Most of the fauna in the Arctic region take part in pollinating, yet during the busiest flowering weeks, there's a shortage of such services. A recent study indicates that the pollination services provided to plants and, thus, the plants' ability to produce seeds are dependent on the timing of the blooming season, and on how...
Scientists go 'back to the future,' create flies with ancient genes to study evolution
Scientists at New York University and the University of Chicago have created fruit flies carrying reconstructed ancient genes to reveal how ancient mutations drove major evolutionary changes in embryonic development -- the impact of which we see today.
The work, published in the journal eLife, found that two mutations that arose 140 million years ago changed...
Cleaning, but safely! Cocoons protect sensitive ant brood during toxic disinfection
Ants are neat: when they move into a new nest box, they spend the first days cleaning it thoroughly, like us humans getting out the cleaning bucket when moving into a new home. Despite keeping the nest clean, using poison within the nest is dangerous and can kill unprotected brood. However, the silk cocoon that...
Oldest fossil of a flying squirrel sheds new light on its evolutionary tree
The oldest flying squirrel fossil ever found has unearthed new insight on the origin and evolution of these airborne animals.
Writing in the open-access journal eLife, researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) in Barcelona, Spain, described the 11.6-million-year-old fossil, which was discovered in Can Mata landfill, approximately 40 kilometers outside the city.
"Due...
Affable apes live longer, study shows
Male chimps that are less aggressive and form strong social bonds tend to live longer, research suggests.
A study of hundreds of captive chimpanzees showed that males that get along well with others -- by being sensitive, protective and cooperative -- outlived their less amiable peers.
The team, led by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, found...
New knowledge about retrovirus-host coevolution
Retroviruses have colonised vertebrate hosts for millions of years by inserting their genes into host genomes, enabling their inheritance through generations as endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Researchers from Uppsala University now provide new knowledge about the long-term associations of retroviruses and their hosts by studying ERV variation and segregation in wild and domestic rabbit populations. The...