January Research Highlights New research on dog noses, hagfish slime, seafood labeling and the water cycle

Since their domestication millennia ago, dogs have been man’s best friend, and aside from friendship, centuries of selective breeding have tailored them for tasks like herding, hunting and guarding — or so we thought. A new study led by Schmid College of Science and Technology’s Nicholas Hebdon and Lindsay Waldrop, published in the journal Science Advances, used advanced 3D reconstruction techniques to analyze 117 skulls from 40 domestic dog breeds and 18 wild canid species.

The researchers found substantial overlap in skull shapes across breeds and functional categories, but no clear evidence that breeds selected for bite work or scent work have developed distinct morphological traits that enhance these abilities. This suggests that humans have been breeding dogs primarily for preferred visible traits, and that other factors like individual personality affect dogs’ performance of tasks.

“There are many news stories about dogs attacking people badly and often there are specific breeds that are targets of this reporting — such as pit bulls. Some people claim that these dogs will bite harder than other dogs of the same size, or they have special features like “locking jaws” that make them especially dangerous to people. Our study shows that this is simply not true; dogs bred to bite things aren’t structurally different than dogs that have bred to do other things,” said Waldrop. A summary of the study is available on EurekAlert.

256,000 and counting. That is the number of times viewers have watched Coyote Peterson’s new video on hagfish slime, which was filmed in collaboration with Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Douglas Fudge. Yes, that is an image of Coyote Peterson about to be covered in hagfish slime for the sake of science.

Remember the water cycle diagram you saw in elementary school? Andrew Felton, Gregory Goldsmith, and Joshua Fisher have published a new study on the global water cycle in the journal Nature Water. The study provides the first comprehensive global estimates of the amount of water stored in Earth’s plants and the amount of time it takes for that water to flow through them. The information is a missing piece of the puzzle in understanding the global water cycle and how that cycle is being altered by changes in land use and climate. A summary of the study is available on EurekAlert.

Food Science MS graduate Sarah Ahles and Associate Professor of Food Science Rosalee Hellberg have published a meta-analysis of seafood species mislabeling in the United States in the journal Food Control. The seafood industry is known for its complex global supply chains and diverse market offerings, which can make accurate labeling a challenging task. This new study offers a fresh perspective on seafood labeling practices in the United States: substitution rates for the most popular seafood species in the U.S. remain relatively low, providing consumers with greater confidence in the seafood choices they make. A summary of the study is available on Phys.org.

Finally, several Schmid College faculty have won awards to hold conferences on campus in the year to come. Drew Moshier, professor of mathematics, will lead the “Banaschewski Centennial Conference” in 2026 and Jeremy Hsu, Sonja Cwik, Daniel Dries and Nicole Howard will lead a conference on “Advancing Research on Quantitative Reasoning (QR) in STEM Education.”