https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Experiments with monarch butterfly caterpillars and the milkweed plants on which they feed have shown for the first time that interactions across four biological kingdoms can influence disease transmission. https://phys.org/news/2015-10-biological-kingdoms-disease-transmission-monarch.html Ecology Tue, 13 Oct 2015 19:00:01 EDT news363967332 (PhysOrg.com) -- The effort to classify life into various groups has been a bumpy ride. Prior to the 1900s, living things were usually pegged as either plants or animals – period. By the middle of the 20th century, however, it was asserted that this scheme did not adequately represent fungi, bacteria and protists, leading to a five-group classification – Monera (bacteria), Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. At roughly the same time, however, a fundamental distinction between prokaryotic bacteria and the four eukaryotic kingdoms (plants, animals, fungi, and protists) based on nuclei, cytoskeleton, internal membranes, and other shared eukaryote characteristics – for example, unlike eukaryotes, their genetic material is not wrapped by a membrane into a separate compartment – was acknowledged, resulting in a different system – and considerable confusion. Then, things changed anew when an entirely new prokaryotic group – the so-called third domain of life, living in high temperatures and producing methane – was discovered in the late 1970s. https://phys.org/news/2012-03-insights-ancient-life-chromosome-segregation.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:00:01 EDT news251110329