Wildfire Poses Greater Threat to Cannabis Than Other California Crops

Wildfires are an increasing threat to people's lives, property and livelihoods, especially in rural California communities. Cannabis, one of California's newer and more lucrative commercial crops, may be at a higher risk of loss from wildfire because it is mostly confined to being grown in rural areas, according to new research by scientists in the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management at UC Berkeley.

Understanding the “Romantic Journey” of Plant Reproduction

Researchers in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (PMB) have uncovered the intricate molecular processes that precede reproduction in flowering plants. Published July 6 in Nature, the findings document a previously unknown molecular process that serves as a method of communication during fertilization. According to Professor Sheng Luan, chair of the PMB department and the paper’s senior author, the exact mechanism for signaling has previously eluded researchers.

A Race to Converse With, and Save, the Ocean’s Brainiest Eco-Predators

At the University of California, Berkeley, a real and more down-to-earth mission to decode an unknown form of communication is underway. Linguist Gasper Begus and computer scientist Shafi Goldwasser are part of an international team of researchers attempting interspecies communication with sperm whales by deciphering their deafening, 200-plus decibel clicking sounds, or codas.

Bottlenecks That Reduced Genetic Diversity Were Common Throughout Human History

Human populations have waxed and waned over the millennia, with some cultures exploding and migrating to new areas or new continents, others dropping to such low numbers that their genetic diversity plummeted. In some small populations, inbreeding causes once rare genetic diseases to become common, despite their deleterious effects. A new analysis of more than 4,000 ancient and contemporary human genomes shows how common such “founder events” were in our history.

Skydiving Salamanders Live in World’s Tallest Trees

Salamanders that live their entire lives in the crowns of the world’s tallest trees, California’s coast redwoods, have evolved a behavior well-adapted to the dangers of falling from high places: the ability to parachute, glide and maneuver in mid-air.

Predicting Flooding From Rain Falling on Sierra Snowpack

Research conducted at UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory (CSSL) is providing a much-needed tool for state water managers that could help them prepare for potential flooding during rain-on-snow events in the Sierra Nevada.

Was This Hyena a Distant Ancestor of Today’s Termite-Eating Aardwolf?

Of the hundred or so known species of hyena — living and extinct — that stalked the earth, all have been meat eaters or omnivores except one, the aardwolf, which, mysteriously, eats termites. What happened in the history of fearsome hyenas that led one group to give up raw meat and turn to insects? Two fossil skulls of a 12- to 15-million-year-old hyena that once lived in the Gansu province of China may shed light on that mystery.

In White House Meeting, Berkeley Scholar Says Advanced Tech Can Support Nature

Nature is vitally important to the U.S. economy but we tend to take it for granted, doing little to measure the nation’s wealth of natural resources or their economic impact. But at a high-level White House meeting Thursday, Berkeley scholar Solomon Hsiang said that advanced technology is creating powerful new tools for measuring nature’s resources and their economic value.

Polynesian Island Yields ‘Treasure Trove’ of Fungal Biodiversity

In a new study published today in the Journal of Biogeography, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, provide the first detailed description of the stunning array of fungi that make their home on the Polynesian island of Mo’orea. The collection includes more than 200 species of macrofungi — that is, fungi producing visible, fruiting bodies — many of which may be new to science.

Monkeys Often Eat Fruit Containing Alcohol, Shedding Light on Our Taste for Booze

For 25 years, UC Berkeley biologist Robert Dudley has been intrigued by humans’ love of alcohol. In 2014, he wrote a book proposing that our attraction to booze arose millions of years ago, when our ape and monkey ancestors discovered that the scent of alcohol led them to ripe, fermenting and nutritious fruit. A new study now supports this idea, which Dudley calls the “drunken monkey” hypothesis.

Losing Amphibian Diversity Also Means Losing Poison Diversity

While frog and salamander declines worldwide have made scientists outspoken about the need to preserve amphibian genetic diversity, two University of California, Berkeley, biologists emphasize another important reason for conserving these animals: their poisons.

Some Birds Sing the Same Song for Hundreds of Thousands of Years

A new study by biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Missouri State University in Springfield, however, documents songs in East African sunbirds that have remained nearly unchanged for more than 500,000 years, and perhaps for as long as 1 million years, making the songs nearly indistinguishable from those of relatives from which they’ve long been separated.

Fleshing Out the Bones of Quetzalcoatlus, Earth’s Largest Flier Ever

Look around any wetland today and you’re likely to see 3-foot-tall egrets or 4-foot-tall herons wading in the shallows in stealthy search of fish, insects or crustaceans. But 70 million years ago, along the Rio Grande River in Texas, a more impressive and scarier creature stalked the marshes: the 12-foot-tall pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus. With a 37- to 40-foot wingspan, it was the largest flying animal that ever lived on Earth.

The Superfoods That Fueled Ancient Andeans Through 2,500 Years of Turmoil

What if Indigenous diets could save our politically and ecologically strained planet? UC Berkeley archaeologists reconstructed the diets of ancient Andeans living around Lake Titicaca, which straddles Bolivia and Peru 12,500 feet above sea level. They found that quinoa, potatoes and llama meat helped fuel the Tiwanaku civilization through 2,500 years of political and climate upheaval.

