Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have identified a brain circuit that's indispensable to the sleep-wake cycle. This same circuit is also a key component of the reward system, an archipelago of interconnected brain clusters crucial to promoting behavior necessary for animals, including humans, to survive and reproduce.

This is a paleoartist's reconstruction of a ptesosaur. Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America. The cranial remains were in an excellent state of preservation and belonged to a new species of pterosaur from the Early Jurassic. The researchers have named this new species 'Allkauren koi' from the native Tehuelche word 'all' for 'brain', and 'karuen' for 'ancient'.

Cyanobacterial neurotoxin β-N-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) and Mercury are detected in sharks from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In a new study, University of Miami (UM) scientists found high concentrations of toxins linked to neurodegenerative diseases in the fins and muscles of 10 species of sharks. The research team suggests that restricting consumption of sharks can have positive health benefits for consumers and for shark conservation, since several of the sharks analyzed in the study are threatened with extinction due to overfishing.

This is a fossil ptilodactyline beetle found in amber from Mexico. The black arrow points to pollinia attached to the beetle's mouthparts. When most people hear the word "pollinator," they think of bees and butterflies. However, certain beetles are known to pollinate plants as well, and new fossil evidence indicates that they were doing so 20 million years ago.

Squinting won't help you spot the fish in this photo. These snub-nosed darts blend seamlessly into their watery surroundings with help from their silvery reflective skin. In a matchup of animal superpowers, a clever form of camouflage might beat super sight -- at least in the ocean.

Image of a thin-section through an Orthacanthus coprolite with a black box indicating the tooth of an Orthacanthus. Scientists have discovered macabre fossil evidence suggesting that 300 million-year-old sharks ate their own young, as fossil poop of adult Orthacanthus sharks contained the tiny teeth of juveniles. These fearsome marine predators used protected coastal lagoons to rear their babies, but it seems they also resorted to cannibalising them when other food sources became scarce.

Birds' reproductive strategies have gone through a series of stages, from dinosaurs to today. What really did come first--the chicken or the egg? Birds' reproductive biology is dramatically different from that of any other living vertebrates, and ornithologists and paleontologists have long wondered how and when the unique features of bird reproduction originated. A new Review in The Auk: Ornithological Advances examines answers from three sources--modern birds, fossils of primitive birds, and fossils of the dinosaurs from which birds are descended--to shed new light on the subject.

Tiger shark eating a turtle, Tiger sharks are known as impressive predators that hunt and consume almost anything from birds to sea turtles. But when the opportunity presents itself, these sharks easily convert into the role of marine scavengers. This behavior was reported¹ in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology by a team of American, Australian and British researchers led by Neil Hammerschlag of the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in the US. They re-evaluated satellite tracking data collected from tiger sharks and green turtles off the Great Barrier Reef's Raine Island, which is home to the world's largest concentration of nesting green turtles.

A mantis shrimp displaying its meral spots, visible as two purple dots. Mantis shrimp, often brightly colored and fiercely aggressive sea creatures with outsized strength, use the ultraviolet reflectance of their color spots as well as chemical signals to assess the likelihood of victory in combat, according to research led by a Tufts University doctoral candidate. The findings, published today in Royal Society Open Science, mark the first time that researchers have demonstrated that mantis shrimp (Neogonodactylus oerstedii) use both color and chemical cues when fighting over resources.

Frigatebirds reaches a wingspan of over two metres. They are excellent gliders and can cover several hundred kilometers a day. For the first time, researchers have discovered that birds can sleep in flight. Together with an international team of colleagues, Niels Rattenborg from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen measured the brain activity of frigatebirds and found that they sleep in flight with either one cerebral hemisphere at a time or both hemispheres simultaneously. Despite being able to engage in all types of sleep in flight, the birds slept less than an hour a day, a mere fraction of the time spent sleeping on land. How frigatebirds are able to perform adaptively on such little sleep remains a mystery.

When reaching into a pocket or purse, it is easy to use the sense of touch to distinguish keys from loose change. Our brains seamlessly integrate the tactile, sensory cues from our fingers with hand movements to perceive the different objects.

The discovery of a theropod dinosaur with Tyrannosaurus rex-like arms suggests that these unusual forelimbs may have evolved multiple times, according to a study published July 13, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sebastián Apesteguía from the Universidad Maimónides, Argentina, and colleagues.

Ants, it turns out, are extremely good at estimating the concentration of other ants in their vicinity. This ability appears to play a role in several communal activities, particularly in the voting procedure whereby an ant colony selects a new nest.

Flow map in the third ventricle of the mouse brain. We have all bumped our heads at some point, and such incidents are usually harmless. This is thanks to fluid-filled chambers in our brain that offset minor knocks and jolts and provide padding for sensitive components of our nervous system. Cerebral fluid, however, has more than just a protective function: It removes cellular waste, supplies our nervous tissue with nutrients, and transports important messenger substances. How these messenger substances are actually being delivered to their destination in the brain, however, was unclear until now. Göttingen-based Max Planck researchers have now discovered that tiny cilia on the surface of specialized cells could lead the way. Through synchronized beating movements, they create a complex network of dynamic flows that act like conveyor belts transporting molecular "freight". The results obtained by the scientists suggest that these flows send messenger substances directly to where they are needed.

Beer bottles are pictured. By activating particular neurons, we may be able to influence alcohol drinking behavior, according to new findings published by researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

This is a reconstruction of the young, deformed Telmatosaurus individual, with the ameloblastoma just becoming visible on its lower left jaw. The first-ever record of a tumourous facial swelling found in a fossil has been discovered in the jaw of the dwarf dinosaur Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus, a type of primitive duck-billed dinosaur known as a hadrosaur.

Hedgehogs cope more easily with city living than you might think. A species that is 15 million years old, hedgehogs have survived all kinds of environmental changes over the years, including urbanisation. Surprisingly, cities have often been found to have higher hedgehog populations than rural areas. Understanding why this is could help us to protect them in the future.

An international team of scientists from Oxford University, UK, and Tel-Hai College, Israel, has shown that pea plants can demonstrate sensitivity to risk - namely, that they can make adaptive choices that take into account environmental variance, an ability previously unknown outside the animal kingdom.

Male and female of the beautiful demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo) in the so-called "mating wheel". Traditionally, the evolutionary development of an insect species has been explained by the notion that the female insect chooses her male partner based on size and other factors, so-called assortative mating. These mating patterns have also been believed to partially explain how the isolation between different species is maintained.

Damien Esquerre with a python. A new study into pythons and boas has for the first time found the two groups of snakes evolved independently to share similar traits, shedding new light on how the reptiles evolved.

A mating pair of melanic peppered moths Researchers from the University of Liverpool have identified and dated the genetic mutation that gave rise to the black form of the peppered moth, which spread rapidly during Britain's industrial revolution.

Hemiphlebia mirabilis is a rare species in every sense: it is the most primitive dragonfly known to man, it has unique reproductive behaviors and was believed to be extinct. The dragonfly considered the most primitive in the world lives in Australia and Tasmania, and was believed to be extinct four decades ago. But it is far from being so. A Spanish researcher has observed thousands of these insects in one of the few habitats in which it has been detected and it displays sexual behaviour that is unique, not only directed towards reproduction.

This is the male fiddler crab Uca lactea. The vibrations and pulses that male fiddler crabs produce when they are trying to lure females into their burrows to mate are surprisingly informative. These signals serve as a type of "Morse code" that the females decipher to learn more about the size and stamina of their suitors. This is according to a study by Japanese researchers Fumio Takeshita of Nagasaki University and Minoru Murai of the University of the Ryukyu, published in Springer's journal The Science of Nature.

Male and female worms engage in different behaviors, which may result from sex-specific wiring patterns in the brain. Nematode worms may not be from Mars or Venus, but they do have sex-specific circuits in their brains that cause the males and females to act differently. According to new research published in Nature, scientists have determined how these sexually dimorphic (occurring in either males or females) connections arise in the worm nervous system. The research was funded by the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

This is a male specimen of the new long-horned beetle species Borneostyrax cristatus gen. et sp. nov. A remarkably high diversity of the wingless long-horned beetles in the mountains of northern Borneo is reported by three Czech researchers from the Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. Apart from the genera and species new to science, the entomologists report the first case of reproduction by live birth in this rarely collected group of beetles.

Fossil and reconstruction of Atopodentatus unicus. Some strange creatures cropped up in the wake of one of Earth's biggest mass extinctions 252 million years ago. In 2014, scientists discovered a bizarre fossil--a crocodile-sized sea-dwelling reptile, Atopodentatus unicus, that lived 242 million years ago in what today is southwestern China. Its head was poorly preserved, but it seemed to have a flamingo-like beak. However, in a paper published May 6 in Science Advances, Dr. LI Chun, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his international team described two new specimens and revealed what was really going on--that "beak" is actually part of a hammerhead-shaped jaw apparatus, which it used to feed on plants on the ocean floor. It's the earliest known example of an herbivorous marine reptile.

Evan R. Buechley releases an adult Egyptian Vulture in Armenia after tagging it with a satellite tracking device (visible on the back of the bird). Vultures. Cartoon characters in parched deserts often wish them to disappear, since circling vultures are a stereotypical harbinger of death. But, joking aside, vultures in some parts of the world are in danger of disappearing. And according to a new report from University of Utah biologists, such a loss would have serious consequences for ecosystems and human populations alike.

