Department of Biology
April 15, 2015
3-D printed blossoms a growing tool for ecology
![A hawk moth probes a flower with its proboscis.](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/04/04172424/hawkmoth-TILE-150x150.jpg)
3-D printing has been used to make everything from cars to medical implants. Now, University of Washington ecologists are using the technology to make artificial flowers, which they say could revolutionize our understanding of plant-pollinator interactions.
March 18, 2015
New Air Force center at UW learns from animals for better flight
![Yonatan Munk, a postdoctoral researcher in biology, studies how moths fly.](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/03/04173008/moth-research-150x150.jpg)
A new center at the University of Washington funded by the U.S. Air Force will focus on how elements in nature can help solve challenging engineering and technological problems related to building small, remotely operated aircraft.
January 15, 2015
Tiny plant fossils a window into Earth’s landscape millions of years ago
![](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/01/04174442/Patagonia-TILE-150x150.jpg)
An international team led by the University of Washington has discovered a way to determine the tree cover and density of trees, shrubs and bushes in locations over time based on clues in the cells of plant fossils preserved in rocks and soil.
November 6, 2014
Zebrafish stripped of stripes
![Sideview of fish](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/11/04175656/Adult-zebrafish-150x150.jpg)
Within weeks of publishing surprising new insights about how zebrafish get their stripes, University of Washington researchers now explain how to “erase” them.
October 3, 2014
Not stuff of musty museums: Enlist evolutionary biology against modern threats
![Full-size models of elephant, leopard, rhino on display](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/10/04180502/Animals-march-museaum-elephant-150x150.jpg)
Using evolutionary biology is one way to try to outwit evolution where it is happening too quickly and to perhaps find accommodations when evolution occurs too slowly.
September 23, 2014
Dying brain cells cue new brain cells to grow in songbird
![Sparrow perches among tree branches](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/09/04180646/Gambels-white-crowned-sparrow-featured-150x150.jpg)
Using a songbird as a model, scientists have described a brain pathway that replaces cells that have been lost naturally and not because of injury.
August 6, 2014
Penguins at risk world over, scientists urge new strategies
![](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/08/04181445/Penguin-two-chicks-150x150.jpg)
Scientists writing in the current issue of Conservation Biology call for marine protected areas and partially protected areas to help penguins cope.
June 26, 2014
Foul fumes derail dinner for hungry moths
![moth with flower and exhaust pipe](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/06/04182205/Pollinating-moth_exhaust-150x150.jpg)
New research on how pollinators find flowers when background odors are strong shows that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.
June 4, 2014
It’s not giant asparagus: Nine-foot agave showing off at botany greenhouse
![People gather around pot with plant that has tall flower spike](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/06/04182748/AgaveSugdenEwingSavolainen1-150x150.jpg)
Stop outside the botany greenhouse to see an agave plant that’s grown a 9-foot-plus flower spike and is about to bloom for the first time in 25 years.
May 21, 2014
Marine apprenticeships give UW undergrads role in animal-ancestor breakthrough
![Three people on beach with buckets](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/05/04183013/Shore-work-150x150.jpg)
Comb jellies – and not sponges – may lay claim as the earliest ancestors of animals, according to new research in Nature.
May 20, 2014
Shrub growth decreases as winter temps warm up
![Campbell Island, New Zealand, hillside covered with the shrub Dracophyllum.](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/05/04183110/Dracophyllum-on-Campbell-Island-Photo-by-Janet-Wilmshurst-150x150.jpg)
Many have assumed that warmer winters as a result of climate change would increase the growth of trees and shrubs because the growing season would be longer. But shrubs achieve less yearly growth when cold winter temperatures are interrupted by temperatures warm enough to trigger growth.
