Department of Biology
October 24, 2019
New fossil trove documents recovery of life on Earth after dinosaur-killing asteroid impact
Scientists have discovered an extraordinary collection of fossils that reveal in detail how life recovered after a catastrophic event: the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
October 15, 2019
Piranha fish swap old teeth for new simultaneously
With the help of new technologies, a team led by the University of Washington has confirmed that piranhas — and their plant-eating cousins, pacus — lose and regrow all the teeth on one side of their face multiple times throughout their lives. How they do it may help explain why the fish go to such efforts to replace their teeth.
October 2, 2019
Abigail Swann on Science News’ list of 10 young scientists to watch
The University of Washington’s Abigail Swann is honored by Science News on its list of 10 promising early- and mid-career scientists.
Inspired by Northern clingfish, researchers make a better suction cup
A University of Washington team inspired by the clingfish’s suction power set out to develop an artificial suction cup that borrows from nature’s design. Their prototype actually performed better than the clingfish.
September 10, 2019
Tides don’t always flush water out to sea, study shows
Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Strathclyde report that, in Willapa Bay in Washington state, the water washing over the tidal flats during high tides is largely the same water that washed over the flats during the previous high tide. This “old” water has not been mixed in with “new” water from deeper parts of the bay or the open Pacific Ocean, and has different chemical and biological properties, such as lower levels of food for creatures within the tide flats.
July 18, 2019
Scientists discover how the mosquito brain integrates diverse sensory cues to locate a host to bite
A team, led by researchers at the University of Washington, has discovered how the female mosquito brain integrates visual and olfactory signals to identify, track and hone in on a potential host for her next blood meal: After the mosquito’s olfactory system detects certain chemical cues, the mosquito uses her visual system to scan her surroundings for certain shapes and fly toward them, presumably associating those shapes with potential hosts.
June 20, 2019
Mammals and their relatives thrived, diversified during so-called ‘Age of Dinosaurs,’ researchers show
Old myths state that, during the time of the dinosaurs, mammals and their relatives were small and primitive. But new research shows that, during the time of the dinosaurs, mammals and their relatives actually underwent two large ecological radiations, diversifying into climbing, gliding and burrowing forms with a variety of diets.
May 23, 2019
Hot spots in rivers that nurture young salmon ‘flicker on and off’ in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region
Chemical signatures imprinted on tiny stones that form inside the ears of fish show that two of Alaska’s most productive salmon populations, and the fisheries they support, depend on the entire watershed.
May 2, 2019
Bats evolved diverse skull shapes due to echolocation, diet
In a paper published May 2 in Nature Communications, a University of Washington team reports that two major forces have shaped bat skulls over their evolutionary history — echolocation and diet — generating a huge diversity of skull shapes across 1,300 bat species today.
April 30, 2019
Flowering plants, new teeth and no dinosaurs: New study sheds light on the rise of mammals
A new study published April 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified three factors critical in the rise of mammal communities since they first emerged during the Age of Dinosaurs: the rise of flowering plants; the evolution of tribosphenic molars in mammals; and the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, which reduced competition between mammals and other vertebrates in terrestrial ecosystems.
March 18, 2019
Information School to welcome high school students March 19 for ‘MisInfo Day’ – from ‘Calling BS’ faculty duo
The UW Information School is taking a leading role in helping people better navigate this era of increasing online fakery and falsehood. On March 19, the school will welcome 200-some Seattle-area high school students for “MisInfo Day,” a daylong workshop on how to navigate the misinformation landscape, from Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, the faculty duo behind “Calling BS in the Age of Big Data.”
March 4, 2019
Fake faces: UWs ‘Calling BS’ duo opens new website asking ‘Which face is real?’
A new website from the UW’s Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, the duo behind the popular “Calling BS” class, asks viewers to choose which of two realistic face photos is real and which is a complete fake.
February 13, 2019
Parents don’t pick favorites, at least if you’re a Magellanic penguin
Researchers at the University of Washington wanted to know how Magellanic penguin parents in South America balance the dietary demands of multiple chicks. As they report in a paper published Jan. 23 in the journal Animal Behaviour, when a Magellanic penguin parent returns to its nest with fish, the parent tries to feed each of its two chicks equal portions of food, regardless of the youngsters’ differences in age or size.
