Welcome to Ask A Biologist. This site has a large collection of biology learning materials that includes stories, games, activities, videos, and a podcast.

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You may have heard that the instructions for life are within your DNA and the DNA of any living thing. But how does DNA relate to a genome?

What is a media artist doing developing games based on large science data sets? It turns out he is looking into how the planet ticks and also what David McConville calls global weirding. Listen as Dr. Biology learns how a media artist makes his home in the world of science,…

By the time the first endangered species list was made, many species had already gone extinct.  Some species, like whooping cranes, were almost extinct at that time.  But the US government did not begin to protect animals as endangered species until they were put on the official…

Not everyone has been on a hike and very few have hiked with a park ranger. Dr. Biology hikes South Mountain Park with not one but two park rangers. Park Rangers Liz Smith and Justin Olson are our guides for the 2.5 mile trip up Holbert Trail. This episode…

Biologist Bruce Hammock talks about life as a biologist, being a businessman and mountain climbing. How do these all fit together? Listen in as Dr. Biology learns how these pieces all work together in an interesting career.

An interview with biologist Rebecca Clark. Dr. Biology and his co-host Itzany Mendez look into lives of ants and learn some pretty cool things including how to build a slick ant farm using two music CD cases.

Could fire be important for life on Earth? Would Earth be the same without fire? These are just a few of the many questions we have for fire researcher Stephen Pyne about fire and its role with life. Did we also mention his battle with a dragon? If you have a burning desire to…

An interview with physicist Peter Vukusic. Dr. Biology gets the inside story about iridescent color, the science behind it, and believe it or not a link between science, surfing and snowboarding that you may not thought about.

Bone Zoom Gallery (Up-close Inside Bones)

Take a look at the microscopic world of bone in our virtual bone histology lab. Just pick a microscope slide from below and click on it to view under the virtual microscope.

Feather Zoom Gallery (Feathers up-close)

There is nothing like seeing a feather up close.

Pollen Gallery (Pollen up-close)

Pollen comes in many shapes and sizes. These are just a few of the thousands of examples.

Tiger Beetle Zoom Gallery (Up-close with tiger beetles)

Some of the fastest animals on Earth are below. That’s right, if these tiny insects were as large as a horse they would be running 200 miles an hour.

Monarch butterfly puzzle

Migrating Monarchs

Thousands of orange and black shapes flutter through the trees. Welcome to one of the few wintering homes of the monarch butterfly. Also in: Español…

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Bee with mites

Mite Mighty Foe to 'Killer' Bees in State

Africanized "killer" bees have fallen prey to a deadly predator of their own- parasitic mites whose infestation has dropped their wild colony numbers by as much as 70 percent statewide.

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crystallography

Making Life Crystal Clear

Much like a mechanical watch, living things only work when all the gears work together. Some of the tiniest of gears are proteins. Learning about the shape and size of these proteins is the job…

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Digger Bees

Desert Diggers

The digger bee is just one of about a thousand species of native bees in Arizona, many of which have females that burrow into the ground with their jaws and legs when constructing a nest.

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