In December 2015 an international group of scientists convened in Austria to discuss the imminent extinction of the northern white rhinoceros and the possibility of bringing the species back from brink of extinction. The discussions of this historic meeting appear in the international Journal Zoo Biology. The publication of this work is designed as part of the ongoing effort to raise awareness for the extinction crisis facing rhinos and many other species while also reaching out to the scientific community to share and gather information.

Sleeping bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps). Behavioural sleep is ubiquitous among animals, from insects to man. In humans, sleep is also characterized by brain activity: periods of slow-wave activity are each followed by short phases of Rapid-Eye-Movement sleep (REM sleep). These electrical features of brain sleep, whose functions are not well understood, have so far been described only in mammals and birds, but not in reptiles, amphibians or fish. Yet, birds are reptiles--they are the feathered descendants of the now extinct dinosaurs. How then did brain sleep evolve? Gilles Laurent and members of his laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, describe for the first time REM and slow-wave sleep in a reptile, the Australian dragon Pogona vitticeps. This suggests that brain sleep dates back at least to the evolution of the amniotes, that is, to the beginning of the colonization of terrestrial landmass by vertebrate animals.

A juvenile lace coral (Pocillopora damicornis), with coral tissue and algal symbionts (brown dots within the tissue) covering the newly grown skeleton. In a study published today, researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (UHM), Rutgers University, and the University of Haifa identified key and novel components of the molecular "toolkit" that allow corals to build their skeletons (called biomineralization) and described when -- in the transformation from floating larvae to coral skeleton -- these components are used.

Scientists have been studying how visual space is mapped in the cerebral cortex for many decades under the assumption that the map is equal for lights and darks. Surprisingly, recent work demonstrates that visual brain maps are dark-centric and that, just as stars rotate around black holes in the Universe, lights rotate around darks in the brain representation of visual space. The work was done by Jens Kremkow and collaborators in the laboratories of Jose Manuel Alonso at the State University of New York College of Optometry and will be published in the May 5, 2016 issue of Nature (advance online publication and press embargo lifted on April 27, 2016 at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time). A similar result will be reported in the same issue of Nature by Kuo-Sheng Lee et al. in the laboratories of David Fitzpatrick at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience.

The work of University of Adelaide researchers is shedding new light on the evolution of what are believed to be the largest bears that ever walked the Earth.

Using cutting-edge imaging technology, University of California, Irvine biologists have determined that uncontrolled fluctuations (known at "noise) in the concentration of the vitamin A derivative Retinoic acid (RA) can lead to disruptions in brain organization during development.

Studies in a group of tropical birds have revealed one of the fastest limb muscles on record for any animal with a backbone. The muscle, which can move the wing at more than twice the speeds required for flying, has evolved in association with extravagant courtship displays that involve rapid limb movements, according to a paper to be published in the journal eLife.

EPFL scientists propose a new way of understanding of how the brain processes unconscious information into our consciousness. According to the model, consciousness arises only in time intervals of up to 400 milliseconds, with gaps of unconsciousness in between.

Found throughout the Caribbean, the bananaquit has smaller flight muscles and longer legs on islands with fewer predators. In groundbreaking new work, Natalie Wright, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Montana, has discovered a predictable trend in the evolution of bird shape.

This image shows ants tending to some leave hoppers. University of Melbourne scientists have shone a new light into the complexities of ant communication, with the discovery that ants not only pick up information through their antennae, but also use them to convey social signals.

An international team of scientists, from three Brazilian universities and one UK university, have discovered a new fossil reptile that lived 250 million years ago in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southernmost Brazil. The species has been identified from a mostly complete and well preserved fossil skull that the team has named Teyujagua paradoxa.

In the first study to use new methods to track antibiotic resistance through the process of intensively farming and slaughtering cattle, scientists have discovered a "startling" lack of resistance genes in meat.

People are intuitive physicists, knowing from birth how objects under the influence of gravity are likely to fall, topple or roll. In a new study, scientists have found the brain cells apparently responsible for this innate wisdom.

Here is an artist's drawing of the abelisaur. An unidentified fossilised bone in a museum has revealed the size of a fearsome abelisaur and may have solved a hundred-year old puzzle.

Sometimes evolution proceeds much more rapidly than we might think. Genetic analysis makes it possible to detect the earliest stages of species formation and to gain a better understanding of speciation processes. For example, a study just published in PLOS Genetics by researchers from Eawag and the University of Bern - investigating rapid speciation in threespine stickleback in and around Lake Constance - shows that a species can begin to diverge very rapidly, even when the two daughter species breed alongside one another simultaneously.

In a surprise result, James Cook University scientists have found female blacktip reef sharks and their young stay close to shore over long time periods, with adult males only appearing during the breeding season.

Black-headed flying fox amongst a grey-headed colony. For the first time researchers have uncovered a unique ability in bats which allows them to carry but remain unaffected by lethal diseases.

The mechanism used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to allocate government research funds to scientists whose grants receive its top scores works essentially no better than distributing those dollars at random, new research suggests.

Recurrent DSB clusters in neural stem/progenitor cells are shown. The genome of developing brain cells harbors 27 clusters or hotspots where its DNA is much more likely to break in some places than others, researchers from the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (PCMM) at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute report in the journal Cell. Those hotspots appear in genes associated with brain tumors and a number of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric conditions, raising new questions about these conditions' origins, as well as how the brain generates a diversity of circuitry during development.

Biologists have found genetic mechanisms that let the Atlantic molly live in toxic, acidic water. A Washington State University biologist has found the genetic mechanisms that lets a fish live in toxic, acidic water. The discovery opens the door to new insights into the functioning of other "extremophiles" and how they adapt to their challenging environments.

In the brain, the visual cortex processes visual information and passes it from lower to higher areas of the brain. However, information also flows in the opposite direction, e.g. to direct attention to particular stimuli. But how does the brain know which path the information should take? Researchers at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience in Frankfurt in Cooperation with Max Planck Society have now demonstrated that the visual cortex of human subjects uses different frequency channels depending on the direction in which information is being transported. Their findings were only possible thanks to previous research with macaque monkeys. They might help to understand the cause of psychiatric illnesses in which the two channels appear to be mixed up.

Aegean wall lizard resting on rock Resting out in the open on rocks can be a risky business for Aegean wall lizards. Out in these habitats they have nowhere to hide and their backs, which show varying shades of green and brown between individuals, are dangerously exposed to birds hunting in the skies above.

Mold growth initially grew on the plant in pillow E in the bottom left corner of the plant mat. When Scott Kelly tweeted a picture of moldy leaves on the current crop of zinnia flowers aboard the International Space Station, it could have looked like the science was doomed. In fact, science was blooming stronger than ever. What may seem like a failure in systems is actually an exceptional opportunity for scientists back on Earth to better understand how plants grow in microgravity, and for astronauts to practice doing what they'll be tasked with on a deep space mission: autonomous gardening.

This image shows a range of wing pattern combinations in various Heliconius butterfly species. Clockwise from top left: elevatus; contigua; rosina; meriana; malleti. New research on butterfly genomes has revealed that the genetic components that produce different splotches of colour on wings can be mixed up between species by interbreeding to create new patterns, like a "genetic paint-box".

Two chimpanzees interact in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Spending time in close contact with others often means risking catching germs and getting sick. But being sociable may also help transmit beneficial microbes, finds a multi-institutional study of gut microbiomes in chimpanzees.

In addition to their natural beauty, the shells of two deceased specimens of Hawksbill sea turtles hold clues to the growth rates and sexual maturity of the endangered species. Radiocarbon dating of atomic bomb fallout found in sea turtle shells can be used to reliably estimate the ages, growth rates and reproductive maturity of sea turtle populations in the wild, a new study led by Duke University and NOAA researchers finds.

Widespread failure to reproduce research results has triggered a crisis of confidence in research findings, eroding public trust in scientific methodology. In response, PLOS Biology is launching on January 4th, 2016, a new Meta-Research Section devoted to research on research.

Chameleons are known for sticking their tongues out at the world fast and far, but until a new study by Brown University biologist Christopher Anderson, the true extent of this awesome capability had been largely overlooked. That's because the smallest species hadn't been measured.

This is a photograph of a Tasmanian Devil with facial tumor. Transmissible cancers -- cancers which can spread between individuals by the transfer of living cancer cells -- are believed to arise extremely rarely in nature. One of the few known transmissible cancers causes facial tumours in Tasmanian devils, and is threatening this species with extinction. Today, scientists report the discovery of a second transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils. The discovery, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, calls into question our current understanding of the processes that drive cancers to become transmissible.

The diversity of mammals on Earth exploded straight after the dinosaur extinction event, according to UCL researchers. New analysis of the fossil record shows that placental mammals, the group that today includes nearly 5000 species including humans, became more varied in anatomy during the Paleocene epoch - the 10 million years immediately following the event.

These are specimens collected in Rwanda in 2013 by The Cleveland Museum of Natural History during the first formal praying mantis survey conducted in the African country. A college student working at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History was lead author on the first formal survey of praying mantises in Rwanda, which revealed a 155 percent increase in praying mantis species diversity for the African country. Riley Tedrow, a Case Western Reserve University graduate student pursuing field research for the Museum, participated in two surveys across four locations in Rwanda, including three national parks. The survey was published Oct. 1, 2015 in the journal Zootaxa.

Columns of workers penetrate the forest, furiously gathering as much food and supplies as they can. They are a massive army that living things know to avoid, and that few natural obstacles can waylay. So determined are these legions that should a chasm or gap disrupt the most direct path to their spoils they simply build a new path -- out of themselves.

