Biology News

Swimming Marine Bacteria Can Make Beeline to Escape Tight Spaces: Study

Differences in Vibrio fischeri swimming patterns when in open spaces or tight spaces. Image credit: Lynch et al., doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.04.008.
May 4, 2022 by News Staff

Vibrio fischeri (also known as Aliivibrio fischeri), a flagellated marine bacterium that forms a binary symbiosis with the Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes), must navigate tight physical confinement during colonization, squeezing through a tissue bottleneck constricting to 2 μm in width on the way to its eventual home. Using microfluidic experiments, Dr. Jonathan Lynch of the Pacific Biosciences Research Center at the University of Hawai’i...

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Until now odd and even categorization, also called parity classification, had never been shown in non-human animals; Howard et al. show honeybees (Apis mellifera) can learn to do this. Image credit: xiSerge.

Honeybees Demonstrate Ability to Learn Concepts of Odd and Even

May 2, 2022 by The Conversation

New research shows that honeybees (Apis mellifera) can visually acquire the capacity to differentiate between odd and even quantities of 1-10 geometric...

Machine learning guided predictions improve enzyme performance across PETase scaffolds. Image credit: Lu et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04599-z.

Scientists Engineer New Plastic-Eating Enzyme

Apr 28, 2022 by News Staff

Plastic waste poses an ecological challenge and enzymatic degradation offers one, potentially green and scalable, route for polyesters waste recycling....

Asgard archaeon. Scale bar - 500 nm. Image credit: Imachi et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1916-6.

Eukaryotic Cells Emerged in Anoxic Environment, New Study Suggests

Apr 27, 2022 by News Staff

Since the 1960s, many scientists have argued that the emergence of eukaryotes — cells containing a clearly defined nucleus — happened in response...

Craugastor cueyatl sits on a Mexican 10 pesos coin (diameter is 2.8 cm). Image credit: Jeffrey W. Streicher, Natural History Museum, London.

Scientists Discover Six New Diminutive Frog Species

Apr 27, 2022 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland has described six new species of direct-developing frogs from the Mexican...

Jaws of Glycera dibranchiata are composites of protein, melanin, and both mineral and ionic copper; to date, nanomechanical tests have correlated the ionic copper and melanin with hardness and wear resistance, but the function of protein is uncertain. Wonderly et al. characterize a Gly- and His-rich protein called multi-tasking protein (MTP) and, using recombinant protein, show that it performs six distinct functions critical for jaw formation and performance, namely (1) recruiting 22 equiv of Cu2+, (2) mediating a liquid-liquid phase separation of the MTP-copper complex, (3) catalyzing the oxidation of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (Dopa) to melanin, (4) templating the interfacial polymerization of melanin, (5) integrating melanin and itself into thin films and fibers, and (6) providing intermolecular cohesion through Cu bridging. MTP achieves all these by assuming unprecedented roles as a building block, organizer, and fabricator -- a processing feat of considerable relevance to the autonomous production of other polymer composites, blends, and/or networks. Image credit: Wonderly et al., doi: 10.1016/j.matt.2022.04.001.

Study: Bloodworms Use Copper Harvested From Marine Sediments to Form Their Unique Jaws

Apr 26, 2022 by News Staff

Bloodworms Glycera dibranchiata are known for their unusual jaws, which are made of protein (∼50% w/w), ionic and mineralized copper (up to 10%), and...

New Species of Deep-Sea Crown Jelly Discovered in Pacific Ocean

Apr 19, 2022 by News Staff

Marine biologists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have described an unusually large and distinctive deep-sea crown jelly with...

A male Albert’s lyrebird (Menura alberti) using its powerful claws to forage in the leaf litter. Image credit: Alex Maisey.

New Light Shed on Vocal Mimicry Abilities of Albert’s Lyrebirds

Apr 19, 2022 by The Conversation

Fiona Backhouse and her colleagues from Western Sydney University, the University of Wollongong and the Australian National University have investigated...

Nannaria swiftae, male holotype from Van Buren County, Tennessee. Image credit: Hennen et al., doi: 10.3897/zookeys.1096.73485.

Seventeen New Species of Millipedes Discovered

Apr 18, 2022 by News Staff

A team of entomologists from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has described 17 new species of the millipede genus Nannaria living...

Field image of Gasteranthus extinctus. Image credit: R. Fortier.

