Competition between related species of lizards can drive evolution really fast
Scientists working on islands in Florida have documented the rapid evolution of a native lizard species — in as little as 15 years…
Category: Biology
Decline in Fish Stocks at Puget Sound Hurts Diving Birds
Birds that dive for fish while wintering in the Salish Sea, located between British Columbia and Washington, are more likely to be in…
Climate change alters cast of winter birds
Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America’s backyard bird feeders in winter have…
New but really old genetic ‘operating system’ led to evolution of complex organisms
The evolution of worms, insects, vertebrates and other “bilateral” animals — those with distinct left and right sides…
Dinosaur–bird link Revealed By Wrist Bone Development
How this wrist bone development happened has been the subject of much debate, with substantial disagreement between developmental…
Evolutionary arms race via ancient viruses in primate evolution
New findings by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggest that an evolutionary arms race between rival elements within…
Individual human microbe community linked to education and gender
As scientists catalog the trillions of bacteria found in every nook and cranny of the human body, a new look by the University of Michigan…
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…
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…