The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

Who cares? Why evolution suggests parenting responsibility is seldom equally shared: "Why is caring for young shared unequally between the sexes in so many animal species? Research from the University of Bristol, UK suggests that small initial differences which predispose one sex to care more are exaggerated once the ability to care evolves. As a result, one sex evolves attributes - such as mammary glands in female mammals or increased brain size in some fish - that enhance the ability to care, and so this sex does most or all of the care.

Patterns of parenting in nature range from care by one parent only (seen in many mammals), to male/female biased care, to care by both parents (seen in many birds).

Parental care involves one of the fundamental conflicts of interest between the sexes. Care by either partner is beneficial to both partners as it increases the health and survival prospects of the common young; providing care is costly only to the caring individual. As a result, each partner does best in a situation where most of the care is provided by the other partner—an outcome that is clearly impossible."

A fish with two mouths has been caught in South Australia: "A common bony bream (Nematalosa erebi) has been caught in South Australia’s Lake Bonney... and it has two mouths. The freshwater species is found across much of Australia, but it normally doesn't look like this.

The unusual fish was alive when it was captured in a net and pulled from the lake, which is located in the east of the state of South Australia.

Fascinatingly, both mouths seem to be joined together.

'The top one opens and closes but the bottom one looks permanently open,' Garry Warrick, who caught the fish, told ABC journalist Malcolm Sutton. 'Other than that, it looks like a normal fish.'"

Why the elephant has a long trunk

Basically, because it allows it to get more food.

'Nature's medicine cabinet' helps bees reduce disease load (Update): "Researchers studying the interaction between plants, pollinators and parasites report that in recent experiments, bees infected with a common intestinal parasite had reduced parasite levels in their guts after seven days if the bees also consumed natural toxins present in plant nectar.

In this early and most comprehensive study of its kind, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Dartmouth College studied hundreds of eastern bumblebees, Bombus impatiens, and their intestinal parasite Crithidia bombi, using eight separate toxic chemicals known as secondary metabolites produced by plants to protect themselves against predators.

They found that toxic chemicals in nectar reduced infection levels of the common bumblebee parasite by as much as 81 percent by seven days after infection. UMass Amherst evolutionary ecologist Lynn Adler says, 'We found that eating some of these compounds reduced pathogen load in the bumblebee's gut, which not only may help the individual bees, but likely reduced the pathogen Crithidia spore load in their feces, which in turn should lead to a lower likelihood of transmitting the disease to other bees.'"

Scientists find strongest natural material: "Limpet teeth might be the strongest natural material known to man, a new study has found.

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have discovered that limpets – small aquatic snail-like creatures with conical shells – have teeth with biological structures so strong they could be copied to make cars, boats and planes of the future.

The study examined the small-scale mechanical behaviour of teeth from limpets using atomic force microscopy, a method used to pull apart materials all the way down to the level of the atom."

Lizards quickly adapt to cooler climate

Neanderthal groups based part of their lifestyle on sexual division of labor: "Neanderthals divided some of their tasks according to their sex. A new study analyzed 99 teeth of 19 individuals from three different sites (El Sidron, in Asturias - Spain, L'Hortus in France, and Spy in Belgium), reveals that the dental grooves in the female fossils follow the same pattern, different to that found in male individuals."

Secret of extinct British marine reptile uncovered: "The fossil had been in the collections of Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery for more than 30 years until Dean Lomax (25) palaeontologist and Honorary Scientist at The University of Manchester, uncovered its hidden secrets.

Dean first examined the fossil in 2008 when he noticed several abnormalities in the bone structure which made him think he had something previously unidentified. Working with Professor Judy Massare of Brockport College, New York, he spent over five years travelling the world to check his findings and a paper explaining the discovery is published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Dean said: 'After examining the specimen extensively, both Professor Massare and I identified several unusual features of the limb bones (humerus and femur) that were completely different to any other ichthyosaur known. That became very exciting. After examining perhaps over a thousand specimens we found four others with the same features as the Doncaster fossil.'"

