85 results
- Animals
Lost to history: The “churk”
More than a half-century ago, researchers at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside Washington, D.C., engaged in some creative barnyard breeding. Their goal was the development of fatherless turkeys — virgin hens that would reproduce via parthenogenesis. Along the way, and ostensibly quite by accident, an interim stage of this work resulted in a rooster-fathered hybrid that the scientists termed a churk.
- Life
Molecular Evolution
Investigating the genetic books of life reveals new details of 'descent with modification' and the forces driving it.
- Animals
Aphids make their own bright colors
The insects’ ancestors adapted fungal DNA for manufacturing vital compounds.
- Genetics
Dog gene heeds call of the wild
Domesticated dogs passed a gene for dark fur color to their wild cousins.
- Health & Medicine
Genome 10K: A new ark
Featured blog: Researchers are working to catalog the DNA sequences of just about every vertebrate genus.
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- Animals
Wild innovation
Researchers have published a rare description of a wild chimpanzee devising and modifying a novel form of tool use.
- Animals
Crickets on Mute: Hush falls as killer fly stalks singers
Within just 5 years, singing has nearly died out among a population of cricket on a Hawaiian island.
- Animals
Poor Devils: Critters’ fights transmit cancer
Tasmanian devils transmit cancer cells when they bite each other during routine squabbles, producing lesions that are often fatal.
- Animals
Dangerous Times: Guppies don’t follow rules for old age
A study of wild guppies suggests that life in a dangerous place does not automatically push evolution toward rapid aging as previously thought.
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- Animals
Retaking Flight: Some insects that didn’t use it didn’t lose it
Stick insects may have done what biologists once thought was impossible: lose something as complicated as a wing in the course of evolution but recover it millions of years later.
