New research shows rapid evolution has helped to make the venom of black widow spiders so toxic. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 6, 2015.
New research on bioluminescent ostracods shows how tiny crustaceans are helping scientists to understand evolution by sexual selection. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 5, 2015.
New research shows that the circadian clock of arctic ground squirrels works differently during the cold of hibernation. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 5, 2015.
New research shows rapid evolution has helped to make the venom of black widow spiders so toxic. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 4, 2015.
New research shows that being monogamous is an advantage for mantis shrimp, helping them to avoid predators. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 4, 2015.
New research shows that flashes of light from an unusual clam help it to fend off predators and perhaps to attract prey. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 4, 2015.
Your mother probably warned against playing with your food, but she may have neglected to mention playing with your drinks. Dr. Lisa Burton, a scientist from MIT, thankfully missed that lesson. Inspired by a love of experimental cuisine, Burton and her colleagues developed several bio-inspired edible cocktail novelties as part of her graduate research. These devices take advantage of fluid-surface interactions first observed in nature to provide a fun science twist to fancy beverages.
Love may be a battlefield, but most wouldn't expect the fighters to be a parasitic virus and its cricket host. Just like a common cold changes our behavior, sick crickets typically lose interest in everyday activities. But when Dr. Shelley Adamo of Dalhousie University found her cricket colony decimated by a pathogen, she was shocked that the dying insects didn't act sick. Not only had the infected crickets lost their usual starvation response, but they also continued to mate. A lot. How were the pathogen and the exuberant amorous behavior in the sick crickets connected?
High temperatures can cause proteins within the embryo to become denatured—an unraveling that results in loss of function, an ineffective or denatured protein. Moreover, denatured proteins can form aggregates that are toxic. Understanding this process has important implications for human health, because such protein aggregates are a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.
As winter approaches, many of us hunker down and virtually “hibernate” for the season. Classic hibernation in the wild conjures images of furry bears, but other animals are not so lucky to have immense fat stores or fur to protect them from the elements. Frogs that live at northern latitudes have neither of these, but must find ways to survive the harsh winter season. Their solution? Freezing…but not to death.
Early studies of alligators led Dr. Guillette to realize that something in the environment was affecting their reproduction. Juvenile female alligators had malformed ovaries, while males had lower than average testosterone levels and a small penis. He and his colleagues discovered that the changes were caused by environmental contaminants, which were acting as endocrine disruptors.
Most adults remember their first success in learning to swim using the ‘dog paddle’. This classic maneuver has been used to describe swimming in armadillos, turtles, even humans – just about everything except dogs. Dr. Frank Fish, a professor of biology at West Chester University, set out with his colleagues to understand how real dogs perform the dog paddle. Fish has spent most of his career studying the swimming of marine mammals such as whales. But looking at swimming in dogs afforded Fish the opportunity to investigate how swimming in marine mammals may have evolved from walking in their terrestrial ancestors.
SICB Annual Meeting Workshop by Randy Olson. Olson’s solution to science boredom? ‘Narrative Training,’ an age-old discipline known to storytellers as the ability to structure stories – in this case about science and scientists – with a full narrative arc, a beginning, middle, and end, and a human connection that listeners can relate to.
What new insights might be gleaned when engineers and mathematicians work with biologists to answer fundamental questions? A special symposium at the 2014 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual conference brings together biologists, mathematicians and engineers, who will investigate the potential and power of a new, quantitative organismal systems biology to address these questions.
Biology students guided by professional mentors network at a scientific meeting by writing news stories suitable for the public. Their web stories explain topics from coral reef diversity to the evolution of soccer kick skills.
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