An international team of researchers has published a new review in Animal Behaviour revealing how communication enables cooperation between different animal species. The review highlights how movements, visual displays, calls, and other behavioural cues and signals help partners coordinate interactions and align interests across species boundaries.

In a new study scientists reveal up to 38-fold higher DMSP concentrations in Southern Ocean sea-ice versus the surrounding seawaters during the Southern Ocean austral winter. DMSP is known for protecting organisms against environmental stressors. Its degradation yields dimethylsulfide (DMS) and methanethiol (MeSH) which are important climate-cooling gases. The study underscores the role of this seemingly uninhabitable environment as a dynamic reservoir and transformation hub influencing climate-cooling cycles in the polar region.

A newly discovered fossil site in Egypt is reshaping scientists’ understanding of how marine ecosystems recovered after the asteroid impact that ended the Age of Dinosaurs. In a study published in Science Advances, researchers report that compositionally modern marine fish communities were already established just 4 million years after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

The site, known as Qreiya 3 and dated to 62.2 million years ago, preserves an exceptionally diverse offshore marine ecosystem from the early Paleocene. Hundreds of fossil fishes recovered from the site include more than 20 groups of ray-finned fishes, making it the richest and most diverse Danian fish assemblage yet discovered.

The fossils reveal that many fish groups common in today’s oceans—including early relatives of tunas, mackerels, jacks, moonfishes, and pipefishes—had already diversified shortly after the extinction event that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs. At the same time, several predatory fish groups dominant in Cretaceous seas are notably absent, suggesting a rapid ecological turnover in marine ecosystems.

Led by researchers from the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center in collaboration with the University of Michigan and KU Leuven, the study provides some of the clearest fossil evidence yet that modern-style marine fish faunas emerged remarkably quickly after one of Earth’s greatest mass extinctions.

Microvascular research is providing important biological insights that may help guide how we diagnose and treat patients living with complex chronic disorders such as Long COVID and ME/CFS. The Complex Disorder Alliance (CODA) will support experts to focus on key hypotheses to more quickly determine which patients can benefit from treatment.

In a breakthrough that could transform medical testing, data transmission and future quantum technologies, scientists at the University of Witwatersrand and the University of East Anglia have uncovered a hidden property of light that allows it to twist, spin and behave differently - without mirrors, materials or special lenses.

The research, led by Professor Kevin J. Naidoo working with Dr Lateef Nashed (SCRU Glycobiomedical laboratory) and SCRU computational scientists Dr Tharindu Senapthi and doctoral student Kyllen Dilsook, focused on Mucin 1 (MUC1), a protein that behaves very differently in healthy and cancerous cells due to changes in glycosylation, the process by which sugar molecules attach to proteins. Using a novel “one-pot” synthetic biology method, combined with advanced computer-based reaction simulations, the team recreated the complex conditions found inside the cell’s Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) and Golgi apparatus.