https://phys.org/biology-news/ en-us Read the latest science news from Phys.org on biology, evolution, microbiology, biotechnology Most of the countryside around the Holnicote estate in Somerset has been dry and dusty for most of the summer. But one corner remains conspicuously green. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-beavers-drought.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 22:40:01 EDT news707998621 Nearly a century ago, a single colony of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) helped launch the antibiotic age. In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned to his London lab to find that a stray mold had wiped out the Staphylococcus growing on one of his plates. The accident gave the world penicillin, ushering in the age of biomedicine and ensuring that an infected cut or scrape would not be fatal. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-antibiotic-playbook-eskape-artist.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 21:40:01 EDT news707988868 A few years ago, I drove with an old friend from Togo, West Africa, towards the country's last remaining large protected area, Fazao-Malfakassa National Park. Our destination was the Hotel Fazao, where his uncle had once worked as a professional chef after its opening in 1980. For decades, while the park was managed by the Swiss Franz Weber Foundation (FWF), the hotel had hosted tourists from around the world who came to see elephants, monkeys, and other wildlife for which Africa is famous. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-rangers-residents-togo-national.html Plants & Animals Mon, 07 Sep 2026 18:00:09 EDT news707988573 The findings of a new study led by the Leibniz-IZW on Namibian free-ranging cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus) demonstrate that epigenetic mechanisms might play an important role in how animals develop different phenotypes despite their low genetic diversity. The work is published in the journal Molecular Ecology. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-strays-territory-bosses-epigenetics-cheetahs.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 16:40:05 EDT news708009301 New research from Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC) examining the aftermath of the February 2024 Port Hills wildfire found that some young native trees and shrubs were able to resprout after being badly damaged by fire. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-port-hills-reveals-native-grass.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:40:07 EDT news708010561 The average person takes thousands of steps each day, instinctively walking heel-to-toe. Although they hardly register them, those consistent heel-first strides are more distinctive to humans than previously thought and allowed early hominins to walk farther and more efficiently, but at the cost of higher impact forces on bones and joints, according to a new study led by a researcher at Penn State. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-heel-early-humans-high-impact.html Evolution Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:00:04 EDT news708011198 This summer, 115 participants in Leiden and The Hague worked with scientists from Leiden University to investigate the soil life in their community garden plots. With mangetout peas, a taste test, a buried pair of underpants and a harvest festival, they helped scientists better understand the connection between soil, plants and people. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-pair-underpants-vegetable-garden.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:40:02 EDT news708000665 The immune system is a highly sophisticated defense network designed to protect against pathogens. A research team from the Universities of Würzburg and Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) has shown that certain components of the immune system can actually help the yeast Candida albicans evade immune attack. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-neutrophil-vesicles-candida-albicans-evade.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:20:08 EDT news707998895 What makes more sense when farming wheat—strips of wildflowers along fields or organic farming? Both options provide financial support via the European Union as environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, has compared the ecological and economic benefits of these two farming methods in fields planted with winter wheat. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-farming-outperforms-wildflower-profits-farm.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:40:01 EDT news707995981 New in JNeurosci, Ning Liu, from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, explored whether brain structures for self-processing are conserved across primates, including humans, chimpanzees and macaques. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-brain-primates.html Evolution Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:00:07 EDT news707742061 When humans get sick, we change our routines and try various solutions to feel better and get well, like staying in bed to rest, going to the doctor, getting medication from the pharmacy, using home remedies and more. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-medicate-wild-clues.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:40:04 EDT news707993047 When it comes to bees, most of us can identify the ubiquitous honey bee (Apis mellifera) and that's about it. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-vital-native-bee-highway-backyard.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:20:05 EDT news707991182 How do related proteins develop different functions? This is the question investigated by a research team involving Kiel University, DESY and the Center for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB). Led by Holger Sondermann, professor at Kiel University and head of the Structural Microbiology group at DESY, the researchers reconstructed the common ancestor of two bacterial enzymes and produced the long-extinct protein in the laboratory. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-reconstructed-ancient-protein-bacterial-enzymes.html Evolution Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:40:04 EDT news707992561 Tsushima leopard cats are an endangered species found only on this isolated island. The most recent government survey estimated the population at around 150 individuals, and because domestic cats also inhabit the same landscape, introgression is a legitimate conservation concern. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-genomic-analysis-unusual-tail-endangered.html Plants & Animals Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:00:09 EDT news707988621 Scientists have discovered that one of the most unusual creatures in the animal kingdom is far more diverse and evolutionarily complex than previously known. An international team led by the University of Göttingen has reconstructed the evolutionary history of branching marine worms—rare annelids that live hidden inside sea sponges and whose bodies branch repeatedly into multiple posterior ends. