News

Monarch butterflies are famous for their annual migrations, but not all migrate. In recent years, more and more monarchs have been living and breeding year-round in California’s Bay Area, thanks in part to the growing presence of non-native milkweeds in urban gardens.

Nobody knew that badgers were inhabiting an ecosystem near Davis until recently — and finding them is the kind of discovery that would excite any seasoned biologist. But that’s not who identified the rare species just last year. It was spotted by undergraduates in Laci Gerhart’s popular “Wild Davis” course (EVE 16), who have also had rare glimpses of ringtails and other species.

Graham Coop, professor of evolution and ecology and director of the Center for Population Biology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his exceptional contribution to his field. Coop is one of nearly 250 new members announced by the academy on April 23.

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.

Platforms such as iNaturalist and eBird encourage people to observe and document nature, but how accurate is the ecological data that they collect?

In a new study published in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice on March 28, UC Davis researchers show that citizen science data from iNaturalist and eBird can reliably capture known seasonal patterns of bird migration in Northern California and Nevada — from year-round residents such as California Scrub-Jays, to transient migrants such as the Western Tanager and Pectoral Sandpiper.

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.

Their work was published Feb. 26 in Nature.

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.

The work of 12 early-career faculty members will get a boost as this year’s class of Hellman Fellows. They will receive grants ranging from $16,000 to $49,000, for a total of $330,000 awarded.

Their work covers a wide range of topics, from the educational experiences of Venezuelan immigrants to a wireless device that monitors for seizures.

You have likely not spent much time thinking about the uterus of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. But then, neither have most scientists, even though Drosophila is one of the most thoroughly studied lab animals. Now a team of biologists at the University of California, Davis, has taken the first deep look at the Drosophila uterus and found some surprises, which could have implications not just for understanding insect reproduction and potentially, pest control, but also for understanding fertility in humans.