Streamlined sharks are legendary for their effortless swimming. George Lauder from Harvard University, USA, explains that the fish have long inspired human engineers, but more recently attention has focused on how the fish's remarkable skin boosts swimming. Coated in razor sharp tooth-like scales, called denticles, the skin is thought to behave like the dimples on a golf ball, disturbing the flow of water over the surface to reduce the drag. But something didn't quite sit right with Lauder. 'All of the shark skin studies were done on flat shark skin mimics that were held straight and immovable. But shark skin moves', recalls Lauder. So, when Masters student Johannes Oeffner joined his lab, Lauder suggested that they take a look at the fluid dynamics of shark skin and its analogues to find out how the fish's motion affects fluid flowing over the rough surface. The duo publishes its discovery that shark skin actually generates thrust to give the fish an additional boost in The Journal of Experimental Biology at http://jeb.biologists.org/.

Aging takes its toll on sex appeal and now an international team of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Michigan find that in fruit flies, at least, it even diminishes the come-hither effect of the chemicals of love – pheromones.

Global warming is having an effect on the dive behaviour and search for food of southern elephant seals. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association cooperating in a joint study with biologists and oceanographers from the Universities of Pretoria and Cape Town have discovered that the seals dive deeper for food when in warmer water. The scientists attribute this behaviour to the migration of prey to greater depths and now wish to check this theory using a new sensor which registers the feeding of the animals below water.

Satellite tracking of threatened loggerhead sea turtles has revealed two previously unknown feeding 'hotspots' in the Gulf of Mexico that are providing important habitat for at least three separate populations of the turtles, according to a study published recently in the journal Biological Conservation.

They are tiny, ugly, disease-carrying little blood-suckers that most people have never seen or heard of, but a new discovery in a one-of-a-kind fossil shows that "bat flies" have been doing their noxious business with bats for at least 20 million years.

A recently published study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and others reveals that humpback whales on both sides of the southern Indian Ocean are singing different tunes, unusual since humpbacks... A recently published study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and others reveals that humpback whales on both sides of the southern Indian Ocean are singing different tunes, unusual since humpbacks in the same ocean basin usually all sing very similar songs.

The camera enables the researchers to see an aspect of light that humans are essentially blind to: polarized light. Though humans aren't sensitive to polarized light, many reef dwelling animals are but this has not always been taken into account in previous studies of reef communities.

Drosophila Orb2 plays an important role in the persistence of memory. Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called "synapses". But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory.

Bonobos groom each other in Lui Kotale, Salonga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo. Mate competition by males over females is common in many animal species. During mating season male testosterone levels rise, resulting in an increase in aggressive behavior and masculine features. Male bonobos, however, invest much more into friendly relationships with females. Elevated testosterone and aggression levels would collide with this increased tendency towards forming pair-relationships.

An excavation at a site in South Africa has unearthed the 190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus – revealing significant clues about the evolution of complex reproductive behaviour in early dinosaurs.

Simon Fraser University PhD student Brent Loken was hoping to capture images of the elusive Bornean clouded leopard when he set up a camera trap in the rainforest. Instead, he made the re-discovery of a lifetime.

A new study suggests that the impact of predation on juvenile Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska has been significantly underestimated, creating a "productivity pit" from which their population will have difficulty recovering without a reduction of predators.

This shows the release of the Southern River terrapin at a ceremony on the Sre Ambel River in Cambodia attended by representatives of WCS, Cambodia’s Fisheries Administration’s Conservation Department The Wildlife Conservation Society, in conjunction with the Cambodian Fisheries Administration and Wildlife Reserves Singapore, announced today the successful release of a Southern River terrapin (Batagur affinis) – one of the most endangered turtles on earth – into the Sre Ambel River in Cambodia.

More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on the Earth's surface began forming multicellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals. Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.

LSU's Chris Austin recently discovered two new species of frogs in New Guinea, one of which is now the world's tiniest known vertebrate, averaging only 7.7 millimeters in size – less than one-third of an inch. It ousts Paedocypris progenetica, an Indonesian fish averaging more than 8 millimeters, from the record. Austin, leading a team of scientists from the United States including LSU graduate student Eric Rittmeyer, made the discovery during a three-month long expedition to the island of New Guinea, the world's largest and tallest tropical island.

Headlines usually tell the story. A young athlete who seems no different from his colleagues on the football field dies suddenly during exercise under the baleful sun of a blistering summer day.

