Biology News

A team of Thai botanists has announced the discovery of what they say is a new species of wild banana. Musa nanensis: male inflorescence. Image credit:...

According to a new paper in the journal Current Biology, honeybees may select caffeinated nectar over an uncaffeinated but otherwise equal-quality alternative....

A new species of coffee tree has been described from the Cusuco National Park, a national park in Honduras. Sommera cusucoana: tip of shoot with flower,...

Using a multidisciplinary approach, an international team of scientists has revealed in never-before-seen detail the 3D structure of biologically active...

In northern Madagascar’s Montagne d’Ambre National Park, Dr Runhua Lei of the Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium and his colleagues from Australia,...

The most comprehensive and accurate avian tree of life has been published in the current issue of the journal Nature. Phylogeny of birds. The five major,...

The smallest known beetle – and the smallest non-parasitoid insect – has a body length of 0.325 mm, according to entomologist Dr Alexey Polilov...

Dr Rainer Günther, a German herpetologist at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and his colleagues from Australia and Indonesia have described two new...

Nearly 30 percent of 1,478 known cactus species are on the verge of extinction, according to a new report published yesterday in the journal Nature Plants. Cacti...

Dr Jake Esselstyn of Louisiana State University and his colleagues from Indonesia and Australia have discovered a new genus and species of shrew rat in...

In 1986, after a catastrophic nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union released radioactive particles into the environment,...

In 2013, a rare and beautiful variety of orchid appeared in cultivation under the commercial trade name ‘Big Pink.’ Now, research by Dutch and Australian...

Mealworms, which are the larvae of the darkling beetle (Tenebrio molitor), can subsist on a diet of Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene, according...

Viruses are fully-alive organisms that share a long evolutionary history with cells, according to a new study published last week in the journal Science...

Seven new species of minute land snails have been discovered in the Chinese province of Guangxi by Dr Barna Pall-Gergely of Shinshu University and his...

The Arctic polar night is not a period without any biological activity as had been assumed, says a large international team of biologists led by Norwegian...

A new study in the journal Science shows that two alpine bumblebee species have responded to a decline in flowering due to warming temperatures by evolving...

A new study published online this week in the journal PeerJ has found that humans emit their own personal microbial cloud (airborne microbes we emit into...

An international team of scientists from eleven institutions in the U.S. has produced a first draft of the ‘tree of life’ for 2.34 million species...