What It Takes to Eat a Poisonous Butterfly

In a study appearing this week in the journal Current Biology, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC Riverside report monarch-like genetic mutations in the genomes of four organisms that are known to eat monarchs: the black-headed grosbeak, a migratory bird that snacks on the butterflies at their overwintering home in Mexico; the eastern deer mouse, a close relative of the Mexican black-eared deer mouse that feeds on butterflies that fall to the ground; a tiny wasp that parasitizes monarch eggs; and a nematode that parasitizes insect larvae that feed on milkweed.

Pacific Rockfish and the Trade-Offs of a Longer Life

In a study appearing this week in the journal Science, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, compare the genomes of nearly two-thirds of the known species of rockfish that inhabit coastal waters around the Pacific Ocean and uncover some of the genetic differences that underlie their widely varying lifespans.

A Wellness Check for Tilden Park’s Turtles

Former UC Berkeley postdoctoral scholar Max Lambert is part of a team of wildlife experts who spent much of the pandemic checking in on the health of the Bay Area’s Western pond turtles, including a population living right next door in Tilden Regional Park.

So-Called Junk DNA Plays Critical Role in Mammalian Development

A new study led by researchers at University of California, Berkeley, and Washington University explored the function of one component of this junk DNA, transposons, which are selfish DNA sequences able to invade their host genome. The study shows that at least one family of transposons — ancient viruses that have invaded our genome by the millions — plays a critical role in viability in the mouse, and perhaps in all mammals.

A peek inside a flying bat’s brain uncovers clues to mammalian navigation

When driving up to a busy intersection, you probably pay more attention to where you will be in the near future than where you are at that moment. After all, knowing when you will arrive at the intersection — and whether you need to stop or slow down to avoid a collision with a passing car, pedestrian or cyclist — is usually much more important than knowing your current location. This ability to focus on where we will be in the near future — rather than where we are in the present — may be a key characteristic of the mammalian brain’s built-in navigation system, suggests a new study appearing online Thursday, July 8, in the journal Science.

Stickleback fish provide genetic road map for rapid evolution

What happens when you dump an ocean fish into a freshwater lake? That experiment has been performed naturally tens of thousands of times over millions of years as sea-faring threespine sticklebacks — which, like salmon, travel up rivers to spawn — have gotten stranded in lakes and had to evolve as permanent denizens of fresh water. Michael Bell, currently a research associate in the University of California Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley, stumbled across one such natural experiment in 1990 in Alaska, and ever since has been studying the physical changes these fish undergo as they evolve and the genetic basis for these changes.

Eastern and Western house mice took parallel evolutionary paths

The European house mouse has invaded nearly every corner of the Americas since it was introduced by colonizers a few hundred years ago, and now lives practically everywhere humans store their food. Yet in that relatively short time span — 400 to 600 mouse generations — populations on the East and West Coasts have changed their body size and nest building behavior in nearly identical ways to adapt to similar environmental conditions, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

Where have all the vultures gone? Ph.D. student investigates

They feast on dead, rotting animals, urinate on their own feet to keep cool, and projectile vomit in self-defense. But UC Berkeley Ph.D. student Mackenzie Kirchner-Smith is passionate about vultures, and in California that means the turkey vulture and the largest land bird in North America — the California condor.

How many T. rexes were there? Billions.

How many Tyrannosaurus rexes roamed North America during the Cretaceous period? That’s a question Charles Marshall pestered his paleontologist colleagues with for years until he finally teamed up with his students to find an answer.

Could a Phone App Help Prevent California Wildfires?

Matteo Garbeletto, a University of California Cooperative Extension forest pathology specialist based at UC Berkeley, has developed a tool to tell if a tree is healthy. He named the app "Evalutree," and hopes the app will help PG&E track and trim, or remove, unhealthy trees. Some of California's largest wildfires in recent history have been caused when trees or branches fell on power lines.

Prenatal pesticide exposure linked to changes in teen’s brain activity

Organophosphates are among the most commonly used classes of pesticides in the United States, despite mounting evidence linking prenatal exposure to the chemicals to poorer cognition and behavior problems in children. A new study led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers is one of the first to use advanced brain imaging to reveal how exposure to these chemicals in the womb changes brain activity.

Ghost objects in the sky

Astronomers typically study objects that are visible night after night or explode suddenly, like supernovas, but Casey Law is scouring vast amounts of data in search of bright objects that disappear, never to be seen again.

Growth rings on rocks give up North American climate secrets

Scientists have found a new way to tease out signals about Earth’s climatic past from soil deposits on gravel and pebbles, adding an unprecedented level of detail to the existing paleoclimate record and revealing a time in North America’s past when summers were wetter than normal.

What the Inuit can tell us about omega-3 fats and ‘paleo’ diets

The traditional diet of Greenland natives – the Inuit – is held up as an example of how high levels of omega-3 fatty acids can counterbalance the bad health effects of a high-fat diet, but a new study hints that what’s true for the Inuit may not be true for everyone else.

Millet Project shows grain isn’t just for the birds

Amrita Hazra, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, is on a mission — to introduce people to the benefits of eating millet, which primarily is used in the United States in bird feed.

Small Salmon, Big Threat

Drought and the growing water demands of agriculture and a changing climate are creating a “knife edge” of survival for young salmon and steelhead, says UC Berkeley fish ecologist Stephanie Carlson. She is working to determine minimum water levels needed to sustain the fish.

Newfound groups of bacteria are mixing up the tree of life

Jill Banfield, professor of EPS and ESPM, and grad student Christopher Brown discovered a large number of new groups or phyla of bacteria, suggesting that the branches on the tree of life need some rearranging. The more than 35 new phyla equal in number all the plant and animal phyla combined.

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