May 12, 2014
Improve grades, reduce failure – undergrads should tell profs ‘Don’t lecture me’
![Man talks with two rows of students in class auditorium](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/05/04183220/Freeman-and-students-discuss-150x150.jpg)
A significantly greater number of students fail science, engineering and math courses that are taught lecture-style than fail with active learning according to the largest analysis ever of studies comparing lecturing to active learning in undergraduate education
May 7, 2014
UW student briefs lawmakers on global land use, touts undergrad research
![Mollie Holmberg stands next to her poster](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/05/04183336/Holmberg-150x150.jpg)
At an event in Washington, D.C. a UW biology student presented her research into the global connections between consumers and goods that come from agriculture and forest production.
April 29, 2014
Benjamin Hall, Eric D’Asaro elected to National Academy of Sciences
![](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/04/04183522/National-Academy-of-Sciences-logo-150x150.jpg)
Benjamin Hall and Eric D’Asaro are among the 84 new members elected fellows the National Academy of Sciences.
April 10, 2014
Fruit flies, fighter jets use similar nimble tactics when under attack
![Close up of fruit fly](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/04/04183907/Fruit-fly-in-flight-150x150.jpg)
Get on your 3-D glasses for one of the animations of tiny fruit flies employing banked turns to evade attacks just like fighter jets.
March 26, 2014
Decline of natural history troubling for science, society
![Two people kneel by tide pool](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/03/04184125/Tidepool-field-work_teaching1-150x150.jpg)
Seventeen North American scientists outline the importance of natural science and call for a revitalization of the practice.
February 4, 2014
Fruit flies – fermented-fruit connoisseurs – are relentless party crashers
![Flies on banans and grapes](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/02/04185112/Original-fruit-fly-kitchen-fruit-20111228_0019Crop-150x150.jpg)
That fruit fly appearing moments after you poured that first glass of cabernet, has just used a poppy-seed-sized brain to conduct a finely-choreographed search and arrive in time for happy hour.
January 29, 2014
Deaths attributed directly to climate change cast pall over penguins
![Six penguin chicks stand under shrub](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/01/04185216/Chicks-at-ease-150x150.jpg)
Climate change is killing penguin chicks from the world’s largest colony of Magellanic penguins, not just indirectly but directly because of drenching rainstorms and heat.
December 19, 2013
Sinuous skeletons, glowing blue and crimson, leap from lab to art world
![Skeleton](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/12/04190203/bonnethead-Featured-image-150x150.jpg)
Fish “stripped” to their skeletons and stained for UW research are now part of an art exhibit at the Seattle Aquarium.
September 19, 2013
Mantas, devil rays butchered for apothecary trade now identifiable
![Side view of manata ray swimmming](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/09/04192037/manta-tile-150x150.jpg)
Dried filters from the mouths of filter-feeding rays started appearing in apothecary shops in recent years, but there’s been no way to know which of these gentle-natured rays was being slaughtered. Now scientists have discovered enough differences to identify the giant manta and eight devil rays using the dried filters.
July 30, 2013
Fifty years of ecological insights earn UW biologist international award
![Several many-legged starfish in water at base of kelp covered boulder](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/07/04193030/StarfishFeaturedImage-150x150.jpg)
Biologist Robert Paine has been awarded this year’s International Cosmos Prize that carries a cash award of about $408,000 and has previously gone to well-known conservationists such as David Attenborough and the leaders behind the Census of Marine Life project.
July 9, 2013
Biceps bulge, calves curve, 50-year-old assumptions muscled aside
!["We Can Do It!" poster for Westinghouse, closely associated with Rosie the Riveter.](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/07/04193418/rosie-tile-150x150.jpg)
The basics of how a muscle generates power remain the same: Filaments of myosin tugging on filaments of actin shorten, or contract, the muscle – but the power doesn’t just come from what’s happening straight up and down the length of the muscle, as has been assumed for 50 years. The rest of the force should be credited to the lattice work of filaments as it expands outward in bulging muscle – whether in a body builder’s buff biceps or the calves of a sinewy marathon runner.
