Authors: Roger S. Seymour, Professor Emeritus of Physiology, University of Adelaide and Edward Snelling, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria If you’ve ever wondered why the giraffe has such a long neck, the answer seems clear: it lets them reach succulent leaves atop tall acacia trees in Africa. Only giraffes have direct access to […]
Author: Rohini Subrahmanyam is a PhD biologist turned science journalist. Insects that tuck away wings; a protist with an accordion-like neck — studying these clever creases may inspire foldable structures for drones As the microscopic, tear-shaped Lacrymaria olor swims around hunting for food, it does something remarkable: In a blink, the tiny protist extends its […]
A rare North American bumble bee may have been on a path toward extinction long before modern human impacts, suggesting that its long-term genetic vulnerability made it especially fragile and less able to cope with both past and current environmental stresses. The study focused on the Franklin bumble bee, once found only in parts of […]
Autor: Chris Johnson, Professor of Wildlife and Conservation Ecology, University of Northern British Columbia and Justina C. Ray, Adjunct professor, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Toronto Through the federal Building Canada Act, “projects of national interest” are being fast-tracked while hundreds of major resource projects are already under construction or planned in the […]
Biology • Chemistry • Evolution • Geosciences • Microbiology • Planetary Science • Robotics
A new study has revealed potential chemical signatures of ancient Martian microbial life in rocks examined by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The findings, published by a large international team of scientists, focus on a region of Jezero Crater known as the Bright Angel formation—a name chosen from locations in Grand Canyon National Park because of the […]
Biology • Ecology • Environment • Geosciences
Author: Sevrine Sailley, Senior Scientist, Marine Ecosystem Modelling, Plymouth Marine Laboratory Climate change is reshaping fish habitats. Some fish are winners, others are losing out. Fish already face plenty of pressure from overfishing and pollution. Climate change is adding more: warmer waters and shifting food supplies cause what’s known as a predator-prey mismatch. This means […]
A new discovery of how bees use their flight movements to facilitate remarkably accurate learning and recognition of complex visual patterns could mark a major change in how next-generation AI is developed, according to a University of Sheffield study. By building a computational model—or a digital version of a bee’s brain—researchers have discovered how the […]
DNA sequencing is getting cheaper than ever. This, coupled with advances in speed and portability, are allowing us to apply deep sequencing beyond the lab to environmental substrates, and analyse this eDNA to gain information and monitor biodiversity at a time where it is being lost at an unprecedented rate. This environmental DNA can be […]
All cellular life as we know it today stems from a single common ancestor, from which all modern lineages emerged. The origin of cellular life is thought to be the node in the Tree of Life from which Archaea and Bacteria, the two primary domains, diverged. The universality of some features across cellular life evidences […]
Biochemistry • Biology • Chemistry • Physics • Physiology • Plant biology
The light of someone’s life might not be just another person, but light in the literal sense. According to a recent study , every living system emits light without requiring external excitation due to a biological phenomenon known as ultraweak photon emission (UPE). In mice, UPE was linked to vitality as live mice emitted significantly […]