A trio of Cyprichromis leptosoma, a cichlid fish from Lake Tanganyika, East Africa. Cichlid fish show unexpected diversity of sex chromosomes within and among species. This species has a novel ZW sex determination system on linkage group 5, one of three new sex chromosome systems reported in Gammerdinger et al. 2018. Photo by Ad Konings. […]
We are worried about how climate change will affect distributions today, but how did climatic changes affect distributions in the past? Around 20,000 years ago at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the vast ice sheets that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere began to melt, opening up new habitats for marine species. […]
Listen to the audio story: “One of the most interesting, pleasant places where I collected cicadas in Chile was this little hot spring resort town high up in the Andes. It was full of cicadas. They were so abundant, just landing on us—that was lots of fun,” says Dr. Piotr Łukasik. “[The sound of […]
If you were to look closely at a prickly pear in mainland western Mexico, chances are you would find a population of flies—Drosophila navojoa, to be exact. Despite their colloquial name of “fruit fly,” many of the over 1,500 species of Drosophilid flies breed in everything from toxic mushrooms to slime flux, the bacteria-infected […]
Today is Darwin Day! Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809. In 1859, he published On the Origin of Species, forever changing how we view the world. Forty-four years later, Darwin’s theory of evolution inspired the formation of the American Genetic Association. Then called the American Breeders Association, members first met to discuss […]
