Department of Biology

Newly discovered fossils from 10 million years after the mass extinction reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs taking hold in Tanzania and Zambia in the mid-Triassic period, many millions of years before dinosaur relatives were seen in the fossil record elsewhere on Earth.

Super-slow motion footage of a moth in flight has revealed how the insects use their bodies to hover. The UW researchers who carried out this study are examining insect flight in order to "distill the biological principles of flight control."

A substance implicated in several mass extinctions could greatly enhance plant growth, with implications for global food supplies and biofuels, new UW research shows.

Professors Tom Daniel (Biology) and Yomi Braester (Comparative Literature) are among a prestigious group of 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship recipients.

Estella Leopold, biology professor emeritus, is co-author of a recently released book "Saved in Time: The Fight to Establish Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado." The book chronicles one of the nation's first explicitly environmental legal cases in which Leopold was a key player.

At high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide--levels in line with expected concentrations over the next century--a blue mussel's byssal threads become weaker, less able to stretch and less able to attach to rocks, found scientists Emily Carrington, Michael O'Donnell and Matthew George of the University of Washington.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild Fauna and Flora added 343 species of plants and animals to its endangered species lists at a recent conference. Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology, is quoted.

A University of Washington research team has captured color photographs of what could be a previously undocumented species of chambered nautilus, a cephalopod mollusk often classified as a "living fossil," in the waters off American Samoa in the South Pacific.

New research led by the University of Washington challenges the 140-year-old assumption that prehistoric mammals such as horses, rhinos and gazelles lived in grasslands.

UW biologist Sam Wasser pushes for more forensic testing of seized ivory to help track down poachers, slow elephant slaughter.

UW assistant professor of biology Benjamin Kerr is corresponding author of a paper examining the importance of early and gradual mutations among bacteria populations when confronted with surviving would be extinction-causing conditions.

Professor of biology Emily Carrington reported Saturday that the fibrous threads she calls "nature's bungee cords" become 60 percent weaker in water that was 15 degrees F above typical summer temperatures where the mussels were from.

UW biologist Michael Dickinson explains the intricacies of fly brains - given their abundant numbers, one of the most common brains on Earth - using videos of flies in flight, Donald Trump and chewing crabs. Flies may have brains smaller than a grain of salt, but this TEDx talk delivered at Caltech, may just cause you to think next time, before you swat.

For already vulnerable penguins, a UW study finds climate change is another danger.

UW biologists are studying mosquitoes to understand why they crave human blood and to explore what happens when their sensory system is rewired in the lab.