To request a media interview, please reach out to School of Biological Sciences experts using our faculty directory, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts and research areas across the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech is also available to journalists upon request.
This week could be a jackpot for birders in Georgia, as an estimated 10 million will fly every night over the state. When they aren't flying, they'll be on the ground feasting. In an 11Alive interview, Benjamin Freeman, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, discusses the “river of migrating birds” over Georgia skies:"So most of these small birds, they're actually... flying at night. So when they're flying, they're spending so much energy they're heating up, so they like to fly when it's cool at night. And they're flying a couple thousand feet up. They're flying all night and then sometime in the morning they'll land and they'll spend the day looking for food. And then the next night, they'll often rise up again and keep flying north, so they're flying a couple 100 miles a night.”Discover the full interview here.A similar story also appeared at The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
11 Alive | 2025-04-28T00:00:00-04:00
In an article published in Science, Maria Martignoni, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection, reflects on her path as a scientist and shares advice to students: "One does not need to have a clear life plan to belong in science. Many scientists know from the start that they want to be academic researchers. But for others the path unfolds gradually, with spurts of doubt and uncertainty along the way. In a way, that’s fitting. As researchers we are explorers, and part of our mission involves finding our way without always knowing where we are going.”
Science Magazine | 2025-04-10T00:00:00-04:00
In an article published in The Washington Post, Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences James Stroud provides an overview of his research: Every morning in Miami, our fieldwork begins the same way. Fresh Cuban coffee and pastelitos — delicious Latin American pastries — fuel our team for another day of evolutionary detective work. In this case, we are tracking evolution in real time, measuring natural selection as it happens in a community of Caribbean lizards.Our research takes place on a South Florida island roughly the size of an American football field — assuming we are successful in sidestepping the American crocodiles that bask in the surrounding lake. We call it Lizard Island, and it's a special place.Since 2015, we have been conducting evolutionary research here on five species of remarkable lizards called anoles. Our team is working to understand one of biology's most fundamental questions: How does natural selection drive evolution in real time?This also appeared in The Conversation.
The Washington Post | 2025-03-23T00:00:00-04:00
How life on Earth evolved from unicellular to multicellular organisms remains a mystery, though evidence indicates that this may have occurred multiple times independently. To understand what could have happened, Will Ratcliff, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, has been conducting long-term evolution experiments on yeast in which multicellularity develops and emerges spontaneously.In a recent episode of “The Joy of Why” podcast, Ratcliff discusses what his “snowflake yeast” model could reveal about the origins of multicellularity, the surprising discoveries his team has made, and how he responds to skeptics who question his approach.
Quanta Magazine | 2025-03-20T00:00:00-04:00
Marvin Whiteley, professor in the School of Biological Sciences, has been named the new editor in chief of mBio, an open-access journal that explores the interconnected microbial world and publishes research in microbiology and allied fields. Whiteley’s term will begin on July 1, 2025.
American Society for Microbiology | 2025-02-07T00:00:00-05:00
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.(This story also appeared in Futurity and New Atlas.)
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
