The novel protein named haditoxin has been described in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (March 12, 2010).

Afghanistan's fledging conservation agency moved Sunday to protect one of the world's rarest birds after the species was rediscovered in the war-ravaged country's northeast.

The remote Pamir Mountains are the only known breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler, a species so elusive that it had been documented only twice before in more than a century.

Biologging – the use of miniaturized electronic tags to track animals in the wild – has revealed previously unknown and suprising behaviors, movements, physiology and environmental preferences of a wide variety of ocean animals. For instance, biologgers have recorded 5,000 foot (1,550 m) dives by Atlantic bluefin tuna, followed journeys of elephant seals halfway across the Pacific from their breeding beaches, and observed annual 40,000 mile migrations of sooty shearwaters – the longest recorded for any animal.

On the open sand plains of the Caribbean seafloor, where soft-bodied animals are routinely exposed to predators, camouflage can be key to survival. Perhaps no group of animals is quite as adept at blending in with its surroundings as cephalopods, who along with relatives the cuttlefish and squid, have evolved a unique skin system that can instantaneously change their appearance.

Dung beetles are among the few species in which the females are more impressively equipped with armor than males, and a new study explains why: the females fight each other for the best manure and breeding sites.

University of Western Australia researchers, Prof. Leigh Simmons and Dr. Nicola Watson, studied the female dung beetle (Onthophagus sagittarius), which, as its name suggests, feeds on dung.

An international paleontological team led by the University of Michigan's Jeff Wilson and the Geological Survey of India's Dhananjay Mohabey will publish their discovery online March 2 in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

Promiscuous females may be the key to a species' survival, according to new research by the Universities of Exeter and Liverpool. Published today (25 February) in Current Biology, the study could solve the mystery of why females of most species have multiple mates, despite this being more risky for the individual.