Diuscovery in amber reveals ancient biology of termites

The analysis of a termite entombed for 100 million years in an ancient piece of amber has revealed the oldest example of "mutualism" ever discovered between an animal and microorganism, and also shows the unusual biology ...

Amoeba Genome Shows Evolution of Complex Life

(PhysOrg.com) -- An amoeba with a split personality is giving biologists clues to the ancestry of organisms from fungi to people and insight into how complex organisms evolved.

Scientists reclassify eukaryotic microorganisms

One of the biggest scientific challenges is the classification of the natural world, especially the protists, which are eukaryotic microorganisms. While the classification proposed by Sina Adl et al. (2005) was conservative ...

New gut bacterium discovered in termite's digestion of wood

When termites munch on wood, the small bits are delivered to feed a community of unique microbes living in their guts, and in a complex process involving multiple steps, these microbes turn the hard, fibrous material into ...

Researchers discover ancient symbiosis between animals, bacteria

Marine shallow water sandy bottoms on the surface appear desert-like and empty, but in the interstitial space between the sand grains a diverse fauna flourishes. In addition to bacteria and protozoa numerous animal phyla ...

Swimming microbes monitor water quality

Miners used to rely on canaries to alert them to dangerous build-ups of gases. Now much smaller animals -- the smallest of all -- can warn of toxins in water supplies.

Algae held captive and genes stolen in crime of evolution

Microscopic animals held algae captive and stole their genes for energy production, thereby evolving into a new and more powerful species many millions of years ago reveals a new study published today in the journal Nature.

page 1 from 3