In a study of 11 different plant species, published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, researchers at the University of Oxford have shown that the speed at which plants evolve is linked to how good they are at photosynthesis.
The critical role that breast feeding plays in infant survival may have led, during the last ice age, to a common genetic mutation in East Asians and Native Americans that also, surprisingly, affects the shape of their teeth.
An international consortium of scientists is proposing what is arguably the most ambitious project in the history of biology: sequencing the DNA of all known eukaryotic species on Earth.
Researchers at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) have developed a new computational method that predicts harmful mutations in mammalian species. As more livestock producers are using genetic tests ...
Predicting chance-driven evolution seems impossible. Nevertheless, scientists from AMOLF in Amsterdam and the ESPCI in Paris have succeeded in making predictions about the evolution of a set of genes in E. coli. When and ...
Viruses are more likely to evolve in similar ways in related species—raising the risk that they will "jump" from one species to another, new research shows.
Highly mobile eyebrows that can be used to express a wide range of subtle emotions may have played a crucial role in human survival, new research from the University of York suggests.
Bucking a central tenet of biology, researchers at the University of California San Diego and their colleagues have discovered evidence for a new path of evolution, and with it a deeper understanding of how quickly organisms ...
Biological evolution takes place over generations. But imagine if it could be expedited beyond the incremental change envisaged by Darwin to a matter of individual experience. Such things are dreamt of by so-called "transhumanists". ...
Pioneering early people who lived at the end of the last ice age actually carried on with life as usual despite plummeting temperatures, a study at a world-famous archaeological site in North Yorkshire suggests.
For a long time, hybridization—when distinct species mate and produce offspring—was thought to be a mistake. Yet, advancements in genomic testing tools have revealed naturally occurring hybridization as a fairly common ...
Arthropods are among the most successful animals on the planet. They inhabit the sea (horseshoe crabs), the sky (fruit flies), and the earth (scorpions) in vast numbers and are defined by their exoskeleton exteriors and segmented ...
Experimental evolution is a good way to enhance our current understanding of how genomes—or sets of chromosomes in an organism's cells—evolve and the role of individual mutations in adaptation.
A team of researchers from institutions at the leading edge of the new field of palaeoproteomics have published guidelines to provide it with a firm foundation. Ancient proteins are used to study everything from extinct species ...
Researchers trying to better understand and treat blood-sugar disorders such as type 2 diabetes can look for new clues in odd little fish that dwell in Mexican caves.
The platypus is the ultimate evolutionary mashup of birds, reptiles and mammals. The iconic, egg-laying, venom producing, duck-billed platypus first had its genome sequenced in 2008, revealing its unique genetic makeup and ...
Researchers at North Carolina State University have for the first time identified a specific chemical used by the higher termite castes—the queens and the kings—to communicate their royal status with worker termites. ...
The approximately 400 languages of Aboriginal Australia can be grouped into 27 different families. To put that diversity in context, Europe has just four language families, Indo-European, Basque, Finno-Ugric and Semitic, ...
Do you know about "comparative spermatology?" It's the science of describing spermatozoa. A first international congress was devoted to it in 1970. In 1976, more than 1,000 animal species had their spermatozoa described by ...
Caecilians are serpent-like creatures, but they're not snakes or giant worms. The limbless amphibians, related to frogs and salamanders, favor tropical climates of Africa, Asia and the Americas. Most live in burrows of their ...
A pair of researchers with the University of Pennsylvania has found evidence suggesting humans may be evolving in a way that will prevent alcoholism in the future. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & ...
Modern humans have brains that are more than three times larger than our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Scientists don't agree on when and how this dramatic increase took place, but new analysis of 94 ...
New research shows that males and females of the same species can evolve to be so different that they prevent other species from evolving or colonising habitats, challenging long-held theories on the way natural selection ...
At first glance, the cost-benefit ratio of a blood-only diet suggests that vampire bats—the only mammals to feed exclusively on the viscous, ruby-red elixir—flew down an evolutionary blind alley.
A team of American Museum of Natural History researchers has created a computational model capable of predicting whether or not organisms have the ability to "eat" other cells through a process known as phagocytosis. The ...
Duplicate copies of a gene shared by male and female fruit flies have evolved to resolve competing demands between the sexes. New genetic analysis by researchers at the University of Chicago describes how these copies have ...
Human self-domestication posits that among the driving forces of human evolution, humans selected their companions depending on who exhibited more pro-social behavior. Researchers from a team of the UB led by Cedric Boeckx, ...
For hundreds of years, butterfly collecting has often inspired a special kind of fanaticism, spurring lengthy expeditions, sparking rivalries and prompting some collectors to risk their fortunes and skins in their quest for ...
It turns out that nobody knows when rabbits were domesticated. Despite a well-cited story of the domestic bunny's origins, a review published on February 14 in Trends in Ecology and Evolution finds that historical and archaeological ...
The evolution of human biology should be considered part and parcel with the evolution of humanity itself, proposes Nicole Creanza, assistant professor of biological sciences. She is the guest editor of a new themed issue ...