This image shows the nervous system of about 1 cm-long Hydra revealed here with a fluorescent green marker. Champion of regeneration, the freshwater polyp Hydra is capable of reforming a complete individual from any fragment of its body. It is even able to remain alive when all its neurons have disappeared. Researcher the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered how: cells of the epithelial type modify their genetic program by overexpressing a series of genes, among which some are involved in diverse nervous functions. Studying Hydra cellular plasticity may thus influence research in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. The results are published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

This image shows a mantis shrimp in a defensive position, on its back with its legs, head and heavily armored tail closed over. Researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute at The University of Queensland have uncovered a new form of secret light communication used by marine animals.

Scientists have solved a longstanding mystery about how some fish seem to disappear from predators in the open waters of the ocean, a discovery that could help materials scientists and military technologists create more effective methods of ocean camouflage.

In the animal world, if several males mate with the same female, their sperm compete to fertilize her limited supply of eggs. Longer sperm often seem to have a competitive advantage. However, a study conducted by researchers from the Universities of Zurich and Stockholm now reveals that the size of the animals also matters. The larger the animal, the more im-portant the number of sperm is relative to sperm length. That's why elephants have smaller sperm than mice.

New research reveals that two different evolutionary shifts toward camouflage investment occurred in the the charismatic horned praying mantises. The most recent shift in increased accumulation of numerous cryptic features occurred only after the re-evolution of important leg lobes that help disguise the appearance of the mantis from predators.

Independent male ruff at lek with colourful ruff and head tuft. The ruff is a Eurasian shorebird that has a spectacular lekking behaviour where highly ornamented males compete for females. Now two groups report that males with alternative reproductive strategies carry a chromosomal rearrangement that has been maintained as a balanced genetic polymorphism for about 4 million years.

DNA was extracted from the molar teeth of this skeleton, dating from almost 10,000 years ago and found in the Kotias Klde rockshelter in Western Georgia. The first sequencing of ancient genomes extracted from human remains that date back to the Late Upper Palaeolithic period over 13,000 years ago has revealed a previously unknown "fourth strand" of ancient European ancestry.

Wing color patterns of butterflies must perform different signalling functions to avoid predators and attract potential mates. In the natural world, mimicry isn't entertainment; it's a deadly serious game spanning a range of senses - sight, smell and hearing. Some of the most striking visual mimics are butterflies. Many butterflies become noxious and unpalatable to predators by acquiring chemical defences from plants they ingest as caterpillars. Other butterflies mimic the 'aposematic' or warning colouration and conspicuous wing patterns of these toxic or just plain foul-tasting butterflies.

Two captive elephants blast air through their trunks to grasp hard-to-reach food, suggests an initial study published today in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. This behaviour, studied in a zoo population of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), is altered according to the distance to the food, which may indicate advanced mental ability and awareness of their physical environment.

Eotiaris guadalupensis fossil was discovered by USC's Jeffrey Thompson in the Smithsonian collections. Researchers have uncovered a fossil sea urchin that pushes back a fork in its family tree by 10 million years, according to a new study.

Millions of years ago, even before the continents had settled into place, jellyfish were already swimming the oceans with the same pulsing motions we observe today.

Alligators and the Everglades go hand-in-hand, and as water conditions change in the greater Everglades ecosystem, gators are one of the key species that could be affected.

Previously, giant sharks had only been recovered from rock dating back 130 million years, during the age of the dinosaurs. The largest shark that ever lived, commonly called "Megalodon", is much younger, with an oldest occurrence at about 15 million years ago. This means the new fossils from Texas indicate giant sharks go much further back into the fossil record.

Electric eels temporarily paralyze their prey by shocking them with electricity using a series of brief, high-voltage pulses, much as a Taser would do. Now, a researcher reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 28 has discovered that the eels can at least double the power of their electrical discharge by curling up their bodies. In bringing their tail up and around, the eels sandwich prey between the two poles of their electric organ, which runs most of the length of their long, flexible bodies.

While the anthropogenic impact on global species diversity is clear, the role of ancient human populations in causing extinctions is more controversial. New data presented at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meetings in Dallas, Texas, implicates early humans in the extinction of large mammals, birds and lizards in Australia. More precise dating of these extinction events places them 10 thousand years after the first arrival of humans in Australia, suggesting human predation was the most likely cause.

In 2001, a paleontology field crew from Burpee Museum of Natural History (Rockford, IL) were prospecting for dinosaur fossils near Ekalaka, Montana, when they discovered bones of a half-grown T. rex weathering out from exposures of the Hell Creek Formation. "Jane", as she was later named, turned out to be the most complete adolescent T. rex ever discovered, filling a critical gap between juvenile and adult that had caused decades of scientific debate.

This is Dr. Rowe with a large cod to be tagged and released in Bonavista Corridor. Once an icon of overfishing, mismanagement, and stock decline, the northern Atlantic cod is showing signs of recovery according to new research published today in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

The researchers demonstrated that social insects, including bees, ants and wasps, are more complex than previously was thought. Chemical signaling among social insects, such as bees, ants and wasps, is more complex than previously thought, according to researchers at Penn State and Tel Aviv University, whose results refute the idea that a single group of chemicals controls reproduction across numerous species.

Fish are far more effective at delivering oxygen throughout their body than almost any other animal. When you think of the world's greatest athletes, names like Usain Bolt generally spring to mind, but scientists have discovered the best athletes could well be found in the water, covered in scales.

An endangered monkey species in Tanzania is living in geographical pockets that are becoming isolated from one another. The situation, researchers say, is mostly driven by the monkeys' proximity to villages and the deliberate burning of forests to make way for crops and pastures.

The color of dinosaurs is a fascinating topic, and in recent years the discovery of melanosomes - small, pigment-filled sacs - associated with fossilized dinosaur feathers has given rise to all sorts of speculation about our prehistoric pals, from the hue of their plumage to color's impact on behavior.

This circular family tree of Earth's lifeforms is considered a first draft of the 3.5-billion-year history of how life evolved and diverged. A first draft of the "tree of life" for the roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes -- from platypuses to puffballs -- has been released.

This is a vaquita photo taken from the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), within a natural protected area subject to special management. A new method of teasing information from scarce and highly degraded genetic samples is helping NOAA Fisheries and Mexican scientists unravel the genetic heritage of the enigmatic vaquita, the most endangered marine mammal on Earth.

A new study from researchers at Uppsala University shows that variation in genome size may be much more important than previously believed. It is clear that, at least sometimes, a large genome is a good genome.

The discovery of a new species of human relative was announced today, 10 September 2015, by the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), the National Geographic Society and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF).

The ants become aggressive in response to the elongated projections (spotted patterns) of the larvae. Project Assistant Professor HOJO Masaru of Kobe University, Graduate School of Science, and joint research groups at the University of the Ryukyus and Harvard University have discovered that lycaenid butterfly larvae, which are in a symbiotic relationship with ants, can control the effect of dopamine by supplying the ants with nectar. The results of this study provide novel insight into the phenomenon of symbiosis and give clues about the physiological functions of dopamine. The study was published in Current Biology on July 31.

This is a funnel-web spider. Scientists studying funnel-web spiders at Booderee National Park near Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast have found a large example of an unexpected funnel-web species.

A sophisticated imaging technique has allowed scientists to virtually peer inside a 10-million-year-old sea urchin, uncovering a treasure trove of hidden fossils.

Tiny sea sapphires' iridescence, created by a regular array of thin transparent crystal plates, is also the secret of their "disappearance. " Tiny ocean creatures known as sea sapphires perform a sort of magic trick as they swim: One second they appear in splendid iridescent shades of blue, purple or green, and the next they may turn invisible (at least the blue ones turn completely transparent). How do they get their bright colors and what enables them to "disappear?" New research at the Weizmann Institute has solved the mystery of these colorful, vanishing creatures, which are known scientifically as Sapphirinidae. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could inspire the development of new optical technologies.

Elite hunter from bat world has previously unknown cues at its disposal. The ability of some bats to spot motionless prey in the dark has baffled experts until now. By creating the first visual images from echolocation, researchers reveal we have been missing how bats sense their world.

Life illustration of Gobisaurus, an ankylosaur with a stiff tail but no knob of bone at the end. How did the ankylosaur get its tail club? According to research from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences that traces the evolution of the ankylosaur's distinctive tail, the handle arrived first on the scene, and the knot at the end of the tail followed.

In early August, biologist Peter Ward returned from the South Pacific with news that he encountered an old friend, one he hadn't seen in over three decades. The University of Washington professor had seen what he considers one of the world's rarest animals, a remote encounter that may become even more infrequent if illegal fishing practices continue.

We humans have been using self-medication to cure the illnesses since the dawn of our species. There is some evidence that also other animals can exhibit this type of behavior, but the evidence has been hard to come by.

This is the first-ever discovery of a salamander preserved in amber, from an unlikely spot -- the Dominican Republic, where all salamanders are now extinct. More than 20 million years ago, a short struggle took place in what is now the Dominican Republic, resulting in one animal getting its leg bitten off by a predator just before it escaped. But in the confusion, it fell into a gooey resin deposit, to be fossilized and entombed forever in amber.

Early humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of a variety of species of giant beasts, new research has revealed.

Earthworms in rich organic soil. As they burrow, the worms consume soil in order to remove nutrients from decaying organic matter such as leaves and roots. Scientists have discovered how earthworms can digest plant material, such as fallen leaves, that would defeat most other herbivores.

A study including researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago found evidence that gut microbes affect circadian rhythms and metabolism in mice.

