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Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden may look serene at first glance, but beneath the resplendent orchids and majestic banyans, two invasive lizards are waging a turf war.The war started a few years ago when Cuban brown anoles, who have called South Florida home for about 100 years, came face to face for the first time with a new rival: crested anoles from Puerto Rico.As the two species, which look almost identical and occupy the same ecological niche, faced off, biologists were able to document who was winning, and more importantly, how quickly the losers were adapting to survive on new turf.A new study published in Nature Communications by researchers, including School of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor James Stroud, reveals that the losing species is adapting at a rapid pace, changing their behavior, but also their bodies. This fast adaptation is altering what we know about how evolution works.
Sun Sentinel | 2024-12-01T00:00:00-05:00
Environmental journalist and author Ben Goldfarb reveals the story of how one biologist spread a non-native species of lizard across the Northeast. According to Goldfarb, Queens College professor of biology Jon Sperling secretly captured, bred, and released Italian wall lizards for many years. “Regardless of how much you love lizards—and I love lizards a lot—you can’t do that,” says James Stroud, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “They are incredible organisms to watch, and they’re beautiful. I can understand his perspective, but I can’t agree with his actions.”
The New Yorker | 2024-11-16T00:00:00-05:00
Last week, Michael Wong and Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution for Science welcomed a diverse group of nearly 100 scientists, from microbiology to neuroscience, for a workshop on how complexity emerges and evolves. It was also a referendum on their audacious proposal, which, Wong said in a talk, is “an explanatory framework for the evolution of physical systems writ large, including, but not limited to, biology.”It’s an appealing idea, says Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry who studies the origin of life and attended the workshop. “To me it seems very clear that there is evolution outside of biology.” Take the polypeptide backbone, the chain of molecules that forms the spine of all amino acids, he says. “[Biological] evolution doesn’t touch that, right? It’s the same in everything alive. It always has been. But it’s a product of evolution, I’m convinced.” It’s just that the evolution happened before life began, he says. And so when Hazen and his co-authors proposed their overarching theory, he says, “that just resonated with me.”
Science | 2024-11-01T00:00:00-04:00
DNA samples from one of the world’s largest and oldest plants — a quaking aspen tree (Populus tremuloides) in Utah called Pando — have helped researchers to determine its age and revealed clues about its evolutionary history.“It’s kind of shocking to me that there hasn’t been a lot of genetic interest in Pando already, given how cool it is,” says study co-author William Ratcliff, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences.By inputting Pando’s genetic data into a theoretical model that plots an organism’s evolutionary lineage, the researchers estimated Pando’s age. They put this at between 16,000 and 80,000 years. “It makes the Roman Empire seem like just a young, recent thing,” says Ratcliff.(This also appeared at Newsweek and NewScientist.)
Nature | 2024-11-01T00:00:00-04:00
Your gut is a battleground where rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts fight for territory – and these battles are often won by armies of traitors made to switch sides by selfish DNA transferred to them by their enemies.“Side switching may be more common than we have appreciated,” says Brian Hammer, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences. The bacterium that causes cholera also constantly produces and fires dart guns. While it has been assumed that this behaviour is costly, last year Hammer’s team showed that strains of Vibrio cholerae that don’t produce T6SSs hardly grow any faster than those that do, suggesting that the cost of going around with guns blazing is surprisingly small.
NewScientist | 2024-10-24T00:00:00-04:00
One group of birds is relatively scarce in the lowlands of South Asia: insect eaters. A study published in Ecology Letters may explain why. Weaver ants—forest-dwelling ants that live in the lowlands and ferociously prey on small invertebrates—might be gobbling up the birds’ food source and pushing them to higher elevations.“That’s a big-time idea, that it’s ants that shape insect-eating bird communities,” says School of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Ben Freeman. He added though, while it’s an intriguing pattern, he would like to see future work test the hypothesis experimentally.
Science | 2024-09-25T00:00:00-04:00
With global ocean heat at record levels, scientists have confirmed that a global coral bleaching event is underway. In an article published in The Conversation, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Annalisa Bracco discusses how research on reef connectivity and resilience may open new avenues for helping corals survive.
The Conversation | 2024-06-26T00:00:00-04:00
Frequently wearing high heels could help you walk more efficiently in flat shoes, according to a new study published in The Journal of Applied Physiology. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Georgia Institute of Technology, including Gregory S. Sawicki, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Mechanical Engineering, found that donning stilettos could help strengthen the tendons in the ankles and calves, making the legs more powerful.
Newsweek | 2024-06-20T00:00:00-04:00
Elephants use their trunks for various tasks by exploiting a remarkable range of motions. A research team has now shown that much of this dexterity can be achieved using just a small number of muscle-like actuators. Using both theoretical calculations and experiments with a simple physical model of a trunk, the researchers found that their minimal model can reproduce the complex bending and torsional motions seen in real trunks. The results might be useful in the design of “soft robotics” devices.David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Mechanical Engineering, calls the work “a triumph of mathematics and an important step in reverse engineering the elephant trunk.” He says that the important result is in “reducing the biological complexity to three degrees of freedom.” Hu adds that “the big question left in my mind is this: If elephants can achieve all these 3D trunk positions with just three actuators, why does it have to have so many other muscles, and when are those used?”
Physics Magazine | 2024-06-14T00:00:00-04:00
In a monograph published in npj Microgravity, researchers including School of Biological Sciences Ph.D. student Iris Irby, reviewed a growing body of experimental evidence indicating that monocytes and macrophages are altered by the spaceflight environment. These findings have implications for a wide range of physiological processes, including innate immunity, acquired immunity, host defense, and tissue remodeling.
npj Microgravity | 2024-06-11T00:00:00-04:00
