News by Subject Earth Science

An international team of researchers, led by marine scientists at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia and including researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the USA, has performed an extensive study of whale shark movement and residency in the Red Sea, offering insights for conservation.

Just about all mammals, including humans, rely on a community of helpful bacteria living in our guts to help us digest food and fight off diseases. We've evolved along with these bacteria, to the point that closely related species have similar microbiomes in their guts. Scientists just discovered that bats break that rule. That tells us that bats probably don't rely on their microbiomes the way other mammals do -- we think it's because they fly.

In 2016, researchers observed that they could reprogram the behavior of the Florida carpenter ant Camponotus floridanus. This species has two distinct castes with nearly identical genetic makeup: smaller Minor workers who forage and nurse the ant brood and larger Major worker soldiers that defend the colony. On Nov. 12 in the journal Molecular Cell, the same group reports that ant castes are determined by epigenetic influences.

The generation of species-specific singing in songbirds is associated with species-specific patterns of gene activity in brain regions called song nuclei, according to a study published Nov. 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Kazuhiro Wada of Hokkaido University in Japan, and colleagues. According to the authors, the findings could be a promising step toward a better understanding of the contribution of multiple genes to the evolution of behaviors.

Discovery means simpler and cheaper manufacturing methods are actually beneficial for the material's use in next-generation solar cells or LED lighting.

Most of our food is from angiosperms, while more than 90% of angiosperms require insect pollination - making this pollination method hugely important. Nevertheless, scientists have long been unclear as to when insect pollination first appeared. Now, however, an international research group from China and the US has provided the earliest evidence of insect-angiosperm pollination -- by analyzing a sample of Cretaceous Burmese amber.

New research reveals anemonefish can see UV light and may use it as a secret channel find their friends and food, while evading predators.