The rate of development of poikilothermic animals, such as insects, fish, and reptiles, is determined by environmental temperature. A research team at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany has recently demonstrated how temperature can affect brain development in fruit flies. They found more synapses and postsynaptic partners in the brain of Drosophila melanogaster correlating to lower environmental temperature during pupal development.

As poultry companies weigh cost and efficiency with higher animal welfare standards, research comparing conventional and slow-growing broiler breeds showed that the slow-growing chickens displayed behaviors more closely associated with positive welfare.

Broilers — chickens specifically bred for meat production — are typically raised for six to eight weeks, while slow-growing broilers need up to 12 weeks to reach maturity.

A simple neural change alters mating preferences in male butterflies, aiding rapid behavioral evolution, Nicholas VanKuren and Nathan Buerkle at the University of Chicago, US, and colleagues, report March 11^th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology.

Brooklyn College/CUNY Graduate Center Associate Professor of Anthropology Stephen Chester and a team of researchers have uncovered fascinating new details about Mixodectes pungens, a long-mysterious mammal that roamed North America in the early Paleocene—just after the extinction of the dinosaurs.