Botanists Rediscover Cloud Forest Herb in Ecuador after 37 Years

Apr 18, 2022 by News Staff

Dr. Nigel Pitman from the Field Museum of Natural History and his colleagues from Ecuador, the United States, and France report the rediscovery of the...

Adamatzky found that size of fungal lexicon can be up to 50 words; however, the core lexicon of most frequently used words does not exceed 15-20 words; Schizophyllum commune and Omphalotus nidiformis have largest lexicon while species Cordyceps militaris and Flammulina velutipes have less extensive one. Image credit: Mohammad Mahir Borhan.

Fungi Use Electrical ‘Language’ to Communicate with Each Other: Study

Apr 15, 2022 by The Conversation

In new research, Dr. Andrew Adamatzky, a computer scientist at the Unconventional Computing Laboratory of the University of the West of England, analyzed...

The same thing that makes their eyes glow helps cats see better in dim light. Image credit: Jplm / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Why Do Eyes of Cats, Dogs and Other Animals Glow in the Dark?

Apr 14, 2022 by The Conversation

Cats and many other animals can reflect light from their eyes. That’s why their eyes will usually shine brightly in photos taken in a dimly lit room...

Prasophyllum morganii. Image credit: Ayre et al., doi: 10.11646/phytotaxa.528.2.1.

Orchid Species Missing for 89 Years Rediscovered in Australia

Apr 13, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Prasophyllum morganii was first collected from a single population in Victoria, Australia, in 1929, but has not been collected since 1933. Prasophyllum...

Village weavers (Ploceus cucullatus) and their nests. Image credit: Chao Zhao.

Study: Vegetarian Weaver Birds are More Sociable than Their Insect-Eating Counterparts

Apr 12, 2022 by News Staff

New research supports an influential ecological hypothesis on social behavior first proposed 58 years ago. Village weavers (Ploceus cucullatus) and their...

Sunflower. Image credit: Mabel Amber.

Mother Nature Prefers Symmetry and Simplicity, Researchers Say

Apr 6, 2022 by News Staff

Biological structures frequently exhibit modularity and symmetry, but the origin of such trends is not well understood. It can be tempting to assume —...

Cooney et al. quantified global latitudinal trends in colorfulness by collating and analysing a photographic dataset of whole-body plumage reflectance information for 4,527 species of passerine birds. Image credit: Sandid.

Passerine Birds are More Colorful Close to Equator, Study Confirms

Apr 6, 2022 by News Staff

An analysis of a photographic dataset for more than 4,500 species of passerine birds shows that male and female birds of tropical passerine species are...

Burrows & Omstead show that the domestication process in dogs involved selection for rapid facial movement, similar to the movement seen in human faces. Image credit: Elena Rogulina.

New Study Reveals Anatomical Features that Could Explain what Makes Dogs’ Faces So Appealing

Apr 5, 2022 by News Staff

New research suggests that ancient humans played a role in selecting dogs with sweetest faces. Burrows & Omstead show that the domestication process...

Odor preference rankings were collected from nine culturally and geographically diverse populations. These included the three hunter-gatherer groups, Seri from a coastal desert and Maniq and Semaq Beri from tropical rainforest, one shoreline forager, Mah Meri, from a tropical coast; one swidden-horticulturalist, Semelai, from tropical rainforest; one farmer-foraging community, Chachi, from tropical rainforest; one subsistence agriculturalist community, Imbabura Quichua, from temperate highlands; and two urban dwellers from industrial and postindustrial communities of bustling urban settings, Mexican and Thai. The data from these nine communities were then related to available data from a large dataset on odor preference collected from urban dwellers from New York City, the United States. Image credit: Arshamian et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.062.

Culture Plays Minimal Role in Perception of Odor Pleasantness, Says New Study

Apr 5, 2022 by News Staff

Humans share sensory systems with a common anatomical blueprint, but individual sensory experience nevertheless varies. In olfaction, it is not known to...

Human ES cell derived RASC transitioning to an Alveolar type 2 cell over time in culture. Image credit: Basil et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04552-0.

New Type of Human Lung Cell Discovered

Apr 5, 2022 by News Staff

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have identified a distinct secretory cell lineage deep within human...

A spider orb web is an enormous, reconfigurable, regenerative, and highly sensitive acoustic antenna. Image credit: Zhou et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2122789119.

Orb-Weaving Spiders Use Their Web as Acoustic Antenna

Apr 1, 2022 by News Staff

Hearing is a fundamental sense of many animals, including all mammals, birds, some reptiles, amphibians, fish, and arthropods. The auditory organs of these...

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