What do you do when you’re looking for life? Well, while there are a lot of new ideas and discoveries lately, expanding the limits of where we know life can occur, an often used phrase is ‘follow the water’. But what if that water’s frozen? Recently, bacteria from the Antarctic permafrost (aka Planococcus halocryophilus strain […]
Category Archives: Biology
One of the universal aspects of living in a social arrangement with others is dealing with death. Or more specifically, dealing with the deceased. This is especially true when living close to each other as corpses tend to increase the spreading of diseases. Now imagine you live with a lot of people together, in an […]
For a long time, it has been thought that evolutionary and ecological research were quite separated from each other. After all, evolution takes place on long timescales while ecological events usually happen much faster. At least, that was the common perception. Lately, however, it has become clear that, in some cases, the relevant timescales in […]
Ecology is a rapidly changing, dynamic field of research. In recent decades, there’s been a major shift from considering ecosystems as stable and poised to seeing them as systems that are in constant flux. At least, that’s what ecologists want (us) to believe. But how much of this claimed change has been able to seep […]
Our close evolutionary cousin, the common chimpanzee, comes in four subspecies, each one named after its location along an East-West band in Africa. Yet, there are chimps outside of Africa as well. Many European zoos possess a group of chimpanzees, which often plays a part in conservation plans… Wondering how the hybrids come into play? Find out […]
How do you catch a dragon? Do you go looking for a brave knight to send forth on a difficult quest? Or a legendary hunter without fear? No. You use cameras to capture their image. For more, head over to United Academics.
When looking at mammals in general, being big correlates quite well with living long lives (barring disease, being eaten and things of that nature, of course). But, within species, it seems that the bigger individuals live less long than their smaller conspecifics. What could be going on here? And what better species to study this […]
The evolutionary history of humanity isn’t the easiest tale to tell. As time passed, we, unlike other primates, spread across the globe, colonizing the various lands we explored. All these different habitats were surely characterized by diverging sets of selection pressures. Lo and behold, there arose diversity among human beings. But finding the exact genetic […]
Biodiversity is, in most cases, good. And, as I’ve written before, biodiversity matters. In general, a healthy dose of biodiversity is something to strive for. It can, as a recent study in Nature shows, even help fighting disease. (Warning: modest bullet point bonanza below.) The researchers performed their investigation on three levels: First, sampling ‘in […]
Cold… Darkness… … And life. Sure, microbial life, but life nonetheless. Lake Whillans, part of the Whillans Ice Stream, to be found at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, has been reached and sampled a little less than two weeks ago. Now, researchers of the WISSARD team report the presence of microscopic life in the samples. […]
