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While the study of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the most urgent priority, biologists also learned more about how brains process information, how to define individuality and why sleep deprivation kills.
The simple insight that most changes are random had a profound effect on genetics, evolution and ecology.
In three bursts of adaptive change, one species of cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika gave rise to hundreds.
The physicist Jeff Gore tests theories about microbe communities experimentally and finds new rules governing ecological stability.
Studies of collective behavior usually focus on how crowds of organisms coordinate their actions. But what if the individuals that don’t participate have just as much to tell us?
To stay healthy, humans and some other animals rely on a complex community of bacteria in their guts. But research is starting to show that those partnerships might be more the exception than the rule.
We give our genes and our environment all the credit for making us who we are. But random noise during development might be just as important.
Recent findings add weight to the evidence that the intransitive competitions between species enrich the diversity of nature.
In evolution, context is everything: Bacteria with neighbors evolve to rebuff viruses in a different way.