Early East Asians Mixed With Neanderthals More Than Once: "People living in East Asia have inherited about 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans. Some say that’s because the Neanderthal lineage was diluted in Europeans because they bred more with Africans, who lack Neanderthal ancestry for the most part. Well, not so, according to two studies published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The differences were due to multiple occasions where Neanderthals and early East Asians mixed."

Feathered Friends for Life—or Not: "Do birds use icebreakers?

In a room full of strangers, you’d most likely make a beeline for the friends (or frenemies) you recognize, just to avoid making small talk with a bunch of people you don’t know. Scientists have recently observed a similar bias in birds, finding that when they’re forced to spend time with strangers, they’ll get chummy—but only for a little while."

Dolphins set up home in the Mediterranean after the last Ice Age: "The bottlenose dolphin only colonised the Mediterranean after the last Ice Age - about 18,000 years ago – according to new research.

Leading marine biologists collaborated in the study - the most detailed ever conducted into the genetic structure of the bottlenose dolphin population in the Mediterranean to date – and the results have been published today 17th February, 2015 in the journal Evolutionary Biology.

Tissue samples from 194 adult bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were collected between 1992 and 2011 from the five main eastern Mediterranean basins.

The team's aim was to investigate the population structure and historical processes that may be responsible for the geographic distribution of the species in that area. No other study has compared the fine scale genetic structure within the Mediterranean, with the well described genetic structure in the North Atlantic."

Animals tend to evolve toward larger size over time, study finds: "Does evolution follow certain rules? If, in the words of the famed evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, one could "rewind the tape of life", would certain biological trends reemerge? Asked another way: can evolution be predicted?

New research suggests that, for at least one important biological trait-body size-the answer is yes.

In one of the most comprehensive studies of body size evolution ever conducted, Stanford scientists have found fresh support for Cope's rule, a theory in biology that states that animal lineages tend to evolve toward larger sizes over time."

Real Paleo Diet: Early Hominids Ate Just About Everything: "Reconstructions of human evolution are prone to simple, overly-tidy scenarios. Our ancestors, for example, stood on two legs to look over tall grass, or began to speak because, well, they finally had something to say. Like much of our understanding of early hominid behavior, the imagined diet of our ancestors has also been over-simplified."

Research trio finds bluebird mothers give sons extra dose of androgen when antagonized: "A trio of researchers has found that western bluebird mothers add a little extra androgen to clutches of eggs during times when there is competition for nest cavities. In their paper published in the journal Science, University of Arizona biologists Renée Duckworth, Virginia Belloni and Samantha Anderson describe how they conducted a ten year field study of the bird species and also carried out some experiments to learn more about induced maternal effects on the cycle of species replacement. Ben Dantzer, with the University of Michigan, offers a Perspectives piece on the work by the team in the same journal edition."

Ovulation shares both cellular and genetic features between fruit flies and mice: "The average American woman lives more than 80 years and ovulates for 35 of them, producing an egg approximately once a month. The typical fruit fly lives about 4 weeks as an adult and ovulates every 30 minutes. Now researchers at the University of Connecticut report in PLOS Genetics that during a key process, the same gene may govern both. If correct, the results could bring insight to cancer metastasis, human fertility and ovarian disease."

Dogs can tell if you're untrustworthy: "Dogs may not seem terribly bright when they're chasing their own tails, but in many ways they are clever creatures. In particular, they are very socially aware, both of humans and of each other.

Many studies have reported that they can sense human emotions. Recent research has found that they can tell the difference between happy and angry faces, and even show jealousy.

It now seems that they can sense when a person is untrustworthy. Once a dog has decided a person is unreliable, it stops following the cues they give."

Goethite nanofibers in limpet teeth display highest tensile strength of any material ever found in nature.

Carnivorous plant packs big wonders into tiny genome: "Great, wonderful, wacky things can come in small genomic packages.

That's one lesson to be learned from the carnivorous bladderwort, a plant whose tiny genome turns out to be a jewel box full of evolutionary treasures.

