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Striking traits seen only in males of some species – such as colourful peacock feathers or butterfly wings – are partly explained by gene behaviour, research suggests.
In nature, male attempts to mate with females can be so extreme that they can harm the females. Such negative impacts of mating interactions have been suggested to promote the emergence of new species under some circumstances. ...
A team of researchers at Université Paris Diderot has found evidence that suggests humans are able to detect via smell which partners are genetically preferable. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society ...
The study of evolution is revealing new complexities, showing how the traits most beneficial to the fitness of individual plants and animals are not always the ones we see in nature.
Species often experience a genetic bottleneck that diminishes genetic variation after speciation or introduction into a new area. Though bottlenecks in population size always reduce fitness and evolutionary potential, introduced ...
Bats fly, whales swim, gibbons swing from tree to tree, horses gallop, and humans swipe on their phones—the different habitats and lifestyles of mammals rely on our unique forelimbs. No other group of vertebrate animals ...
To determine where a sound is coming from, animal brains analyze the minute difference in time it takes a sound to reach each ear—a cue known as interaural time difference. What happens to the cue once the signals get to ...
In nature, vinegar flies are exposed to a wide variety of odor mixtures, which contain both attractive and repellent odors. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology have now discovered that repellent odors ...
In his new book, Assembling Life, David Deamer challenges the consensus that life began in the ocean and presents an alternative scenario, based on his research, in which life began in freshwater hot springs.
In 1949, the young biologist Victor Nigon described the reproduction of various species of nematodes, small roundworms that live in the soil in its doctoral thesis. These include Mesorhabditis belari, whose rare male specimens ...
Sex pheromones are chemical compounds released by an organism to attract potential mates. For moths in particular these sex pheromones are very important for mate recognition, as they rely completely on scent signal rather ...
A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has systematically studied and compared the eyes and antennae and the associated brain structures of more than 60 species of the genus Drosophila. They ...
Scientists are rethinking a major milestone in animal evolution, after gaining fresh insights into how life on Earth diversified millions of years ago.
To successfully infect their hosts, bacteria need to evade the host immune system in order to reproduce and spread. Over the course of evolution, hosts—such as humans—develop increasingly sophisticated defenses against ...
Pilar Domingo, Ernesto Segredo, María Durán and Rafael Sanjuán from the Institute of Integrated Systems Biology (I²SysBio) have shown that viruses behave altruistically to avoid the immune system. This research, published ...
One virus' genetic loss can become its evolutionary gain, says a pioneering study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Male house mice produce several pheromones, which are volatile and non-volatile chemical signals that have potent effects on the reproductive physiology and behavior of female mice. A recent study conducted by researchers ...
Blue-blooded and armored with 10 spindly legs, horseshoe crabs have perhaps always seemed a bit out of place.
Researchers have examined the visual response of 113 individuals when observing prehistoric ceramics belonging to different styles and societies. The ceramics analysed cover 4,000 years (from 4,000 B.C. to the change of era) ...
It's been said that there are no atheists in foxholes, but a new study led by Joseph Henrich has shown that the impact of war on religion extends well beyond the front lines.
Smaller beetles who consistently lose fights over resources can gain a competitive advantage over their larger rivals by teaming up with another species.
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When naturalist Charles Darwin stepped onto the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he encountered a bird that sparked a revolutionary theory on how new species originate. From island to island, finches had wildly varied beak designs ...
Genetic manipulation that more than doubles lifespan also leads to better offspring—according to new collaborative research from the University of East Anglia and Uppsala University.
Scientists have revealed how certain wild plants with naturally doubled 'supergenomes' can stay ahead of the game when it comes to adapting to climate volatility and hostile environments.
How are reptiles capable of generating such a diversity of bright colors? And how is it possible that within a single population of the same species, different individuals exhibit strikingly different coloration patterns? ...
Every step you take, you're likely walking on a world of unseen and undescribed microbial diversity. And you don't need to head out into nature to find these usually unnoticed microscopic organisms.
Brazilian researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary history of amoebae and demonstrated that at the end of the Precambrian period, at least 750 million years ago, life on Earth was much more diverse than suggested by ...
The headlines are eye-catching: Scientists have sequenced the genome of white sharks. Or the bamboo lemur, or the golden eagle. But why spend so much time and money figuring out the DNA makeup of different species?
In the order Diptera, more-primitive species such as mosquitos generally do their deed in the end-to-end position. Higher (more evolved) species such as flies tend toward the male mounting the female from behind (male-above ...
"Ibiza is different." That is what the hundreds of standard-bearers of the "hippie" movement who visited the Pitiusan Island during the 60s thought, fascinated by its climate and its unexplored nature. What they did not imagine ...
Snails, like humans, can be right-handed or left-handed, and the swirl etched into the shell of a snail can reveal a lot about them, down to their genetic makeup.
Scientists have learned a lot about evolution by studying fossils, by observing nature and, more recently, by unraveling the genetic code stored in DNA.
The paper mulberry evolved its uniquely fibrous inner bark around 31 million years ago, long before the woody tree was first used for bookmaking during China's Tang dynasty. This adaptation, which makes the nutrient-rich ...
The bacterium that causes tularemia in animals and humans can survive in a dormant state in nature for a long time before causing new outbreaks. This according to a new doctoral thesis at Umeå University. The thesis also ...
An international team has unveiled the genome of the Antarctic blackfin icefish, opening a genetic window on fish that evolved over the last 77 million years to survive in temperatures below the freezing point of freshwater.
