to spend a career studying one topic, she went on to earn a master’s in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writing has appeared in Nature News, Science, Eos, Smithsonian Voices and more, and she was the winter 2019 science writing intern at Science News.

All Stories by Erin Garcia de Jesús

  1. Animals

    See 3-D models of animal anatomy from openVertebrate’s public collection

    Over six years, researchers took CT scans of over 13,000 vertebrates to make museum collections more easily accessible to researchers and the public.

  2. Genetics

    A genetic parasite may explain why humans and other apes lack tails

    Around 25 million years ago, a stretch of DNA inserted itself into an ancestral ape’s genome, an event that might have taken our tails away.

  3. Animals

    The Brazilian flea toad may be the world’s smallest vertebrate

    Brazilian flea toads are neither a flea nor a toad, but they are almost flea-sized. The frogs are small enough to fit on a pinkie fingernail.

  4. Health & Medicine

    50 years ago, computers helped speed up drug discovery

    In 1974, a computer program helped researchers search for promising cancer drugs. Today, AI is helping speed up drug discovery.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Taking a weight-loss drug reduced a craving for opioids

    Early results from 20 people with opioid use disorder raise hopes that popular weight-loss drugs like Wegovy can tackle opioid addiction, too.

  6. Plants

    Here’s why blueberries are blue

    Nanostructures in a blueberry’s waxy coating make it look blue, despite having dark red pigments — and no blue ones — in its skin, a new study reports.

  7. Animals

    Explore the expected life spans of different dog breeds

    An analysis of dogs in the United Kingdom found that breeds like miniature dachshunds have the longest life spans while bulldogs have the shortest.

  8. Life

    Insects flocking to artificial lights may not know which way is up

    Insects may use light to figure out where the ground is. Artificial lights send them veering off course, data from high-speed infrared cameras suggests.

  9. Animals

    What parrots can teach us about human intelligence

    By studying the brains and behaviors of parrots, scientists hope to learn more about how humanlike intelligence evolves.

  10. Animals

    A bird flu outbreak is sweeping the globe. Its long-term effects are unclear

    A reporter’s recent trip to the Galápagos offered a chance to reflect on the bird flu outbreak, which has killed millions of birds and other animals.

  11. Life

    Here’s how poison dart frogs safely hoard toxins in their skin

    A protein found in frog bodies may help the amphibians collect and transport toxins from their food to their skin for chemical defense.

  12. Anthropology

    Ancient primates’ unchipped teeth hint that they ate mostly fruit

    Of more than 400 teeth collected, just 21 were chipped, suggesting that early primate diets were soft on their choppers.