Untangling The Branches Of The Tree Of Life
Vanderbilt University These days, phylogeneticists – experts who painstakingly map the complex branches of the tree of life – suffer from an embarrassment of riches. The genomics revolution has given them mountains of DNA data that they can...
Latest Species Stories
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online If there is one thing you can say about families, it is the larger the better. And by looking at genetic data of people from Ireland to the Balkans, researchers have found that Europeans are one big family, and have been for the past thousand years. Graham Coop, a professor of evolution and ecology at UCDavis, and Peter Ralph, a professor at University of Southern California (USC), published a recent study of the genetics of...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Tropical rainforests are known to harbor a high biodiversity of untold species, many of them unknown and unnamed by scientists as of yet. Insects, especially beetles, make up a large proportion of this undiscovered life on Earth. Experts in remote tropical countries' fauna such as the wilderness of New Guinea, Alexander Riedel of the Natural History Museum Karlsruhe (SMNK) and Michael Balke of the Zoological State Collection Munich...
Smithsonian Studying the relationship between plants and the insects that feed on them is an arduous task, as it must be done through direct observation. It can take years for a researcher to fully understand the diets of a community of herbivorous insects in a tropical rain forest. Now, five Smithsonian scientists are paving a fast track using the DNA found inside the insects' stomachs, potentially turning years of research into months. This method will help scientists understand the...
George Washington University Alex Pyron’s expertise is in family trees. Who is related to whom, who begat whom, how did they get where they are now. But not for humans: reptiles. In 2011, his fieldwork in Sri Lanka studying snake diversity on the island led him to confirm the identity of 60 known species of snakes. With Sri Lankan collaborators, Ruchira Somaweera, an author on snakes and expert on amphibians and reptiles, and Dushantha Kandambi, a local naturalist and snake expert,...
American Journal of Botany Floral morphologies may be less reliable than other traits in determining the relationships of papilionoid species and genera For hundreds of years, plant taxonomists have worked to understand how species are related. Until relatively recently, their only reliable source of information about these relationships was the plants' morphology—traits that could be observed, measured, counted, categorized, and described visually. And paramount among these...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In a field of study that remains largely in the dark, we have relied on the voice talent of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary to instruct our children about life in the time of the Ice Age. While the lessons learned aren’t necessarily accurate, one Bournemouth University lecturer on palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and environmental change seemingly thinks it might be a good place to start. Dr. John Stewart, throughout...
FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology Experts from the Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes and the University of Barcelona (UB) collected and studied different crustacean specimens during recent expeditions to Madagascar, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Philippines and French Polynesia. Using morphological and molecular data they have discovered five new species of crustaceans in the waters of these regions. They are genetically different but morphologically very similar...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online According to a new study in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, determining if certain extinct animals had sexually selective traits is possible, despite the fact that we cannot observe their behavior. Many animals have sexually selective traits that are used or displayed in pursuit of a mate, male peacocks have their colorful plumage and mallard ducks have a distinct green coloration to their head feathers. Some of these...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study from researchers at the University of Auckland, Griffith University and the University of Oxford has debunked claims that most species will go extinct before they can be discovered. "Surprisingly, few species have gone extinct, to our knowledge. Of course, there will have been some species which have disappeared without being recorded, but not many we think," Professor Nigel Stork, Deputy Head of the Griffith School of...
When Charles Darwin first sketched how species evolved by natural selection, he drew what looked like a tree. The diagram started at a central point with a common ancestor, then the lines spread apart as organisms evolved and separated into distinct species. In the 175 years since, scientists have come to agree that Darwin’s original drawing is a bit simplistic, given that multiple species mix and interbreed in ways he didn’t consider possible (though you can’t fault the guy for not...
Latest Species Reference Libraries
The Three-Spined Stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is a fish native to much of northern Europe, northern Asia and North America. It has been introduced into parts of southern and central Europe. Three subspecies that are currently recognized by the IUCN are Gasterosteus aculeatus aculeatus, which is found in most of the species range, and is the subspecies most strictly termed the Three-Spined Stickleback; its common name in England is the Tiddler, although "tittlebat" is also sometimes...
