EurekAlert! News by Subject: Biology - News by Subject: Biology

Biology

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Oct-2025 20:11 ET (21-Oct-2025 00:11 GMT/UTC)

What environmental factors determine fish life history strategies in a river?

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.
Peer-Reviewed Publication

We investigated the composition of fish life history strategies across 14 major rivers worldwide and found that variation in environmental factors plays a key role in shaping riverine fish assemblages and life history strategies. In the Yangtze River basin, we observed a shift in environmental conditions from stable to unstable states. These findings highlight the potential of life history strategies as effective indicators for monitoring riverine ecological conditions.

Journal: Water Biology and Security
Funder: Science & Technology Fundamental Resources Investigation Program, The research program of China Three Gorges Corporation, National Natural Science Foundation of China

Novel online analysis platform for plastid phylogenomics and comparative genomics

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers from Shandong Normal University and Kunming Institute of Botany Chinese Academy of Sciences in China and in the US have developed a freely-available online analysis platform about plastid phylogenomics and comparative genomics for botanists and evolutionary biologists. The analysis platform offers a set of 25 tools spanning diverse plastome analyses, including the updated version of popular free tool PGA (Plastid Genome Annotator).

Journal: Plant Diversity
Funder: Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, Science and Technology Basic Resources Investigation Program of China, Major Program for Basic Research Project of Yunnan Province, Yunnan Revitalization Talent Support Program: Yunling Scholar Project to Tingshuang Yi, “Cross Cooperative Team” of the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species,Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

scSCC: A swapped contrastive learning-based clustering method for single-cell gene expression data

Higher Education Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Recently, Hongwei Li’s team from China University of Geosciences published a research article titled “scSCC: A swapped contrastive learning-based clustering method for single-cell gene expression data” in the journal Quantitative Biology, proposing a novel clustering method combining instance contrastive learning and swapped contrastive learning for scRNA-seq data.

Journal: Quantitative Biology

Eliminating invasive rats may restore the flow of nutrients across food chain networks in Seychelles

PLOS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Ecosystems are characterized by interconnected structure and functions. A study published July 8^th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Casey Benkwitt at Lancaster University, United Kingdom and colleagues suggests that restoring seabird populations via eradication of rats may help coral reefs by restoring nutrient connectivity in disrupted food chains.

Journal: PLOS Biology

Gut length driven by ‘sexual conflict’ in fish species

North Carolina State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study that looked at gut length variation between cichlid fish species found that some of the genetic loci for the trait are sex-specific even though males and females of the same species have the same gut length.

Journal: Genetics
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, NIH/National Institutes of Health

Meet the “plastivore” caterpillars that grow fat from eating plastic

Society for Experimental Biology
Reports and Proceedings

Plastics play a fundamental role in modern life, but their resistance to biodegradation makes them very difficult to dispose of. New research reveals how “plastivore” caterpillars can metabolically degrade plastics in a matter of days, not decades, and store them internally as body fat – but at what cost?

Meeting: SEB Conference 2025

Swimming in the deep: MSU research reveals sea lamprey travel patterns in Great Lakes waterways

Michigan State University

MSU researchers found that sea lampreys — a parasitic fish considered an invasive species in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. — follow a clear pattern of staying in the deepest parts of a river. These findings are important for informing sea lamprey management strategies, conservation of fish species native to the Great Lakes and protecting the region’s $7 billion fishing industry and the 75,000 jobs it provides.

Journal: Journal of Experimental Biology