A golden jackal (Canis aureus) from Israel. Based on genomic results, the researchers suggest this animal, the Eurasian golden jackal, is distinct from Canis anthus Despite their remarkably similar appearance, the "golden jackals" of East Africa and Eurasia are actually two entirely different species. The discovery, based on DNA evidence and reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 30, increases the overall biodiversity of the Canidae--the group including dogs, wolves, foxes, and jackals--from 35 living species to 36.

In research that could lead to protective probiotics to fight the "chytrid" fungus that has been decimating amphibian populations worldwide, Jenifer Walke, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, and her collaborators have grown bacterial species from the skin microbiome of four species of amphibians. The research appears July 10 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Research led by Oxford University scientists shows that mammals were evolving up to ten times faster in the middle of the Jurassic Mammals were evolving up to ten times faster in the middle of the Jurassic than they were at the end of the period, coinciding with an explosion of new adaptations, new research shows.

From the smell of flowers to the taste of wine, our perception is strongly influenced by prior knowledge and expectations, a cognitive process known as top-down control.

The world's rarest ape has an increased chance of survival after a team led by international conservation charity the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) found a new family group of Hainan gibbons (Nomascus hainanus).

University of Washington researchers have discovered a link between floral scent release and circadian rhythms in the common garden petunia. Good timing is a matter of skill. You would certainly dress up for an afternoon business meeting, but not an evening session of binge-watching Netflix. If you were just a few hours off in your wardrobe timing, your spouse might wonder why you slipped into a stiff business suit to watch "House of Cards."

Drilling deep into the night: The team of researchers headed by Christian Hallmann and Katherine French took elaborate precautions to keep their samples clean Contaminated samples have evidently created some confusion in the timetable of life. On the basis of ultra-clean analyses, an international team, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, has disproved supposed evidence that eukaryotes originated 2.5 to 2.8 billion years ago. In contrast to prokaryotes such as bacteria, eukaryotes have a nucleus. Some researchers thought they had discovered molecular remnants of living organisms in rock samples up to 2.8 billion years old. However, as the current study shows, these molecular traces were introduced by contamination. The oldest evidence for the existence of eukaryotes is now provided by microfossils that are ca. 1.5 billion years old.

Scientists at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University of Bonn led by Prof. Stefan Remy report on this in the journal "Neuron". Their investigations give new insights into the workings of spatial memory. Furthermore, they could also help improve our understanding of movement related symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease.

The restoration of formerly endangered species is raising conflict in some places. A study of marine mammals and other protected species finds that several once endangered species, including the iconic humpback whale, the northern elephant seal and green sea turtles, have recovered and are repopulating their former ranges.

Maps of the lymphatic system: old (left) and updated to reflect UVA's discovery.

• Vessels directly connecting brain, lymphatic system exist despite decades of doctrine that they don't
• Finding may have substantial implications for major neurological diseases
• Game-changing discovery opens new areas of research, transforms existing ones
• Major gap in understanding of the human body revealed
• 'They'll have to change the textbooks'

Pond snails used in the experiment, Lymnaea stagnalis, have been used for over 25 years to study learning and memory. Animals, like humans, excel at some tasks but not others according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Shown here is a panther chameleon. Madagascar is home to extraordinary biodiversity, but in the past few decades, the island's forests and associated biodiversity have been under greater attack than ever. Rapid deforestation is affecting the biotopes of hundreds of species, including the panther chameleon, a species with spectacular intra-specific colour variation. A new study by Michel Milinkovitch, professor of genetics, evolution, and biophysics at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), led in close collaboration with colleagues in Madagascar, reveals that this charismatic reptilian species, which is only found in Madagascar, is actually composed of eleven different species. The results of their research appear in the latest issue of the Molecular Ecology journal. They also discuss the urgent need to protect Madagascar's habitats.

Chema and Rumumba, two low-ranking immigrant female chimpanzees, take turns grooming each other in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Low-ranking "new girl" chimpanzees seek out other gal pals with similar status, finds a new study of social relationships in the wild apes.

The Tara Oceans expedition collected these small zooplanktonic animals in the Indian Ocean: a molluscan pteropod on the right, and 2 crustacean copepods. On the left is a fragment of... In five related reports in this issue of the journal Science, a multinational team of researchers who spent three and a half years sampling the ocean's sunlit upper layers aboard the schooner Tara unveil the first officially reported global analyses of the Tara Oceans consortium. Planktonic life in the ocean is far more diverse than scientists knew, these reports show. They provide new resources for cataloguing the ocean's numerous planktonic organisms, which -- though critical to life on Earth, providing half the oxygen generated annually through photosynthesis, for example -- have largely been uncharacterized. The reports also reveal how planktonic life is distributed and how planktonic species interact, and they suggest that these organisms' interactions, more so than environmental conditions, help explain their community structures.

This image shows the epithelial lining of the gut. Scientists and clinicians on the Norwich Research Park have carried out the first detailed study of how our intestinal tract changes as we age, and how this determines our overall health.

A cartwheeling spider, a bird-like dinosaur and a fish that wriggles around on the sea floor to create a circular nesting site are among the species identified by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) as the Top 10 New Species for 2015.

In a study using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute scientists found that our inherent risk-taking preferences affect how we view and act on information from other... The hottest hairstyle, the latest extreme sport, the newest viral stunt -- trends happen for a reason and now scientists have a better understanding of why.

Duke and MIT scientists have discovered an area of the brain that is sensitive to the timing of speech, a crucial element of spoken language.

The evolutionary age of grass has been hotly contested. Scientists have previously dated the earliest grasses to 55 million years ago; after the dinosaurs went extinct. Now, a new 100-million-year-old specimen of amber from Myanmar potentially pushes back grass evolution to the Late Cretaceous.

In many of the more than 100 recognized species of lemurs, females run the show. Here, a crowned lemur female hogs a sprig of honeysuckle from her mate. Lemur girls behave more like the guys, thanks to a little testosterone, according to a new study.

This is Odaraia alata, an arthropod resembling a submarine from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. A new study from the University of Cambridge has identified one of the oldest fossil brains ever discovered - more than 500 million years old - and used it to help determine how heads first evolved in early animals. The results, published today (7 May) in the journal Current Biology, identify a key point in the evolutionary transition from soft to hard bodies in early ancestors of arthropods, the group that contains modern insects, crustaceans and spiders.

To eat, rorqual whales open their mouths and lunge while their tongues invert and their mouths fill like giant water balloons full of floating prey. Nerves aren't known for being stretchy. In fact, "nerve stretch injury" is a common form of trauma in humans. But researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 4 have discovered that nerves in the mouths and tongues of rorqual whales can more than double their length with no trouble at all.

A team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich has identified the first fossil specimens of a major group of killifishes that is widely distributed in freshwater habitats today. The 6-million-year-old material sheds new light on the evolution of the bony fishes.

Researchers of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have carried out the first detailed study of the molecular mechanisms responsible for formation of the brachiopod shell. Comparison with shell synthesis in other groups reveals the deep evolutionary roots of the process.

If you thought that a beetle with a machine gun built into its rear end was something that only exists in sci-fi movies, you should talk to Wendy Moore at the University of Arizona.

Rare fossils from extinct pygmy sperm whales found in Panama indicate the bone involved in sound generation and echolocation, the spermaceti organ, reduced in size throughout the whales' evolution, according to a study published April 29, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jorge Velez-Juarbe from Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and colleagues.

Matthew Webster and Andreas Wallberg at Uppsala University, have studied recombination in honeybees. Recombination, or crossing-over, occurs when sperm and egg cells are formed and segments of each chromosome pair are interchanged. This process plays an crucial role in the maintanance of genetic variation. Matthew Webster and Andreas Wallberg at the Biomedical Centre, Uppsala University, have studied recombination in honeybees. The extreme recombination rates found in this species seem to be crucial for their survival.

Genetic testing of Iñupiat people currently living in Alaska's North Slope is helping Northwestern University scientists fill in the blanks on questions about the migration patterns and ancestral pool of the people who populated the North American Arctic over the last 5,000 years.

This is the gorgeous new Psammisia sophiae from Colombia. The description of five new species of blueberry relatives from Colombia highlights the country's great diversity of the plant family Ericaceae and the importance of field exploration. These new mortiños, as locally known, are added to the hundreds of blueberry relatives that are native to Colombia. The new additions are endemic species that exhibit morphological characters unparalleled within the genera in which they are classified. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

The discovery of a single anatomical difference between males and females in the species Stegosaurus mjosi provides some of the most conclusive evidence that some dinosaurs looked different based on sex The discovery of a single anatomical difference between males and females of a species of Stegosaurus provides some of the most conclusive evidence that some dinosaurs looked different based on sex, according to new research.

Among soft-bodied cephalopods, vampire squid live life at a slower pace. At ocean depths from 500 to 3,000 meters, they don't swim so much as float, and they get by with little oxygen while consuming a low-calorie diet of zooplankton and detritus. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 20 have found that vampire squid differ from all other living coleoid cephalopods in their reproductive strategy as well.

An evolutionary biologist fascinated by the way new species evolve, J. Albert C. Uy has longed to have his research featured in a film geared toward the general public. But concerns over the way some nature documentaries distort science always dissuaded him from collaborating with filmmakers.

The neural network necessary for normal face recognition has been not fully understood yet until now. Here, the research group of Dr. Daisuke Matsuyoshi (present affiliation: The University of Tokyo) led by Prof. Ryusuke Kakigi and Prof. Norihiro Sadato of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS), by using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), revealed that suppression of the brain area responsible for object recognition by that for face recognition is necessarily for "normal face" recognition. The researchers simulated mathematically networks between the brain areas and showed that not only brain areas that execute face recognition but also brain areas that had been considered non-essential to face recognition are important for "normal face" recognition. This result was published in The Journal of Neuroscience, the weekly official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC.

