News
Jun 03, 2021
Penn State biologist and colleagues receive $4M to identify heat-tolerant corals
An international team that includes Penn State biologist Iliana Baums has been awarded a $4 million grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation to identify corals that are naturally resilient to climate change. This is one of four newly funded projects supported by the foundation that are focused on the conservation and restoration of coral reefs in the context of the climate crisis.
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May 28, 2021
Reef-building corals and microscopic algae within their cells evolve together
The microscopic algae that live inside and provide nutrients to their reef-building coral hosts may be evolving in tandem with the corals they inhabit, so each partner is fine-tuned to meet one another’s needs. A new study by Penn State biologists reveals that genetic differences within a species of these microalgal symbionts correspond to the coral species they inhabit, a discovery that could have implications for the conservation of these endangered corals.
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May 27, 2021
Widespread coral-algae symbioses endured historical climate changes
One of the most important and widespread reef-building corals, known as cauliflower coral, exhibits strong partnerships with certain species of symbiotic algae, and these relationships have persisted through periods of intense climate fluctuations over the last 1.5 million years, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.
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May 17, 2021
Maternal stress during pregnancy may shorten lifespans of male lizard offspring
Mother fence lizards that experience stress during pregnancy give birth to male offspring with shortened telomeres, or bits of non-coding DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes, according to a Penn State-led study.
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Mar 18, 2021
Ottar Bjørnstad elected to Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters
Ottar N. Bjørnstad, distinguished professor of entomology and biology and J. Lloyd & Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair of Epidemiology at Penn State, has been elected to the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters. Bjørnstad was recommended as a result of his significant contributions to the fields of population ecology and quantitative epidemiology.
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Mar 03, 2021
Wolf social group dynamics matter for infectious disease spread, models suggest
By modeling wolves in Yellowstone National Park, researchers have discovered that how a population is organized into social groups affects the spread of infectious diseases within the population. The findings may be applicable to any social species and could be useful in the protection of endangered species that suffer from disease outbreaks.
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Mar 01, 2021
Unique study of isolated bobcat population confirms accuracy of extinction model
The reintroduction of 32 bobcats to an island off the coast of Georgia more than three decades ago created an ideal experiment to examine the accuracy of a genetic-modeling technique that predicts extinction of isolated wildlife populations.
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Feb 18, 2021
Silencing the alarm
An enzyme in the saliva of certain insects prevents their food plants from warning neighboring plants of an attack.
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Feb 04, 2021
The business of bees
The economic value of insect pollination services is much higher than previously thought in the U.S., new research finds.
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Feb 02, 2021
Summer weather conditions influence winter survival of honey bees
Winter survival of honey bee colonies is strongly influenced by summer temperatures and precipitation in the prior year, according to Penn State researchers, who said their findings suggest that honey bees have a "goldilocks" preferred range of summer conditions outside of which their probability of surviving the winter falls.
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