Latest Species Stories

Mucor nidicola species previously unknown to science While some researchers look for new species in such exotic places as the deep sea, tropical regions, or extreme environments, a team headed by Tufts researchers turned their attention towards nests of an invasive paper wasp. What they found was a new species of fungus. Philip T. Starks, associate professor of biology at the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, and doctoral student Anne A. Madden published their discovery...

A huge "migration" of trees has begun across much of the West due to global warming, insect attack, diseases and fire, and many tree species are projected to decline or die out in regions where they have been present for centuries, while others move in and replace them. In an enormous display of survival of the fittest, the forests of the future are taking a new shape. In a new report, scientists outline the impact that a changing climate will have on which tree species can survive, and...

Mollusks have been around for so long (at least 500 million years), are so prevalent on land and in water (from backyard gardens to the deep ocean), and are so valuable to people (clam chowder, oysters on the half shell) that one might assume scientists had learned everything about them. “Here’s this big, diverse group of animals, and we don’t know how they were related to each other,” said Casey Dunn, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University who specializes in building...

Changes in North American ecosystems over the past 150 years have caused coyotes to move from their native habitats in the plains and southwestern deserts of North America to habitats throughout the United States. In a new study, published Oct. 17 in the Journal of Mammalogy, researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics used DNA from coyote scat (feces) to trace the route that led some of the animals to colonize in...

Using one of the largest DNA data sets for a group of birds and employing next-generation sequencing methods, Smithsonian scientists and collaborators have determined the evolutionary family tree for one of the most strikingly diverse and endangered bird families in the world, the Hawaiian honeycreepers. Not only have the researchers determined the types of finches that the honeycreeper family originally evolved from, but they have also linked the timing of that rapid evolution to the...

Species' ability to overcome adversity goes beyond Darwin's survival of the fittest. Climate change has made sure of that. In a new study based on simulations examining species and their projected range, researchers at Brown University argue that whether an animal can make it to a final, climate-friendly destination isn't a simple matter of being able to travel a long way. It's the extent to which the creatures can withstand rapid fluctuations in climate along the way that will determine...

  University of Pennsylvania evolutionary biologists have resolved a long-standing paleontological problem by reconciling the fossil record of species diversity with modern DNA samples. Cataloging the diversity of life on earth is challenging enough, but when scientists attempt to draw a phylogeny — the branching family tree of a group of species over their evolutionary history — the challenge goes from merely difficult to potentially impossible. The fossil record is the only...

  Salk scientists discover 'hidden' code in DNA evolves more rapidly than genetic code A "hidden" code linked to the DNA of plants allows them to develop and pass down new biological traits far more rapidly than previously thought, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The study, published Sept. 16 in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that an organism's "epigenetic" code - an extra layer of...

Botanical taxonomy, which extends to include the formal scientific naming of all plants, algae and fungi has gone through a landmark change in the procedure scientists need to follow when they describe new species. Details of the forthcoming changes to the newly-named 'International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants' are laid out by Dr Sandra Knapp and colleagues in an article published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. It has been suggested that...

  A new study finds that our ancestors bred with more archaic hominin forms around 35,000 years ago, before they migrated out of Africa. In fact, up to 2% of the genomes of some modern African populations may originally have come from a closely related species, the researchers said. It is widely accepted that the species Homo sapiens originated in Africa, and eventually spread throughout the world.  However, paleontologists have long wondered whether modern humans came from a...