In 1988, Robert O'Hara coined the now ubiquitous phrase "tree thinking" to highlight the importance of cladistics for proper evolutionary reasoning. This accessible phrase has been taken up widely in the professional, popular, and educational literatures, and it has played an important role in helping spread phylogenetic thinking far…

Water is one of the most common molecules in the universe. Water is polarized, but it has many states besides the normal tetrahedron depicted in standard biology texts. Water is also the most ubiquitous molecule on Earth, the universal solvent. It is the internal and external habitat of cells. Ecologically, water is contiguous with life and the…

The Red Queen effect takes its name from a scene in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass," where Alice and the Red Queen are constantly running, yet remain in the same place relative to one another. In competitive ecosystems, this translates to the idea that, "in order to survive, a technology solution must evolve faster just…

Evolution is the central concept of biology and key to a comprehensive understanding of any complex biological interaction. It has proven to be a particularly difficult subject for both teachers and students. Hybrid teaching environments have the potential to support students in learning about complex topics and simultaneously enable researchers…