The high diversity of phytoplankton has puzzled biological oceanographers for a long time. Diversity of life abounds on Earth, and there's no need to look any farther than the ocean's surface for proof. There are over 200,000 species of phytoplankton alone, and all of those species of microscopic marine plants that form the base of the marine food web need the same basic resources to grow--light and nutrients.

Researchers have discovered a new birth story for mosasaurs. New Haven, Conn. - They weren't in the delivery room, but researchers at Yale University and the University of Toronto have discovered a new birth story for a gigantic marine lizard that once roamed the oceans.

Outbreaks of leukemia that have devastated some populations of soft-shell clams along the east coast of North America for decades can be explained by the spread of cancerous tumor cells from one clam to another. Researchers call the discovery, reported in the Cell Press journal Cell on April 9, 2015, "beyond surprising."

This is an artist's reconstruction of one Daspletosaurus feeding on another. A new study documents injuries inflicted in life and death to a large tyrannosaurine dinosaur. The paper shows that the skull of a genus of tyrannosaur called Daspletosaurus suffered numerous injuries during life, at least some of which were likely inflicted by another Daspletosaurus. It was also bitten after death in an apparent event of scavenging by another tyrannosaur. Thus there's evidence of combat between two large carnivores as well as one feeding on another after death.

The camel skeleton was unearthed near the river Danube in Lower Austria, Tulln. In 2006 construction began on a new shopping centre in Tulln. The works unearthed various archaeologically valuable objects that were salvaged during rescue excavations. Among these objects was also the complete skeleton of a large mammal.

Foraging bats obey their own set of 'traffic rules', chasing, turning and avoiding collisions at high speed according to new research publishing in PLOS Computational Biology.

These are bees on a hive. Honey bees use different sets of genes, regulated by two distinct mechanisms, to fight off viruses, bacteria and gut parasites, according to researchers at Penn State and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

This is a ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) indigenous only to Madagascar. UC's Brooke Crowley is researching lemurs' geographic mobility. Out of the mouths of lemurs come many answers to old mysteries about Madagascar's unique fauna. What were their origins, and how and why did they move around?

This image shows a Gammarus duebeni celticus pair. Parasites can play an important role in driving cannibalism, according to a new study.

New research shows that courtship rituals evolve very fast in cichlid fish in Lake Malawi. Whenever species evolve to feed at different depths, their courtship evolves as well. In the shallows where the light is good, males build sand castles to attract females. Males of deep-dwelling species dig less elaborate pits and compensate with longer swimming displays. The results are published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Baboons take turns grooming each other to make friends and cement social bonds. A new study finds that baboon friendships influence the microscopic bacteria in their guts. The warm soft folds of the intestines are teeming with thousands of species of bacteria. Collectively known as the gut microbiome, these microbes help break down food, synthesize vitamins, regulate weight and resist infection.

A study of a recently discovered fossil published by LMU zoologists reveals the specimen to be the oldest known crab larva: The fossil is 150 million years old, but looks astonishingly modern.

Researchers used a painted dot to track queen bees. An Indiana University researcher and collaborators have published the first comprehensive analysis of the gut bacteria found in queen bees.

Older brains may be more similar to younger brains than previously thought.

Scientists find that people use the touch of a handshake to sample and sniff signaling molecules. A sterile glove was used to identify signaling molecules transmitted via a handshake. Limp or firm, your handshake conveys subliminal social cues. Now, research reveals it also transmits chemical signals that could explain why the greeting evolved in the first place.

Scientists mapped and read sound memories in rat brains. Lights, sound, action: we are constantly learning how to incorporate outside sensations into our reactions in specific situations. In a new study, brain scientists have mapped changes in communication between nerve cells as rats learned to make specific decisions in response to particular sounds. The team then used this map to accurately predict the rats' reactions. These results add to our understanding of how the brain processes sensations and forms memories to inform behavior.

The queen bee in this image is marked with a green dot. Researchers from North Carolina State University, Indiana University and Wellesley College have characterized the gut microbiome of honey bee queens. This is the first thorough census of the gut microbiome - which consists of all the microorganisms that live in the gut of the organism - in queen bees.

Feeding experiment with different potato leaves: Detached leaves of unmodified plants were compared to plants with an altered chloroplast genome. Colorado potato beetles are a dreaded pest of potatoes all over the world. Since they do not have natural enemies in most potato producing regions, farmers try to control them with pesticides. However, this strategy is often ineffective because the pest has developed resistances against nearly all insecticides. Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institutes of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam-Golm and Chemical Ecology in Jena have shown that potato plants can be protected from herbivory using RNA interference (RNAi). They genetically modified plants to enable their chloroplasts to accumulate double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) targeted against essential beetle genes. (Science, February 2015).

Mantis shrimp attack their dinners with the help of spring-loaded claws. DURHAM, N.C. -- The miniweight boxing title of the animal world belongs to the mantis shrimp, a cigar-sized crustacean whose front claws can deliver an explosive 60-mile-per-hour blow akin to a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun.

With apologies to the poet John Donne, and based on recent work from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a DOE Office of Science user facility, it can be said that no plant is an island, entire of itself. Unseen by the human eye, plants interact with many species of fungi and other microbes in the surrounding environment, and these exchanges can impact the plant's health and tolerance to stressors such as drought or disease, as well as the global carbon cycle.

A University of Michigan-led study of penguin genetics has concluded that the flightless aquatic birds lost three of the five basic vertebrate tastes--sweet, bitter and the savory, meaty taste known as umami--more than 20 million years ago and never regained them.

In the Room of DOOM (Dissolved Oxygen Oyster Mortality), oyster tanks mimic the day-night oxygen swings that oysters experience in shallow Bay waters. In shallow waters around the world, where nutrient pollution runs high, oxygen levels can plummet to nearly zero at night. Oysters living in these zones are far more likely to pick up the lethal Dermo disease, a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center discovered. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The rich green color of the photosynthesizing sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, helps to camouflage it on the ocean floor. How a brilliant-green sea slug manages to live for months at a time "feeding" on sunlight, like a plant, is clarified in a recent study published in The Biological Bulletin.

Research by scientists and conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Zoological Society of London, and other groups published today in PLOS ONE shows that critically endangered Saharan cheetahs exist... Research by scientists and conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Zoological Society of London, and other groups published today in PLOS ONE shows that critically endangered Saharan cheetahs exist at incredibly low densities and require vast areas for their conservation. The research also offers some of the world's only photographs of this elusive big cat.

The images show two species of cone snail, Conus geographus (left) and Conus tulipa (right) attempting to capture their fish prey. As they approach potential prey, the snails release a... As predators go, cone snails are slow-moving and lack the typical fighting parts. They've made up for it by producing a vast array of fast-acting toxins that target the nervous systems of prey. A new study reveals that some cone snails add a weaponized form of insulin to the venom cocktail they use to disable fish.

This is the skull of an extinct short-faced kangaroo (Simosthenurus occidentalis). Ancient DNA from these animals reveals they are a highly distinct evolutionary lineage. Scientists have finally managed to extract DNA from Australia's extinct giant kangaroos - the mysterious marsupial megafauna that roamed Australia over 40,000 years ago.

This image shows a perfectly preserved example of the Lower Jurassic fish Dapedium from Lyme Regis, Dorset. Perfectly preserved specimens such as this allow us to calculate the biomechanical function... The feeding habits of an unusual 200-million-year-old fish have been uncovered by a University of Bristol undergraduate in a groundbreaking study which has been published in Palaeontology, a leading scientific journal, this week - a rare achievement for an undergraduate student.

This is Dr Stephen Munro at the School of Anthropology and Archaeology at ANU. An international team of scientists has discovered the earliest known engravings from human ancestors on a 400,000 year-old fossilised shell from Java.

Pictured here are Dr. Turi King and Professor Kevin Schürer from the University of Leicester. International research led by the University of Leicester published in Nature Communications reveals:

• Analysis of all the available evidence confirms identity of King Richard III to the point of 99.999% (at its most conservative).
• Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA shows a match between Richard III and modern female-line relatives, Michael Ibsen and Wendy Duldig.
• The male line of descent is broken at one or more points in the line between Richard III and living male-line relatives descended from Henry Somerset, 5th Duke of Beaufort.
• King Richard was almost certainly blue-eyed and probably had blond hair at least during his childhood.
• The portrait which appears to most closely match the genetically-determined hair and eye colour is the Arched-Frame Portrait in the Society of Antiquaries.

Cartilaginous fishes were very diverse during the Permian period. However, after severe losses among cartilaginous fishes during the Middle Permian extinction, bony fishes experienced a massive diversification in the subsequent... Today, ray-finned fish, which belong to the bony fish, are by far the most biodiverse fish group in both salt- and freshwater. Their spectacular variety of forms ranges from eels, tuna, flounders and angler fish all the way to seahorses. With around 1,100 species, the second most biodiverse group is the cartilaginous fish, which are almost exclusively marine and include sharks, rays and chimaeras. Exactly why bony fish managed to prevail in different habitats is the subject of debate: Do they have a better body plan, which is suited to more ecological niches than that of the cartilaginous fish? Or are other factors involved in their successful distribution? Paleontologists from the University of Zurich now reveal that climate catastrophes in the past played a crucial role in the dominance of ray-finned fish today.

Stephanie Green studies lionfish in The Bahamas. If you live in lionfish territory in the Atlantic Ocean, the last thing you want to be is a small fish with a long, skinny body, resting by yourself at night, near the bottom of the seafloor.

