Evolution
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High standards of female songbirds could be driving their mates to evolve
Picky females force male songbirds to become better singers. Read MoreSep 4, 2019
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Rokas to lead budding cross-disciplinary collaboration on evolutionary studies
The Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative seeks to position the university as a global leader in evolutionary studies by engaging a large group of scholars who share this research interest. Read MoreAug 14, 2019
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Intense look at La Brea Tar Pits explains why we have coyotes, not saber-toothed cats
The most detailed study to date of ancient predators trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits is helping Americans understand why today we’re dealing with coyotes dumping over garbage cans and not saber-toothed cats ripping our arms off. Read MoreAug 5, 2019
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Ediacaran dinner party featured plenty to eat, adequate sanitation, computer model shows
“They are behaving like animals, and that’s a link between them and what we recognize as animals," says paleontologist Simon A.F. Darroch. Read MoreJun 19, 2019
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Life in evolution’s fast lane
A group of budding yeasts in the genus Hanseniaspora, which is closely related to the baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has lost large numbers of genes related to cell cycle and DNA repair processes. Read MoreMay 21, 2019
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Frog fungus fights back
Louise Rollins-Smith and colleagues have discovered a new way that a deadly fungus evades frogs' immune systems. Read MoreMay 15, 2019
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Dolphin ancestor’s hearing was more like hoofed mammals than today’s sea creatures
The team, one of the first in the world to examine the ability’s origins, used a small CT scanner to look inside a 30-million-year-old ear bone fossil from a specimen resembling Olympicetus avitus. Read MoreMay 15, 2019
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How attracting multiple mates affects flirting fads in birds
For many species, extravagant displays are a critical part of attracting a mate. Think of a peacock’s long tail or a songbird’s elaborate melody. When considering these populations, scientists at Vanderbilt University wondered if they could use new methods to test a theory that has been around for almost 150… Read MoreFeb 22, 2019
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Earth’s oldest animals formed complex ecological communities
Ediacara biota were forming complex communities tens of millions of years before the Cambrian explosion. Read MoreSep 17, 2018
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Interdisciplinary approach yields new insights into human evolution
Vanderbilt biologist Nicole Creanza is the guest editor of a new themed issue of "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B" highlighting interdisciplinary approaches to understanding human evolution. Read MoreFeb 12, 2018
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Vanderbilt evolutionary biologist makes finals of a national award for young scientists
Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor in Biological Sciences Antonis Rokas has been selected as a finalist for the $250,000 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Read MoreJun 6, 2017
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Climate change helped kill off super-sized Ice Age animals in Australia
A new study has compared the diet of a variety of Australian megafaunal herbivores from the period when they were widespread (350,000 to 570,000 years ago) to a period when they were in decline (30,000 to 40,000 years ago) by studying their fossil teeth. The analysis suggests that climate change had a significant impact on their diets and may well have been a primary factor in their extinction. Read MoreJan 26, 2017
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Each animal species hosts a unique microbial community and benefits from it
A laboratory study of four animal species and their microbiota finds that each species hosts a unique community of microbes that can significantly improve its health and fitness. Read MoreNov 28, 2016
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Transcription factor evolution
Vanderbilt researchers have discovered a novel model of evolution for factors that control gene expression. Read MoreAug 11, 2016
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Discovery of male-harming DNA mutation reinforces ‘mother’s curse’ hypothesis
There is new evidence that the "mother’s curse" – the possibility that moms may transmit genes to their children that harm their sons but not their daughters – holds true in animals. Read MoreAug 2, 2016
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Newly discovered fossils strengthen proposition that world’s first mass extinction engineered by early animals
New fossil evidence strengthens the proposition that the world’s first mass extinction was caused by ‘ecosystem engineers’ – newly evolved organisms that radically altered the environment. Read MoreJul 29, 2016
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Neanderthal DNA has subtle but significant impact on human traits
The first study that directly compares Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of a significant population of adults of European ancestry with their clinical records confirms that this archaic genetic legacy has a subtle but significant impact on modern human biology. Read MoreFeb 11, 2016
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Evidence that Earth’s first mass extinction was caused by critters, not catastrophe
The Earth's first mass extinction event 540 million years ago was caused not by a meteorite impact or volcanic super-eruption, but by the rise of early animals that dramatically changed to prehistoric environment. Read MoreSep 2, 2015
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The pronoun ‘I’ is becoming obsolete
Recent microbiological research has shown that plants and animals, including humans, are not autonomous individuals but are holobionts: biomolecular networks that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes. Read MoreAug 19, 2015
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Evolutionary history of whales, dolphins and sea turtles
The evolutionary history of whales, sea turtles and other land animals that have returned to the sea details the radical changes to their life style, body shape, physiology that they made to survive in an aquatic environment. Read MoreApr 17, 2015