Department of Biology
June 21, 2013
Airborne gut action primes wild chili pepper seeds
Seeds gobbled by birds and dispersed across the landscape tend to fare better than those that fall near parent plants. Now it turns out it might not just be the trip through the air that’s important, but also the inches-long trip through the bird.
May 7, 2013
Guggenheim names Braester, Daniel as fellows
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation names 173 fellows for 2013.
April 29, 2013
Dinosaur predecessors gain ground in wake of world’s biggest biodiversity crisis — with photo gallery
Newly discovered fossils reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs taking hold in Tanzania and Zambia, many millions of years before dinosaur relatives were seen in the fossil record elsewhere on Earth.
April 17, 2013
A key to mass extinctions could boost food, biofuel production
A substance implicated in several mass extinctions could greatly enhance plant growth, with implications for global food supplies biofuels, new UW research shows.
April 2, 2013
Book focuses on 1969 fight to save America’s premier fossil beds
Book Q and A: To allow buildings on 34 million year-old fossils would be like using the Dead Sea Scrolls to wrap fish in, proclaimed the lawyer defending land that would eventually become Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.
March 4, 2013
‘True grit’ erodes assumptions about evolution
New work in Argentina where scientists had previously thought Earth’s first grasslands emerged 38 million years ago, shows the area at the time covered with tropical forests rich with palms, bamboos and gingers. Grit and volcanic ash in those forests could have caused the evolution of teeth in horse-like animals that scientists mistakenly thought were adaptations in response to emerging grasslands.
February 19, 2013
Mutant champions save imperiled species from almost-certain extinction
Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. UW scientists consider the genetic underpinnings of such evolutionary rescue.
February 18, 2013
Mussels cramped by environmental factors
The fibrous threads helping mussels stay anchored are more prone to snap when ocean temperatures climb higher than normal.
December 26, 2012
Piranha kin wielded dental weaponry even T. rex would have admired — with video
Taking into consideration size, an ancient relative of piranhas weighing about 20 pounds delivered a bite with more force than prehistoric whale-eating sharks or – even – Tyrannosaurus rex.
December 17, 2012
Plumes across the Pacific deliver thousands of microbial species to West Coast
Microorganisms – 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago – are hitching rides in the upper troposphere from Asia.
December 6, 2012
Moths wired two ways to take advantage of floral potluck
Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator’s buffet of flowers because of two distinct “channels” in their brains, scientists have discovered.
December 4, 2012
Scientists find oldest dinosaur – or closest relative yet
Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs.
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