Some reef fish have the unexpected ability to move their jaws from side to side, biologists at the University of California, Davis have discovered. This ability – which is rare among vertebrate animals – allows these fish to feed rapidly and efficiently on algae growing on rocks. The work is published May 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It’s not what you do, it’s how readily you do it. Rapid evolutionary change might have more to do with how easily a key innovation can be gained or lost rather than with the innovation itself, according to new work by biologists at the University of California, Davis, who studied how teeth in certain fishes evolved in response to food sources and habitats.
A mussel bed along Northern California’s Dillon Beach is as healthy and biodiverse as it was about 80 years ago, when two young students surveyed it shortly before Pearl Harbor was attacked and one was sent to fight in World War II.
The genetics behind the alternating sexes of walnut trees has been revealed by biologists at the University of California, Davis. The research, published Jan. 3 in Science, reveals a mechanism that has been stable in walnuts and their ancestors going back 40 million years — and which has some parallels to sex determination in humans and other animals.
Below is a list of science communication resources both on and off campus. This is not an exhaustive list and if you have more to add please email esuglia@ucdavis.edu. For tips on how to communicate science effectively, check out this blog post by Easton and me.
In this post, I will point to several teaching resources specific to ecology and evolution. However, principles from teaching in STEM more generally also apply. Therefore, I provide general teaching resources. Most of these resources are focused on teaching at the high school or undergraduate level. Lastly, I provide teaching resources that are specific to UC Davis. This page will be updated periodically.
Population Biology PhD candidates Kyle Christie and Marshall McMunn were honored for their work as Professors for the Future fellows at the program’s annual symposium. Along with Kyle and Marshall, an additional 12 fellows from a variety of disciplines were also honored.
