News tagged with evolutionary
Researchers reveal secrets of duck sex: It's all screwed up
Dec 23, 2009 |
3.9 / 5 (11) |
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Female ducks have evolved an intriguing way to avoid becoming impregnated by undesirable but aggressive males endowed with large corkscrew-shaped penises: vaginas with clockwise spirals that thwart oppositely ...
Fossil shelved for a century reworks carnivore family tree
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Dec 22, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (8) |
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More than a hundred years after its discovery, the limbs and vertebrae of a fossil have been pulled off the shelf at the American Museum of Natural History to revise the view of early carnivore lifestyles. ...
Foot binding and a biological approach to the study of Chinese culture
Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Dec 21, 2009 |
2.8 / 5 (4) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Exaptation is a familiar concept to evolutionary biologists. It's the basic idea explaining that a trait can evolve because it starts serving a different function. Think of birds: at first, the most important ...
Warming climate chills Sonoran Desert's spring flowers
Dec 16, 2009 |
3.2 / 5 (9) |
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Global warming is giving a boost to Sonoran Desert plants that have an edge during cold weather, according to new research.
Soap opera in the marsh: Coots foil nest invaders, reject impostors
Dec 16, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (2) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The American coot is a drab, seemingly unremarkable marsh bird common throughout North America. But its reproductive life is full of deception and violence.
Global barcode project to scan plants in the wild
Dec 16, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A cheap and fast method of identifying the world's most important plants in the wild could soon be possible, thanks to a global project involving the University of Adelaide.
Sucker-footed bats don't use suction after all (w/ Video)
Dec 14, 2009 |
4.3 / 5 (3) |
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There are approximately 1,200 species of bats worldwide. Of that total, only six are known to roost with their heads pointed upward. Investigators did not know why, because they knew next to nothing about ...
Evolution may take giant leaps
Dec 11, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (29) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of thousands of species of plants and animals suggests new species may arise from rare events instead of through an accumulation of small changes made in response to changes in ...
Killer catfish? Venomous species surprisingly common, study finds
Dec 10, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Name all the venomous animals you can think of and you probably come up with snakes, spiders, bees, wasps and perhaps poisonous frogs. But catfish?
Article Traces History of Darwinian Medicine
Dec 10, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Despite being a founding principle of modern biology for 150 years, evolutionary theory has played a limited role in the field of medicine. Only in the last 20 years has Darwinian medicine emerged as a discipline ...
Fossils shake dinosaur family tree
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Dec 10, 2009 |
5 / 5 (5) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Paleontologists have unearthed a previously unknown meat-eating dinosaur in New Mexico, settling a debate about early dinosaur evolution, revealing a period of explosive diversification and ...
Researchers Identify the Most Promiscuous Birds in the World
Dec 09, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- UConn ornithologist Chris Elphick and his colleagues carried out DNA tests to discover the paternity of Saltmarsh Sparrow nestlings.
Think again about keeping little ones so squeaky clean
Dec 08, 2009 |
5 / 5 (15) |
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A new Northwestern University study suggests that American parents should ease up on antibacterial soap and perhaps allow their little ones a romp or two in the mud --- or at least a much better acquaintance with everyday ...
Why King Kong failed to impress
Dec 08, 2009 |
2 / 5 (2) |
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Humans have the same receptors for detecting odors related to sex as do other apes and primates. But each species uses them in different ways, stemming from the way the genes for these receptors have evolved over time, according ...
Researchers demonstrate nanoscale X-ray imaging of bacterial cells
Dec 07, 2009 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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An ultra-high-resolution imaging technique using X-ray diffraction is a step closer to fulfilling its promise as a window on nanometer-scale structures in biological samples. In the Proceedings of the National Ac ...
