A new study reveals that when burying beetle larvae are denied parental support, they evolve bigger jaws to compensate.

Despite rapidly ageing, dominant animals live longer because their underlings are driven out of the group – becoming easy targets for predators. The secret of a long meerkat life is to be “ruler of your community… cracking down on would-be rivals,” say scientists.

A unique three-year project to bridge the divide between science and philosophy – which embedded early-career philosophers into some of Cambridge’s ground-breaking scientific research clusters – is the subject of a new film released today.

A new study of TV-watching great tits reveals how they learn through observation. Social interactions within a predator species can have “evolutionary consequences” for potential prey – such as the conspicuous warning colours of insects like ladybirds.

Latest findings support the theory that teeth in the animal kingdom evolved from the jagged scales of ancient fish, the remnants of which can be seen today embedded in the skin of sharks and skate. 

Fish embryo study indicates that the last common ancestor of vertebrates was a complex animal complete with gills – overturning prior scientific understanding and complementing recent fossil finds. The work places gill evolution concurrent with shift to self-propulsion in our earliest ancestors.

Over a third of new conservation science documents published annually are in non-English languages, despite assumption of English as scientific ‘lingua franca’. Researchers find examples of important science missed at international level, and practitioners struggling to access new knowledge, as a result of language barriers.