Evolutionary Biology

Males on two Hawaiian islands simultaneously went mute in just a few years to avoid a parasite

Researchers could tell what sounds blindfolded volunters were hearing by analyzing activity in their visual cortexes. Christie Nicholson reports

 

Yesterday's big reptiles can help us figure out how the human era is shaping up

The feat is a landmark achievement in synthetic biology

CT scans may soon link human remains to missing persons

It’s the first documentation of insects incorporating plastic trash into nests

Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928–May 28, 2014) reading her poem "The Human Family"
 

Is this the end of Montana's famed cutthroat trout in the face of invasive rainbow trout, stream temperature rise and flow changes?

A new genetic analysis shows that flightless birds, or ratites, did not evolve from a common flightless ancestor as had been previously thought

A structural study of spider fangs found that their curved, hollow design gives them the necessary strength for piercing and injecting their prey

Today is the birthday of one of my science heroes: Carl Linnaeus. Born on May 23, 1707, the Swede turned natural history from a hobby into a science with his masterful systemization and documentation of what had until then been haphazard classification of plants, animals and fungi.

The following project constitutes a half-hour activity for 3-, 4-, or 5-year olds. It includes the entire process from finding fossils to putting the recovered pieces together like a puzzle to drawing our best guess at what it looked like in life.