A team of evolutionary biologists, including faculty at the State University of New York at Binghamton, says some Anales lizards have adapted to re-breathing the exhaled air underwater using bubbles attached to their noses. The lizard, which lives along a new tropical stream, often dives into the water and stays underwater for up to 16 minutes. Lindsey Swierk, an assistant research professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University, documented the animal’s behavior in Costa Rica in 2019 and was shocked…

An easy way to find and identify a bird species is to listen to their unique calls. But Otus Brookii has not been observed by scientists since 1892, and its cry is unknown, making it harder to find. Researchers first documented Otus Brookii in a study published last month in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. Andy Boyce, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Center for Migratory Birds, looks at and photographs the owl in Sabah, Malaysia, in May 2016. Boyce was…

A lion lizard embryo can be made into a female lizard using two different genes — one activated by a sex chromosome and the other activated by high temperatures during development. Sarah Whiteley and Arthur Georges of the University of Canberra published their findings in the journal PLOS Genetics on April 15, 2021. In many reptiles and fish, the sex of a developing embryo depends on the temperature of the surrounding environment. The phenomenon, known as temperature-dependent sex decisions, was…

Mammals usually look with their eyes, hear with their ears, and smell with their noses. But what kind of sensation or organ allows them to determine their direction as they migrate? Their migration sometimes extends far beyond the local foraging area and requires expanded navigational capabilities. Scientific experiments led by leibniz-IZW, a scientific experiment with Professor Richard A. Holland (Bangor University, UK) and Dr. Gunnars Pētersons (Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technology), now show that the cornea of the…

According to a new study led by biologists at Pennsylvania State University, two opposite evolutionary forces explain the presence of two different colors of Ambystoma maculatum in Pennsylvania ponds. Understanding the process of maintaining biodiversity in wild populations is a central biological issue that could lead researchers to predict how species will respond to global change. Ambystoma maculatum is a widely available species that appear in the eastern United States and returns to makeshift ponds in the spring to breed.…

Australian scientists have studied the largest bird brain in history for the first time, New Atlas reported. Paleontologists examined the brain shells of the extinct Dromornithidae family of non-flying birds, including some of the largest birds ever, and conducted some strange evolutionary experiments on them. Dromornithidae is a group of giant non-flying birds that lived in Australia from the New Age about 25 million years ago until they ben extinct about 50,000 years ago. They are also known as mihirungs…

The critically endangered bird is losing its “singing culture” due to a rapid decline in the number of Regent Honeyeaters, according to a new study by the Australian National University (ANU). Just as humans learn to speak, many birds learn to sing with older birds of the same species. If adult birds are too rare, there is a risk of losing this skill. If they don’t learn to sing a song sexy enough, their chances of mating will be reduced.…

Many hearing aids not only amplify a person’s voice but also filter out distracting background noise. New scientific research has found that female tree frogs have similar functions to hear the courtship of male tree frogs. During mating season, a pond may be filled with different species of frogs, all of which either make mating sounds or look for potential mates through hearing. With all this noise in the air, one might think that a female frog would have a…

Would you want to share your home with a 100-kilogram carnivorous hyena? Probably not. Neither, it seems, did the Denisovans. These early humans turn out to have been just short-term visitors when they left tools and remains at one of the world’s most famous archaeological cave sites. For most of the past 300,000 years, the real owners of the Denisova Cave in southern Siberia have been large carnivores, especially cave hyenas – deeply unsuitable housemates for humans. A new study…

Multi-year study finds nest parasites breed as a matter of principle. Barry Keily reports.Cowbirds are known to lay their eggs in the nest of another species, leaving unknowing step-parents to care for their offspring. (Wikipedia commons) A seven-year US study into the mating habits of a parasitic bird has confirmed one evolutionary theory and contradicted another. In a paper published in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology, researchers led by Mark Hauber of the University of Illinois detail the curiously contradictory…