It’s a good thing for frog embryos to be able to hatch early. Suppose there’s a drought or some other environmental change that means the growing tadpoles would be better off in the water than in the egg. The timing of hatching is subject to cues from the environment for many species, but even among these flexible hatchers the red-eyed…
A recent study suggests that who we are might be more integrated with where we are than previously thought. “The built environment can restrict or promote spatial cognition, which can influence one’s self-hood,” the researchers explain. “Our spatial coordinates and our ‘selves’ are intertwined.” The fact that experience can shape individual differences, which in turn can affect the quality of…
When most wild animals first encounter humans, they respond as they would to any predator — by running, swimming or flying away. Over time, some species become more tolerant of humans’ presence, but the extent to which they do is largely driven by the type of environment in which the animals live and by the animal’s body size, according to…
An endangered monkey species in Tanzania is living in geographical pockets that are becoming isolated from one another. The situation, researchers say, is mostly driven by the monkeys’ proximity to villages and the deliberate burning of forests to make way for crops and pastures. An international team, led by Maria Jose Ruiz-Lopez, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon,…
Dramatic increases in exposure to toxic chemicals in the last four decades are threatening human reproduction and health, according to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), the first global reproductive health organization to take a stand on human exposure to toxic chemicals. The opinion was written by obstetrician-gynecologists and scientists from the major global, US, UK and Canadian…
Scientists at UC San Diego have discovered that planarians, commonly used in high-school biology labs to study regeneration and the primitive nervous system, are actually quite sophisticated when it comes to modeling the response of the developing human nervous system to potentially toxic chemicals. The researchers published their findings in the current issue of the journal Toxicological Sciences. “Because planarians…