How the centimeter-sized termite is able to build meter-sized structures all over the world has long puzzled scientists. In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Prof. Mahadevan and PhD student, Alexander Heyde, developed a simple model that shows how differences in the environment lead to the distinct morphologies of termite mounds in Asia, Australia,...

Postdoc, Jacob Peters (PhD '18) and Prof. L. Mahadevan have developed a framework that explains how bees use environmental signals to collectively cluster and continuously ventilate the hive. The study published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface looked at European honey bees (Apis mellifera), which live in large congested nest cavities with a single opening that limits...

Set in the Nebraska's Sand Hills, an on-going study led by Rowan Barrett (McGill University, former Postdoc, Hoekstra Lab) and Hopi Hoekstra shows evolution in real time. Hundreds of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) were released into massive, custom-built outdoor enclosures to track how light- and dark-colored mice survived in light- and dark-colored habitats.

The results, published in Science, reveals real-time...

Scientists have long assumed that the hundreds of species of salamanders that lack lungs breathe instead through their skin and the lining of the mouth. However, a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B led by postdoc Zachary Lewis (Hanken Lab) and Prof. Jim Hanken provides the first concrete evidence for how the lungless salamanders do "breathe".

The authors, including former Harvard...

PhD student, Nathan Ranc (Moorcroft Lab) studies wildlife movement ecology. Nathan's work - supported by the Edmund Mach Foundation in Italy - follows the staggering expansion of the golden jackal. Ranc and Miha Krofel, a conservation biologist at the University of Ljubljana, lead 37 volunteers — scientists and naturalists — in monitoring the golden jackal throughout Europe. Ranc and Krofel's research was recently covered by the ...