Plants' water-to-land leap marks one of the most important milestones in the evolution of life on Earth. But how plants managed this transition when faced with unfamiliar challenges such as drought and bright light has been ...
DNA activity can change without changing the sequence of the DNA segment itself. Gene activation and inactivation can be the basis for how species produce unique individuals. Some processes that change gene activity are well ...
How do individuals choose their mates? Why are some more successful at attracting mates than others?
A team of researchers from Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. has found that a gene known to influence foraging in fruit flies has a similar effect on humans. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of ...
Solar energy is one of the most promising resources to help reduce fossil fuel consumption and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to power a sustainable future. Devices presently in use to convert solar energy into thermal ...
Many species of termites, whose societies are built on hierarchies of kings, queens, workers, and soldiers, live in towering nests that are ventilated by a complex system of tunnels.
Physicists at the University of Maryland have developed a powerful new method to detect radioactive material. By using an infrared laser beam to induce a phenomenon known as an electron avalanche breakdown near the material, ...
Organic electronics have the potential to revolutionize technology with their high cost-efficiency and versatility compared with more commonly used inorganic electronics. For example, their flexibility could allow companies ...
The light scattered by plasmonic nanoparticles is useful, but some of it gets lost at the surface and scientists are now starting to figure out why.
Human appetites are pushing makos and other iconic sharks to the brink of extinction, scientists warned in a new assessment of the apex predator's conservation status.
New research from Washington University in St. Louis explains the cellular processes that allow a sun-loving microbe to "eat" electricity—transferring electrons to fix carbon dioxide to fuel its growth.
Understanding how chemical reactions happen on tiny crystals in liquid solutions is central to a variety of fields, including materials synthesis and heterogeneous catalysis, but obtaining such an understanding requires that ...
University of Alberta paleontologists have just reported the world's biggest Tyrannosaurus rex and the largest dinosaur skeleton ever found in Canada. The 13-metre-long T. rex, nicknamed "Scotty," lived in prehistoric Saskatchewan ...
The Trump administration's reliance on industry-funded environmental specialists is again coming under fire, this time by researchers who say that Louis Anthony "Tony" Cox Jr., who leads a key Environmental Protection Agency ...
On Dec. 18, 2018, a large "fireball—the term used for exceptionally bright meteors that are visible over a wide area—exploded about 16 miles (26 kilometers) above the Bering Sea. The explosion unleashed an estimated 173 ...
Glaciers that drain ice sheets such as Antarctica or Greenland often flow into the ocean, ending in near-vertical cliffs. As the glacier flows into the sea, chunks of the ice break off in calving events. Although much calving ...
A team of researchers from Northwest University and Guizhou University, both in China and one from the U.S., has found and partially excavated a new treasure trove of marine fossils from the "Cambrian explosion" in southern ...
Did you know that music and diagnostic imaging have something in common? Sounds have a lower or higher pitch depending on the size of the object that creates them. Tubas and double basses are big and produce deep low-pitch ...
The string of volcanoes in the Cascades Arc, ranging from California's Mt. Lassen in the south to Washington's Mt. Baker in the north, have been studied by geologists and volcanologists for over a century. Spurred on by spectacular ...
Warmer temperatures are having a ripple effect on food webs in Ontario lakes, according to a new University of Guelph study.
Researchers from the University of Nottingham have found a much higher percentage of 'natural' fibres than microplastic fibres in freshwater and atmospheric samples in the UK.
A sophisticated new analysis tool developed by Florida State University scientists may signal a new era in the study of population genetics.
DESY and MPSD scientists have created high-order harmonics from solids with controlled polarization states, taking advantage of both crystal symmetry and attosecond electronic dynamics. The newly demonstrated technique might ...
Imagine smart materials that can morph from being stiff as wood to as soft as a sponge—and also change shape.
Scientists seeking to understand Earth's inner clockwork have deployed armies of sensors listening for signs of slips, rumbles, exhales and other disturbances emanating from the planet's deepest faults to its tallest volcanoes. ...
A trio of chemists at Okayama University has published a paper in the journal Nature Catalysis outlining the manner in which sodium can be safely used for cross-coupling reactions. In their paper, Sobi Asako, Hirotaka Nakajima ...
Changing batteries in orbit took some huffing and puffing and some intricate maneuvering by two spacewalkers Friday. But in the end, it went almost as smoothly as doing the chore back on Earth.
It's a popular phrase used to describe people, things, and ideas that just don't mix—"like oil and water." Except it's not entirely true. Oil and water can mix, and can be very difficult to completely separate when brought ...
Related individuals of a soil bacterial species live in cooperative groups and exhibit astonishing genetic and behavioural diversity. ETH researchers recently published these findings in Science .
With natural gas booming across the Front Range, drilling rigs may operate within feet from cattle farms. That shared land use can confound attempts to understand trends in methane, a greenhouse gas and air pollutant—the ...
Researchers from the University of Toronto's Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) and the Donnelly Centre have discovered a population of cells – dubbed to be "elite" – that play a key role in ...
The ATLAS Experiment at CERN has just released evidence for the simultaneous production of three W or Z bosons in proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The W and Z bosons are the mediator particles ...
The ~125 million-year-old Early Cretaceous fossil beds of Los Hoyas, Spain, have long been known for producing thousands of petrified fish and reptiles (Fig. 1). However, researchers have uncovered an extremely rare, nearly ...
Formamidinium lead iodide is a very good material for photovoltaic cells, but getting the correct stable crystal structure is a challenge. The techniques developed so far have produced poor results. However, University of ...
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