Electrical and computer engineering professor Barry Van Veen wears an electrode net used to monitor brain activity via EEG signals. As real as that daydream may seem, its path through your brain runs opposite reality.

A population of endangered giant tortoises, which once dwindled to just over a dozen, has recovered on the Galapagos island of Española, a finding described as "a true story of success and hope in conservation" by the lead author of a study published today (Oct. 28).

Making mistakes while learning can benefit memory and lead to the correct answer, but only if the guesses are close-but-no-cigar, according to new research findings from Baycrest Health Sciences.

The way in which male moths locate females flying hundreds of meters away has long been a mystery to scientists.

Scientists tracing the real-time impact of viruses in the wild have found that entire amphibian communities are being killed off by closely related viruses introduced to mountainous areas of northern Spain.

This is a 3-D image of the hippocampus of a rat. The way neurons are interconnected in the brain is very complicated. This holds especially true for the cells of the hippocampus. It is one of the oldest brain regions and its form resembles a see horse (hippocampus in Latin). The hippocampus enables us to navigate space securely and to form personal memories. So far, the anatomic knowledge of the networks inside the hippocampus and its connection to the rest of the brain has left scientists guessing which information arrived where and when.

An iceplant, from a region of high diversity in South Africa, is overtopping and killing a native shrub on the New Zealand coast, a region with far less diversity. Dov Sax of Brown University and Jason Fridley of Syracuse University aren't proposing a novel idea to explain species invasiveness. In fact, Charles Darwin articulated it first. What's new about Sax and Fridley's "Evolutionary Imbalance Hypothesis" (EIH) is that they've tested it using quantifiable evidence and report in Global Ecology and Biogeography that the EIH works well.

Eyeless Mexican cavefish show no metabolic circadian rhythm in either light and dark or constant dark conditions, according to a study published September 24, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Damian Moran from Lund University, Sweden, and colleagues.

Achieving complete breakdown of plant biomass for energy conversion in industrialized bioreactors remains a complex challenge, but new research shows that termite fungus farmers solved this problem more than 30 million years ago. The new insight reveals that the great success of termite farmers as plant decomposers is due to division of labor between a fungus breaking down complex plant components and gut bacteria contributing enzymes for final digestion.

Although the immediate welfare consequences of removing infant chimpanzees from their mothers are well documented, little is known about the long-term impacts of this type of early life experience. In a year-long study, scientists from Lincoln Park Zoon observed 60 chimpanzees and concluded that those who were removed from their mothers early in life and raised by humans as pets or performers are likely to show behavioral and social deficiencies as adults.

Rhinorex, a newly discovered dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period, had an impressive nose. Call it the Jimmy Durante of dinosaurs – a newly discovered hadrosaur with a truly distinctive nasal profile. The new dinosaur, named Rhinorex condrupus by paleontologists from North Carolina State University and Brigham Young University, lived in what is now Utah approximately 75 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period.

These are adult marine (top) and freshwater (bottom) threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) stained with a red dye that labels calcified bone. Sticklebacks, the roaches of the fish world, are the ideal animal in which to study the genes that control body shape. They've moved from the ocean into tens of thousands of freshwater streams and lakes around the world, each time changing their skeleton to adapt to the new environment.

It's hard to comprehend how bad the current rate of species extinction around the world has become without knowing what it was before people came along. The newest estimate is that the pre-human rate was 10 times lower than scientists had thought, which means that the current level is 10 times worse.

Move over antibiotic ointment, there might be a new salve to dominate medicine cabinets of the future, and it comes from an unlikely place—the lowly salamander. Salamanders may not be the cuddliest of animals, but they can regenerate lost limbs and achieve amazing recovery of seriously damaged body parts. Now, a new report published in the September 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal, identifies a small protein (called a "peptide") from the skin of salamanders that may be the key to unlocking the secret of this amazing wound healing trick in humans.

About 400 million years ago a group of fish began exploring land and evolved into tetrapods – today's amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. But just how these ancient fish used their fishy bodies and fins in a terrestrial environment and what evolutionary processes were at play remain scientific mysteries.

A dead ant manipulated by a species of so-called "zombie ant fungus " clings to a twig in a South Carolina forest. A parasitic fungus that reproduces by manipulating the behavior of ants emits a cocktail of behavior-controlling chemicals when encountering the brain of its natural target host, but not when infecting other ant species, a new study shows.

The green anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis), when caught by a predator, can lose its tail and then grow it back. By understanding the secret of how lizards regenerate their tails, researchers may be able to develop ways to stimulate the regeneration of limbs in humans. Now, a team of researchers from Arizona State University is one step closer to solving that mystery. The scientists have discovered the genetic "recipe" for lizard tail regeneration, which may come down to using genetic ingredients in just the right mixture and amounts.

The arapaima fish, which once dominated Amazon fisheries, is long and can weigh as much as 400 pounds. An international team of scientists has discovered that a large, commercially important fish from the Amazon Basin has become extinct in some local fishing communities.

Spider silk is an impressive material; lightweight and stretchy yet stronger than steel. But the challenge that spiders face to produce this substance is even more formidable. Silk proteins, called spidroins, must convert from a soluble form to solid fibers at ambient temperatures, with water as a solvent, and at high speed. How do spiders achieve this astounding feat? In new research publishing in the open access journal PLOS Biology on August 5, Anna Rising and Jan Johansson show how the silk formation process is regulated. The work was done at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with colleagues in Latvia, China and USA.

Yale University scientists have performed the first artificial selection on a structural color, using butterfly wings. This image shows a male Bicyclus anynana butterfly Yale University scientists have chosen the most fleeting of mediums for their groundbreaking work on biomimicry: They've changed the color of butterfly wings.

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus)—which grow more than 30 feet long—are the largest fish in the world's ocean, but little is known about their movements on a daily basis or over years. A newly discovered juvenile whale shark aggregation off Saudi Arabia is giving researchers a rare glimpse into the lives of these gentle giants.

A member of the Martu Aboriginal community in western Australia sets fire to mature spinifex grass as a way to expose burrows occupied by sand monitor lizards Australia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch lizards, as they have for at least 2,000 years. A University of Utah researcher found such man-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations – showing how co-evolution helped marsupials and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists.

LB1 is shown in three different views to illustrate facial asymmetry. In October 2004, excavation of fragmentary skeletal remains from the island of Flores in Indonesia yielded what was called "the most important find in human evolution for 100 years." Its discoverers dubbed the find Homo floresiensis, a name suggesting a previously unknown species of human.

Sir David Attenborough narrates and appears in a video about the digital curation of a 20-million-year-old amber collection at the Illinois Natural History Survey at Illinois. Scientists are searching through a massive collection of 20-million-year-old amber found in the Dominican Republic more than 50 years ago, and the effort is yielding fresh insights into ancient tropical insects and the world they inhabited.

Birdsongs automatically decoded by computer scientists

This is an image of the inflorescence of Arabidopsis thaliana. In close collaboration with Jürg Schönenberger and Yannick Städler from the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research of the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, 14 developmental stages of the flower of Arabidopsis thaliana from very early meristematic floral initiation to fully developed seeds were monitored with micro-computed tomography in 3D. From the same set of developmental stages a full metabolic profile using mass spectrometry was measured covering hundreds of biochemical pathways.

Paleontologist Dan Ksepka examines the fossilized skull of what may be the biggest flying bird ever found. Scientists have identified the fossilized remains of an extinct giant bird that could be the biggest flying bird ever found. With an estimated 20-24-foot wingspan, the creature surpassed size estimates based on wing bones from the previous record holder -- a long-extinct bird named Argentavis magnificens -- and was twice as big as the Royal Albatross, the largest flying bird today. Scheduled to appear online the week of July 7, 2014, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the findings show that the creature was an extremely efficient glider, with long slender wings that helped it stay aloft despite its enormous size.

Pushing closer to understanding the mechanisms behind the mysterious glow of light produced naturally by certain animals, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have deciphered the structural components related to fluorescence brightness in a primitive sea creature.

This reconstruction shows how scientists think the fly larvae adhered to the skin of the amphibian. Around 165 million years ago, a spectacular parasite was at home in the freshwater lakes of present-day Inner Mongolia (China): A fly larva with a thorax formed entirely like a sucking plate. With it, the animal could adhere to salamanders and suck their blood with its mouthparts formed like a sting. To date no insect is known that is equipped with a similar specialised design. The international scientific team is now presenting its findings in the journal "eLIFE".

Chance events may profoundly shape history. What if Franz Ferdinand's driver had not taken a wrong turn, bringing the Duke face to face with his assassin? Would World War I still have been fought? Would Hitler have risen to power decades later?

Artist reconstruction of Mercuriceratops gemini, a new species of horned dinosaur that had wing-shaped ornamentation on the sides of its skull. Scientists have named a new species of horned dinosaur (ceratopsian) based on fossils collected from Montana in the United States and Alberta, Canada. Mercuriceratops (mer-cure-E-sare-ah-tops) gemini was approximately 6 meters (20 feet) long and weighed more than 2 tons. It lived about 77 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period. Research describing the new species is published online in the journal Naturwissenschaften.

For some birds, recognising their own eggs can be a matter of life or death.

During evolutionary diversification of vertebrate limbs, the number of toes in even-toed ungulates such as cattle and pigs was reduced and transformed into paired hooves. Scientists at the University of Basel have identified a gene regulatory switch that was key to evolutionary adaption of limbs in ungulates. The study provides fascinating insights into the molecular history of evolution and is published by Nature today.

