A team of biologists and robotic engineers have developed a virtual reality system for fish to decipher how they school. They uncovered the natural ‘control law’ that is used by zebrafish to coordinate behaviour with others, a behavioural algorithm that has been tuned over millennia to facilitate effective collective motion. Since such collective behaviour could be highly advantageous for technological solutions, such as in the control of autonomous vehicles, the scientists then tested its performance with groups of robotic cars, drones and watercraft. They found that the rules of interaction that have evolved in fish are highly effective for robotic control, demonstrating their potential for the control of fleets of robots in the future. The research, published in Science Robotics, was led by scientists at the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB), Germany, in collaboration with researchers at Eötvös University in Hungary and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

Critically endangered axolotls bred in captivity appear able to survive release into both artificial and restored Mexican wetlands, but may need specific temperatures to thrive

SAN DIEGO (April 30, 2025) — Many are aware of the dire challenges with plastic waste polluting the ocean, but new research shows it may harm wildlife in ways not previously understood. In a new study just published in the journal Environmental Pollution, researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance found that plastic swallowed by northern fulmars— seabirds found in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans—can leak chemicals that interfere with the birds’ hormone systems.

A good wildlife management plan must include information on their migratory processes if the conservation of a species, particularly an endangered species, is to be improved. In the marine environment, for example, regulating fishing activity in certain wintering areas could improve and complement conservation and protection measures carried out on the breeding grounds. These are some of the conclusions of the study featured on the cover of the journal Diversity and Distributions and led by experts from the Seabird Ecology Lab of the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.

A new book by Dr. Robert Spengler tackles one of the biggest questions in biology and the social sciences: domestication – what it is, how it occurred, and the role that humans really played in developing the first crops and livestock.