The Friends of Charles Darwin

Future climate change could threaten the populations of moorland birds. Scientists at Newcastle and Manchester universities have found that golden plover chicks now hatch on average nine days earlier than 20 years ago… Scientists say failure of the plover chick's main prey, daddy long legs or craneflies, to adapt at the same rate could threaten the plover's future.

• Guardian: Evolutionary Biologist Ernst Mayr Dies
• Nature: Ernst Mayr dies, aged 100
• BBC: Evolution pioneer dies aged 100

Hunting may be altering the social ecology of our closest living relative, the pygmy chimpanzee, or bonobo, making this endangered ape even more difficult to study and protect. A new survey of the Lomako forest, a 3600-square-kilometre region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), found more bonobos than expected, says Jef Dupain of the African Wildlife Foundation in Kanshasa (DRC), who carried out the study. But because their distribution was a lot patchier than has been seen previously, there were fewer actual nest sites, so the bonobos were more difficult to find.

Tiny single-celled creatures, many of them previously unknown to science, have been found at the deepest point in the world's oceans, almost 11km down. The soft-walled foraminifera, a form of plankton, were recovered by the Japanese remote submersible Kaiko.

When the temperature soars, coral reefs might cool off by creating their own clouds. Research from the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast shows that corals are packed full of the chemical dimethyl sulphide, or DMS. When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds to form, which could have a large impact on the local climate. In the air, DMS is transformed into an aerosol of tiny particles on which water vapour can condense to form clouds. This sulphur compound is also produced in large amounts by marine algae and gives the ocean its distinctive smell. Algae play a vital part in regulating Earth's climate, but no one had looked at whether coral reefs might have a similar role.

Tiny ants living in the Amazonian treetops have a remarkable survival strategy - when blown off a branch, they can glide back to the safety of their tree, a new study reveals. Cephalotes atratus ants live in communities tens of metres above the ground where gusts of wind constantly threaten to send them spiralling to the forest floor. That would spell certain death, says Robert Dudley at the University of California at Berkeley, US, and one of the study team. "For these social insects, if you can't find your tree again in the Amazon, you're never going to find your home which means you'll die," he says. So the team, led by Stephen Yanoviak at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, US, has worked out how the ants avoid this fate. The researchers found that falling ants pivot to fall hind-feet-first in midair and swerve in a J-shaped swoop to land on the bark of their home tree trunk .

Human remains dating from the 1st Century AD suggest tuberculosis (TB) may have killed off leprosy in Europe. Scientists at University College London have been examining a shrouded body recently discovered in a sealed chamber in Israel. The bones reveal the man was infected with both TB and leprosy. Given that TB is the more aggressive and faster-killing of the two, the scientists say it would have won the battle of the diseases.

They call this "Dutch country", the soft hills and open dales of South Pennsylvania, settled by European migrants three centuries ago. It is a conservative part of the country, overwhelmingly white and Christian, where the old world and the new live side-by-side. It is an unlikely place for a revolution. Yet the small town of Dover in York County is at the centre of an argument on the origins of mankind. The local high school has just become the first in the country to discuss an alternative Darwin's theory of evolution in class, called Intelligent Design.

In 1848, a strange skull was discovered on the military outpost of Gibraltar. It was undoubtedly human, but also had some of the heavy features of an ape - distinct brow ridges, and a forward projecting face. Just what was this ancient creature? And when had it lived? As more remains were discovered one thing became clear: this creature had once lived right across Europe. The remains were named Homo neanderthalensis - or Neanderthal Man - an ancient and primitive form of human.

Scientists are to establish a giant catalogue of life - to, in effect, "barcode" every species on Earth, from tiny plankton to the mighty blue whale. Initial projects will focus on birds and fish, recording details in their genetic make-up that can be used to tell one life form from another.

Two academics are paying an unusual homage to naturalist Charles Darwin's seminal study, The Origin of Species. Prof Mark Pallen and PhD student Dom White, both of Birmingham University, are performing extracts from the work in dub, a hybrid form of reggae music…

The self-styled Genomic Dub Collective came together after Prof Pallen, a bacteriologist, was inspired by a reading from Birmingham poet Benjamin Zephaniah at last year's event.

One of the few remaining objections to the idea that an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs has been put to rest. The giant tsunami caused by the impact may have scrambled fossil evidence, explaining puzzling finds that suggested the asteroid and the mass extinction were unrelated. Many geologists have long argued that the Cretaceous period ended when a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Yucat´n coast. That point in history bears the hallmarks of a global disaster - mass extinction, a giant crater, impact debris such as solidified rock droplets, and traces of iridium typical of an asteroid. However, fossils from the end of the Cretaceous have been found above layers of rock linked to the asteroid impact, and Gerta Keller of Princeton University has used this evidence to argue that the extinction may have come 300,000 years after the impact. Now Tim Lawton of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and his colleagues have shown how fossil records could have been shuffled by the tsunami following the impact. Earlier evidence has shown that the tsunami may have been 150 metres high, carrying water up to 300 kilometres inland.

Madagascar is fast losing its forest wilderness. But villagers are angered by moves to prevent them cutting down trees in recently created nature reserves.

