kin in Biological News

Rudolf's kin more than just Santa's ride

Better known as reindeer during the holiday season, caribou are also central to the health and vitality of the Far North. Revered by many cultures, the caribou could soon become endangered by threats such as oil exploration and climate change, according to a new book by authors from the Wildlife ...

Perceived facial similarity in children is an estimate of kin recognition

Perceived facial similarity of children is effectively an estimate of the probability that two children are close genetic relatives according to a new study recently published in Journal of Vision, an online, free access publication of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO)...

Siberian jays use complex communication to mob predators

... predators with the help of their cognitive abilities. Lowering the risk of relative of being killed benefits the propagation of the own genes through kin selection. In contrast, animals that live in anonymous groups rather rely on the selfish notion that other group members could become the target in th...

Execretion analysis aids primate social studies

...said. Moreover, "relatively large numbers of samples are required to reveal kin relationships within a primate social group." Progress was made in the e... Primates "live in matrilineal societies where females remain with their kin while males disburse," Alberts said. "If offspring have a high ranking moth...

Singapore research team first place in Brain-Computer Interface contest

...ent. This simply proves that our in-house developed technologies are able to compete with the global offerings on a level playing field," said Dr. Lye kin Mun, Deputy Executive Director for research at I2R. "I see this achievement as having a stamp of recognition from fellow researchers over the world fo...

Endangered sawfish focus of national collection and recovery efforts

...aah's because humans tend to gravitate to the more charismatic megafauna, as it is characterized," he said. "We place more values on whales than their kin the field mice or the brown-eyed seal more than we do some wood rat." Part of the sawfish's appeal may also be its increasing rarity, said Burgess,...

Making the ultimate family sacrifice

...gists and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) geneticists is helping narrow the search for genes that drive single-celled amoebae to stick close to their kin before altruistically giving their all. The study, which appears this week in PLoS Biology , focuses on the soil-dwelling amoeba Dictyostelium di...

'Fish technology' draws renewable energy from slow water currents

... generation of Bernitsas' machine looks nothing like a fish, though he says future versions will have the equivalent of a tail and surface roughness a kin to scales. The working prototype in his lab is just one sleek cylinder attached to springs. The cylinder hangs horizontally across the flow of water i...

Academy publishes first biography of artist-naturalist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins

...l history museums that people take them for granted. But until Hawkins created such things in the second half of the 19th century, dinosaurs and their kin were little known, poorly understood, and of little interest to all but a handful of professional paleontologists. Through a series of public displays...

Insects' 'giant leap' reconstructed by founder of sociobiology

...ole colonies, explains eusociality in Hymenoptera. kin selection is thought to be especially powerful in ...e explanation for eusocialitys rare instances than kin selection. kin selection is, he writes, not wrong but incomplete....

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Nov. 7, 2007

...hone: 301-975-3230 Fax: 301- 926-6689 Email: babakn@nist.gov ARTICLE #5 EMBARGOED FOR 9 A.M., EASTERN TIME, Nov. 12, 2007 Octopus and kin inspire new camouflage strategies for military applications Chemical & Engineering News Researchers are studying the remarkable shape- and color-c...

'Kissing cousins'

...migrating with herds of sheep and goats to pastures in the Syrian desert, they have recently become more sedentary, though a continuing preference for kin as marriage partners particularly ibn amm (fathers brothers son) or bint amm (fathers brothers daughter) remains a salient feature of Bedouin matrim...

Study finds Viagra increases release of key reproductive hormone

...searchers has shown that oxytocin-sensitive cells in the brain play a role in the neural control of erectile responses, suggesting that Viagra and its kin may work through multiple channels. The famous blue pills could have other uses as well. Oxytocin has been linked to the ability to make strong so...

Plants recognize their siblings, biologists discover

... Society journal Biology Letters. “The ability to recognize and favour kin is common in animals, but this is the first time it has been shown in plant...ccurred when they shared a pot, the root interactions may provide a cue for kin recognition.” Though they lack cognition and memory, the study shows p...

Mule deer moms rescue other fawns

... withdraw right away and then stayed safely outside that distance. The behaviour of mule deer defies traditional explanations that parental care, kin selection or reciprocity play a part in the defence of fawns other than their own. But while the study's findings seem to point to mule deer as superi...

Invasive ants territorial when neighbors are not kin

...e introductions of the ants, possibly in the soil of plants used in landscaping. They hope that a better understanding of how the ants distinguish kin from non-kin, and the mechanisms that prevent gene flow between colonies, might lead to more effective ways to control the ants. That would be good n...

Why do some queen bees eat their worker bee's eggs?

...rs or confronting egg-laying workers. In 1964 the English biologist William Hamilton put forward his "relatedness hypothesis", a major landmark in kin selection theory. His hypothesis was that worker bees, wasps and ants do not reproduce because most workers are half sisters. Instead the workers favo...

Helping in a selfish world

...iticians, and everyday citizens among them) do co-operate. Traditionally, scientists have explained the evolution of co-operation using the idea of kin selection. Help to relatives (who share your genes) makes sense if it means your relative will have more children who will carry your genes into the n...

Can our genes tell the story of our divergence?

...6 million years ago, we shed our hirsute coat and heavy brow, mastered bipedal locomotion, and acquired a knack for abstract thought while our next of kin learned to use tools, and developed the skills to construct tree-bound nests high above the forest floor. We differ by just a tad over 1% at the DNA s...