Humans have totally altered small mammal communities in just a few centuries
FrontiersResearchers have found that small mammal communities today are fundamentally different from even a few centuries ago, during North America’s pre-colonial past.
Researchers have found that small mammal communities today are fundamentally different from even a few centuries ago, during North America’s pre-colonial past.
Scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered that the vast anatomical variety of fungi stems from evolutionary increases in multicellular complexity.
Naturalists Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin both presented the theory of evolution at the same time in 1858. They thus changed both the course of biology and how we understand the natural world around us.
The evolution of the human larynx contributed to the stable voices we use to communicate. The morphological changes do not include the addition of structures but rather the loss of specific vocal folds or cords in the larynx, providing a stable voice quality and controllable voice pitch used when singing or speaking.
A new study shows that 87 genes have been affected by deletions or short insertions during the course of the mammoth’s evolution.
This has been confirmed in the article 'New contributions to the skull anatomy of spinosaurid theropods: Baryonychinae maxilla from the Early Cretaceous of Igea (La Rioja, Spain)' published in the journal Historical Biology by Iker Isasmendi (lead author) and Xavier Pereda of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, Pablo Navarro of the UR-University of La Rioja, Angélica Torices, director of the Chair of Palaeontology at the UR, plus other experts of the Complutense University of Madrid and the Palaeontological Visitors’ Centre of La Rioja.
Is brain fog a condition limited to humans? “Infectious disease and cognition in wild populations,” a recently published paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, answers that question.
In new paper, UNLV-led anthropology team balks at a widely held belief that modern humans experienced an evolutionary decrease in brain size.
In an effort to understand how climate changes will affect many species at once, PhD candidate Guillermo Garcia Costoya created simulations that can predict how likely animals are to go extinct in different climatic conditions.
A study published recently in the prestigious journal Nature Ecology and Evolution has unveiled some of the key processes in marine microbial evolution.
New genetic analyses of wild baboons in southern Kenya reveals that most of them carry traces of hybridization in their DNA. As a result of interbreeding, about a third of their genetic makeup consists of genes from another, closely-related species.
California’s McKinney Fire grew to become the state’s largest fire so far this year. The risk of wildfire is rising globally due to climate change. Below are some of the latest articles that have been added to the Wildfires channel on Newswise.
New research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMSOM) Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) shows that one fruit fly species contains whole genomes of a kind of bacteria, making this finding the largest bacteria-to-animal transfer of genetic material ever discovered. The new research also sheds light on how this happens.
After the ancestors of modern humans split from those of Neanderthals and Denisovans, their Asian relatives, about one hundred amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in cells and tissues, changed in modern humans and spread to almost all modern humans.
Lumbering through the forested wetlands of Bulgaria around six million years ago, a new species of panda has been uncovered by scientists who state it is currently the last known and “most evolved” European giant panda.
Ancient genomes from the herpes virus that commonly causes lip sores – and currently infects some 3.7 billion people globally – have been uncovered and sequenced for the first time by an international team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge.
Trilobites- extinct marine arthropods that roamed the world’s oceans from about 520 million years ago until they went extinct 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period - may have grown in a similar fashion and reached ages that match those of extant crustaceans, a new study has found.
Paleontologists find insufficient evidence that iconic Tyrannosaurus rex should be reclassified
Scientists have discovered that multituberculates, an extinct group of mammals, reproduced using long gestation periods, like today's placental mammals. That calls into question a longstanding view that marsupials have a more "primitive" mode of reproduction and placentals a more "advanced" strategy.
Scientists discovered that ultrasonic defenses moths use to avoid bats are widespread in the insects, and that many harmless moths seem to mimic their toxic cousins to avoid becoming prey.
Effective national and international laws are needed to reverse the decline of populations of large carnivores – such as tigers, wolves, and eagles – and reduce their risk of extinction, reports a paper published in Scientific Reports.
A multidisciplinary team led by researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh has found that wild red deer become less sociable with age.
Animals will often put their lives on the line for reproduction, even if it comes at the cost of being the wrong temperature. Thermal biology co-adapts with the traits favored by sexual selection, including things like courtship displays, ornamental coloration and enlarged weapons like horns or claws.