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-decades-museum-specimens-reveal-extraordinary.html Plants & Animals Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:20:01 EDT news707989621 When a suspected case of H5 bird flu arrived in Australia, CSIRO scientists knew the first hours would matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-scenes-science-australia-h5-bird.html Veterinary medicine Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:40:01 EDT news707982062 When rescue dog Chloe is not tumbling across the grass on a farm outside India's tech capital, Bengaluru, she is learning to sniff human breath for cancer with a little help from AI. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-dogs-cancer-ai-india.html Other Mon, 07 Sep 2026 04:07:25 EDT news707972810 A routine blood sample contains a diverse collection of immune cells that can reveal important clues about health and disease. These cells, known as peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), are widely used to study infections, autoimmune disorders, cancer and the immune system's response to treatment. Scientists typically identify these cells using fluorescent labels that attach to specific surface markers. While effective, those methods provide limited information about how the cells are functioning and can alter the cells during preparation. As reported in Biophotonics Discovery, a recent study shows how advanced optical imaging can reveal a previously inaccessible layer of information: the metabolic activity of individual immune cells within a complex blood sample. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-advanced-optical-imaging-reveals-hidden.html Cell & Microbiology Sun, 06 Sep 2026 17:30:01 EDT news707627336 While the highly virulent avian influenza strain has only recently been discovered on Australian shores, researchers at Deakin University have been working behind the scenes for years, anticipating what an outbreak might look like. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bird-movements-track-global-virus.html Plants & Animals Sun, 06 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news707401817 With their slender bodies and long front legs, Miracinonyx trumani—often nicknamed the "American cheetah"—was long thought to be a North American analog of the African big cat. But in a new study published in the journal Current Biology, researchers reveal that the extinct cat was more closely related to pumas. Some populations living near the Arctic preyed almost exclusively on fish, challenging the long-held assumption that these "cheetahs" chased fast-running prey, such as pronghorns. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-extinct-american-cheetah.html Evolution Sun, 06 Sep 2026 11:00:01 EDT news707573172 Conformational changes in proteins are vital to their function yet remain challenging for state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, such as AlphaFold3, to predict. Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI introduced a repulsive force between predicted structures, allowing AlphaFold3 to sample the multiple conformational states that its default settings rarely capture. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-alphafold-limits-proteins.html Biotechnology Sat, 05 Sep 2026 17:00:05 EDT news707472556 A study led by the University of Jyväskylä in Finland evaluated, for the first time, an ecological threshold for the amount of clearcutting in boreal forests. According to the results, maintaining populations of bird species specialized in old-growth forests requires either a forest rotation period of at least 90 years on average or that approximately one-fifth of the forest area be excluded from clearcut management. The study provides a concrete target for the ecologically sustainable use of forests. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-clearcutting-nature-sustain-ecological-limit.html Plants & Animals Sat, 05 Sep 2026 16:30:01 EDT news707584342 The human-animal bond is often so strong that pet owners may delay or forgo medical treatment or leave a health care facility against medical advice if they have no one to care for their pet at home. A perspective paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine explains why pet owners may need different approaches to care when hospitalized, according to an Emory University physician and an Ohio State University veterinarian. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-views-physician-veterinarian-barriers-pet.html Veterinary medicine Sat, 05 Sep 2026 14:00:04 EDT news707734865 Here's a novel idea for countering the painful side effects of chemotherapy: Beforehand, take the hallucinogenic drug found in magic mushrooms. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-psilocybin-cancer-side-effects.html Molecular & Computational biology Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:30:01 EDT news707716019 New research has found that tree species diversity can play a crucial role in protecting forests from the growing threat of extreme climate events. The study analyzed data from 88,116 separate forest plots across the United States to investigate the impact of "compound climate extremes," when events such as drought and extreme heat occur at the same time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tree-species-diversity-forests-climate.html Plants & Animals Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:00:01 EDT news707665667 Narwhals have nature's only straight tusk, a single tooth up to three meters (10 feet) long, so strange they were sold as magical unicorn horns during the Middle Ages. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-scientists-narwhals-nature-straight-tusk.html Plants & Animals Sat, 05 Sep 2026 11:00:07 EDT news706274391 Why do some ants help nestmates in distress while others don't? A research team from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Tel Aviv University addressed this question in a new study. The researchers examined worker ants of the species Cataglyphis niger, some of which had shown rescue behavior while others had not. The results, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, suggest that the key difference lies not in body size, morphology or the animals' energy reserves, but in gene activity in the nervous system. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ant-nervous-gene-behavior.html Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:40:01 EDT news707747341 Every 13 or 17 years, swarms of cicadas emerge from the ground, their black bodies, orange-tinged wings and ruby-red eyes enveloping trees and forests. It is a biological marvel unique in the insect world, and when it happens, it is impossible not to notice. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-periodical-cicadas-doomed-extinction.html Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:40:02 EDT news707746681 Feeding stations providing food and water for wild birds are contributing to the spread of disease-causing parasites among farmland birds, researchers have said, with birds three times more likely to catch a parasite from these resources. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-food-stations-wild-birds-contributing.html Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:20:04 EDT news707747402 In recent years, scientists have developed methods to measure a cell's transcriptome, or all the RNA produced by a cell, to study the cell's identity and genetic activity. However, these methods rely on killing the cell to access the bits of RNA within and offer only a one-time snapshot. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-virus-particles-enable-gene-tracking.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:00:02 EDT news707739962