Called Utricularia gibba by scientists, the bladderwort is a marvel of nature. It lives in an aquatic environment. It has no recognizable roots. It boasts floating, thread-like branches, along with miniature traps that use vacuum pressure to capture prey.

A new study in the scientific journal Molecular Biology and Evolution breaks down the plant's genetic makeup, and finds a fascinating story.

According to the research, the bladderwort houses more genes than several well-known plant species, such as grape, coffee or papaya—despite having a much smaller genome."

WATCH: These new flowers change colour on demand: "Researchers in the US are working on a new variety of petunia that changes colours throughout the day, from red in the morning to blue in the evening, with various purple hues in-between. They're calling it the 'Petunia Circadia,' because its pigment molecules - or anthocyanins - will be expressed based on the plant's circadian rhythm over a 12-hour period."

How tuna avoid cardiac arrest in cold water: "Pacific bluefin tuna should be hit with cardiac arrest every time they dive deep. Though their bodies remain warm, their hearts receive blood directly from the gills, which has a temperature similar to the surrounding water. Such a quick temperature change would stop the hearts of most other animals, including humans. Now, scientists have figured out how the fish survive. They report this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that changes in the heartbeat due to temperature (the heart slows as it cools and then speeds back up as the fish resurfaces) and adrenaline, released from the stress of diving, alter the electrical activity of the heart cells to sustain the constant calcium cycling needed to keep the heart going."

Kenyan fossils show evolution of hippos: "A French-Kenyan research team has just described a new fossil ancestor of today's hippo family. This discovery bridges a gap in the fossil record separating these animals from their closest modern-day cousins, the cetaceans. It also shows that some 35 million years ago, the ancestors of hippos were among the first large mammals to colonize the African continent, long before those of any of the large carnivores, giraffes or bovines."

Research shows that sea urchins, sand dollars thrived with time: "A new study about echinoids—marine animals like sea urchins and sand dollars—gives scientists a reason to rethink a classical pattern of evolution. Fossil-based studies have traditionally indicated that groups of organisms diversify fastest early in their evolutionary history, followed by a steady decline through time. But the new work on Echinoidea, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts that expectation, showing that rates of evolution were actually lowest at the group's onset and increased over time through episodic bursts associated with changes in the animals' feeding strategies."

Molecular feedback loop gives clues to how flowers drop their petals: "As Valentine's Day fades into the past, you may be noticing a surfeit of petals accumulate around your vase of flowers. A new study from the University of Missouri sheds new light on the process that governs how and when plants shed their petals, a process known as abscission. The findings are reported this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Boy or girl? Lemur scents have the answer: "Dozens of pregnancy myths claim to predict whether a mom-to-be is carrying a boy or a girl. Some say you can tell by the shape of a woman's bump, or whether she craves salty or sweet.

Even ultrasound doesn't always get it right.

But for lemurs, the answer is in the mother's scent.

Duke University researchers report in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal Biology Letters that lemur moms carrying boys smell different from those carrying girls."

Remotely operated vehicle finds heterotrophs abundant in deepest part of the ocean: "A team of researchers with ties to several institutions in Japan has found an abundance of microscopic bacteria known as heterotrophs living on or near the ocean floor in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes their expedition work and what they found using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).

The Mariana Trench is located in the western Pacific Ocean, some distance east of Taiwan. One part of it known as Challenger Deep, is the deepest, and holds the record for the deepest part of the ocean. Scientists are eager to learn more about what sort of life forms can live there, approximately 36,000 feet below the surface, both for curiosity's sake and because what they learn may help with the search for life on other planets. In this new effort, the researchers took a closer look than those before them, sifting the waters below looking for creatures too small to be spotted with cameras. They sent their ROV down with an ability to not just note microscopic sized life forms, but to count how many were seen."

How mantis shrimp evolved many shapes with same powerful punch: "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.

Now, a Duke University study of 80 million years of mantis shrimp evolution reveals a key feature of how these fast weapons evolved their dizzying array of shapes—from spiny and barbed spears to hatchets and hammers—while still managing to pack their characteristic punch."