Scientists have long thought the unique geography of the Philippines — coupled with seesawing ocean levels — could have created a “species pump” that triggered massive diversification by isolating, then reconnecting, groups of species again and again on islands.
About 201 million years ago, volcanic eruptions covered an area roughly the size of South America in lava as Pangaea started to split. The Earth was changed. In the years that followed, 40% of all four-legged land animals were wiped out in the End Triassic Extinction (ETE). The exact cause was unknown. However, researchers recently discovered that atmospheric changes as a result of the eruptions caused freezing temperatures at high latitudes. The land animals that survived had feathers or hair as insulation: large dinosaurs.
Researchers discover a new fossil that is closely related to other animals that made the transition to land, but with features more suited for swimming and life in the water.
New research led by the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Texas at Arlington may shed light on how to bolster anti-venom treatments for snake bites.
Australia’s first fossil vulture has been confirmed more than 100 years after it was first described as an eagle.
The Prussian carp is considered one of the most successful invasive fish species in Europe. Its ability to reproduce asexually gives it a major advantage over competing fish.
From the beginning of the Ordovician, marine life began its great radiation, which was characterized by the rapid appearance of new orders, families, and genera, together with the replacement of existing groups.
“Biodiversity loss is one of our biggest environmental challenges in the world, probably more important than climate change.
The latest research news in Climate Science on Newswise.
In the deep subsurface that plunges into the Earth for miles, microscopic organisms inhabit vast bedrock pores and veins.
Some copepods, diminutive crustaceans with an outsized place in the aquatic food web, can evolve fast enough to survive in the face of rapid climate change, according to new research that addresses a longstanding question in the field of genetics. Barely more than a millimeter long, the copepod Eurytemora affinis paddles its way through the coastal waters of oceans and estuaries around the world in large numbers — mostly getting eaten by juvenile fish, like salmon, herring and anchovy.
Bungarus multicinctus, or the many-banded krait as it commonly called, is a highly venomous elapid snake widely distributed across southern Asia.
The genetic evolution of freshwater fish in Ecuador could unlock new insights for conservation ecologists. A new collaboration between biologists and computer scientists at DePaul University seeks to sequence the genomes of these species.
A comprehensive new genetic and statistical study from researchers at the University of Kansas reveals two groups of scrub jays — one in Mexico and one in Texas — deserve status as independent species.
Scientists have uncovered an intriguing new understanding of how viruses and the hosts they infect evolve new innovations to outcompete each other. Culminating a 10-year research effort, the researchers tracked the way fitness landscapes constantly change in the ongoing struggle for survival.
Habitat differences help determine changes in the nervous system of tropical butterflies, scientists at the University of Bristol have found.
Hawk moths are known for being some of the largest night fliers in the insect world.
Stony Brook University scientists provide researchers investigating the evolutionary past of ancient hominins an important and foundational message in a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. That is – conclusions drawn from evolutionary models are only as good as the data upon which they are based.
Scientists have discovered that gophers harvest crops of roots for food, making the rodents the only other mammal known to farm.
ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) revealed new research based on a cache of fossils that contains the brain and nervous system of a half-billion-year-old marine predator from the Burgess Shale called Stanleycaris
Scientists have identified more than 1,500 genetic differences between migratory and non-migratory hoverflies.
Researchers argue that the long human lifespan is due in part to the contributions of older adults.
Scientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution of invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and humans, share unique features, such as a backbone and a skull. Invertebrates are animals without backbones.
An international team that includes a University of Minnesota Twin Cities researcher has discovered a new big, meat-eating dinosaur, dubbed Meraxes gigas, that provides clues about the evolution and anatomy of predatory dinosaurs such as the Carcharodontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.
Geckos are famous for having grippy feet that allow them to scale vertical surfaces with ease. They get this seeming superpower from millions of microscopic, hairlike structures on their toes.
New research by a scientist at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath suggests that “selfish chromosomes” explain why most human embryos die very early on.
Many of us know the conventional theory of how the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago: in Earth’s fiery collision with a meteorite, and a following global winter as dust and debris choked the atmosphere.