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.
Individuals can benefit by varying their investment in offspring. The optimal amount of investment may vary in relation to both climatic conditions and social conditions (such as the number of carers for the offspring).
Why do organisms look the way they do? Why do they live where they do? Wy are some groups more diverse than others? These basic questions are often addressed at different scales using a particular set of methods.
The taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships of longhorn beetles have been debated for decades, with neither morphological nor molecular data reaching a consistent solution.