Do whales have graveyards where they prefer to die?: "On the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island, there is a long bar of sand called Farewell Spit. The area is famous, but for an undesirable reason. It's a hotspot of whale strandings.

In February 2015, 200 pilot whales became stuck on the shore. It was the biggest stranding in the area in over a decade, according to local conservation teams. Rescuers spent hours trying to re-float them but 100 died. Without the support of water, the weight of their bodies crushed their muscles.

The remaining whales were watered and kept as comfortable as possible by volunteers equipped with buckets and spades. Sixty were eventually re-floated, but promptly stranded themselves again. Members of the public helped to re-float them a second time, and the whales are now believed to be back at sea.

Beaches like Farewell Spit are perhaps the most conspicuous places that whales can die. To all intents and purposes, it seems as though the whales have committed suicide by swimming too close to the shore. So are beaches like this the places where whales go to die – or are there other graveyards that we don't know about?"

The girl who gets gifts from birds: "Lots of people love the birds in their garden, but it's rare for that affection to be reciprocated. One young girl in Seattle is luckier than most. She feeds the crows in her garden - and they bring her gifts in return."

Bumblebees make false memories, too: "It's well known that our human memory can fail us. People can be forgetful, and they can sometimes also 'remember' things incorrectly, with devastating consequences in the classroom, courtroom, and other areas of life. Now, researchers show for the first time that bumblebees can be unreliable witnesses too."

DNA evidence shows surprise cultural connections between Britain and Europe 8,000 years ago: "DNA evidence shows surprise cultural connections between Britain and Europe 8,000 years ago. Researchers found evidence for a variety of wheat at a submerged archaeological site off the south coast of England, 2,000 years before the introduction of farming in the UK."

Cats put sight over smell in finding food: "Cats may prefer to use their eyes rather than follow their nose when it comes to finding the location of food, according to new research by leading animal behaviourists.

Felines have a tremendous sense of smell and vision, but the new study by researchers at the University of Lincoln, UK, has for the first time investigated which sense they prefer to use under test conditions – and suggested sight may be more important than smell."

How were fossil tracks made by Early Triassic swimming reptiles so well preserved?: "A type of vertebrate trace fossil gaining recognition in the field of paleontology is that made by various tetrapods (four-footed land-living vertebrates) as they traveled through water under buoyant or semibuoyant conditions.

Called fossil "swim tracks," they occur in high numbers in deposits from the Early Triassic, the Triassic being a geologic period (250 to 200 million years ago) that lies between the Permian and Jurassic. Major extinction events mark the start and end of the Triassic.

While it is known that tetrapods made the tracks, what is less clear is just why the tracks are so abundant and well preserved.

Paleontologists at the University of California, Riverside have now determined that a unique combination of factors in Early Triassic delta systems resulted in the production and unusually widespread preservation of the swim tracks: delayed ecologic recovery, depositional environments, and tetrapod swimming behavior."

Research of plain wren duets could help further understand fundamentals of conversation: "Known for their beautiful singing duets, plain wrens of Costa Rica perform precise phrase-by-phrase modifications to the duration between two consecutive phrases, achieving careful coordination as their songs unfold, according to a new study published in the Journal of Avian Biology."

Scientists uncover new seadragon: "or 150 years, scientists have known of just two so-called seadragons: the leafy seadragon (Phycodurus eques) and the weedy seadragon (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus). But a new paper in the Royal Society Open Science has announced the discovery of a third, dubbed the ruby seadragon (Phyllopteryx dewysea) for its incredible bright-red coloring. Found only off the southern Australian coastline, seadragons belong to the same family as the more familiar seahorses: the Syngnathidae."

Scientists find evidence of wheat consumption in prehistoric British communities 2,000 years before the introduction of agriculture, likely acquired via trade routes with communities on the European mainland.

Genetics reveals where emperor penguins survived the last ice age: "A study of how climate change has affected emperor penguins over the last 30,000 years found that only three populations may have survived during the last ice age, and that the Ross Sea in Antarctica was likely the refuge for one of these populations.

