Biology

Viruses do not encounter a blank biological landscape when they infect humans. They meet an immune system shaped by thousands...

The world’s fastest-growing class of weight-loss medicines has reached a critical crossroads: millions of women of reproductive age are now...

Smithsonian researchers have reconstructed the most comprehensive evolutionary map yet of Hawaii’s honeycreepers, a spectacular group of birds whose rapid...

Moving an outdoor cat indoors may be far less disruptive than many owners fear, according to a new study from...

A Sacred Feather Could Help Save One of the World’s Rarest Cockatoos On Seram Island in Indonesia, an endangered cockatoo...

A Bonnethead Shark’s Unusual Head Shape Is Not What Scientists Thought For decades, the bonnethead shark’s distinctive shovel-shaped head has...

Snakes may be among nature’s most successful evolutionary experiments, but their origin has never followed a simple script. Today, more...

Butterflies are often treated as symbols of beauty, but their ecological importance is far more consequential. Because they respond quickly...

Intensive use of anthelmintic drugs is reshaping parasite populations in cattle, and a new study from Argentina has captured that...

A plant’s first steps into a new habitat can leave a molecular footprint far deeper than scientists once imagined. A...

A brief recording of ordinary speech may carry far more neurological information than clinicians can hear by ear alone. In...

An international team of scientists has described seven new species of diamond frogs from Madagascar, revealing that the island’s secretive...

Cells across the eukaryotic tree of life appear to rely on a remarkably ancient system for switching genes on, while...

More than 100 shallow lakes extending across roughly 1,000 kilometers of coastline in southern Brazil and Uruguay could become one...

A small study of orphaned grizzly bears released into the wild has raised troubling questions about whether conventional rehabilitation methods...

A new mathematical study of competing populations suggests that winning the evolutionary race is not determined by reproductive fitness alone....

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), an umbrella term for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is becoming an increasingly significant public-health challenge...

The brain is increasingly being understood not as an isolated command center, but as part of a continuously communicating biological...

The blood vessels running through muscle and bone may be more than passive delivery routes. They could be the central...

For more than a century, the South African butterfly lilies of the genus Wachendorfia have challenged botanists with a striking...