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…
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…
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…
Scientists and doctors are concerned by growing resistance to existing drugs that treat malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 800,000 children per year.
Thomas Omondi / UK Department for International Development
Malaria parasites are able to adapt their growth rate to render anti-malarial drugs useless, according to new research by Australian scientists. More than 200 million people are infected annually with…
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…
Were cave women more likely to leave home than men?
Flickr, Klearchos Kapoutsis
Primitive women were more likely than their male counterparts to pack up and leave the cave, eventually partnering with men from further afield, according to a new study published in Nature magazine. By…
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 significant…
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…