January 31, 2019
Iguana-sized dinosaur cousin discovered in Antarctica, shows how life at the South Pole bounced back after mass extinction
Scientists have just discovered a dinosaur relative that lived in Antarctica 250 million years ago. The iguana-sized reptile’s genus name, Antarctanax, means “Antarctic king.”
January 2, 2019
The number of single male Magellanic penguins is rising at this breeding colony. Here’s why.
Female Magellanic penguins are more likely to die at sea as juveniles, which has caused a skewed sex ratio of nearly three adult males to every female, as well as population decline of more than 40 percent since 1987 at one of their largest breeding colonies — Punta Tombo in Argentina.
How economic theory and the Netflix Prize could make research funding more efficient
In a paper published Jan. 2 in PLOS Biology, two scientists at the University of Washington and North Carolina State University use the economic theory of contests to illustrate how the competitive grant-application system has made the pursuit of research funding inefficient and unsustainable — and that alternative methods, such as a partial lottery to award grants, could relieve pressure on professors and free up time for research.
December 13, 2018
Hark! UW talents — on page and disc — for the good Dawgs on your holiday shopping list
As the year comes to a close and festivities abound, some UW faculty creations can make great gifts for the thinking Dawg on your giving list.
December 12, 2018
Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and attendance with later school start time, researchers find
In 2016, Seattle Public Schools pushed back the start times for the district’s 18 high schools by 55 minutes, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. And as hoped, teenagers used the extra time to sleep in.
November 7, 2018
After a bad winter in the ocean, female Magellanic penguins suffer most, study shows
Researchers from the University of Washington have shown how Magellanic penguins fare during the winter months when they spend months at sea feeding. They have discovered that oceanographic features are more likely to negatively impact the body conditions of Magellanic penguin females, but not males, when the penguins return to their nesting grounds in spring.
October 8, 2018
Awards to UW affiliate professor recognize career of conservation and research on penguins
Pablo García Borboroglu, president of the Global Penguin Society and a UW affiliate associate professor of biology, has won the Whitley Gold Award and the National Geographic/Buffett Award for Leadership in Conservation, as well as accolades from the Argentine National Congress, for his research and advocacy for penguin conservation.
October 1, 2018
High CO2 levels cause plants to thicken their leaves, which could worsen climate change effects, researchers say
When levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise, most plants do something unusual: They thicken their leaves. Now two University of Washington scientists have shown that this reaction by plants will actually worsen climate change by making the global “carbon sink” contributed by plants was less productive.
September 24, 2018
Burst of morning gene activity tells plants when to flower
For angiosperms — or flowering plants — one of the most important decisions facing them each year is when to flower. It is no trivial undertaking. To flower, they must cease vegetative growth and commit to making those energetically expensive reproductive structures that will bring about the next generation. Knowledge of this process at the…
September 19, 2018
DNA testing of illegal ivory seized by law enforcement links multiple ivory shipments to same dealers
The international trade in elephant ivory has been illegal since 1989, yet African elephant numbers continue to decline. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature cited ivory poaching as a primary reason for a staggering loss of about 111,000 elephants between 2005 and 2015 — leaving their total numbers at an estimated 415,000….
September 7, 2018
New Life Sciences Building is a nexus for modern-age teaching and research at the University of Washington
The University of Washington today opened the doors to a new Life Sciences Building that will transform learning, teaching and research for generations.
The $171 million Life Sciences complex includes seven floors and 207,000 square feet that encourages and makes possible team-oriented science. Designed by Perkins+Will and built by Skanska, the building encompasses a 187,000-square-foot research and teaching facility and a 20,000-square-foot research greenhouse with UW plant collections.
June 27, 2018
To tell the sex of a Galápagos penguin, measure its beak, researchers say
In a paper published April 5 in the journal Endangered Species Research, scientists at the University of Washington announced that, for a Galápagos penguin, beak size is nearly a perfect indicator of whether a bird is male or female.
June 15, 2018
Study: Undergrad research experiences make a noticeable difference
A new analysis suggests the value of structured research programs for undergraduates extends to society as a whole by encouraging participants to seek advanced degrees in scientific and technological fields.
