Drosera capensis (the Cape Sundew) is joining the flowering party. The small whitish flowers below the curved flower stalk of the sundew are from a species of terrestrial bladderwort.

Hey #forestry #Ecology #biology #GIS folks... any recommendation of a program/library/app to calculate canopy cover on tropical tree plantations? #GISChat

Our fingers wrinkle in water due to a loss of blood flow our nervous system causes, and (they think) this is because evolution-wise, this would've allowed early humans to grip things better when their hands were wet (fish, tools, etc).

https://www.popsci.com/science/why-do-fingers-wrinkle-in-water

Congratulations to the top 3 images from the Node–FocalPlane image competition!

1. "Cell-estial bloom" by Özge Özgüç

2. "Dancing actinotroch" by Allan Carrillo-Baltodano

3. "Who’s active?" by Julia Peloggia de Castro

@the_node @focalplane_jcs

Fungi are among the planet's most important organisms, yet continue to be overlooked in conservation strategies

https://theconversation.com/fungi-are-among-the-planets-most-important-organisms-yet-theyre-overlooked-in-conservation-strategies-250483

Could Sound Waves Be the Key to Cleaning Up Oil Spills?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/sound-waves #physics #science #chemistry #biology #astronomy #neet #space #quantumphysics #engineering #physicsfun

Sarracenia purpurea and its buddies are just hanging around waiting until it's warm enough to go outside.

We have to talk about #owl necks.

https://beaksandbones.substack.com/p/owls-head-rotation

If you'd like to get regular updates on scientific discoveries like this, subscribe to my newsletter for free!

https://beaksandbones.substack.com/

Malachite Sunbird (Nectarinia famosa). They're usually found in habitats with flowering plants in southern & eastern Africa. #birds #birdsofmastodon #nature #biology #ecology #photo #africa

Eclipse echoes: Study reveals surprising avian vocal patterns during solar eclipse

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-eclipse-echoes-reveals-avian-vocal.html

Read about an LLM internals. How it's not reasoning, how it's not doing math at all, and how you are fooled and how you can fool it.

https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/biology.html

If you prefer a quick TL;DR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wzOetb-D3w

Imo the only relevant #species definition for #deextintion is the ecological one. In other contexts this definition is absolutely silly, because it can't distinguish between a #bat and a #bird if they hunt #insects - it defines a species by their ecological #niche.

Under that definition, an elephant with hair is in fact a #mammoth because it's can live in tundra and serve as an umbrella species capable of shaping an entire #ecosystem, serving a unique role in it.

A #dire #wolf is not actually deextinct if it's not serving the ecosystem the way the OG dire wolf used to.
#biology #climate

Measuring Mucus by Dragging Dead Fish

A fish‘s mucus layer is critical; it protects from pathogens, reduces drag in the water, and, in some cases, protects against predators. But little is known about how mucus could affect terrestrial locomotion in species like the northern snakehead, which can breathe out of the water and move across land. So researchers explored the snakehead’s mucus layer by measuring the force required to drag them (and two other non-terrestrial species) across different surfaces.

The team tested the same, freshly euthanized fish twice: once with its mucus layer intact and again once the mucus was washed off. Unsurprisingly, the fish’s friction was much lower with its mucus. But they also found that the snakehead was slipperier than either the scaled carp or the scale-free catfish. The biologists suggest that the snakehead could have evolved a slipperier mucus to help it move more easily on land, thereby extending the distance it can cover.

As a fluid dynamicist, I think fish mucus sounds like a great new playground for the rheologists among us. (Image and research credit: F. Lopez-Chilel and N. Bressman; via PopSci)

For #academia #biology

I started a part-time job at NYMC sequencing core past Oct. PI here (Ravi Sachidanandam) didn't pay me until late Jan, and is now arguing I shouldn't be paid for earlier period since I wasn't present full-time.

And now it looks like 'official' job contract only covers work from late November onward and he was just lying about backpay.

I don't even care about the money - but I would like to get a warning out there about this lab. What would be a good way for this?

There's Now a Third Way to Inherit Traits That Isn’t Your DNA or RNA, Scientists Say

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a64380912/amyloid-inheritance-mechanism/

> And they discovered it completely by accident.

They realize how massive these things get right? One of the largest Dire Wolf fossils they've found is at #yellowstone. I've seen it. And I've also seen my fair share of wolves and the Dire makes it look like a Chihuahua. #science #biology https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/dire-wolves-return-after-13000-years

Live-cell labeling sheds light on how our DNA is packed and behaves in cells

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-cell-dna-cells.html

Silver-washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia) on a marigold plant. Silver-washed are found throughout much of Europe, extending eastward through Asia Minor, Russia, and into Japan. #insects #butterfly #photo #nature #biology

World’s smallest pacemaker is activated by light

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/03/worlds-smallest-pacemaker-is-activated-by-light/

"Our research identifies specific steps in embryogenesis that contribute to spina bifida," said senior study author Dr. Joseph Gleeson, a professor at Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine and the University of California, San Diego. "This is a major step forward in understanding why this condition occurs and how we might one day prevent it."

#genetics #research #science #biology #SpinaBifida

https://www.labroots.com/trending/cell-and-molecular-biology/28807/insights-causes-spina-bifida