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Peter Girguis courtesy of The Moore Foundation

Peter Girguis awarded the Captain Don Walsh Award for Ocean Exploration

August 8, 2023

Congratulations to Professor Peter Girguis, recipient of the 2023 Captain Don Walsh Award for Ocean Exploration.

Professor Girguis is honored for his prolific career dedicated to increasing understanding of the animals and microbes that thrive in the deep sea and in advancing deep-sea exploration to expand humanity’s understanding of the natural world. His primary focus is to understand how marine organisms have adapted to their habitats and how they...

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Shane Campbell-Staton and James Hanken sitting at a table with a jar of frog specimens.

Human Footprint features Jim Hanken

July 31, 2023

In the latest episode of Human Footprint on PBS, host Shane Campbell-Staton (PhD 15') visits OEB Professor and Curator of Herpetology James Hanken. The episode, “The Replacements”, explores the surprising science and unexpected histories of five animal and plant species that made allies of humans, and grew to dominate the planet alongside us. 

Professor Hanken explains why the African Clawed Frog, or Xenopus, joined the ranks of The...

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Two live tangled individuals of Gordionus violaceus from Germany; photo by Gonzalo Giribet

"Mind Controlling" parasitic worms missing common genes

July 18, 2023

Hairworms are parasitic worms that manipulate the behavior of their hosts; what some refer to as "mind control." They are found all over the world, look like strands of spaghetti, and are only a few inches long. Even more bizarre, they have no excretory, respiratory, or circulatory systems, spending most of their life inside the bodies of other animals.

In keeping with the strange traits of these animals, a new study in Current Biology reveals they're also missing about 30...

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Artistic reconstruction of Megasiphon thylakos by Franz Anthony

Discovery of 500-million-year-old fossil reveals astonishing secrets of tunicate origins

July 6, 2023

Karma Nanglu says his favorite animal is whichever one he’s working on. But his latest subject may hold first place status for a while: a 500-million-year-old fossil from the wonderfully weird group of marine invertebrates, the tunicates.

“This animal is as exciting a discovery as some of the stuff I found when hanging off a cliffside of a mountain, or jumping out of a helicopter. It’s just as cool,” said Nanglu, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.

In a new study in ...

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Michael Bradshaw awarded NSF  Grant

Michael Bradshaw awarded NSF Grant

July 1, 2023
Congratulations to postdoctoral fellow Michael Bradshaw (D Pfister) awarded the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology Grant as Co-PI for a joint project with Professor Don Pfister titled, “A North American monograph of the powdery mildews (Erysiphaceae).”