Spring isn't all it's quacked up to be. Pollen levels are high, magpies are terrorising cyclists and pedestrians alike, and protective duck parents are in attack mode.
Our new research unites genomic sequencing and museum collections to reconstruct the evolutionary tale of native rodents, including many extinct and elusive species – and they have a fascinating origin story.
If swooping season strikes fear into your heart, you're not alone. Fortunately, Dr Chaminda Ratnayake from the ANU Research School of Biology has the intel you need to navigate the great outdoors this spring.
To measure the speed of adaptive evolution in the wild, we studied 19 populations of birds and mammals over several decades. We found they were evolving at twice to four times the speed suggested by earlier work.
How animals adapt to environmental stress has long been of concern. Studies looking at effects of resource limitation often focus on food. Water is also essential for life and can often be limiting in the environment.
There is great variation in how individuals interact with each other. Variation in sociality has been argued to reflect adaptations to the environment, but the exact links between local conditions and social behaviors are often unclear.
I’ll share some of the latest data on animal movement around the planet. I will highlight how this helps us to preserve biodiversity, to secure our global food supplies, to anticipate pandemics and potentially to predict natural disasters.