The egg is perhaps nature’s most perfect life support system. These remarkable structures nurture new life; protecting it from the outside world at the same time as allowing it to breathe. They are strong enough to withstand the full weight of an incubating parent and weak enough for a hatchling to break free. But how is an egg made? Why are...
News
Thursday, Apr 11, 2019
Eric and Wendy Schmidt announced that Saki Takahashi, a 2019 graduate alumna, is one of 20 new Schmidt Science Fellows — a program of Schmidt Futures, in partnership with the Rhodes Trust. Takahashi works to understand the spread of infectious diseases. She completed a Ph.D. this year with Jessica Metcalf, an assistant professor of EEB and...
Thursday, Apr 11, 2019
Levine, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB), was recognized by Ecological Society of America (the world’s largest professional organization of ecologists) “for research that fundamentally advances understanding of biological invasions and species coexistence, often by deploying creative, highly controlled experimental units...
Monday, Mar 11, 2019
A team of ecologists including Princeton's Rob Pringle, Corina Tarnita, Justine Atkins and Arjun Potter took advantage of a rare opportunity to study what happens to an ecosystem when large carnivores are wiped out (in this case through past civil war). Using a series of experiments in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, the ecologists...
Monday, Feb 25, 2019
Chris Tokita, an EEB graduate student who works with associate professor Corina Tarnita, is partially funded by a fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Tokita and Tarnita work to create computational models for how social groups — including ants and humans — develop properties like division of labor and social networks.
Wednesday, Dec 26, 2018
Though red wolves were declared extinct in the wild by 1980, a team of biologists has found their DNA in a group of canines living on Galveston Island off the coast of Texas. “This is a remarkable finding, as red wolves were declared extinct in this region over 35 years ago and remain critically endangered,” said Elizabeth Heppenheimer, a...
Thursday, Dec 13, 2018
Associate professor Andrea Graham and graduate student Jackie Leung drafted a kid-friendly version of their research on mice in Biomedical Science Journal for Kids. The bodies of humans and mice have a lot in common. So scientists often use mice (Mus musculus) as a model organism (or stand-in) to mimic human diseases and...
Tuesday, Nov 20, 2018
Black-bellied seedcrackers (Pyrenestes ostrinus) can have large or small beaks on birds of the same size, a trait that had mystified researchers for years. Princeton biologist vonHoldt found that the two morphs differ in a 300,000-base-pair chunk of DNA, apparently inherited as a unit, which includes a well-known growth-factor gene.
Monday, Nov 5, 2018
The escalating effects of climate change now demand a substantial research initiative to develop and launch “negative emissions technologies” (NETs) that remove and sequester carbon dioxide directly from the air, according to a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Stephen Pacala, Princeton’s Frederick D...
Friday, Oct 26, 2018
Students interested in graduate studies at Princeton University convened on campus Oct. 4-7 for three programs designed to give them an intimate look at the University’s Ph.D. programs. The Prospective Ph.D.