The Ross Sea is likely to have been a shelter for emperor penguins for thousands of years during the last ice age, when much of the rest of Antarctica was uninhabitable due to the amount of ice.

The findings, published today in the journal Global Change Biology, suggest that while current climate conditions may be optimal for emperor penguins, conditions in the past were too extreme for large populations to survive."

Scientists have created the perfect music for cats: "Anyone who loves music knows how therapeutic it can be, and now researchers have shown that a good melody may have the same affect on cats. But they think our human-tunes suck.

To work out whether cats could respond to music, scientists from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Maryland, both in the US, composed 'cat-centric music'.

'We looked at the natural vocalisations of cats and matched our music to the same frequency range, which is about an octave or more higher than human voices,' lead author Charles Snowdon told Jennifer Viegas for Discovery News."

Do big carnivores practice birth control?: "The grizzled wolf stalks from her rival’s den, her mouth caked with blood of the pups she has just killed. It’s a brutal form of birth control, but only the pack leader is allowed to keep her young. For her, this is a selfish strategy—only her pups will carry on the future of the pack. But it may also help the group keep its own numbers in check and avoid outstripping its resources. A new survey of mammalian carnivores worldwide proposes that many large predators have the ability to limit their own numbers. The results, though preliminary, could help explain how top predators keep the food chains beneath them in balance."

Some tropical plants pick the best hummingbirds to pollinate flowers: "Rather than just waiting patiently for any pollinator that comes their way to start the next generation of seeds, some plants appear to recognize the best suitors and 'turn on' to increase the chance of success. These findings stem from the discovery that the showy red and yellow blooms of Heliconia tortuosa, an exotic tropical plant, recognize certain hummingbirds by the way the birds sip the flowers' nectar. The plants respond by allowing pollen to germinate, ultimately increasing the chances for successful seed formation."

Study shows one reason why pigeons so rarely crash: "A pair of researchers with Harvard University has uncovered one of the secrets behind pigeons' impressive flight abilities. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, David Williams and Andrew Biewener describe how they videotaped some of the birds flying through an obstacle course they made, and what they found when they examined the footage.

City dwellers know that pigeons are some of the best flyers around, unlike robins and other birds, pigeons rarely collide with cars, buildings, trees or any other obstacle. That skill has not gone unnoticed—scientists and engineers have been working for years to duplicate their abilities. In this new effort, Williams and Biewener taught some of their tamed specimens to fly through a corridor to get to a meal, then introduced obstacles and high speed cameras to find out how it is that the birds are so good at avoiding objects in their path."

Why seashells' mineral forms differently in seawater: "For almost a century, scientists have been puzzled by a process that is crucial to much of the life in Earth's oceans: Why does calcium carbonate, the tough material of seashells and corals, sometimes take the form of calcite, and at other times form a chemically identical form of the mineral, called aragonite, that is more soluble—and therefore more vulnerable to ocean acidification?

Researchers had previously identified variations in the concentration of magnesium in the water as a key factor in that process, but had never been able to explain why that produced such a dramatic effect. Now scientists at MIT and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have carried out a detailed, atomic-level analysis of the process. The new explanation, they say, could be a step toward enabling the directed synthesis of new materials on demand in the lab."

When age matters: precise dating of ancient charcoal found near skull is helping reveal unique period in prehistory: "The precise dating of ancient charcoal found near a skull is helping reveal a unique period in prehistory. The Manot Cave, a natural limestone formation, had been sealed for some 15,000 years. It was discovered by a bulldozer clearing the land for development, and the first to find the partial skull, which was sitting on a ledge, were spelunkers exploring the newly-opened cave. Five excavation seasons uncovered a rich deposit, with stone tools and stratified occupation levels covering a period of time from at least 55,000 to 27,000 years ago."

Grand tree of life study shows a clock-like trend in new species emergence and diversity: "Temple University researchers have assembled the largest and most accurate tree of life calibrated to time, and surprisingly, it reveals that life has been expanding at a constant rate.

