Following our guide to the tree squirrels of North America, we now present: the flying squirrels of North America! Until recently there were only 2 lonely species of flying squirrel in the US and Canada, but in 2017 a new cryptic species was discovered in the Pacific Northwest. Humboldt’s flying squirrel is physically indistinguishable from the northern flying squirrel, but they’re genetically distinct. They don’t hybridize, which is kind of weird because northern and southern…

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For North Americans, squirrels (particularly eastern greys) are probably the most frequently encountered wildlife species. They’re everywhere, and they’re super cute. But did you know there are many more species of this charismatic critter than those most likely hanging out in your yard or local park? That’s not even counting ground squirrels or flying squirrels. And, not all of them like hanging around humans as much as eastern grey or fox squirrels. AND—get this—not all…

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We’re super excited to unveil our latest adventure in artistic science communication, Evolutionary Tales! We loove creative writing. As much as we love drawing. And ecology & evolution, of course! Naturally our fondness for these activities culminated in a pet science communication project: a collection of fairy tales about science! Imagine the Three Little Pigs teaching you about genetic drift, or evil stepmothers embodying meiotic drive. The perceptive Goldilocks testing out new habitats, with the…

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Looking around a city, or a suburb, you might think that mammals are doing pretty well. There are pizza rats and egg roll squirrels, mice in the basement, rabbits in the garden, raccoons in the garbage bins, woodchucks under the shed, deer bounding over fences, maybe some skunks skulking around the yard. Yeah, mammals have it pretty good. That being said, it turns out human presence is creating unforeseen consequences for mammal evolution. A new…

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Body size might be an animal’s most important trait. Lots of things are correlated with body size. For example, we know that on average, bigger animals have lower metabolic rates, smaller litter sizes, and live longer. They tend to have larger home ranges, larger species ranges in general, and smaller population sizes. Bigger animals have proportionally more blood too. So, we would expect the numbers of cells in the blood to roughly scale with size……

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A cool new article is out in eLife about fruit fly mutants: more specifically the yellow ones. It’s open access, plus there’s a digest explaining what the team found in more detail for those non-geneticists out there. Check it out! The yellow gene influences Drosophila male mating success through sex comb melanization

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A follow up to our presentation guide, this guide is about something else close to our heart: posters. Access the PDF here.Download

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We love making posters and presentations, but apparently that’s not the case for everyone. (Weird, right?!) We made a guide to share our enthusiasm for the visual side of science. And now we’re posting it here! Hope it’s useful! A Scientist’s Guide to Making Presentations (PDF) Update: need poster-specific tips? See the second installation of our Scientist’s Guides here!

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Plants are pretty flexible when it comes to chromosome numbers. Whole genome duplications–aka, when a whole extra set of chromosomes are made by accident– is a major route by which plants evolve. Humans, by contrast, generally have 2 copies of each chromosome. If this same mutation were to happen in a human egg or sperm cell, it would nope outta there. Pretty normal day in the plant kingdom, though. Today’s infographic is about a hybrid…

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Evolution and adaptation to different environments seem like straightforward processes. If you treat bacteria to a low dose of antibiotics, chances are they’re going to evolve resistance. But this process isn’t as simple as it seems: different factors determine whether or not those bacteria will develop resistance. Our latest infographic deals with conditions when populations wouldn’t be able to evolve, and what this means for conservation (we’re not talking about antibiotic resistance today!). The paper in…

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