Conservation strategies are turning back the doomsday clock in threatened Florida-Scrub Jays – but not without caveats, a new study published in Current Biology shows. 

Researchers examined dozens of bird species in museum collections looking for differences in the feathers and bodies between birds that can fly and birds that can't. They found that when birds evolve from a flying ancestor to a new flightless form, the birds' bodies, including the ratio of their wings and tails, change before the feathers do. Insights from this research could help scientists trying to determine whether a fossil bird, or a feathered dinosaur that isn’t part of the bird family, was able to fly.

Austin Gray received a $1.3 million National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award to explore the ecological effects of microplastics.