Mathematical biology

While the study of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the most urgent priority, biologists also learned more about how brains process information, how to define individuality and why sleep deprivation kills.

The physicist Jeff Gore tests theories about microbe communities experimentally and finds new rules governing ecological stability.

Studies suggest that self-disseminating vaccines could prevent the "spillover" of animal viruses into humans as pandemic diseases.

Emperor penguins display rigorously geometric spacing and mathematical efficiency when they huddle together for warmth, which may reveal secrets to their overall health.

Plants ignore the most energy-rich part of sunlight because stability matters more than efficiency, according to a new model of photosynthesis.

The nervous systems of foraging and predatory animals may prompt them to move along a special kind of random path called a Lévy walk to find food efficiently when no clues are available.

Recent findings add weight to the evidence that the intransitive competitions between species enrich the diversity of nature.

Mathematicians and neuroscientists have created the first anatomically accurate model that explains how vision is possible.

During development, cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing, which could hint at a more general principle of life.