'The constant rate of diversification that we have found indicates that the ecological niches of life are not being filled up and saturated,' said Temple professor S. Blair Hedges, a member of the research team's study, published in the early online edition of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. 'This is contrary to the popular alternative model which predicts a slowing down of diversification as niches fill up with species.'

The tree of life compiled by the Temple team is depicted in a new way —- a cosmologically-inspired galaxy of life view —- and contains more than 50,000 species in a tapestry spiraling out from the origin of life."

Cockroaches made to follow directions via wireless nerve stimulation: "A team of researchers at Texas A&M University has found a way to control the path a cockroach takes as it walks using wireless technology. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the team, made up of mechanical engineers and entomologists, describe how they created little backpacks for the bugs and implanted electrodes to allow for movement control."

Discovery of 2.8-million-year-old jaw sheds light on early humans: "For decades, scientists have been searching for African fossils documenting the earliest phases of the Homo lineage, but specimens recovered from the critical time interval between 3 and 2.5 million years ago have been frustratingly few and often poorly preserved. However, a fossil lower jaw found in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, Ethiopia, pushes back evidence for the human genus — Homo — to 2.8 million years ago."

Significant facial variation in pre-Columbian South America: "A team of anthropology researchers has found significant differences in facial features between all seven pre-Columbian peoples they evaluated from what is now Peru — disproving a longstanding perception that these groups were physically homogenous. The finding may lead scholars to revisit any hypotheses about human migration patterns that rested on the idea that there was little skeletal variation in pre-Columbian South America."

Excavation reveals ancient town and burial complex in Diros Bay, Greece: "Recent research has uncovered the remains of an ancient town and burial complex that date to the Neolithic and Bronze Age. In addition to the Neolithic 'spooning' couple that has been highlighted in recent news articles, the team also uncovered several other burials and the remains of an ancient village that suggest the bay was an important center in ancient times."

Menopausal whales are influential and informative leaders: "Menopause is a downright bizarre trait among animals. It's also rare. Outside of the human species, only the female members of two whale species outlive their reproductive lives in such a major way. Female killer whales typically become mothers between the ages of 12 and 40, but they can live for more than 90 years. Males rarely make it past 50. Now, researchers have new evidence to explain why."

The secret to chameleon color change: Tiny crystals: "Chameleons normally do their best to blend into the background. But when adult males find themselves confronting a rival, they rapidly switch on bolder colors, changing from green to yellow, for example. Scientists had suggested they may do so by moving pigments around in their skin cells. Today, however, researchers report online in Nature Communications that chameleons change colors by rearranging a lattice of nanocrystals in one of the top layers of skin cells."

Honey, I shrunk the ants: How environment controls size: "Until now scientists have believed that the variations in traits — such as our height, skin color, tendency to gain weight or not, intelligence, tendency to develop certain diseases, etc., all of them traits that exist along a continuum — were a result of both genetic and environmental factors. But they didn't know how exactly these things worked together. By studying ants, researchers have identified a key mechanism by which environmental (or epigenetic) factors influence the expression of all of these traits, along with many more."

New research shows that the Asian monsoon rains played a key role in the evolution of mammals: "New research has shown that the Asian monsoon rains played a key role in the evolution of mammals.

And the findings, published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could have implications for conserving the species living in the vast area affected by monsoon rains.

A team including researchers from the University of Manchester, the University of Bristol, the Chinese Academy of Science, and Harvard University looked at the pattern of variation of the South Asian monsoon over time and compared it with the evolution of African mole rats and bamboo rats as revealed by a full analysis of their relationships coupled with studies of their distribution in space and through time and of their evolutionary rates."

Blue blood on ice: How an Antarctic octopus survives the cold: "An Antarctic octopus that lives in ice-cold water uses an unique strategy to transport oxygen in its blood, according to research published in Frontiers in Zoology. The study suggests that the octopus's specialized blood pigments could help to make it more resilient to climate change than Antarctic fish and other species of octopus."

