Warming, Plant Phenology, And The Spatial Dimension Of Trophic Mismatch For Large Herbivores

Spring warming can lead to mismatches between the timing of resource availability and timing of demand for those resources by consumers if resource phenology is driven by local temperatures while migration to breeding grounds is driven by other factors.

Phylogenomic Analyses Of Lophophorates brachiopods, Phoronids And Bryozoans Confirm The Lophotrochozoa Concept

Phylogenomic analyses of a dataset including 79 ribosomal proteins of 39 metazoan taxa show that the three lophophorate lineages, Ectoprocta, Brachiopoda and Phoronida, are affiliated with trochozoan (annelids, molluscs and allies) rather than deuterostome phyla, with which they were associated based on embryological and morphological evidence.

Sexual Selection In A Lekking Bird: The Relative Opportunity For Selection By Female Choice And Male Competition

Sexual selection can occur via male-male competition or female mate choice, but the relative importance of these mechanisms is difficult to determine because they frequently occur simultaneously. In a bird called the lance-tailed manakin, these selective episodes are temporally separated into male competition for breeding (alpha) status, and female mate choice among alpha males that rarely interact.

Evolution Of Cooperation With Shared Costs And Benefits

Sometimes human and/or animal societies exhibiting cooperation can appear robust or frightfully fragile in the face of seemingly small changes to the incentive structure of costs and benefits. We explore this issue in a new cost-benefit game of cooperation.

Genomic Analysis Reveals New Insights Into Cellular Reprogramming

The ability to drive somatic, or fully differentiated, human cells back to a pluripotent or "stem cell" state would overcome many of the significant scientific and social challenges to the use of embryo-derived stem cells and help realize the promise of regenerative medicine.

Applied Biosystems MDS Analytical Technologies' Software Expands Detection Of Chemical Contaminants In Food And Water

Public concern over the safety of food and drinking water is increasingly in the news around the world. Already this year, there have been reports of tainted rice from China, food coloring additives in Europe, and traces of pharmaceuticals found in drinking water in more than 25 metropolitan areas in the United States.

An Enzyme That Binds Differently To Male And Female Sex Chromosomes Helps Males To Make Up For Their X Chromosome Shortage

Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, have revealed new insights into how sex chromosomes are regulated. A chromatin modifying enzyme helps compensate for the fact that males have only one copy of the sex chromosome X, while females have two.

A Molecular Switch Turns On The Flame In 'Nature's Blowtorch'

Uncontrolled reaction of organic compounds with oxygen is easy: we call it fire. But nature often needs to do oxidations very specifically, adding oxygen to a particular carbon atom in a complicated molecule without disturbing anything else. Usually, this job falls to an enzyme called cytochrome P450.

What Makes Life Go At The Tropics? Study Points To Heat, Not Light, As Engine Driving Biodiversity

What causes tropical life to thrive: temperature, or sunlight?The answer is not necessarily "both." According to a study published online this week in PNAS Early Edition, the explosion of species at the tropics has much more to do with warmth than with light.

Fruit Fly Protein Acts As Decoy To Capture Tumor Growth Factors

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have shown how Argos, a fruit fly protein, acts as a 'decoy' receptor, binding growth factors that promote the progression of cancer. Knowing how Argos neutralizes tumor growth may lead to new drug designs for inhibiting cancer.