News

Birds use odor to identify other birds. Danielle Whittakers and her colleagues have shown that if the bacteria that produce the odor is altered, it could negatively impact a bird’s ability to communicate with other birds or find a mate.

Richard Lenski has been awarded the 2020 D.C. White Award by the American Society for Microbiology, the world’s oldest and largest life science organization, in recognition and honor of his distinguished accomplishments, not only in interdisciplinary research but in mentoring.

Zoology major, Joshua Simmonds, recounts his experiences as an intern at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. 

The electric pulses emitted by electric fish can be quite variable in their duration: and as it turns out the reason can be quite “shocking.” Jason Gallant has received a three-year, $680,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue work on a discovery that this variation may be due to unusual changes in a common protein called a potassium channel.

Fred Dyer was a co-author on a new paper published in The American Naturalist that explores how computers could begin to evolve learning in the same way as natural organisms did – with implications for many fields, including artificial intelligence.

Samuel Ayebare, a Ph.D. student in Integrative Biology and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior (EEBB) program, is the first MSU student to receive a prestigious Beinecke African Conservation Scholarship from the Wildlife Conservation Society.

By studying how fish regenerate fins, Ingo Braasch’s team pinpointed the genes and the mechanisms responsible that drive the regrowth.

Allison Sussman and Elise Zipkin show that conservation and construction decisions should rely on multiple approaches to determine waterbird “hotspots,” not just on one analysis method as is often done.