How do living organisms that lack a brain or nerve cells make decisions? In a new study published in May 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ...

Hokkaido University researcher Assistant Professor Yukinori Nishigami and his collaborators study the complex behavioral patterns of seemingly simple, single-celled ciliates. They found out that they ...

Up until recently, habituation -- a simple form of learning -- was deemed the exclusive domain of complex organisms with brains and nervous systems, such as worms, insects, birds, and mammals. But a ...

Depending upon how you do the counting, there are around 9 million species on Earth, from the simplest single-celled organisms to humans. It’s reassuring to imagine that complex bodies and brains like ...

Laboratory chemists are now edging closer to the moment when lifeless molecules first organized into the chemistry that would eventually support complex organisms. By recreating key early-Earth ...

Despite being among the simplest forms of life on Earth, cyanobacteria are able to anticipate and prepare for the changing seasons based on the amount of light they are exposed to. It has been known ...

Molecules found in 1.6-billion-year-old Australian rocks are believed to be remnants of a “lost world” of ancient organisms that comprised the earliest complex life. “We say they are a lost world, ...