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A new paper appearing in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows a varied collection of lizards throughout Asia to be unexpectedly close cousins of beach-dwelling mourning geckos, all descended from a common ancestor species that thrived along an ancient archipelago in the West Pacific that served as a "superhighway" of biodiversity.
The dispersal of these...
The early evolution of snakes happened from surface-terrestrial to burrowing in the lizard-snake transition suggests a research group at the University of Helsinki.
The group's new findings redirect the debate on evolution towards a new underexplored evolutionary scenario. Thus, the study adds another dimension to the investigation of snake origins.
Research studies have previously established that snakes...
The difference between webbed toes and distinct digits may be the result of not just genetic information, but of how the genes regulate that information. Researchers at the National Institute of Genetics, Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS) in Japan found that a small, non-specific tweak to a mammal's DNA can potentially cause specific...
Introduced predators pose threats to biodiversity and are implicated in the extinction of many native species. A new Mammal Review analysis of published studies highlights unintended outcomes of predator control programs that are implemented to mitigate these effects.
In Australia, considerable effort is spent controlling populations of introduced predators, including the dingo Canis dingo and the...