Study yields insights into how plant cells grow: "A study by Purdue University plant scientists and University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineers advances our understanding of how plants control their shape and development at the cellular level.

Their findings could help researchers engineer better cotton fibers, improve plant defense against insects, alter plant architecture and toughen root response to drought."

Cockroaches have personalities, too. You've been warned: "New research has shown that, unlike other insects such as termites and ants, cockroaches have their own unique personalities, and can display traits such as bravery and shyness. This could help explain why the terrifying insects are so good at surviving pretty much anything. And it also means that they're even smarter than we feared."

Discovery demystifies origin of life phenomenon: "Biomolecules, if large enough (several nanometers) and with an electrical charge, will seek their own type with which to form large assemblies. This is essentially 'self-recognition' of left-handed and right-handed molecule pairs."

Epoch-defining study pinpoints when humans came to dominate planet Earth: "The human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene probably began around the year 1610, with an unusual drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the irreversible exchange of species between the New and Old Worlds, according to new research."

Did Neandertals make jewelry 130,000 years go? Eagle claws provide clues: "Krapina Neandertals may have manipulated white-tailed eagle talons to make jewelry 130,000 years ago, before the appearance of modern humans in Europe."

Highly evolved bacteria found near hydrothermal vents: Iron-oxidizing bacteria found along Mid-Atlantic Ridge: "Bacteria that live on iron were found for the first time at three well-known vent sites along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These bacteria likely play an important role in deep-ocean iron cycling, and are dominant members of communities near and adjacent to sulfur-rich hydrothermal vents prevalent along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This group of iron-oxidizing bacteria, Zetaproteobacteria, appears to be restricted to environments where iron is plentiful, suggesting they are highly evolved to utilize iron for energy."

Scientists reconstruct evolutionary history of whale hearing with rare museum collection: "Scientists CT scanned fetal whale specimens from the museum's marine mammal collection to trace the development of fetal ear bones in 56 specimens from 10 different whale families. Their findings confirmed that changes in the development of ear bones in the womb paralleled changes observed throughout whale evolution, providing new insight about how whales made the dramatic evolutionary shift from land to sea and adapted to hearing underwater."

'Quantum jitters' could form basis of evolution, cancer: "The molecular machines that copy DNA in a living cell are amazingly fast and accurate at pairing up the correct bases—G with C and A with T—into each new double helix.

They work by recognizing the shape of the right base pair combinations, and discarding those—such as a G and a T—that don't fit together correctly. Yet for approximately every 10,000 to 100,000 bases copied, these machines make a mistake that if uncorrected will be immortalized in the genome as a mutation.

For decades, researchers have wondered how these seemingly random errors are made. Some hypothesized that DNA bases can change shapes, transiently morphing into alternative states to trick the replication machinery into incorporating the wrong base pairs into the DNA. But no one has ever caught these tiny shape-shifters in action.

Now, Duke University researchers have witnessed DNA bases making the slightest of changes—shifting a single atom from one spot to another or simply getting rid of it altogether—to temporarily mimic the shape of a different base. These 'quantum jitters' are exceedingly rare and only flicker into existence for a thousandth of a second, and yet have far-reaching consequences.

The study, which appears March 12 journal Nature, indicates that these jitters appear at about the same frequency that the DNA copying machinery makes mistakes, which might make them the basis of random genetic changes that drive evolution and diseases like cancer."

Frankensquid creature roamed seas 480m years ago: "A 480-million-year-old relative of the lobster, cockroach and tarantula was a sea monster which snared food with spine-covered protrusions on its head, researchers said Wednesday.

The two-metre (seven-foot) creature used spiny appendages to filter morsels from ocean water, said a study in the journal Nature.

The technique is similar to the method used by modern-day ocean giants like baleen whales. But the bizarre beast also shared features with today's arthropods, the family of invertebrates with exoskeletons that includes spiders, insects, crustaceans and centipedes."

Relative of the lobster, cockroach and tarantula? That's, like, spread across two separate phylums, as well as across two separate subphylums within one of them? Talk about a doozy.