May 17, 2018
Washington Research Foundation grant brings on four new biology faculty just in time for new Life Sciences Building
With the grand opening of the new $171 million Life Sciences Building just months away, it’s time to fill the building with faculty. That was the idea behind a $3 million Washington Research Foundation (WRF) grant to hire four biology professors. It’s called a cluster hire and will help maintain the University of Washington’s leading reputation in primary research and life sciences.
May 15, 2018
Forest loss in one part of US can harm trees on the opposite coast
If an entire forest dies, new research shows, it has ricocheting effects in the atmosphere that can affect vegetation on the other side of the country.
May 7, 2018
Stomata — the plant pores that give us life — arise thanks to a gene called MUTE, scientists report
New research in plants shows that a gene called MUTE is required for the formation of stomata — the tiny pores that are critical for gas exchange, including releasing the oxygen gas that we breathe.
April 10, 2018
UW’s Samuel Wasser receives prestigious Albert Schweitzer Medal
A University of Washington professor has been awarded the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Medal for his work for developing noninvasive tools for monitoring human impacts on wildlife. Samuel K. Wasser was honored in a ceremony in Washington, D.C., Tuesday evening. The award was presented by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.
March 28, 2018
Decade of fossil collecting in Africa gives new perspective on Triassic period, emergence of dinosaurs
A University of Washington-led project spanning countries, years and institutions has attempted to reconstruct what the southern end of the world looked like during the Triassic period, 252 to 199 million years ago.
February 7, 2018
Fruit bat’s echolocation may work like sophisticated surveillance sonar
High-speed recordings of Egyptian fruit bats in flight show that instead of using a primitive form of echolocation, these animals actually use a technique recently developed by humans for surveillance and navigation.
January 25, 2018
If you swat mosquitoes, they may learn to avoid your scent
In a published Jan. 25 in Current Biology, University of Washington researchers report that mosquitoes can learn to associate a particular odor with an unpleasant mechanical shock akin to being swatted. As a result, they’ll avoid that scent the next time.
January 22, 2018
Lab-made hormone may reveal secret lives of plants
By developing a synthetic version of the plant hormone auxin and an engineered receptor to recognize it, University of Washington biology professor Keiko Torii and her colleagues are poised to uncover plants’ inner workings, raising the possibility of a new way to ripen fruits such as strawberries and tomatoes.
January 17, 2018
Scale-eating fish adopt clever parasitic methods to survive
A small group of fishes — possibly the world’s cleverest carnivorous grazers — feeds on the scales of other fish in the tropics. A team led by biologists at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories is trying to understand these scale-feeding fish and how this odd diet influences their body evolution and behavior.
December 3, 2017
Kim Nasmyth — a UW postdoctoral alumnus — wins Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for discoveries in cell biology, genetics
Kim Nasmyth, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Oxford and former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, is one of five recipients of the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Nasmyth and other prize recipients were honored by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation at a ceremony December 3 at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
November 7, 2017
With climate change, Mount Rainier floral communities could ‘reassemble’ with new species relationships, interactions
An unseasonably warm, dry summer on Mount Rainier in 2015 caused subalpine wildflowers to change their bloom times and form ‘reassembled’ communities, with unknown consequences for species interactions among wildflowers, pollinators and other animals.
September 25, 2017
Group project? Taking turns, working with friends may improve grades
It has become an almost essential element of academic life, from college lecture halls to elementary classrooms: the group assignment. Dreaded by some, loved by others, group projects typically aim to build teamwork and accountability while students learn about a topic. But depending on the assignment and the structure of the groups, a project…
August 24, 2017
Scientists to create digital encyclopedia of 3-D vertebrate specimens
A $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant will daylight thousands of specimens from their museum shelves by CT scanning 20,000 vertebrates and making these data-rich, 3-D images available online to researchers, educators, students and the public. The University of Washington is a partner institution contributing most of the fish and bat scans.
August 10, 2017
Public has rare opportunity to view work on T. rex skull
Starting Aug. 12, the public can watch fossil preparation of the University of Washington Burke Museum’s Tyrannosaurus rex skull “live.”
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