Congratulations to PhD candidate, Mara Laslo (Hanken Lab), Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) 2017 Fellowship Awardee. Mara was awarded the Nell Mondy Fellowship, the Eloise Gerry Fellowship and the Elizabeth Weisberger Fellowship for her work, "Evaluating the role of thyroid hormone in limb development in a direct-developing frog." Read more about Mara Laslo Awarded Graduate Women in Science Fellowship

A new study in Science, led by Shane Campbell-Stanton (Ph.D. '15), with Jonathan Losos and Scott Edwards, offers a rare view of natural selection in the anole lizard due to extreme weather events. 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

Read more about How Climate Change is Impacting Natural Selection

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

Read more about A Look At Flowers Millions of Years Ago

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

Read more about Researchers Study on Avian Neck Flexibility Lays Foundation for Future Evolution Work

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.  

Read more about Stephanie Pierce Lab Goes Fossil Hunting at Blue Beach

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

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