It is happening again, right now. In multiple localities across Eastern North America, as the end of the spring warms up the soil, legions of hundreds of thousands of insects are being awakened from their underground hides. They reach the surface at night, climb up to the trees, and moult for the last time in […]
Carbohydrates are molecules composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. They are formed of at least three atoms of carbon. Monosaccharides are the simplest carbohydrates and they cannot be hydrolyzed to smaller carbohydrates. Among the monosccharides we find glucose or fructoses which are formed of six atoms of carbon or glyceraldehyde which is composed of three […]
In areas with dense cover or little snow, the wolf is one of the most difficult animals to census. In the Iberian Peninsula and other southern regions of wolves’ global range, snow is rare in winter, so wolves must be surveyed without snow. Spanish researchers Blanco and Cortés described in a recent paper the diverse […]
If you have ever faced that thankless task of cleaning fish, for sure you will have realized, at least envisaged, the complex architecture of the fish’s natural armour. Fish scales play the role of a skeleton which provides both protection and flexibility at the same time. It goes without saying that this fact has not […]
Flowers are the reproductive organs of angiosperms (flowering plants) and flowering is therefore the phenomenon by which the undifferentiated cells from the meristems (similar to animal stem cells) differentiate into a floral meristem that will then produce the different components of the flower (sepals, petals, stamens and carpels). This transition from a plant vegetative to […]
The lungs of birds move air in only one direction during both inspiration and expiration through a set of tubular gas-exchanging bronchi called parabronchi. On the other hand, in the lungs of mammals and other vertebrates, air moves tidally into and out of terminal gas-exchange structures, called alveoli (Figure 1). The work carried out by […]
You’re sitting in a room with an all-southern view. Suddenly, a bear walks by the window. What color is the bear? Young Sherlock Holmes. Barry Levinson (1985) The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is one of the most unmistakable mammals of the planet. Its white fur is maybe the most straightforward reason for this distinctiveness, but […]
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1813) is especially known as one of the discoverers of evolution by natural selection. However, among his various contributions to the development of modern biology we can also consider the British naturalist as the father of biogeography: the study of the spatial distribution of organisms over the surface of the planet. Wallace’s […]
All of us know that animals use camouflage and mimicry as strategies to protect themselves from predators. Many examples have become famous with many TV documentaries showing, among others, foxes and rabbits that in higher latitudes are white to be confused with the snow and thus, to become harder to be distinguished and caught. Insects […]
When the general media report news about genetics, there is a deplorable tendency towards gene determinism. Headlines in the vein of “Gene for X discovered”—where X is anything from a physical trait to a complex behavior—are regrettably common, and almost always incorrect. That’s why I face this article with some trepidation. Because, you see, there […]