News by Subject Earth Science

When startled, do all fish respond the same way? A few fish, like Mexican cavefish, have evolved in unique environments without any predators. To see how this lack of predation impacts escape responses that are highly stereotyped across fish species, scientists explored this tiny fish to determine if there are evolved differences in them. Findings reveal that the dramatic ecological differences between cave and river environments contribute to differences in escape behavior in blind cavefish and river-dwelling surface cavefish.

Bengalese finches -- also called the Society finch -- are a species of brown, black and white birds that don't rely on colorful signals when choosing a mate. Consequently, when presented with a color-perception test that their bright red-beaked cousins the Zebra finches routinely ace, they seem to be paying more attention to differences in brightness than hue.

Membraneless compartments--models for a potential step in the early evolution of cells--have been shown to persist or form, disappear, and reform in predictable ways through multiple cycles of dehydration and rehydration.

On the track of evolution: a catalytically active RNA molecule that specifically attaches methyl groups to other RNAs - a research group from the University of Würzburg reports on this new discovery in Nature.

Mountain gorilla groups are friendly to familiar neighbours - provided they stay out of "core" parts of their territory - new research shows.

Most detailed every study into how animals evolve to better suit their environments shows that pterosaurs become more efficient at flying over millions of years before going extinct with the dinosaurs.

Chemists studying how life started often focus on biopolymers like peptides and nucleic acids, but modern biopolymers don't form easily without help from living organisms. A possible solution to this paradox is that life started using different components, and many non-biological chemicals were likely abundant in the environment. A new survey of a diverse set of such compounds under primitive environmental conditions found many of these easily formed polymers and some spontaneously formed cell-like structures.

Some of the largest birds in history, called pelagornithids, arose a few million years after the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs and patrolled the oceans with giant wingspans for some 60 million years. A team of paleontologists has found two fossils -- each from individual pelagornithids with wingspans of 20 feet or more -- that show this gigantism arose at least 50 million years ago and lasted at least 10 million years.