In a new study published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, geoscientists Wolfgang Stinnesbeck of the University of Heidelberg and colleagues document the discovery of forty-six ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs (marine reptiles). These specimens were discovered in the vicinity of the Tyndall Glacier in the Torres del Paine National Park of southern Chile. Among them are numerous articulated and virtually complete skeletons of adults, pregnant females, and juveniles.

Ants are capable of complex problem-solving strategies that could be widely applied as optimization techniques. An individual ant searching for food walks in random ways, biologists found. Yet the collective foraging behaviour of ants goes well beyond that, as a mathematical study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals: The animal movements at a certain point change from chaos to order. This happens in a surprisingly efficient self-organized way. Understanding the ants could help analyze similar phenomena - for instance how humans roam in the internet.

This is the winged male Dystacta tigrifrutex, or bush tiger mantis from Nyungwe National Park, southwestern Rwanda. Scientists describe a new species of praying mantis, Dystacta tigrifrutex, or the bush tiger mantis from Rwanda's mountainous Nyungwe National Park. Like all praying mantises the new species is a vicious hunter. The wingless females are adapted for catching prey close to the ground and in the undergrowth, which inspired the name of the species due to the similarities in hunting practices with one of the world's favorite big cats. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Octopus investigators: From left to right, Dr. Nir Nesher (standing), Dr. Guy Levy and Prof. Benny Hochner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered how octopuses don't tie themselves in knots. An octopus's arms are covered in hundreds of suckers that will stick to just about anything, with one important exception: those suckers generally won't grab onto the octopus itself, otherwise the impressively flexible animals would quickly find themselves all tangled up.

This is a model of the nurse shark's immunoglobulin new antigen receptor molecule containing two stabilization principles, which could be transferred to human anitbodies to receive enhansed stability. Custom-tailored antibodies are regarded as promising weapons against a multitude of serious illnesses. Since they can accurately recognize specific structures on the surface of viruses, bacteria or cancer cells, they are already being deployed successfully in cancer diagnostics and therapy, as well as against numerous other diseases. The stability of the sensitive antibodies is a decisive factor in every step, from production and storage to therapeutic application.

Marine scientists at the Northeastern University Marine Science Center have shown that the behavior of middle predators in marine food webs plays an important role in the welfare of the... Northeastern University researchers at the Marine Science Center have shown that the behavior of the "middle child" in the predator-prey food chain plays a strong role in determining how the reef as a whole will fare. The new research from the team was published online on Tuesday in the journal Ecology Letters.

This image shows a reconstruction of Plexus ricei. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside have discovered a fossil of a newly discovered organism from the "Ediacara Biota" — a group of organisms that occurred in the Ediacaran period of geologic time.

This shows the female penis of N. aurora. Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 17 have discovered little-known cave insects with rather novel sex lives. The Brazilian insects, which represent four distinct but related species in the genus Neotrogla, are the first example of an animal with sex-reversed genitalia.

The 375 million-year-old fossil lycopod Leclercqia scolopendra, described and beautifully rendered by UC Berkeley graduate student Jeffrey Benca. Jeff Benca is an admitted über-geek when it comes to prehistoric plants, so it was no surprise that, when he submitted a paper describing a new species of long-extinct lycopod for publication, he ditched the standard line drawing and insisted on a detailed and beautifully rendered color reconstruction of the plant. This piece earned the cover of March's centennial issue of the American Journal of Botany.

New research from scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School shows that fruit flies are secretly harboring the biochemistry needed to glow in the dark —otherwise known as bioluminescence.

Stunning images of a 305-million-year-old harvestman fossil reveal ancestors of the modern-day arachnids had two sets of eyes rather than one.

This image shows the dorsal view of Fuxianhuia protensa. An international team of researchers from the University of Arizona, China and the United Kingdom has discovered the earliest known cardiovascular system, and the first to clearly show a sophisticated system complete with heart and blood vessels, in fossilized remains of an extinct marine creature that lived over half a billion years ago. The finding sheds new light on the evolution of body organization in the animal kingdom and shows that even the earliest creatures had internal organizational systems that strongly resemble those found in their modern descendants.

UC Davis scientists have learned why zebras, like these plains zebras in Katavi National Park, Tanzania, have stripes. Why zebras have black and white stripes is a question that has intrigued scientists and spectators for centuries. A research team led by the University of California, Davis, has now examined this riddle systematically. Their answer is published April 1 in the online journal Nature Communications.

The two partial limb fossils from the ancient sea turtle Atlantochelys mortoni fit together perfectly, leaving little room for doubt that they are from the same bone. "As soon as those two halves came together, like puzzle pieces, you knew it," said Ted Daeschler, PhD, associate curator of vertebrate zoology and vice president for collections at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

How does the Arctic tern (a sea bird) fly more than 80,000 miles in its roundtrip North Pole-to-South Pole migration? How does the Emperor penguin incubate eggs for months during the Antarctic winter without eating? How does the Rufous hummingbird, which weighs less than a nickel, migrate from British Columbia to Mexico? These physiological gymnastics would usually be influenced by leptin, the hormone that regulates body fat storage, metabolism and appetite. However, leptin has gone missing in birds - until now.

This is an example of the horned pollinaria found in South American milkweed. Rutting stags and clawing bears are but two examples of male animals fighting over a mate, but research in New Phytologist has uncovered the first evidence of similar male struggles leading to the evolution of weaponry in plants.

Ohio University scientists have found the oldest definitive fossil evidence of modern, venomous snakes in Africa, according to a new study published March 19 in the journal PLOS ONE Ohio University scientists have found the oldest definitive fossil evidence of modern, venomous snakes in Africa, according to a new study published March 19 in the journal PLOS ONE.

A leatherback turtle equipped with a satellite tag crawls off the tagging vessel, the F/V Sea Holly A first-of-its-kind satellite tagging study of migrating New England leatherback turtles in the North Atlantic offers a greatly improved understanding of their seasonal high-use habitats, diving activity and response to key ocean and environmental features in relation to their search behavior. Leatherbacks are considered endangered species in all the world's oceans.

The protector species, the weaver ant Oecophylla smaragdina, can also turn predator of the associate species, the jumping spider Phintella piatensis. A timid jumping spider uses the scent of ants as a secret weapon to save itself from becoming the somewhat soggy prey of the predatory spitting spider. The downside to this plan is that jumping spiders are also a favorite snack of its very own saviors. To overcome this additional hazard, the spider has made yet another plan in the form of an ant-proof nest, writes Ximena Nelson of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Robert Jackson of the University of Canterbury and the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya, in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

This shows the North Atlantic tracking routes of 17 juvenile loggerhead sea turtles. A new study satellite tracked 17 young loggerhead turtles in the Atlantic Ocean to better understand sea turtle nursery grounds and early habitat use during the 'lost years.' The study, conducted by a collaborative research team, including scientists from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, was the first long-term satellite tracking study of young turtles at sea.

Papilio polytes, an Asian swallowtail butterfly species also known as the Common Mormon, possesses distinctive mimicry patterns (left). The same species also has non-mimetic forms (right). A single gene regulates the complex wing patterns, colors and structures required for mimicry in swallowtail butterflies, report scientists from the University of Chicago, March 5 in Nature. Surprisingly, the gene described, doublesex, is already well-known for its critical role in sexual differentiation in insects.

Why does a mouse's heart beat about the same number of times in its lifetime as an elephant's, although the mouse lives about a year, while an elephant sees 70 winters come and go? Why do small plants and animals mature faster than large ones? Why has nature chosen such radically different forms as the loose-limbed beauty of a flowering tree and the fearful symmetry of a tiger?

Invasive "crazy ants" are rapidly displacing fire ants in areas across the southeastern U.S. by secreting a compound that neutralizes fire ant venom, according to a University of Texas at Austin study published this week in the journal Science Express. It's the first known example of an insect with the ability to detoxify another insect's venom.

New data from the field in Central Africa shows that between 2002 and 2013, 65 percent of forest elephants were killed. New data from the field in Central Africa shows that between 2002 and 2013, 65 percent of forest elephants were killed. They are being poached, for their ivory, at a shocking 9 percent per year.

Associate Professor Joan Heath has uncovered a new way that protein production is regulated in development. Melbourne researchers have made a major step forward in understanding how changes in an essential cellular process, called minor class splicing, may cause a severe developmental disease.

A new study using small Chinook salmon "parr " found the fish use the Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves. A team of scientists last year presented evidence of a correlation between the migration patterns of ocean salmon and the Earth's magnetic field, suggesting it may help explain how the fish can navigate across thousands of miles of water to find their river of origin.

Sponges are an important animal for marine and freshwater ecology and represent a rich animal diversity found throughout the world, from tropical climates to the arctic poles. For evolutionary biologists, they also present an interesting animal for comparative study because they are simple filter feeders, and lack nervous, digestive or circulatory systems, suggesting that they diverged early from other animals.

A speculative life rendering of the fossil whale Balaenoptera bertae unearthed in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The whale belongs within the same genus as minke and fin whales, indicating... The pre-Ice Age marine mammal community of the North Pacific formed a strangely eclectic scene, research by a Geology PhD student at New Zealand's University of Otago reveals.

Representative diverse origins of multicellularity are shown on a highly redacted and unrooted phylogenetic diagram of the major eukaryotic clades (modified from a variety of sources). In the beginning there were single cells. Today, many millions of years later, most plants, animals, fungi, and algae are composed of multiple cells that work collaboratively as a single being. Despite the various ways these organisms achieved multicellularity, their conglomeration of cells operate cooperatively to consume energy, survive, and reproduce. But how did multicellularity evolve? Did it evolve once or multiple times? How did cells make the transition from life as a solo cell to associating and cooperating with other cells such that they work as a single, cohesive unit?

