Female zebra finches seek mate who sings one song just right

Humans aren't the only living beings who find a singing voice attractive in the opposite sex—songbirds do too. For about a third of the approximately 4,000 songbird species that sing only one song, the features that make ...

Virus evolution differs by species of mosquito carrier

A new study on how the West Nile virus evolves in four species of mosquitos shows that viruses accumulate mutations in their insect carriers that reduce how well they reproduce when passed on to a bird host. Viruses carried ...

Evolutionary benefit of human personality traits

Bold and outgoing or shy and retiring –– while many people can shift from one to the other as circumstances warrant, in general they lean toward one disposition or the other. And that inclination changes little over the ...

The fight against genome parasites

In the gonads of animals, genome parasites such as transposons pose a serious threat to evolutionary fitness. With their ability to bounce around in the genome, they often cause dangerous mutations. To protect genomic integrity, ...

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