Researchers analyzing the genomes of cultivated cacao trees have traced their origin to a “single domestication event” some 3,600 years ago. The discovery opens a new front in a long-running argument regarding when and where humans started growing the source of chocolate.

“This evidence increases our understanding of how humans moved and established in America,” said Omar Cornejo, a Washington State University population geneticist in the School of Biological Sciences and lead author of an article on the study in Communications Biology, an open-access journal from the publishers of Nature.

“It is important in itself because it gives us a timeframe for asking questions that are perhaps trickier: How long did it take to make a good cacao? How strong was the process of domestication? How many plants were necessary to domesticate a tree?”

The study, which involved 18 scientists from 11 institutions, also found that cacao’s domestication ended up selecting for flavor, disease resistance and the stimulant theobromine. However, that came at the cost of retaining genes that lowered crop yields.

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It’s hard to say exactly what would happen if you had three hearts and one of them stopped. Humans, like cats, have just one heart, so we have no experience with this. Octopuses, on the other hand, do have three hearts.

When I called my friend Kirt Onthank, an alumnus in biology from Washington State University who studies how octopus bodies work, he told me all about the three hearts. Before becoming a professor at Walla Walla University, he also studied biology here at WSU.

Onthank says the answer to your question depends on which of an octopus’s three hearts stops working. Octopuses have two types of hearts. Two of them are called branchial hearts and one is called a systemic heart.

Each branchial heart sits right next to each of the octopus’s gills. The branchial heart pumps blood through the gills and after the blood leaves the gills, the single systemic heart pumps it to the rest of the body.

“The branchial hearts kind of work like the right side of your heart, pumping blood to the lungs, and the systemic heart works like the left side of your heart, pumping blood to the rest of the body,” Onthank says.

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Dr. Universe

Scientists know very little about a species of stonefly that can only be found in the alpine streams of the Grand Teton Mountain Range: the Lednia tetonica.

It was discovered in 2012. But as climate change slowly melts glaciers and threatens the aquatic insect’s habitat, researchers are trying to learn as much as they can about the species, before it disappears.

On a cold morning at a Grand Teton campground, three scientists prepared to do just that by packing their bags for an expedition.

Scott Hotaling, a post-doctoral scholar in biological sciences at Washington State University, got out of his green Subaru and said, “it’s about 6 am, people are just starting to wake up and we’re heading to the Skillet Glacier later today.”

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Wyoming Public Media

Researchers in Washington are studying a fish that nests under rocks and sings at night to attract its mates. They say the ears of these singing fish could teach us how to improve our own hearing.

You know that expression, “Leave no stone unturned?”

That’s how Washington State University neuroscientist Allison Coffin goes about catching midshipman fish—at least during mating season.

Standing on the rocky, oyster-covered shoreline of Hood Canal, she rolled over a beach-ball sized rock to reveal a small pool of water just barely covering two fish.

“Oh yeah! Another female,” she said. “And then there’s the male right there.”

Because it’s low tide, some of the fish she and her research partner Joe Sisneros uncovered aren’t in any water at all.

That makes this area prime fishing grounds for the researchers, who say the ears of these fish could teach us how to improve our own hearing.

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