Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

"This book was originally published as an issue of Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society B; Biological sciences (volume 363; number 1496) but has been materially changed and updated"--Title ...

If we look across the whole of the mammal branch of the tree of life, we find there are many groups of mammals that have evolved testicles of all different sizes. In almost all these separate cases, ...

Animals from completely different branches of the tree of life, such as insects, worms and vertebrates, independently evolved similar genetic solutions to survive on land, according to a new study ...

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal's body carries an identical genome yet ...

The story of primates is a tale of incredible variety and ancient roots, told through the lens of science, DNA, and time itself. These creatures, ranging from massive gorillas to tiny mouse lemurs, ...

Life depends on genes being switched on and off at exactly the right time. Even the simplest living organisms do this, but usually over short distances across the DNA sequence, with the on/off switch ...

A new study argues that human culture — including religion, politics and war — influences how wildlife evolves in cities. In Los Angeles, factors such as policing, zoning, and local values and ...