Journal Club

Highlighting recently published papers selected by Academy members

Category Archives: Journal Club

Deep-sea mussels still show biological rhythms tracking sunlight, tides

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Like many land animals, marine organisms follow daily and seasonal clocks—in the water, those clocks are set by the cadence of the sun and the moon. But researchers hadn’t known if deep-sea creatures also exhibit biological rhythms, tucked away in … Continue reading →

Future choices may be guided by our memories of past ones

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Jill Sakai

When it comes to making choices, past decisions may play a surprisingly large role. The traditional view of decision-making is that our choices are guided by what we remember about the outcomes of previous choices we’ve made. But in recent … Continue reading →

Seasonality shapes coevolution of parasites and hosts

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Parasites and their hosts coevolve in an arms race influenced by environmental conditions. Seasonal change, for example, can shape the course of evolution, but precisely how has been something of a mystery. A recent study used lab experiments and mathematical … Continue reading →

Country-level assessment hides big variations in soy’s carbon footprint

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Jyoti Madhusoodanan

Analysts usually estimate a crop’s carbon footprint based on country-level factors. But that formulation isn’t adequate, according to a new analysis of soy exports from Brazil. Published in Global Environmental Change, the study tracked soy from specific production sites in … Continue reading →

Snake venom evolved in fits and spurts

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Amy McDermott

The cocktail of toxins in snake venom experienced constant change with pulses of rapid evolution over the last 60 million years, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Venom, the researchers report, has changed … Continue reading →

Categories: Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club | Tagged diversification, phylogenetics, RNA expression, snake, speciation, toxin, venom | Leave a comment

Trends in conservation funding track popular narratives about the illegal wildlife trade

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Trends in conservation funding are changing, according to a recent study in World Development. “We see a shift toward funding conservation work that’s increasingly about combatting wildlife trafficking,” says coauthor Jared Margulies, a human-environment geographer at the University of Alabama … Continue reading →

In plea for face masks, researchers visualize how speech sends fluid droplets flying

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Carolyn Beans

As COVID-19 ravaged Wuhan, China, in January, scientists remained unsure how the virus was spreading so rapidly. Biophysicist Adriaan Bax, chatting over dinner with his linguist wife Ingrid Pufahl, started to suspect that the saliva we project as we speak … Continue reading →

Neurons in the hippocampus can make several different maps of the same environment

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Nestled deep in the brain, the hippocampus is the seat of spatial cognition. Specialized hippocampal neurons fire in consistent patterns thought to construct mental maps that help us navigate the world—in general, researchers believed there was one map for every … Continue reading →

Categories: Journal Club | Neuroscience | Tagged hippocampus, map, navigation, neuron, place cell | Leave a comment

Fluid dynamics work hints at whether spoken word can spread COVID-19

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Carolyn Beans

As of April 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is advising that everyone—sick or healthy—wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Recent research on how fluids travel from our respiratory tracts when we sneeze, speak, or … Continue reading →

Variation in a single gene increases plant yield in groups but not in pairs

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Carolyn Beans

Groups of diverse plant species often produce more seeds than monocultures. But whether plants ramp up yield in response to genetically distinct, direct neighbors, as opposed to a broader neighborhood of diverse plants, remains an open question in ecology. “It’s … Continue reading →