The shorter average lifespan of males compared to females appears not to be a result of the fact that males have only one X chromosome. This is the conclusion from a research study on fruit flies at Linköping University, ...
Cartoons that illustrate evolution depict early vertebrates generating primordial limbs as they move onto land for the first time. But new findings indicate that some of these first ambulatory creatures may have stayed under ...
From dogs to seals to cats, members of the mammalian order Carnivora can vary greatly from one species to another. But for the most part, their skulls all tend to take on some variant of just a few shapes-a pattern scientists ...
Prevailing theories about evolution state that belief in the concept is tied only to a person's politics, religion or both. But according to new research out of the University of Pennsylvania published in BioScience, the ...
Scientists from the University of Bristol have revealed that ray-finned fishes are perhaps one of Earth's most resilient groups of animals, having survived four mass extinction events that wiped out many other groups.
Around four billion years ago, the Moon had a magnetic field that was about as strong as Earth's magnetic field is today. How the Moon, with a much smaller core than Earth's, could have had such a strong magnetic field has ...
Researchers have developed an inkjet printing technique that can be used to print optical components such as waveguides. Because the printing approach can also fabricate electronics and microfluidics, it could advance a variety ...
In a laboratory experiment that mimics astrophysical conditions, with cryogenic temperatures in an ultrahigh vacuum, scientists used an electron gun to irradiate thin sheets of ice covered in basic molecules of methane, ammonia ...
Currently, most of the magnetic sensors used in today's computers, airplanes, cars, and other systems distort the magnetic fields that they are measuring. These distortions can cause major problems for some applications, ...
An international team of astronomers reports the finding of ASASSN-18di—a powerful white-light superflare on a previously undetected, mid-type M-dwarf star. The discovery is detailed in a paper published April 12 on the ...
From cell phones and laptops to electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries are the power source that fuels everyday life. But in recent years, they have also drawn attention for catching fire. In an effort to develop a safer ...
Two researchers, one with Biofaction in Austria, the other with Université de Toulouse in France, report an example of ants (Azteca brevis) in Costa Rica who have developed a truly unique way of capturing prey that are much ...
ESA's Gaia mission has produced the richest star catalogue to date, including high-precision measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars and revealing previously unseen details of our home Galaxy.
Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, is a widely used medical tool for taking pictures of the insides of our body. One way to make MRI scans easier to read is through the use of contrast agents—magnetic dyes injected into ...
A pair of researchers with Victoria University of Wellington has suggested that the way to prevent future blockchains from future hackers using quantum computers is to use quantum blockchains. Theoretical physicists Del Rajan ...
Viruses may spark hydrocephalus by exploiting a suprising weakness of cells that circulate fluid in the brain, says a new study by Duke University scientists.
When the balance of the sexes is skewed towards one gender, parents are more likely to split up, leaving the father to care for the offspring, says a study from an international team of scientists studying bird populations.
A team of researchers including U of A engineering and physics faculty has developed a new method of detecting single photons, or light particles, using quantum dots.
Two new studies have shown that sunlight transforms oil spills on the ocean surface more significantly and quickly than previously thought. The phenomenon considerably limits the effectiveness of chemical dispersants, which ...
When famed physicists Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska first introduced the transmission electron microscope (TEM) in 1933, it allowed researchers to peer inside cells, microorganisms and particles that were once too small to study.
New Guinea warriors harvested thigh bones from their dead fathers to fashion into ornamental but deadly daggers used to kill and maim enemies, sometimes to eat them.
Deep-diving whales and other marine mammals can get the bends—the same painful and potentially life-threatening decompression sickness that strikes scuba divers who surface too quickly. A new study offers a hypothesis of ...
A small, brown mouse found in the forests of Central America bucks the rodent trend of conversing in high-pitched squeaks often inaudible to the human ear.
A team of researchers, which includes the University of Southampton, have developed new technology which could prompt a significant change for a spacecraft or satellite.
An ancient horse burial at Tombos along the Nile River Valley shows that a member of the horse family thousands of years ago was more important to the culture than previously thought, which provides a window into human-animal ...
Soldiers often need to see through smoke, fog, dust or any other airborne obscurant and detect the presence of toxins or other chemicals in the field or on the front lines. To identify those chemicals, they use infrared (IR) ...
An international team of researchers, including Frank Seifart and Sven Grawunder of the former Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Julien Meyer from the Université Grenoble ...
The next generation of energy-efficient power electronics, high-frequency communication systems, and solid-state lighting rely on materials known as wide bandgap semiconductors. Circuits based on these materials can operate ...
The pin mold fungus Phycomyces blakesleeanus forms a dense forest of vertically growing fruiting bodies, but how does it know which way is "up"? New research publishing 24 April in the open access journal PLOS Biology, from ...
Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have recently found higher amounts of microplastic in Arctic sea ice than ever before. However, the majority of particles were ...
In 1935, at the height of the Dust Bowl, a team of researchers from the Kansas Board of Health set out to understand the impact of dust on human health. In areas impacted by dust storms, the researchers documented an increase ...
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