Colonization of new land drives the evolution of new hummingbird species
The first comprehensive map of hummingbirds’ 22-million-year-old family tree — reconstructed based on careful analysis of 284 of…
Category: Biology
Diversity of lake cichlid species due to unusually high gene duplication
In an effort to understand the molecular basis of adaptation in vertebrates, researchers sequenced the genomes and transcriptomes of five…
Sloths may be slow but their body size evolved really fast
Today’s sloths might be known as slow, small animals, but their ancestors developed large body sizes at an amazing rate, according to…
Deciduous trees flourished after dinosaur-killing meteor impact
Some 66 million years ago, a 10-km diameter chunk of rock hit the Yukatan peninsula near the site of the small town of Chicxulub with the…
Origin of vertebrate notochord seriously much older than previously thought
Thoughts of the family tree may not be uppermost in the mind of a person suffering from a slipped disc, but those spinal discs provide a…
Early mammals diverged from reptiles much earlier than thought in the late Triassic
Paleontologists have described three new small squirrel-like species that place a poorly understood Mesozoic group of animals firmly in the…
Plant and animal collections crucial for research and conservation
Collecting plant and animal specimens is essential for scientific studies and conservation and does not, as some critics of the practice…
Terrestrial alga reveal the presence of genes that enable plants to cope with life on land
By analysing the genome of a terrestrial alga, a research group including researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Kazusa DNA Research…
New species of sea-dwelling mushroom-shaped organisms represent an early branch on the tree of life
New deep sea mushroom-shaped organisms discovered Organisms’ discovery spurs identification of 2 new species Scientists discovered two…
Marine protected areas should include ecologically valuable fish communities
Study finds marine protected areas inadequate for protecting fish and ocean ecology A new study reports that an expansion of marine…