23 December, 2008
Volume 18, Issue 24

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Volume 18, Issue 24

On the cover: Until the 1980s, when the last one went extinct, five species of Hawaiian honeyeaters sipped nectar from Hawaii's flowers. These songbirds, illustrated at lower left (Hawaii ‘o’o) and upper center (kioea), have always been considered Australasian honeyeaters (family Meliphagidae; two on right branch) and share many similarities in form, behavior, and ecology. However, DNA sequence analysis of museum specimens by Fleischer, James, and Olson (pages 1927–1931) reveal that the Hawaiian species are distantly related to meliphagids and instead form a new songbird family, the Mohoidae, related to Holarctic waxwings (shown at upper left), neotropical silky flycatchers, and related families. The mohoids and meliphagids are a remarkable example of convergent evolution and are the only bird family known to go extinct over the past few centuries. Illustration by John Anderton.

In the News


Top 20 Papers

  • The Top 20 papers in Current Biology accessed over the last 30 days.

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Featured Video

The paper by Schuster and colleagues in the December 23rd issue reports how fruit-catching fish in Costa Rica analyse aerial motion as well as compensate for drift in order to optimize their catching success. The first clip shows the response of a school of Brycon guatemalensis to a piece of fruit falling from a bridge, and the second shows the failure of these fish to respond to an artificial fruit that is moving in an upwards direction.

Online Discussion

An online discussion of the October 28th issue Dispatch by Lawrence et al. is available here.


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Volume 18, Issue 24 | December 23, 2008


Research Highlights

Online Ahead of Issue

Each week, Current Biology publishes papers online ahead of the print issue. Here are the latest:

Csankovszki et al. A third condensin in C. elegans Wystrach et al. Ants learn geometry and features

Interview

In this interview, Current Biology's Cyrus Martin talks to Robert Fleischer about his recent study, which has shown that the Hawaiian honeyeaters, a now extinct group of songbirds, represent a long overlooked case of convergent evolution. Listen also to the December Cell Press Podcast containing this interview and other exciting science from the Cell Press journals.

Featured Article

A new model for asymmetric spindle positioning in mouse oocytes
Melina Schuh and Jan Ellenberg

In order to divide asymmetrically, mammalian oocytes relocate the spindle from their center to the cortex in an F-actin-dependent manner. Here, Schuh and Ellenberg show that this spindle positioning is mediated by myosin-driven pulling on the cytoplasmic actin network.

The featured article is available FREE online.

Magazine Highlight

Primer: The evolution of haploidy and diploidy
Sarah P. Otto and Aleeza C. Gerstein

The number of sets of homologous chromosomes in a cell, the ploidy level, shows wide variation among organisms; in this Primer, Otto and Gerstein provide an overview of the diversity in ploidy levels and discuss the impacts of evolutionary forces on ploidy.

The magazine highlight is available FREE online.

Collections

Current Biology's Primers and Quick Guides offer accessible accounts of a broad range of subjects in biology, Q & As are short interviews with scientists, and Sydney Brenner's Loose Ends columns are the thoughts of one of the greatest biologists of the 20th century on a wide variety of topics.

Quick Guides Primers
Q & As Loose Ends