Tag: DNA

February 26, 2020

Fieldnote: Tracking mammal presence through soil DNA

Researchers are using trace residues that mammals leave in soil to better detect which species are present in a given area. “It was really cool yet challenging to use the...

February 10, 2020

JWM: Museums hold secrets of California’s vanished pronghorn

One hundred years ago, pronghorn roamed the Sonoran Desert in what is now the borderlands between Southern California and northern Baja California in Mexico. Today, they are gone from the...

January 13, 2020

JWM: Kentucky success provides recipe for elk reintroduction

Kentucky may have discovered the recipe for success when it set out to reintroduce elk to the state about 20 years ago, researchers found. The state brought in a large...

January 2, 2020

Biologists sequence every U.S., Canadian butterfly genome

Researchers say they have sequenced the genome of every butterfly species in the United States and Canada — what they are calling a “complete butterfly continent.” Biologists at the University...

October 21, 2019

Florida panther genome reveals higher genetic diversity

Bringing in Texas pumas in the mid-’90s reduced Florida panther inbreeding and increased the panther’s genetic diversity threefold, researchers found after sequencing the panther’s genome. The Florida panther (Puma concolor...

June 17, 2019

What can an Ice Age wolf head reveal about wolves today?

What can a severed wolf head from the Pleistocene tell us about wolves today? A local man in Siberia reportedly discovered the head last summer and pulled it from the...

November 21, 2018

DNA Sequencing to help conservation

The journal Nature is voicing support for a massive project to sequence the DNA of every plant and animal on earth. The Earth BioGenome Project launched earlier this month with...

September 21, 2018

DNA helps track ivory poachers

A team of researchers say they have a novel approach to tracking down elephant poachers, the New York Times reports. Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at...

June 22, 2018

Scientists set out to map genomes of 1.5 million species

An international network of biologists is embarking on a decade-long effort to map the genomes of over a million complex life forms in an effort to benefit wildlife research and...

April 5, 2018

Ravens turn evolution on its head

Two lineages of the common raven (Corvus corax) in western North America have been fusing for thousands of years, researchers found, in what they say is one of the first...