News by Subject Earth Science

Scientists looking at the genetics of Zika virus have found a way to fast-track research which could lead to new vaccines. The study, led by The University of Queensland and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, used a new technique to uncover Zika mutations that help foster virus replication in mosquito hosts, while hindering its ability to replicate in mammals.

Ohio University researchers announced a new species of mammal from the Age of Dinosaurs, representing the most complete mammal from the Cretaceous Period of continental Africa, and providing tantalizing insights into the past diversity of mammals on the planet.

UMD biologist finds alligators build neural maps of sound the way birds do, suggesting the hearing strategy existed in their common ancestor, the dinosaurs.

One of the things that makes mammals special is our diverse forelimbs -- bat wings, whale flippers, gibbon arms, and cheetah legs have evolved to do different, specialized tasks. Scientists wanted to see where this mammalian trait started evolving, so they examined fossils from early mammal relatives to see when the upper arm bones started diversifying. They discovered that the trait took root 270 million years ago -- 30 million years before the earliest dinosaurs existed.

The University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group joins an international team to conduct the largest-ever study of ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) which suggests that the Iberian male lineages were almost completely replaced between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago by newcomers originating on the Russian steppe.

In the Mesorhabditis belari roundworm, the sole purpose of males is to help females produce clones of themselves. This unique form of reproduction was recently described by researchers from the CNRS, l'ENS de Lyon, l'Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in an article published on March 15, 2019, in the journal Science.

Scientists have asked, 'What is the primary driver in tropical forest diversity-competition for resources, or herbivore pests?' For the first time, University of Utah biologists compared the two mechanisms in a single study. The team analyzed how neighboring trees influence the growth and survival of nine coexisting species of the tree genus Inga in the Panama rainforest. They found that pests and the plant defenses against them drive diversity in tropical rainforests.

Despite being widely distributed across north and central South America, the small family of similarly looking bald-legged spiders had never been confirmed in Colombia. However, a new research paper, published in the open-access journal ZooKeys, describes a total of six previously unknown species inhabiting the country, with four of them belonging to a new genus named Stormtropis -- after the clone trooper army in the famous Star Wars franchise.