Royal Society Publishing

03/07/2025

Biology Letters has a new special feature on ‘Dinosaur Science’, guest-edited by Paul Barrett and Susannah Maidment: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/topic/special-collections/dinosaur-science

Dinosaurs were one of the most iconic groups of terrestrial vertebrates and their direct descendants, birds, remain as key members of modern ecosystems. 2024, marks the 200th anniversary of the first dinosaur to be described scientifically – Megalosaurus. This special issue aims to celebrate that anniversary by providing expert reviews of key areas of dinosaur biology, showing how the application of new methods, technologies and discoveries in the field have shed more light on these diverse animals. They also highlight the ways in which dinosaur science might advance in future.

03/07/2025

Soaring birds use atmospheric updraughts to fly at low energy cost. While the use of thermals and orographic lifting is well documented, the role of mountain gravity waves in powering soaring flight remains largely unexplored. Using a high-resolution atmospheric model and GPS tracking data, researchers show that golden eagles repeatedly used gravity waves to soar. Although thermals remained the main updraught source used by the eagles, orographic lifting and gravity waves were the principal source of energy during winter months. These results provide a new perspective on the environmental energy available to soaring birds and on landscape connectivity in topographically complex regions.

Read the article in Interface:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2024.0891

02/07/2025

Dextrous sulfur-crested cockatoos of western Sydney have learned to use twist-handle water fountains to drink. The spread of behavioural innovations – solutions to novel problems – can be an adaptive response in fast-changing urban environments. Camera traps recorded birds gripping the valve and lowering their weight to twist it. Successful opening requires fine motor skills and coordinated sequences of actions with 46% of attempts being successful. While drinking-fountains are wide-spread, the behaviour seems to be localized, but persisting over at least two years, suggesting that this innovation has spread to form a new local tradition.

Read the full paper in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0010

02/07/2025

African wild dogs – an endangered large carnivore species – experience intense competition from dominant lions. By combining camera trap and GPS data from both species, researchers showed that despite the risk posed by humans, wild dogs use human-dominated areas as a refuge from lion competition. The study provides novel insight into how competition between large carnivores can mediate the responses of top predators to human disturbance, which has far-reaching implications for species persistence and human-wildlife coexistence as the human footprint expands globally.

Read the full article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2835

01/07/2025

Thomas Young's paper 'On the mechanism of the eye’ provided the best account up to that time of the eye's optical system, including refraction by the cornea and the surfaces of the lens. He describes an instrument that he built, an ‘optometer′, for determining the eye's state of focus, making it possible to prescribe appropriate correction lenses. The main substance of the paper, however, was to show that accommodation, the eye's focusing mechanism, was not the result of changes to the curvature of the cornea, nor to the length of the eye, but was due entirely to changes in the shape of the lens, which he describes with impressive accuracy.

To mark the 360th anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions, we're spotlighting landmark papers. View Thomas Young's 1801 paper in the Royal Society Journals Archive:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstl.1801.0004

01/07/2025

Wildflower strips can be useful measures to support ground-dwelling arthropods and their ecological functions in agricultural landscapes. New research shows that two-year-old perennial wildflower strips lead to increases of spiders and carabid beetles, as well as pest predation measured with artificial caterpillars. More importantly, these benefits were observed across three different crop types (oilseed r**e, winter cereals, and spring crops), highlighting that positive consequences can be expected for several common crops in Central Europe. Spillover (effects on adjacent fields) was weak, which indicates that other management strategies, like decreasing field sizes, are needed to support biodiversity within arable fields.

Read the full article in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0752

30/06/2025

A pair of critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoises, born 'ex situ' in Tian-e-Zhou National Nature Reserve, China, have been successfully reintegrated into wild populations for the first time. Through post-release monitoring based on wearable radio tag and passive acoustic methods, the researchers show that, by the third day after release, the two porpoises had joined a local individual and gradually integrated into the core distribution area of the local population. This successful release demonstrates the potential of this approach as a supplementary measure for the restoration of the Yangtze finless porpoise wild population and may be a model for other endangered river species.

Read the full paper in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0719

30/06/2025

Local human impacts interact with geography to drive benthic community depth zonation on contemporary coral reefs. Bex J. Turner from Bangor University tells us more about a new study in Proceedings B that tested whether natural depth zonation patterns differed across geographies, and whether and how local human impacts might disrupt these natural zonation patterns. They found evidence of human-disrupted changes to benthic community depth zonation and that benthic community depth zonation did not always occur.

Read the blog post:

Bex J. Turner tells us more about a new study in Proceedings B that tested whether natural depth zonation patterns differed across geographies, and whether and how local human impacts might disrupt these natural zonation patterns.

29/06/2025

When did flowering plants evolve? This question puzzled Darwin and remains unresolved in evolutionary biology. At the heart of the issue is a disconnect between the fossil record and approaches designed to infer ages from genetic information - molecular clocks. In a new article researchers argue that this disconnect is a result of how we interpret the fossil record. Through a careful appraisal of this record, they show that the two lines of evidence are in agreement: flowering plants most likely originated during the latest Jurassic and have continued to diversify since.

Read the paper published in Royal Society Open Science:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.242158

28/06/2025

The Royal Society has spent over 360 years publishing innovative, multi-disciplinary scientific research from around the world. In this blog, we share the top cited articles of 2024, showcasing the breadth and impact of the research published across the Royal Society's journals.

You can also visit our publishing metrics page to learn more about the journals and the advantages of publishing open access:

Discover the top cited articles of 2024, showcasing the breadth and impact of the research published across the Royal Society's journals.

28/06/2025

To find a suitable mate, many animals across taxa use social information. Mate copying is a form of social learning in which individuals use information regarding potential mates by observing and copying the mate choices of other individuals. In a new study, researchers report the first evidence that also Drosophila simulans females use social information during mate choice. In their experiments, a female first observes another female choosing between artificially coloured green or pink males and is afterwards allowed to choose between two males of the same phenotypes herself. D. simulans females were more likely to choose the same type of male as in the demonstration. Thus, copy the mate choice of their conspecifics. This finding underscores the capacity of D. simulans females to engage in rapid social observational learning, a process that may play a significant role in the evolution of reproductive isolation.

Read the full paper in Biology Letters:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0070

27/06/2025

How and why have animal minds evolved to be so different from one another? A new theme issue investigates the processes by which minds become different, the selection pressures that drive this process, and the neural processes and physiology that they act upon. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2025/380/1929