Rodents are mammals of the order Rodentia, characterized primarily by a single pair of ever-growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws, separated from the cheek teeth by a diastema and adapted for gnawing. This order encompasses extensive taxonomic diversity, including families such as Muridae, Cricetidae, Sciuridae, and Caviidae, occupying a wide range of terrestrial and arboreal habitats. Rodents exhibit high reproductive rates, diverse dietary strategies (from herbivory to omnivory), and complex social structures in some lineages. They play key ecological roles as primary consumers, seed predators and dispersers, and prey species, and serve as important model organisms in biomedical and evolutionary research.
Freeman Hrabowski Scholar Bianca Jones Marlin studies how caregiving takes shape in the brain and how some biological adaptations are passed to the next generation.
Ecology
Aug 2, 2026
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16
Xenophagocytosis is a natural immune process that limits interspecies organ generation by eliminating living donor cells, researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, report. By uncovering how embryonic macrophages ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 1, 2026
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193
Scientists at Imperial College London and the University of Manchester have developed a promising new way to create safer and more effective treatments for life-threatening fungal infections. The research, published today ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 29, 2026
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5
Evolution is a fact of life. So much so that even the theory of evolution is evolving. Lately, a centuries-old discredited idea has been making a strong comeback. It helps us explain scientific observations that, according ...
Evolution
Jul 28, 2026
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207
Apoptosis is the natural process by which damaged or no longer needed cells are eliminated from the body. Researchers have long investigated how this mechanism might be manipulated to treat cancer and other serious diseases.
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 28, 2026
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5
It's 5 a.m. when we crawl out of our tents. The catbirds are calling and the night sky is fading to dawn as we prepare to head into the wilderness. We're surrounded by the towering eucalypts of southeast Queensland in search ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 21, 2026
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5
Research co-authored by an Oklahoma Museum of Natural History curator, her graduate student and an international team of scientists has shed new light on the evolutionary "toolkit" animals use to survive environmental change.
Plants & Animals
Jul 20, 2026
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24
The "red tide" algal blooms that are becoming more frequent along the Pacific coast produce one of the most potent neurotoxins known: saxitoxin, or STX. The toxin accumulates in shellfish and causes paralytic shellfish poisoning ...
Ecology
Jul 16, 2026
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15
An international team led by Dr. Gary Lewin, group leader of the Molecular Physiology of Somatosensory Perception lab at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin, has discovered that the queens of naked mole-rat colonies release ...
Ecology
Jul 15, 2026
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121
Rutgers Office for Research (OfR) leaders collaborated with researchers around the world to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) program that has the potential to revolutionize lab research.
Biotechnology
Jul 10, 2026
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