Communication requires a sender, a receiver, and a message. But communication doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Often, there are unintended receivers listening in and unintentional messages getting across. Illustrating just how complicated sending a message can be is the example of the túngara frog (Physalaemus pustulosus). Male túngara frogs, native to Central and South America, gather at night in…
They went boating alone without life vests and gave no thought to shimmying up very tall coconut trees. And although they were only figments of a writer’s imagination, the fictional adventurers helped provide new insight into how humans, especially men, gauge the threat of a potential adversary. Those reading the stories — dozens of residents of a small village on…
A new study has found that species living together are not forced to evolve differently to avoid competing with each other, challenging a theory that has held since Darwin’s Origin of Species. By focusing on ovenbirds, one of the most diverse bird families in the world, the Oxford University-led team conducted the most in-depth analysis yet of the processes causing…
Lemurs can be sneaky. They’ll wait until a human’s back is turned to take a treat. But a new study shows that in the same situation, they don’t seem to realize that making a racket will draw unwanted attention. Joel Bray, Christopher Krupenye, and Brian Hare of Duke University wanted to see if ring-tailed lemurs could take the perspective of others.…
ISG faculty, Christina Palmer and Janet Sinsheimer, along with ISG associate, Patrick Boudreault, and their colleagues, have published a paper titled “Using a social marketing framework to evaluate recruitment of a prospective study of genetic counseling and testing for the deaf community” in BMC Medical Research Methodology. ABSTRACT: Background Recruiting deaf and hard-of-hearing participants, particularly sign language-users, for genetics health service research…
UCLA biologists reported last year on the evolution of 129 primate faces in species from Central and South America. This research team now reports on the faces of 139 Old World African and Asian primate species that have been diversifying over some 25 million years. With these Old World monkeys and apes, the species that are more social have more…