June 21, 2013
Airborne gut action primes wild chili pepper seeds
![Bird sits on brach had red chili pepper in beak](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/06/04193700/Bird-with-chili-pepper-150x150.jpg)
Seeds gobbled by birds and dispersed across the landscape tend to fare better than those that fall near parent plants. Now it turns out it might not just be the trip through the air that’s important, but also the inches-long trip through the bird.
May 7, 2013
Guggenheim names Braester, Daniel as fellows
![statue of George Washington on UW campus](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2012/10/04204128/george2-tile-150x150.jpg)
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation names 173 fellows for 2013.
April 29, 2013
Dinosaur predecessors gain ground in wake of world’s biggest biodiversity crisis — with photo gallery
![Lizard-like animal with stripes stands in forested area](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/04/04195604/Asilisaurus-tile-150x150.jpg)
Newly discovered fossils reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs taking hold in Tanzania and Zambia, many millions of years before dinosaur relatives were seen in the fossil record elsewhere on Earth.
April 17, 2013
A key to mass extinctions could boost food, biofuel production
![A hydrogen sulfide-treated dwarf wheat seed next to an untreated seed.](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/04/04195846/hydrogensulfide-tile-150x150.jpg)
A substance implicated in several mass extinctions could greatly enhance plant growth, with implications for global food supplies biofuels, new UW research shows.
April 2, 2013
Book focuses on 1969 fight to save America’s premier fossil beds
![Five people gather around the base of a large petrified stump twice as tall as they are](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/04/04200316/Leopold_Ch03_06_BigStump-150x150.jpg)
Book Q and A: To allow buildings on 34 million year-old fossils would be like using the Dead Sea Scrolls to wrap fish in, proclaimed the lawyer defending land that would eventually become Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.
March 4, 2013
‘True grit’ erodes assumptions about evolution
![Large cliff of white ashy material surrounded by rock cliffs when two researchers working the face](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/03/04201412/Fieldwork-at-Gran-Barranca-Argentina-150x150.jpg)
New work in Argentina where scientists had previously thought Earth’s first grasslands emerged 38 million years ago, shows the area at the time covered with tropical forests rich with palms, bamboos and gingers. Grit and volcanic ash in those forests could have caused the evolution of teeth in horse-like animals that scientists mistakenly thought were adaptations in response to emerging grasslands.
February 19, 2013
Mutant champions save imperiled species from almost-certain extinction
![Gloved had holds plate with dozes of tiny wells of reddish orange hue](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/02/04201703/E.-coli-antibiotic-plate-150x150.jpg)
Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. UW scientists consider the genetic underpinnings of such evolutionary rescue.
February 18, 2013
Mussels cramped by environmental factors
![Drawing of wave with menancing face and startled mussels on shore](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2013/02/04201748/IllustrationLogo-for-Emily-Carringtons-lab-copy-150x150.jpg)
The fibrous threads helping mussels stay anchored are more prone to snap when ocean temperatures climb higher than normal.
December 26, 2012
Piranha kin wielded dental weaponry even T. rex would have admired — with video
![Head, teeth and ribs of a piranha skeleton](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2012/12/04202737/PiranhaSkelaton-150x150.jpg)
Taking into consideration size, an ancient relative of piranhas weighing about 20 pounds delivered a bite with more force than prehistoric whale-eating sharks or – even – Tyrannosaurus rex.
December 17, 2012
Plumes across the Pacific deliver thousands of microbial species to West Coast
![Mount Bachelor observatory.](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2012/12/04202902/MtBachelor_observatory-in-the-sky-150x150.jpg)
Microorganisms – 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago – are hitching rides in the upper troposphere from Asia.
December 6, 2012
Moths wired two ways to take advantage of floral potluck
![](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2012/12/04203153/manduca-tile-150x150.jpg)
Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator’s buffet of flowers because of two distinct “channels” in their brains, scientists have discovered.
December 4, 2012
Scientists find oldest dinosaur – or closest relative yet
![Artist's drawing of what Nyasasaurus parringtoni looked like](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2012/12/04203220/Nyasasaurus-tile-150x150.jpg)
Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs.
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