Evolutionary changes in cuticular hydrocarbons, a lipid layer on the insect epicuticle, underlie the evolution of desiccation resistance in Drosophila species.
Honey bee queens adjust the provisioning of their eggs based on their perception of colony size via upregulation of metabolism, protein transport, and cytoskeletal reorganization, including the small GTPase Rho1.
Sofia N Moraes, Jordan T Becker ... Reuben S Harris
The birth of the antiviral gene APOBEC3B in ancient primates is linked to the evolution of a potent counterdefense by herpesviruses, a host-pathogen interaction maintained to present day.
Three-dimensional digital reconstruction shows the temporal and palatal regions of stemward avialans are evolutionarily and functionally conservative, and the mixture of plesiomorphic cranial morphologies together with derived postcranial skeleton manifests the key role of mosaicism in early bird diversification.
Primate hand preference strength but not direction (left vs. right) generally reflects phylogeny and ecology at species level, but human handedness deviates markedly from all other species.
Paul C Sereno, Nathan Myhrvold ... Lauren L Conroy
A digital flesh model of the sail-backed dinosaur Spinosaurus was tested and performed very poorly in water, favoring the view of this dinosaur as a two-legged, wading ambush predator of large fish in shallow waterways and not an aquatic dinosaur.
Strains of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa that use secondary metabolism to make surfactants and change the surface tension of the liquid that surrounds them do so only if they can first meet their primary metabolic needs.
By spending more time around infants which physically resemble their own, mandrill mothers may increase how frequently their offspring interact with their paternal half siblings.
