New regulations by the government of Ecuador to protect the waters around the Galapagos Islands as a marine preserve, including main feeding areas for Galapagos penguins.
Tag: Department of Biology
Four faculty members at the University of Washington have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The new Sloan Fellows, announced Feb. 23, include Bingni Brunton, assistant professor of biology; Christopher Laumann, assistant professor of physics; Matthew McQuinn, assistant professor of astronomy; and Emina Torlak, assistant professor of computer science and engineering. The 126 Sloan Fellows for 2016 were nominated by senior colleagues in their field, department or institution. Committees with the Sloan Foundation then examined each…
P. Dee Boersma, a University of Washington professor of biology and Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science, is one of six finalists for the prestigious Indianapolis Prize for conservation. Boersma is the first UW faculty member nominated for this prize — the highest honor for animal conservationists — which has been awarded every other year since 2006.
On Dec. 3, the legislature for Argentina’s Chubut province established a new marine protected area off Punta Tombo, which would help preserve the feeding grounds for about 500,000 Magellanic penguins that make their home along this rocky stretch of Argentine coast. This is welcome news for the UW scientists who have studied these penguins for decades and advocated for their conservation.
Two University of Washington researchers have uncovered details of the radically divergent strategies that two common tree species employ to cope with drought in southwestern Colorado. As they report in a new paper in the journal Global Change Biology, one tree species shuts down production and conserves water, while the other alters its physiology to continue growing and using water.
University of Washington scientists have sequenced the complete genetic makeup of a species of ecologically important algae, which may aid in biofuel production.
New research from the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories shows that a more acidic ocean can weaken the protective shell of a delicate alga. The findings, published Sept. 9 in the journal Biology Letters, come at a time when global climate change may increase ocean acidification.
Faculty members from several departments at the University of Washington will share $2.25 million in research funds from the National Science Foundation to study and apply the principles of evolution “in real time.” Their studies are a part of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action. Founded in 2010, this NSF science and technology center is a partnership among five universities to better understand evolutionary processes and apply concepts such as adaptation and selection to new and…
Two professors from the University of Washington and Oklahoma State University have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to bring six Native American undergraduate students to their first scientific meeting. The students will attend the Jan. 2016 annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Portland, Oregon. Known commonly by its acronym, SICB, this broad scientific research society of 3,500 members promotes research and collaboration on diverse topics within biology such as evolution, developmental…
In early August, biologist Peter Ward returned from the South Pacific with news that he encountered an old friend, one he hadn’t seen in over three decades. The University of Washington professor had seen what he considers one of the world’s rarest animals, a remote encounter that may become even more infrequent if illegal fishing practices continue. The creature in question is Allonautilus scrobiculatus, a species of nautilus that Ward and a colleague had previously discovered off of Ndrova Island…
A team of scientists has identified a new species of “pre-mammal” based on fossils unearthed in Zambia’s Luangwa Basin in 2009. The ancient, Dachshund-sized creature lived some 255 million years ago, in a time just before the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. Its discoverers include Christian Sidor, professor of biology at the University of Washington and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Sidor and his colleagues, who announced their finding in July…
A team of biologists from the University of Washington and the California Institute of Technology has cracked the cues mosquitoes use to find us.
The UW-based Conservation magazine has won a gold award in a national competition sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE. Conservation shares this top honor with a magazine from Stanford Medicine. The award recognizes magazines produced by universities or colleges for special external constituencies, including publications affiliated with individual colleges or devoted exclusively to an institution’s scholarly research. CASE judges noted Conservation’s dedication to stories of the “highest caliber,” as well as an “outstanding” layout…
UW researchers have produced cell-to-cell communication in baker’s yeast — a first step in learning to build multicellular organisms or artificial organs from scratch.
A team of UW biologists has identified a key mechanism plants use to decide when to release their floral scents to attract pollinators.
New research comparing traditional hunter-gatherer living conditions to a more modern setting shows that access to artificial light and electricity has shortened the amount of sleep humans get each night.
University of Washington biologist Samuel Wasser uses DNA evidence to trace the origin of illegal ivory and help police an international trade that is decimating African elephant populations. New results show that over the past decade, ivory has largely come from just two areas in Africa.
A team of University of Washington researchers has identified a mechanism that some plant cells use to receive complex and contradictory messages from their neighbors.
What researchers have discovered about the hummingbird-sized hawkmoth could help the next generation of small flying robots operate efficiently under a broad range of lighting conditions. The research is published in the June 12 edition of Science.
Warming temperatures and decreasing levels of dissolved oxygen will act together to create metabolic stress for marine animals. Habitats will shift to places in the ocean where the oxygen supply can meet the animals’ increasing future needs.
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories are looking at how the biomechanics of clingfish could be helpful in designing devices and instruments to be used in surgery and even to tag and track whales in the ocean.
3-D printing has been used to make everything from cars to medical implants. Now, University of Washington ecologists are using the technology to make artificial flowers, which they say could revolutionize our understanding of plant-pollinator interactions.
A new center at the University of Washington funded by the U.S. Air Force will focus on how elements in nature can help solve challenging engineering and technological problems related to building small, remotely operated aircraft.
An international team led by the University of Washington has discovered a way to determine the tree cover and density of trees, shrubs and bushes in locations over time based on clues in the cells of plant fossils preserved in rocks and soil.
Within weeks of publishing surprising new insights about how zebrafish get their stripes, University of Washington researchers now explain how to “erase” them.
Using evolutionary biology is one way to try to outwit evolution where it is happening too quickly and to perhaps find accommodations when evolution occurs too slowly.
Using a songbird as a model, scientists have described a brain pathway that replaces cells that have been lost naturally and not because of injury.
Scientists writing in the current issue of Conservation Biology call for marine protected areas and partially protected areas to help penguins cope.
New research on how pollinators find flowers when background odors are strong shows that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.
Stop outside the botany greenhouse to see an agave plant that’s grown a 9-foot-plus flower spike and is about to bloom for the first time in 25 years.
Comb jellies – and not sponges – may lay claim as the earliest ancestors of animals, according to new research in Nature.
Many have assumed that warmer winters as a result of climate change would increase the growth of trees and shrubs because the growing season would be longer. But shrubs achieve less yearly growth when cold winter temperatures are interrupted by temperatures warm enough to trigger growth.
A significantly greater number of students fail science, engineering and math courses that are taught lecture-style than fail with active learning according to the largest analysis ever of studies comparing lecturing to active learning in undergraduate education
At an event in Washington, D.C. a UW biology student presented her research into the global connections between consumers and goods that come from agriculture and forest production.
Benjamin Hall and Eric D’Asaro are among the 84 new members elected fellows the National Academy of Sciences.
Get on your 3-D glasses for one of the animations of tiny fruit flies employing banked turns to evade attacks just like fighter jets.
Seventeen North American scientists outline the importance of natural science and call for a revitalization of the practice.
That fruit fly appearing moments after you poured that first glass of cabernet, has just used a poppy-seed-sized brain to conduct a finely-choreographed search and arrive in time for happy hour.
Climate change is killing penguin chicks from the world’s largest colony of Magellanic penguins, not just indirectly but directly because of drenching rainstorms and heat.
Fish “stripped” to their skeletons and stained for UW research are now part of an art exhibit at the Seattle Aquarium.