A koala bear isn’t actually a bear, it’s a marsupial. Whales aren’t fish, they’re mammals. Tomatoes aren’t vegetables, they’re fruit. Almost nothing is actually a nut. Peanuts, brazil nuts, cashews, ...

A species is a group of living organisms that are all broadly similar and can, at least in principle, breed with one another. This seems straightforward enough, but the word “species” is actually ...

Darren Curnoe receives funding from the Australian Research Council. How many kinds of plants and animals are there in the world? Where do humans fit within the vast fabric of life? Indeed, how did ...

How do new species form? Like most areas of Evolutionary Biology, research related to the formation of new species - 'speciation ' - is rich in historical and current debate. Here, we review both ...

What effects will the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology have on the conservation of nature? The ecological and ethical challenges stemming from this question will require a new and continuing ...

Until a decade ago, scientists categorized microorganisms almost exclusively by their physical characteristics: how they looked, what they ate, and the by-products they produced. With the advent of ...