Our series, Animals in Research, profiles the top organisms used for science experimentation. Here, we look at Caenorhabditis elegans – a roundworm.
When you think of a worm, what do you see? For some…
We use a range of hormone-induced indicators to determine who is male and who is female on a daily basis.
European Parliament
What is a male? What is a female?
If you were to conduct a survey, most people would probably have little difficulty expressing some fundamental differences. After all, we learn to tell boys apart from…
New research suggests that seeds could now be formed without the biological process of fertilisation.
CIMMYT
Sex without seed. Seed without sex. It’s been said that the greatest gift of science to humankind would be achieving those two goals.
Effective contraceptives such as the pill have pretty much nailed…
You may achieve your pigmentary potential a little ahead of schedule, but you can’t go grey overnight.
Image from shutterstock.com
The belief that nervous shock can cause you to go grey overnight (medically termed canities subita) is one of those tales which could nearly be true. There are certainly cases in medical literature of…
The emperor tamarin is one of several species of New World monkey … but how did they get there?
Apex Design
How did you get to work today? I walked to the station, caught a train, then walked to a bus stop and hopped on the 891 express.
All this time, while I was travelling, I moved in space – in fact a lot…
Taxonomists are in the business of classifying the life we see around us – plant, animal and otherwise.
Gnilenkov Aleksey
For taxonomists, days often start – and sometimes end – with the question: what’s that?
Whether you’re an entomologist, staring at a new species of riffle bug from a rainforest stream, or a paleontologist…
Ants might be a pain … but they play a vital role in maintaining the variety of plant life we see around us.
mraandrews
You’d be hard pressed to find many people who hold ants in high regard. That might be due to their destructive behaviour towards lawns, their ability to infest your house in no time at all, or a willingness…
How do you remember where you’ve been if you don’t have a brain?
Tanya Latty
We humans use our large brains to make and store maps of our environment; maps we then use everyday for getting around and for recalling where we’ve been. But we are nothing special – many other animals…
The nature vs nurture dichotomy is wobbly and belongs in discussions from yesteryear.
sparklemotion0
Welcome to Peer Review, a series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people working in the same field.
Here Rob Brooks, Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of…
Is aversion and/or attraction to red a biological or cultural construct?
Yogurinha Borova
Colour is an extraordinary motivator. We sensibly caution against waving a red rag to a bull to avoid provocation – worthy but curious advice, since bulls cannot distinguish red from other colours.
We…
Rejoice: rumours of male extinction may be out of line.
StuartOlver
There’s something degenerate in every male (no, seriously). We members of the facial-hair-bearing sex carry, among the 23 pairs of chromosomes in every one of our cells, an odd pair of sex-chromosomes…
How do you get the girl? That’s a nom-brainer.
Yann Audras
“Finish your dinner or there’ll be no dessert for you!” – it’s a cry heard at dinner tables around the world, as mothers battle to convince their sons about the importance of eating properly. Sorry lads…
The humble pigeon mightn’t look smart, but it’s no bird-brain.
Seamoor
We humans have long been interested in defining the abilities that set us apart from other species. Along with capabilities such as language, the ability to recognise and manipulate numbers (“numerical…
In 2009, more than 190 whales and dolphins stranded themselves on King Island.
AAP
Whales are a highly specialised group of mammals which left their terrestrial ancestors for the ocean about 50 million years ago. They have become so well adapted to the marine environment that they can…
Human sleeping patterns could be about more than light and dark.
Kristof Borkowski
By Greg Murray, Swinburne University of Technology
Eyeless fish that have evolved underground, completely isolated from the day-night cycle, may offer clues to how our body clocks work up here on dry land.
Authors of a report published today in the online…
Estimates on the possible number of species vary wildly.
Holger Hollerman/AFP
An estimated 8.7 million species exist on Earth, according to a paper published today in PLoS Biology. The figure is based on a new validated analytical technique that, it’s said, significantly narrows…
Much of nature’s delicate balance is a case of give and take.
UCCSbiology
We now know that mountain treeshrews and summit rats feed on the nectar secreted by the giant pitcher plant – Nepenthes rajah – then defecate into its pitchers, providing it with much needed nutrients…
Guess what? It’s not so much size but the shape that matters.
Ozchin
Why should male genitalia be so variable? This problem has puzzled evolutionary biologists for decades.
Even to the experts, it can be difficult to tell closely-related species apart just by looking at…
Microbial fossils in Western Australia hold secrets about life’s earliest evolution.
Mundoo
Welcome to If I had a blank cheque I’d … a new series in which leading researchers reveal what they could do in their discipline if money were no object.
Today we hear from Malcolm Walter, professor of…
Animals aren’t to blame – the bacteria came from humans.
The genomes of the recent German E. coli outbreak have revealed crucial insights into the origins of this deadly strain. The bacteria was found in German bean sprouts but it didn’t originate from the gut…
Why do the legs of galloping horses appear as a blur?
Eadweard Muybridge, 1878
What’s the fastest thing you can see? Events that play out over a scale of minutes or seconds are easy to see. Events at much smaller timescales — milliseconds and shorter — can be entirely invisible to…
Evolutionary biology can teach us a lot about rock ‘n’ roll music.
mariaguimaraes
Welcome to Peer Review, a new series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people in the same field.
Here Mark Elgar, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Melbourne…
Inherited only from mothers, the mitochondria may harbour male-harming mutations.
ddc c z/flickr
As many as a one in 20 men is infertile, but in many cases the underlying cause for it remains unknown.
Recent research has found that a peculiarity in the way in which the DNA inside our mitochondria…
Poor sperm quality is a characteristic common to all men, not just some.
Aldo Risolvo/Flickr
Infertility plagues one in six Australian couples, and in approximately half of these cases the problem lies in poor semen quality.
The discovery that a man has poor semen quality can be emotionally challenging…
E.coli and other critters provide glimpses of evolution in action.
kaibara87/Flickr
When you think of evolution, you no doubt imagine a process that takes millions of years to produce any notable results. In other words, evolution doesn’t happen overnight.
Or does it?
While the most…
Late nights and jet-lag see us fighting our body clocks, but can we ever win?
fmgbain/Flickr
Do we control our body clocks or do those clocks, ticking imperceptibly, control us? It’s the kind of question that keeps sleep scientists awake at night.
Rhythms are a good place to start. They are a…
