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Scientists from the University of Copenhagen have revealed how a specific hormone regulates ant caste differentiation by phenotypic measurements of organ-level developmental changes and matching transcriptome analyses. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study titled "Juvenile hormone as a key regulator for asymmetric caste differentiation in ants" significantly enhances the understanding of caste development and evolution.

The Irish philosopher George Berkely, best known for his theory of immaterialism, once famously mused, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" What about AI-generated trees? They probably wouldn't make a sound, but they will be critical nonetheless for applications such as adaptation of urban flora to climate change.

In recent decades, scientists have clearly demonstrated that chimpanzees, like humans, pass on complex cultures such as tool use from generation to generation. But human culture has become vastly more sophisticated, from the Stone Age to the Space Age, as new advances have been incorporated. Chimpanzee cultures haven't changed in the same way, which suggests that only humans have the remarkable ability to build...

A new study on aging in the animal kingdom has highlighted how urgently Earth's oldest and wisest creatures must be protected, with knowledge and environmental stability lost due to human intervention.

According to the fossil record, cetaceans—whales, dolphins and their relatives—evolved from four-legged land mammals that returned to the oceans beginning some 50 million years ago. Today, their descendants are threatened by a different land-based mammal that has also returned to the sea: humans.

Mysterious, repeating sounds from the depths of the ocean can be terrifying to some, but in the 1980s, they presented a unique look at an underwater soundscape.

The Delta, a regional powerhouse for Arkansas agriculture built by river flows, is showing a trend of increasing droughts. Using satellite imagery, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers comprehensively analyzed drought dynamics over five years to reveal this and other short and long-term climate trends in Arkansas.

Compared to children, adults don't play as much, but social play into adulthood is considered a universal human trait. Play has a role in building tolerance, cohesion, bonding, and cooperation. By comparison, play in adults of other species has been considered rare, and yet a new study reported in Current Biology shows that some chimpanzees, like people, continue to play often throughout their entire...

New research shows that increased levels of plastic pollution in the Southern Ocean could reduce the ability of Antarctic krill, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean, to help take CO2 from the atmosphere. The results are published this month in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Morning glory plants that can resist the effects of glyphosate also resist damage from herbivorous insects, according to a University of Michigan study.

Researchers in Canada are using artificial intelligence to monitor the ongoing mass extinction of insects, hoping to collect data that can help reverse species collapse and avert catastrophe for the planet.

Scientists from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences found forty new freshwater viruses infecting aquatic microorganisms this year. The first one, which they isolated and described in detail, was named Budvirus after the South Bohemian capital České Budějovice. It belongs to "Giant Viruses" and it infects unicellular algae called cryptophytes.

The patches of lichen you've probably seen growing on tree trunks and park benches might be easy to overlook, but they're actually some of the world's strangest living things. While they're sometimes mistaken for moss, lichens are miniature ecosystems made up of a fungus and algae or bacteria that can make energy from sunlight, living together in one body.

A team of marine biologists, ecologists and evolutionary specialists from the University of Chicago, Stanford University and Duke University has found that heart cockles have windows in their shells to allow in light needed by the algae that live inside the shells.

Chimpanzees are more likely to engage in play or groom each other if they see others performing these social behaviors first, Georgia Sandars and colleagues at Durham University, U.K. report in a study published November 20, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

New research suggests that while manatees are an indelible part of Florida's seascape, they might also be relatively new residents in the Sunshine State.

Over the typical two-year rotation of corn and soybeans most Iowa farmers use, 40% of nitrous oxide emissions are in the soybean year, according to a new study by an Iowa State University research team.

New findings, published in the journal Ecology, describe a newly documented behavior of Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis).

A study found that invasive zebra mussels significantly alter aquatic ecosystems, and are associated with elevated mercury concentrations in fish. Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, poses a serious threat to both aquatic life and human health.

Rivers and streams serve as critical connectors across vast geographical landscapes, trickling out of tucked-away headwaters and snaking thousands of miles toward oceans and deep seas. These waterways directly impact human and environmental health, agriculture and energy production, and supply the United States with two-thirds of its drinking water. And yet, compared with other larger waterbodies, the microbiology of rivers is relatively understudied.

Along Colombia's Pacific coast, a small shellfish called piangua has been a crucial part of local communities for generations. This humble mollusk is a vital source of income and nutrition for many coastal residents. As a regional resource that can be sustainably utilized, it represents a bioeconomic opportunity and is an example for other regions. But now, scientists are raising the alarm about its...

In order to use remote locations to record and assess the behavior of wildlife and environmental conditions, the GAIA Initiative developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that reliably and automatically classifies behaviors of white-backed vultures using animal tag data.

Climate change is a persistent and growing challenge to plant life on our planet. Changes to the environment that plants are unaccustomed to affect how they grow, putting them much at risk. Increasingly, plant scientists are trying to determine how these environmental changes will impact plant life and whether plants will be able to acclimate to a new status quo.

A team of environmental management specialists, dendrologists and Indigenous studies researchers found evidence showing that Indigenous people living in British Columbia cultivated hazelnut trees long before colonists from Europe arrived.