Biology News

Jul 31, 2023 by News Staff

Bees are the most significant pollinators of flowering plants. This partnership began approximately 120 million years ago, but the uncertainty of how and when bees spread across the planet has greatly obscured investigations of this key mutualism. New research led by Universidade de São Paulo and Washington State University scientists demonstrates that bees originated in western Gondwana (Africa and South America) in the Early Cretaceous epoch and...

Jul 31, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Precise radiocarbon dating indicates that Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, a species of soil nematode new to science, remained in cryptobiosis for about 46,000...

Jul 26, 2023 by Natali Anderson

Honey produced by the Australian honeypot ant (Camponotus inflatus) is valued nutritionally and medicinally by Indigenous peoples. In a new study, scientists...

Jul 25, 2023 by News Staff

Living amphibians include frogs and salamanders and the limbless worm-like caecilians (order Gymnophiona). Caecilians have cylindrical bodies with a compact,...

Jul 24, 2023 by News Staff

The ‘eel hypothesis’ proposes that the anthrozoological phenomenon at Loch Ness in Scotland can be explained in part by observations of large-bodied...

Jul 20, 2023 by News Staff

Few fast-swimming apex fishes are classified as regional endotherms, or partially warm-blooded, having evolved a relatively uncommon suite of traits (e.g....

Jul 11, 2023 by Natali Anderson

Scientists have described a new salamander species of the genus Tylototriton from evergreen montane forests on Ngoc Linh Mountain in the Central Highlands...

Jul 11, 2023 by News Staff

The evolution of life on Earth has changed dramatically at tens of million-year time scales. However, the causal mechanisms of these changes remain unclear....

Jul 10, 2023 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal eLife elucidates the honeybee’s behavioral strategy to associate sensory cues with rewards of different values....

Jul 4, 2023 by Natali Anderson

A team of researchers from Mizoram University and the Max Planck Institute for Biology has discovered a new species of the gecko genus Gekko living in...

Jul 4, 2023 by News Staff

Scientists from Ohio State University and elsewhere have developed a 3D computer model of the nose of the domestic cat (Felis catus) and simulated how...

Jun 28, 2023 by News Staff

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have studied camouflage in the common cuttlefish...

Jun 27, 2023 by News Staff

Otodus megalodon was a gigantic megatooth shark that lived in the world’s oceans from 23 to 3.6 million years ago. It could grow to the enormous size...

Jun 27, 2023 by News Staff

Placental mammals — the evolutionary lineage that includes humans — co-existed with non-avian dinosaurs for a short time before the dinosaurs...

Jun 26, 2023 by Sergio Prostak

Scientists from Queensland Museum have described three new species of carnivorous demosponges from the Great Barrier Reef, in Queensland, Australia. The...

Jun 26, 2023 by News Staff

Understanding how complex eukaryotic cells emerged from prokaryotic ancestors represents a major challenge in biology. A main point of contention in refining...

Jun 21, 2023 by News Staff

New research shows how the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a long-used model organism, can use electric fields to ‘jump’ across Petri plates or onto...

Jun 20, 2023 by News Staff

Ancient horses such as Hyracotherium leporinum, a tiny horse relative from the Eocene of England, had feet like those of a modern tapir: four toes in front...

Jun 20, 2023 by News Staff

Aerial parts of plants arrange their organs around stems, and this arrangement defines their structure. In most existing plant species, organs emerge at...

Jun 8, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using whole-genome sequencing and bioinformatic analysis, scientists provide the first evidence of facultative parthenogenesis in a crocodilian —...