zoology

In a chapter on cats, author Bethany Brookshire explores the thorny issue of felines that live freely.

In Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, I explore what it is that makes an animal a pest—and it has nothing to do with their behavior, but rather our own desires and beliefs about the natural world.

The ability to activate different sets of genes has likely helped the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis spread widely in amphibians, resulting in global population declines. 

This image took 4th place at the 2022 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.

Meet the grasshopper that has reproduced asexually for a quarter of a million years—without acquiring undue numbers of harmful mutations.

For too long, some scientists have acted like Gollums of the ivory tower, guarding precious study sites, model organisms, and even entire fields of inquiry.

Finding a creature in the wild that had been considered long gone brings hope—and quite a bit of uncertainty.

This image took the top prize at the 2022 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.

Sounds made by more than 50 vertebrates previously thought to be mute push back the origin of this type of communication by at least 100 million years, a study finds.

Small charges carried by individual insects can add up, a study finds, with larger swarms generating substantial electrical fields.

People with more carboxylic acids in their body odor are more attractive to mosquitoes, a study finds.

In the book's introduction, author Carol Gigliotti makes the case that intricate behavioral patterns can be just as important to conserve as species’ genomes.

When species disappear, more than their genomes are lost. The potential for their creative innovation to benefit ecosystems vanishes as well.

Nearly 50 million birds have been culled amid efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus, which continues to ravage the Northern Hemisphere.

The broken-wing display, in which birds fake being wounded to protect their nests from predators, is found across the avian phylogenetic tree, a study finds.

All multicellular creatures interact with bacteria, but some have taken the relationship to another level with highly specialized structures that house, feed, and exploit the tiny organisms.

Specialized structures in plants and animals help attract and mediate communication with bacterial symbionts.

A survey of more than 200 whale skulls has unveiled bursts of evolution over the past 50 million years.

Other winners of this year’s prizes include research on the physics of ducklings and the therapeutic potential of ice cream.

Australians are resorting to increasingly drastic measures to keep cockatoos out of their garbage bins.