A rough sketch by Francis Crick showing his first impression of the DNA molecule has been released on the web. The doodle, done on a scrap of A4 paper, provides the first hint of the famous double-helix structure of DNA.

The world's "biggest ever" spider has been exposed as an impostor by a leading British spider scientist. Megarachne servinei was thought to be the most terrifying spider to roam the Earth and was in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest.

A leading European Space Agency scientist says he has found a gas in the Martian atmosphere that he believes can only be explained by the presence of life. But the few researchers who have been privy to the facts say that such a conclusion is premature.

Two skulls originally found in 1967 have been shown to be about 195,000 years old, making them the oldest modern human remains known to science. The age estimate comes from a re-dating of Ethiopian rock layers close to those that yielded the remarkable fossils. The skulls, known as Omo I and II, push back the known presence of Homo sapiens in Africa by 40,000 years.

The fossilised skeleton of a rabbit-like creature that lived 55 million years ago has been found in Mongolia, Science magazine reports. Gomphos elkema, as it is known, is the oldest member of the rabbit family ever to be found.

This week's edition of Lord Melvyn Bragg's wonderful radio programme was about the Cambrian Explosion. For one week only, you can download it in mp3 format.

In the first of three essays written on a recent journey to the Galápagos Islands, Richard Dawkins considers one of the extraordinary creatures that helped inspire Darwin's theory of evolution.

Crooked and disordered teeth may be the result of people having evolved to eat relatively mushy cooked food, suggests new research. The disarray may have developed because evolutionary pressures affecting the size and shape of both the front teeth and jaw conflict with those influencing the back teeth. This means that there is often not enough space in the human jaw to accommodate all our teeth.

When it comes to brain size and intelligence, bigger is not necessarily better, say scientists. Although our brains are triple the size of our primitive ancestors, history suggests the growth had nothing to do with becoming smarter.

A new genetic study has revealed that the Antarctic minke whale may have been much more abundant before whaling began than previous estimates suggest. The DNA survey of whale meat purchased in Japanese grocery stores reveals that the species has the most genetically diverse population of any whale, indicating the species historically had a population of between 500,000 and one million individuals. The finding is significant because Japanese delegates to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) have previously argued that recent surges in minke whale numbers are unprecedented.

A huge, frozen sea lies just below the surface of Mars, a team of European scientists has announced. Their assessment is based on pictures of the planet's near-equatorial Elysium region that show plated and rutted features across an area 800 by 900km. The team think a catastrophic event flooded the landscape five million years ago and then froze out.

Microbes in the Alaskan permafrost have been found living in temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. The discovery raises concerns that the activity of these bacteria, once thought inactive at such extreme temperatures, could be making a considerable contribution to greenhouse gas production.

Swift and deadly "raptor" dinosaurs - similar to the terrifying velociraptors featured in the movie Jurassic Park - were more widespread than previously thought, a new fossil find in Argentina has revealed. The discovery shows they spread across the southern continents during the Cretaceous period - when they were thought to have been largely limited to Asia and North America.

[W]hy do so many people believe? And why has belief proved so resilient as scientific progress unravels the mysteries of plagues, floods, earthquakes and our understanding of the universe? By injecting nuns with radioactive chemicals, by scanning the brains of people with epilepsy and studying naughty children, scientists are now working out why. When the evidence is pieced together, it seems that evolution prepared what society later moulded: a brain to believe.

A bacterium that sat dormant in a frozen pond in Alaska for 32,000 years has been revived by NASA scientists. Once scientists thawed the ice, the previously undiscovered bacteria started swimming around on the microscope slide. The researchers say it is the first new species of microbe found alive in ancient ice. Now named Carnobacterium pleistocenium, it is thought to have lived in the Pleistocene epoch, a time when woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth.

An Italian scientist working on the Mars Express probe says gases detected in the planet's atmosphere may indicate life exists on the Red Planet today. Vittorio Formisano told a Dutch space conference methane and formaldehyde could signify biological activity.

In the second of three essays written on a recent visit to the Galápagos Islands, Richard Dawkins considers another of the extraordinary creatures that helped inspire Darwin's theory of evolution.

Leo Donnelly, FCD, on how Darwin's sculptor informed him of one little peculiarity in the external ear, which is now known as Darwin's Tubercle (a.k.a. Darwin's Point).

A palaeontologist has come up with a novel way of studying historical manuscripts, by treating them as fossils from an extinct species. John Cisne, writing in Science magazine, says manuscripts from the Middle Ages have a lot in common with animal populations. For this reason, he claims, he can work out how many copies of a manuscript once existed and how regularly they were destroyed, simply by applying a biological model.

Two new retroviruses - the type of virus which causes AIDS - have jumped from primates to humans, a new study reveals. The study of blood samples from nearly a thousand bushmeat hunters or handlers in Cameroon showed that at least six viruses had crossed from monkeys to the people who were exposed to freshly caught bushmeat. And two of these viruses have never been seen before in humans.

The ship belonging to Shrewsbury's most famous son is set to be recovered from the bottom of the sea and fully restored. Plans to fully restore Charles Darwin's ship the Beagle are set to be unveiled as one of the closing events of the town's Darwin Festival. Members of the Beagle project, based in Devonport, will travel to the birthplace of the naturalist, where they will give a presentation on how they propose to resurrect the ship.