Research

Dubbed “veloci-roach,” the crawling device uses sensors and locomotion like many other bio-inspired devices.

“We are on the trajectory of seeing a mass extinction in two human lifetimes if we just keep doing business as usual,” said Anthony Barnosky, a paleontologist in UC Berkeley’s integrative biology department and one of the authors of the study.

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An ancient human skeleton called Kennewick Man, found on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996, has been at the center of a dispute between Native Americans and scientists on the disposition of the remains. A new analysis of DNA from the bones by a team that includes Professor Rasmus Nielsen concludes that the man probably was an ancestor of local Native American tribes. Read More

Cold-blooded and other animals that are unable to regulate their internal temperature may have a hard time tolerating global warming, according to an analysis by biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University.

Berkeley, California - Two thousand California honey bees may have a story to tell.  So too, more than 10,000 deer mice, and 3,000 oaks. Specimens of these plants and animals populate massive collections in Berkeley’s renowned research museums, and are now being enlisted as guides to past episodes of habitat and climate change.

“Our goal was to diagnose which species are vulnerable in the modern world, using the past as a guide,” said lead author Seth Finnegan, an assistant professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. “We believe the past can inform the way we plan our conservation efforts. However, there is a lot more work that needs to be done to understand the causes underlying these patterns and their policy implications.”

Research by Professor Robert Dudley and postdoc Victor Ortega is featured in a segment on KQED Science about Hummingbirds in a wind tunnel.

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Lindsey Dougherty’s love of the sea eventually led her to UC Berkeley, where she is now a graduate student focusing on one of the ocean’s more unusual critters: a clam that flashes in the deep.

This behavior earned it the nickname ‘disco clam,’ and Dougherty is working with UC Berkeley’s Roy Caldwell, professor of integrative biology, to explore how and why it flashes its mirrored lips.

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The whirling, winged seeds of today's conifers are an engineering wonder and, as University of California, Berkeley, scientists show, a result of about 270 million years of evolution by trees experimenting with the best way to disperse their seeds.