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Discover new research from across the sciences and highlights from the world's longest-running journal archive.
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18/07/2025

The asteroid impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs is one of the most iconic events in Earth history. In new research, scientists show that one lizard lineage, the bizarre xantusiid 'night lizards', survived the extinction proximal to the site of the impact after having reached their modern distribution around the Gulf of Mexico by the Late Cretaceous. Discovering traits that facilitate survival through mass extinctions is of great interest to scholars of macroevolution. Because the results show that the common ancestor of living 'night lizards' lived before the extinction, the analyses of the life history and ecology of living xantusiids provide a key window into the natural history of the terrestrial survivors of the asteroid impact.

Read the article in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0157

18/07/2025

A 68-year study (1955–2023) on Leach’s storm-petrels from Kent Island, New Brunswick reveals how long-term oceanic changes influence the survival of this small declining seabird. Using capture-mark-recapture data, researchers estimated adult survival to average 84%, with significant year-to-year variability. Highest survival period was between 1979 and 1989. Statistical models showed a significant inverse relationship between survival rates and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index, indicating that warmer ocean conditions negatively impact survival. These findings highlight the importance of long-term studies and how large-scale climate cycles affect seabird populations.

Read the article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2710

17/07/2025

This study describes new fossils of monstersaur lizards: ancient relatives of the modern-day Gila monster of the American Southwest, and beaded lizards of northern Mexico. The discovery of a new, large-bodied species, Bolg amondol, from 76 million-year-old river sediments in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, USA, adds to the diversity and complexity of lizard evolution during the Late Cretaceous. Bolg is potentially one of many undiscovered monstersaur species from the Late Cretaceous of North America, and its close relationship with fossils from the Gobi Desert bolster hypotheses of biotic interchange between North America and Asia throughout the Cretaceous.

Read the article in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250435

17/07/2025

Dogs were introduced to North America during the early peopling of the continent. But to date, it is unclear when dogs reached Central and South America. In this paper, researchers produced and analysed 70 mitochondrial genomes that shed new light on the timing of dog introduction to Central and South America. They show that dogs likely spread South with the development of agriculture and the spread of maize in South America between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago. They also identify the arrival of new lineages of dogs with the European colonisation and their legacy in modern village dogs.

Read the article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2443

16/07/2025

Extant ice crawlers (Notoptera: Grylloblattidae) are wingless, ground dwelling polyneopteran insects inhabiting cold Holarctic environments. Their origins are uncertain, with various Palaeozoic and Mesozoic winged insects proposed as relatives. Researchers describe a well preserved winged specimen from Kachin amber, whose specialised male terminalia align with extant Grylloblattodea, marking the first definitive fossil of this order. This new species lived in warm, humid forests, traversing trunks and leaves, contrasting with modern cryophilic habitats. This transitional fossil provides key evidence for tracing ecological shifts in this lineage over its evolutionary history, thus shedding light on the evolutionary trajectory of this exceptional insect group.

Read the article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0557

16/07/2025

Climate change poses a threat to marine calcifiers, crucial ecosystem engineers and a key part of the marine carbon cycle. Many marine calcifiers depend on partnerships with algae to survive and function but, ocean warming threatens these relationships. Researchers examined two species of foraminifera (small, shell-building marine organisms) that host different algal symbionts. Their findings show that the less heat-tolerant species changes its symbiont community as temperatures rise, while the more resilient species consistently hosts a single, heat-tolerant alga. When algae from the heat-tolerant species were introduced to the more sensitive one, it was able to recover from bleaching under heat stress. These results suggest a plausible mechanism conferring the high thermal tolerance of some foraminifera species.

Read the article published in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0596

15/07/2025

A fundamental trade-off experienced by parents, that was first described by David Lack for birds, is between investing in larger numbers of offspring versus investing in the quality of each offspring. In the wild, where available energy is restricted, mammalian mothers must decide when to take energy away from current young and to invest in a new reproductive event. A new study on wild seasonally breeding Assamese macaques reveals that conception was predicted by the age of the current offspring. Mothers that conceived early again after the birth of an infant, suffered the costs of reduced infant survival. By tracking 410 births over 18 years, this study sheds new light on the evolution of reproductive strategies in mammals.

Read the article published in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0024

15/07/2025

Davies Gilbert’s paper 'On the mathematical theory of suspension bridges’ contains extensive tables for facilitating the practical design of suspension bridges and influenced Thomas Telford in formulating his final design for the Menai Strait suspension bridge—a bridge that was to have the world's longest span when it opened in 1826. The paper is also distinguished for providing a completely novel analysis of the ‘catenary of equal strength’; that is, a catenary whose cross-sectional area is made to vary along its length to be everywhere proportional to the local tension, so as to achieve a uniform (‘equal’) tensile stress in the chain or cable.

To mark the 360th anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions, we're spotlighting landmark papers. View Davies Gilbert's 1826 paper in the Royal Society Journals Archive:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstl.1826.0019

Image: Drawn by G. Arnold and engraved by R. G. Reeve. Courtesy of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

14/07/2025

Horseshoe crabs are a famously ancient lineage of arthropods, with the oldest forms first appearing 450 million years ago. Their early record is poor, however, with an 80 million year gap in their fossil record following their origins. The discovery of a new fossil horseshoe crab species named Ciurcalimulus discobolus from 424 million year old rocks in Indiana fills the gap in their fossil record and, with the aid of ultraviolet light and laser stimulated fluorescence to show details of the fossil, reveals details about what the oldest horseshoe crabs looked like and how they lived.

Read the article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0874

14/07/2025

Communication between individuals is a fundamental requirement for sociality. Vocalization—from human language to mouse squeaks—is a pervasive form of communication across animal species. But how vocal communication contributes to social dynamics in natural populations remains poorly understood. To address this, researchers combine acoustic monitoring and radiotelemetry-based animal tracking in a wild population of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus). In the wild house mice live in social groups and are highly vocal, producing two major call types that fall into the ultrasonic range and human-audible range (squeaks). The study finds that vocalization in this population is seasonal and correlated with mouse social dynamics. Vocalization is closely associated in time with entrances to and exits from those groups, occurs most often in the presence of pups, and is correlated with how much time pairs of mice spend together. This work lays a foundation to understand animal sociality in wild populations.

Read the article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0995

13/07/2025

Wolves in Northern Europe have made an impressive comeback after near extinction in Scandinavia and Finland during the 20th century — but they haven’t returned unchanged. Using 3D scans of wolf skulls from museum collections, researchers compared the shapes of historical and modern wolves. Their findings reveal that today’s wolves have broader, and in Scandinavia even larger, skulls than before. These shape changes reflect not only genetic replacement but also shifts in prey availability over time. The study underscores how human actions, such as the near-eradication of wildlife, can 'leave marks' on the bodies of animals — reshaping nature in unexpected ways.

Read the article published in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250358

13/07/2025

A new study looks at how fish assemblages in tropical tidepools are affected by small differences in the environment. On tropical intertidal reef shores, certain areas are covered by flat reefs made by reef-building organisms and just above by bare rocky shore. Researchers found that fish living in tidepools in these different areas were quite different in terms of species and how they use food resources. In the same site, fish had different roles in the food web depending on the type of reef. This shows that even small changes in the environment can make a big difference to marine life in these coastal areas.

Read the article published in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0690

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