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Products from new breeding techniques provide major opportunities for making agriculture more sustainable. This makes them a useful addition to common breeding practice, especially for crops where the desired variety improvements are currently very time-consuming, such as potatoes and apples.

Coral reefs are widely known for their stunning array of color, shape and forms of life, making them a model for extreme biodiversity. Hidden within the multitude of reef inhabitants, but no less important, is their genetic diversity— variability in DNA that gives species the capacity for adaptation, speciation and resilience in the face of stress.

When fluctuating climates in the Ice Age altered habitats, modern humans may have adapted their diets in a different way than Neandertals, according to a study published April 27, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sireen El Zaatari of the University of Tübingen, Germany, and colleagues.

On April 26, 2016, ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile hosted an event to mark the first light for the four powerful lasers that form a crucial part of the adaptive optics systems on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Attendees were treated to a spectacular display of cutting-edge laser technology against the majestic skies of Paranal.

In a study published today, researchers from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM), Rutgers University, and the University of Haifa identified key and novel components of the molecular “toolkit” that allow corals to build their skeletons (called biomineralization) and described when—in the transformation from floating larvae to coral skeleton—these components are used.

(Phys.org)—An international team of researchers has found that deep voices in primates, including humans, might have evolved more as a means to intimidate rivals than to attract females for mating. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team describes three separate experiments they carried out to test their ideas on the reasons for large differences in the vocal frequency range of male primates.

(Phys.org)—A small team of researchers from the University of Maine, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Perdue University has found that copepods that eat a certain type of toxic algae react to it by engaging in unusual behavior that ultimately puts them at risk from other predators. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Rachel Lasley-Rasher, Kathryn Nagel, Aakanksha Angra and Jeannette Yen describe a study they carried out of copepods called Temora longicornis off the eastern coast of the U.S.

The Sapayoa, a rainforest bird from Central and South America, is an evolutionary enigma—genetic analysis shows that its closest relatives are bird species living across the ocean in Asia and Africa. Now, new research in The Auk: Ornithological Advances demonstrates for the first time that its natural history links it to its evolutionary relatives thousands of miles away.

Multiple dispersals of penguins reached Australia after the continent split from Antarctica, including ‘giant penguins’ that may have lived there after they went extinct elsewhere, according to a study published April 26, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Travis Park from Monash University, Australia, and colleagues.

Dissection might prove unnecessary when identifying new molluscs after scientists Corey Whisson, Western Australian Museum, and Dr Abraham Breure, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, the Netherlands, and Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium, described a previously unknown land snail based on its genitalia, yet without damaging the specimen in the slightest.