Tag: evolution
I’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil...
Antonis Rokas, Vanderbilt University
Biologists don’t call them “the hidden kingdom” for nothing. With an estimated 5 million species, only a mere 100,000 fungi are...
Last of the giants: What killed off Madagascar’s megafauna a thousand...
Nick Scroxton, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Laurie Godfrey, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Stephen Burns, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Giant 10-foot-tall elephant birds, with eggs...
Sexual selection in action: Birds that attract multiple mates change their...
Nicole Creanza, Vanderbilt University and Kate Snyder, Vanderbilt University
How do individuals choose their mates? Why are some more successful at attracting mates than others?
These...
Why ‘Nigerian Prince’ scams continue to dupe us
Frank T. McAndrew, Knox College
With cryptocurrency fraud and IRS scams making headlines, I had thought Nigerian email schemes were a thing of the past,...
Bird DNA helps explain Amazonian rivers’ role in evolution
Luciano Nicolas Naka, Harvard University
When the young naturalist Alfred R. Wallace left England to explore the New World in 1848, one of his key...
Natural selection in action: Hurricanes Irma and Maria affected island lizards
Colin Donihue, Harvard University
The Turks and Caicos anole is a small brown lizard found running through the undergrowth in the Turks and Caicos Islands....
How virtual worlds can recreate the geographic history of life
Robert K. Colwell, University of Connecticut and Thiago F. Rangel, Universidade Federal de Goias
The Amazon and the adjacent Andean slopes in South America host...
Pigments from microbes provide clue to evolution in ancient oceans –...
Patricia L. Foster, Indiana University
Possibly the most significant event in the evolution of life on Earth occurred 2.4 billion years ago. That was when...