L. Mahadevan recreated complex birdsongs using air blown through a stretched rubber tube. The study published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, found the complexity of birdsongs may be due to a simple controllable instability in the structure of the syrinx, a specialized organ used to create songs. News coverage in the...
Graduate student, Brianna McHorse (Biewener and S. Pierce Lab), used beam bending to study fossil horses (Equidae) to shed light on the evolutionary forces that led to digit reduction. The study, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, supports two historical hypotheses: increased body mass and limb elongation, and elucidates the mystery of the modern horse. One of...
Flowering plants, which arose approximately 140 million years ago, are the most diverse group of plants on Earth. The evolution of these plants and why so diverse is a biology mystery. OEB Ph.D. student, Kristel Schoonderwoerd (Friedman Lab) is part of an international effort, the eFLOWER Project, which aims to reconstruct the evolution of flowers. The study in Nature Communications, reveals insight into the early...
Shane Campbell-Stanton (PhD '15, Losos and Edwards Labs), offers a rare view of natural selection in the anole lizard due to extreme weather events in a study in Science. As a graduate student, Campbell-Stanton collected DNA in 2013 from lizards in Texas and Oklahoma. Following an unusually harsh winter in 2014, he returned to the field sites to collect new DNA samples. With the before and after samples, Campbell-Staton and...
Birds have highly mobile necks, but the details and evolution of the complex musculoskeletal system is not well-understood. A new study in Frontiers in Zoology led by postdoc, Robert Kambic (S. Pierce Lab), and professors Stephanie Pierce and Andrew Biewener, uses biplanar X-rays on wild turkeys to evaluate the...
Stephanie Pierce and lab members are at Blue Beach Fossil Museum in Hantsport Nova Scotia searching for fossils from the lower carboniferous rock period. Carboniferous rocks help fill in "Romer's Gap", the period of time that explains the evolution of tetrapods from fish 360 million years ago. Outside of Nova Scotia, carboniferous fossils haven't been located anywhere else except Scotland. ...
An international team of scientists led by L. Mahadevan and Mary Caswell Stoddard (former postdoc in Edwards Lab) have answered the question of why there is great diversity in egg shape and sizes. And, the answer may help explain how birds evolved. The groundbreaking study published in Science was chosen as the cover article. More News:... Read more about How the Egg Got Its Shape
A study led by Thomas Powell (Moorcroft Lab), former OEB PhD student, James Wheeler (Holbrook Lab) and Paul Moorcroft examined the unknown effects of drought tolerance among mature Amazon rainforest trees. The study found the differences in xylem and leaf hydraulic traits not only explained the differences in drought tolerance among mature Amazon rainforest trees, but are...
David Haig teamed with professors at the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick to examine the effect of learning a child’s gender on parents’ attitudes towards risky behaviors upon learning a child’s gender. The authors gathered prenatal and post-birth data from the pediatric wards of hospitals in both the United Kingdom and Ukraine, allowing for longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of those attitudes; a first for a study of this kind. The study was presented at the... Read more about New Study Suggest Parents of Newborn Daughters Take Fewer Risks
Pardis Sabeti is part of three international teams of researchers that sequenced and studied the genomes of the Zika virus to trace its origin and spread across the Americas. Using a genetic clock and looking at DNA from samples from people and mosquitoes, the teams determined the virus was spreading long before the first cases were reported. Sabeti's team authored one of three studies published in...