Biology

For decades, scientists have sought to understand how the present-day starfish came to be. Newly analyzed fossils should help, as they represent a transitional step between the starfish and the family tree it branched off of.

If evolutionary biologists are the detectives of the natural world’s past mysteries, then the phylogenic tree is their cork board of linked crime-scene suspects. With this, they offer some big news about the origins of flowering plant life on Earth.

With Christmas just behind us and New Year’s around the corner, many are familiar with the effects of alcohol, but how it works in the brain is still shrouded in mystery. Now scientists at the Scripps Research Institute have discovered a new step in the intoxication process – by getting flies drunk.

You don't often find crowds flocking to take in the pungent scent of rotting flesh, yet that's just what happens when a corpse flower blooms at a public garden. But this iconic endangered plant is now facing a new threat – our aversion to paperwork.

Scientists have discovered how an Australian jumping spider's semi-hydraulics allows it to speed jump long distances with precision while experiencing g-forces higher than those of fighter pilots. Their insights might help robotics research.

​Studies have already indicated that dogs have a sense of inequity. Many scientists have assumed that this is a result of domestication. A new study shows that wolves react in the same way, however, suggesting that the behavior originates with a common ancestor.