GoKawiilWhat PhD supervisors are doing right, according to Nature’s 2025 PhD survey. Plus, the glowing lures of anglerfish might help them flag down a mate and a gripping account of the ‘rule-defying’ genes that determine sex.
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Only female anglerfish have luminescent lures. Males have large chambers in their heads, possibly for detecting the scent of females, and big eyes with which they might spot a tempting glimmer. (David Shale/Bluegreen Pictures via Alamy)
The glowing lure that female anglerfishes (Lophiiformes) use to attract prey might have originally evolved to help potential mates find them in the pitch dark of their deep-sea homes. Researchers found that deep-sea anglerfish species began to proliferate shortly after females developed bioluminescence in their lures, which could suggest that the glow helped the fish reproduce as they moved into the darkness. “The evolution of this group may be driven because of the sexual attraction of the lures,” says evolutionary biologist and study co-author Alex Maile. “That’s the fun, weird part about all this.”
Science | 4 min read
Reference: Ichthyology & Herpetology paper
Mentions of AI in the research literature are booming and the number of specialist science AI models are on the rise, finds an influential annual report from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Many researchers have started to rely on AI ‘agents’ that autonomously carry out science tasks but the report is sceptical about their performance. AI agents still struggle to reliably perform multistep workflows, it says, with the best AI agents scoring roughly half as well as human specialists with PhDs.
Nature | 8 min read
Reference: Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2026
A group of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Uganda appears to be embroiled in a ‘civil war’ that’s been rumbling on for nearly a decade. The well-studied Ngogo chimpanzee group seemed to live in harmony until around 2015, at which point researchers noticed fractures among the community. By 2018, two factions had emerged, one of which has since made several co-ordinated attacks against the other. The divide might have been prompted by a combination of disease outbreak and shifting social hierarchies after the death of some key older individuals, researchers say.
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