Researchers have produced the world's first chimeric monkeys. The bodies of these monkeys, which are normal and healthy, are composed of a mixture of cells representing as many as six distinct genomes. The advance holds great potential for future research as chimeric animals had been largely restricted to mice, the researchers say. The report, published online ahead of the release of the January 20th issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication, also suggests there may be limits to the use of cultured embryonic stem cells.

The new edition of America Speaks, a compilation of public opinion polls commissioned by Research!America, demonstrates increasing public support for research and innovation to improve health, create jobs and boost the economy. However, nearly 60% of Americans don't believe we are making enough progress in medical research, and 54% don't believe the U.S. has the best health care system in the world.

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL, www.eol.org) continues to expand at a record pace with the addition of new content and partners. At the start of 2012, EOL provides data on nearly half of all described species, with new content in Spanish, rich information about conservation issues from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and NatureServe, and more images and videos than ever before.

This photo shows the jawfish in association with the mimic octopus -- a case of a fish mimicking an octopus that mimics fish. Nature's game of intimidation and imitation comes full circle in the waters of Indonesia, where scientists have recorded for the first time an association between the black-marble jawfish (Stalix cf. histrio) and the mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus).

Communities of species previously unknown to science have been discovered on the seafloor near Antarctica, clustered in the hot, dark environment surrounding hydrothermal vents.

Identifying species, separating out closely related species and managing each type on its own, is an important part of any animal management system. Some species, like the two types of two-toed sloth, are so close in appearance and behavior that differentiation can be challenging. Conservation researchers at San Diego Zoo Global's Institute of Conservation Research have developed a mechanism for identifying these reclusive species from each other.

For the first time, the presence of large bodied herbivorous dinosaurs in Antarctica has been recorded. Until now, remains of sauropoda - one of the most diverse and geographically widespread species of herbivorous dinosaurs - had been recovered from all continental landmasses, except Antarctica. Dr. Ignacio Alejandro Cerda, from CONICET in Argentina, and his team's identification of the remains of the sauropod dinosaur suggests that advanced titanosaurs (plant-eating, sauropod dinosaurs) achieved a global distribution at least by the Late Cretaceous*. Their work has just been published online in Springer's journal, Naturwissenschaften – The Science of Nature.

New research has found that a protein associated with learning and memory plays an integral role in changing the behaviour of locusts from that of harmless grasshoppers into swarming pests.

WHAT: UCR entomologists will release Tamarixia radiata, a tiny parasitic wasp that lays eggs in Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) nymphs. The larvae eat the ACP nymphs, killing them, and emerge as adults about 12 days later. Adult female Tamarixia also eat other ACP nymphs, thus killing them.

Researchers from the University of Bristol have discovered that a chemical compound in the brain can weaken the synaptic connections between neurons in a region of the brain important for the formation of long-term memories. The findings, published today [13 Dec] in the Journal of Neuroscience, may also provide a potential explanation for the loss of memory associated with Alzheimer's.

Jackson is the male southern elephant seal tracked by the Wildlife Conservation Society that traveled an astonishing 18,000 miles The Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a southern elephant seal for an astonishing 18,000 miles – the equivalent of New York to Sydney and back again.

These are images of specimens of Paedophryne dekot (A) and (B), and P. verrucosa (C), and (D). Field work by researcher Fred Kraus from Bishop Museum, Honolulu has found the world's smallest frogs in southeastern New Guinea. This also makes them the world's smallest tetrapods (non-fish vertebrates). The frogs belong to the genus Paedophryne, all of whose species are extremely small, with adults of the two new species - named Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa - only 8-9 mm in length. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Swarms of bees and brains made up of neurons make decisions using strikingly similar mechanisms, says a new study in the Dec. 9 issue of Science.

Recent studies show that the populations of African great apes are rapidly decreasing. Many areas where apes occur are scarcely managed and weakly protected. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have carried out an international collaborative project together with field researchers and park managers. The project aim was to evaluate how the lack of conservation effort influences the extinction risk of African great apes. Records were collected over the last 20 years from 109 resource management areas. The researchers found that the long-term presence of local and international non-governmental organization support and of law enforcement guards are the most crucial factors affecting ape survival, and that they have a clear measurable impact. Conversely, national development, often cited as a driver of conservation success, and high human population density had a negative impact on the likelihood of ape survival.