One of the most damaging invasive species in history, kudzu, or Japanese arrowroot, found its way from Japan to the southeastern United States. In 1859 an Australian farmer named Thomas Austin released 24 grey rabbits from Europe into the wild because it "could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting."

Gunther's Banded Treefrog, Hypsiboas fasciatus, was believed to have a wide distribution in the Amazon region. Amazonian biodiversity has been studied for hundreds of years. Early explorers of Amazonian plants and animals included renowned naturalists of the stature of Alexander von Humboldt and A. R. Wallace. Despite this long history of exploration, new studies are resulting in the discovery of a large number of new species. The key of these discoveries lies in the use of advanced new tools for species detection.

This shows two lion cubs in West Africa. A report published today concludes that the African lion is facing extinction across the entire West African region. The West African lion once ranged continuously from Senegal to Nigeria, but the new paper reveals there are now only an estimated 250 adult lions restricted to four isolated and severely imperiled populations. Only one of those populations contains more than 50 lions.

Great white sharks—top predators throughout the world's ocean—grow much slower and live significantly longer than previously thought, according to a new study led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

This flower preserved in 100-million-year old amber is one of the most complete ever found. A 100-million-year old piece of amber has been discovered which reveals the oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in a flowering plant – a cluster of 18 tiny flowers from the Cretaceous Period – with one of them in the process of making some new seeds for the next generation.

Scientists have discovered how plants use steroid hormones to choose growth over defence when their survival depends on it.

Common hippopotami (Hippopotamus amphibius) are vulnerable to extinction in the wild, but reproduce extremely well under captive breeding conditions. Females can give birth to up to 25 young over their 40 year lifespan – evidently too many for zoos to accommodate. Captive populations of hippopotamus must therefore be controlled. Male castration is useful in this respect because it can simultaneously limit population growth and reduce inter-male aggression. However, documented cases of successful hippo castrations are scant. The procedure is notoriously difficult due to problems with anaesthesia and difficulties in locating the testes.

Two teams of researchers, including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University, have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse from 4.4 million-year-old fossil-rich deposits in Ethiopia.

This is a view eastward along the spine of the Azorean island of São Jorge, showing the area where the new orchid has been discovered. Image: Rob Poot. Researchers studying speciation of butterfly orchids on the Azores have been startled to discover that the answer to a long-debated question "Do the islands support one species or two species?" is actually "three species". Hochstetter's Butterfly-orchid, newly recognized following application of a battery of scientific techniques and reveling in a complex taxonomic history worthy of Sherlock Holmes, is arguably Europe's rarest orchid species. Under threat in its mountain-top retreat, the orchid urgently requires conservation recognition.

Viruses alter plant biochemistry in order to manipulate visiting aphids into spreading infection.

Although it lived roughly 65 million years before the earliest known occurrence of figs, the fossil wasp's ovipositor closely resembles those of today's fig wasps. A 115-million-year-old fossilized wasp from northeast Brazil presents a baffling puzzle to researchers. The wasp's ovipositor, the organ through which it lays its eggs, looks a lot like those of present-day wasps that lay their eggs in figs. The problem, researchers say, is that figs arose about 65 million years after this wasp was alive.

A new study led by CU-Boulder has shown Madagascar's ring-tailed lemurs are the only wild primates in the world that sleep in the same caves on a nightly basis. Scientists have discovered that some ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar regularly retire to limestone chambers for their nightly snoozes, the first evidence of the consistent, daily use of the same caves and crevices for sleeping among the world's wild primates.

This image shows the beautiful body pattern of the new species G. spectabilis Erwin. Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution describe the Spectacular Guyane False-form beetle, or Guyanemorpha spectabilis, from Guyane (French Guiana). As its name suggests, the newly discovered species stands out among its dull relatives in the Western Hemisphere, with its great size and beautiful coloration. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

A male Pacific leaping blenny, Alticus arnoldorum, in Guam. These terrestrial fishes spend all their adult lives on land, on the rocks in the splash zone. One of the world's strangest animals – a legless, leaping fish that lives on land - uses camouflage to avoid attacks by predators such as birds, lizards and crabs, new research shows.

Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 27 have identified a cryptic new species of wild cat living in Brazil. The discovery is a reminder of just how little scientists still know about the natural world, even when it comes to such charismatic creatures. The findings also have important conservation implications for the cats, the researchers say.

This image shows the female Fufius lucasae described for the first time in this study. Scientists discover three new gorgeous species of the wafer trapdoor genus Fufius – F. minusculus, F. jalapensis, and F. candango. The discovery of the three new species, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, paves the road to understanding the morphological variability of the species in this little known mygalomorph genus.

University of Illinois anthropology professor Ripan Malhi looks to DNA to tell the story of how ancient humans first came to the Americas and what happened to them once they were here.

Many of us have mixed feelings when remembering painful lessons in German or Latin grammar in school. Languages feature a large number of complex rules and patterns: using them correctly makes the difference between something which "sounds good", and something which does not. However, cognitive biologists at the University of Vienna have shown that sensitivity to very simple structural and melodic patterns does not require much learning, or even being human: South American squirrel monkeys can do it, too.

Johns Hopkins researchers report that the deletion of any single gene in yeast cells puts pressure on the organism's genome to compensate, leading to a mutation in another gene. Their discovery, which is likely applicable to human genetics because of the way DNA is conserved across species, could have significant consequences for the way genetic analysis is done in cancer and other areas of research, they say.

This shows fossil and recent araucarian cones sectioned in 2-D by microCT (A, D, G), and showing one segmented spiral or row of seeds By integrating high-resolution X-ray imaging (termed microCT), 3D image segmentation, and computer animation, a new study conducted by Carole Gee at the University of Bonn, Germany, demonstrates the visualization of fossils without destroying the material. Traditional techniques, such as thin-sectioning, require investigators to physically cut up the fossil in order to observe internal structures. Dr. Gee, however, has now successfully applied microCT to visualize silicified conifer seed cones as old as 150 million years without cutting, sawing, or damaging the specimens in any way.

Mammal body size decreased significantly during at least two ancient global warming events, a new finding that suggests a similar outcome is possible in response to human-caused climate change, according to a University of Michigan paleontologist and his colleagues.

Bee colonies consist of a queen bee, lots of female worker bees and some male drones. The gene that determines the sex of the bees is much more complex than has been assumed up until now and has developed over the course of evolution at a very high rate. This is the finding of an international team of scientists under the direction of Dr. Martin Hasselmann of the Institute for Genetics of the University of Cologne. The study has been published in the renowned Oxford journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Get gaming! Scientists found that playing Super Mario can make you brainier, or at least cause increases in the brain regions responsible for spatial orientation, memory formation and strategic planning. Video gaming causes increases in the brain regions responsible for spatial orientation, memory formation and strategic planning as well as fine motor skills. This has been shown in a new study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charité University Medicine St. Hedwig-Krankenhaus. The positive effects of video gaming may also prove relevant in therapeutic interventions targeting psychiatric disorders.

An international team of scientists, led by physicists from the University of York, has shed important new light on coral skeleton formation.

A chance find by a high school student led to the youngest, smallest and most complete fossil skeleton yet known from the iconic tube-crested dinosaur Parasaurolophus. The discovery, announced today by the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology at The Webb Schools, shows that the prehistoric plant-eater sprouted its strange headgear before it celebrated its first birthday. Three-dimensional scans of nearly the entire fossil are freely available online, making this the most digitally-accessible dinosaur to date.

Poison dart frogs like this one, photographed by Louise Rollins-Smith during a trip to Panama in 2010, are threatened by fungal infections that paralyze their immune response. A fungus that is killing frogs and other amphibians around the world releases a toxic factor that disables the amphibian immune response, Vanderbilt University investigators report Oct. 18 in the journal Science.

Researchers studying young bonobos in an African sanctuary have discovered striking similarities between the emotional development of the bonobos and that of children, suggesting these great apes regulate their emotions in a human-like way. This is important to human evolutionary history because it shows the socio-emotional framework commonly applied to children works equally well for apes. Using this framework, researchers can test predictions of great ape behavior and, as in the case of this study, confirm humans and apes share many aspects of emotional functioning.

Research conducted by the National Geographic Genographic Project, a multiyear global initiative that uses DNA to map the history of human migration, is helping unravel the timing and source of human settlement in Central Europe.

This is chimpanzee Tushi. Jorg Massen (University of Vienna) and Sonja Koski (University of Zurich) together measured chimpanzee personality in two zoos with behavioural experiments and years of observations of chimpanzee behaviour. They also carefully logged which chimpanzee sat in body contact with whom most. "This is a clear sign of friendship among chimpanzees", explains Jorg Massen. Subsequently, the researchers tested, if those chimpanzees who sit together frequently have similar or different personality types.

Ants and bees are surprisingly more genetically related to each other than they are to social wasps such as yellow jackets and paper wasps, a team of University of California, Davis, scientists has discovered. The groundbreaking research is available online and will be published Oct. 21 in the print version of the journal Current Biology.

Researcher Peter Facchini (left) and PhD student Scott Farrow's (right) paper sheds light on how the opium poppy -- the world's only source of the valuable painkillers University of Calgary scientists have discovered metabolic enzymes in the opium poppy that play "widespread roles" in enabling the plant to make painkilling morphine and codeine, and other important compounds.