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 ...

On Sept. 17, researchers reported the formal identification of Leopardus tilcayo, a small wild cat from Bolivia’s Yungas cloud forests. The study, published in Current Biology, marks the first ...

Climate change is rapidly altering our environment—and posing major challenges for many animal species. Whether they can adapt depends largely on their genetic diversity. An international study ...

Animal social behavior is an extremely complex phenomenon that is shaped by evolution. Animals, whether social bird species or solitary hunters, have an extremely wide range of social behaviours.

Madagascar began rebuilding a giant tortoise population in 2018 with only 12 founder animals at the Anjajavy Reserve in the north-west of the country. The small group faced an important challenge ...

In five cases where vertebrates evolved monogamy, the same changes in gene expression occurred each time. In many non-monogamous species, females provide all or most of the offspring care. In ...

How did horses become some of the greatest athletes in the animal kingdom? Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine may have found the answer, pinpointing a genetic mutation and evolutionary process that ...

An understanding of the origin and dynamics of heritable genetic variation within classical animal breeding programs is needed to provide the context for understanding the contributions and concerns ...

Mammals, for instance, differ dramatically in their maximal lifespans—from the tiny forest shrew, which lives only one or two years, to the bowhead whale, capable of living for more than 200 years.

Visit NAP.edu/10766 to get more information about this book, to buy it in print, or to download it as a free PDF. With a growing human population and rising living standards, demand for animal-derived ...