Imagine, like a young Darwin on the Beagle, you took an ocean voyage to observe the natural history of the world. If you were to survey the great predators of the sea, you might notice a curious pattern: near tropical shorelines, "cold-blooded" sharks and bony... click to read more

Picture yourself at the seaside, at Monterey Bay in California. The sun is bright. There's a fresh breeze; the water is smooth and blue... Wait - what's that hammering noise down by the rocks? A sea otter in the water holds a mussel between its... click to read more

In 1859, an English settler named Thomas Austin decided to import 24 rabbits from England to Australia so he could hunt on his property. He could have not been more successful, and by 1910, hundreds of millions of rabbits covered the entire continent. Thomas' success,... click to read more

The whales, dolphins, and porpoises (generally called "cetaceans") that we know today are fully aquatic mammals, spending their entire life in the water. Whereas the forelimbs of these hydrodynamic animals are transformed into flippers, mostly used for steering, their hind limbs are highly reduced, and... click to read more

Discussions about the evolution of multicellularity tend to focus on animals and plants, but there have actually been at least 25 independent origins of multicellularity in the history of life on this planet, including fungi, slime molds, several groups of algae, cyanobacteria and myxobacteria. So... click to read more