Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania studying the processes of evolution appear to have resolved a longstanding conundrum: How can organisms be robust against the effects of mutations yet simultaneously adaptable ...
Evolution
Jan 20, 2010
0
0
Large carnivores are generally sensitive to ecosystem changes because their specialized diet and position at the top of the trophic pyramid is associated with small population sizes. This in turn leads to lower genetic diversity ...
Ecology
Feb 25, 2021
1
274
The Atacama desert, which stretches for approximately 1,600 km along the western coast of the cone of South America, is the driest place on Earth. Some weather stations there have never recorded rainfall throughout their ...
Evolution
Oct 21, 2022
0
360
Genetic kinship analyses of human bones reach their limits if the DNA is poorly preserved or if destructive sampling is not possible. New research shows that in such cases, comparisons of the structure and shape of certain ...
Evolution
Aug 10, 2023
1
91
The largest genome of any insect, seven times the size of the human genome, was recently discovered in a grasshopper. In a study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from the German Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 16, 2023
0
1014
Both ecologically and morphologically, the clouded leopards known as Neofelis nebulosa are a distinct lineage of big cats. These species are threatened due to human activities of targeted hunting and habitat loss. Evolutionary ...
"If you pick a spot in, say, a rainforest, and count the number of different species of lizards within 15 meters and you come up with a number," asks Luke Mahler, "what determines that number?"
Evolution
Mar 20, 2023
0
64
A new University of Michigan study has found that higher levels of biodiversity—the enormous variety of life on Earth and the species, traits and evolutionary history they represent—appear to reduce extinction risk in ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 25, 2022
0
621
A region's climate has a greater impact than landscape on how many languages are spoken there, new research from The Australian National University (ANU) shows.
Social Sciences
May 17, 2019
1
411
While much research has focused on the striking differences in biodiversity between tropical and temperate regions, another, equally dramatic, pattern has gone largely unstudied: the differences in species richness among ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 22, 2022
0
328
