Evolution

Astronomers have discovered an unusual carbon-based molecule – one with a branched structure – contained within a giant gas cloud in interstellar space -  27,000 light years away. Like finding a…

A key indicator of how successfully one species of monkey will breed can be determined by skin color, a new study has shown. Skin coloration in male and female rhesus macaques is an inherited…

So much for patriarchy. When it comes to evolution, female populations have always been larger than male populations throughout human history, according to a new study in Investigative Genetics which…

A new study uses tree rings to document arroyo evolution along the lower Rio Puerco and Chaco Wash in northern New Mexico. Arroyos are deep, oversized channels that have vertical or steeply cut walls…

Parasitic lamprey are a challenge to study but an important one - they are an invasive pest in the Great Lakes but difficult to study under controlled conditions because they live up to 10 years and…

Can the brown anole lizard outrun climate change? Credit: Ianaré Sévi, CC BY By Amanda Bates, University of Southampton Lizards from the deserts of Australia to the tops of mountains in Costa Rica…

"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" biologists once said - meaning that an animal's "ontogeny", its embryonic development, replays its entire evolutionary history. Today our understanding a more…

Gibbons are small, tree-living apes from Southeast Asia, many species of which are endangered. They are part of the same superfamily as humans and great apes, but sit on the divide between Old-World…

New whale research has turned a long-accepted evolutionary assumption on its...hips. Instead of  being just vestigial, whale pelvic bones play a key role in reproduction, according to a new…

The coffee plant has a newly sequenced genome and that can tell scientists what they really want to know about: the evolution of caffeine. The sequences and positions of genes in the coffee plant…