Latest Ecology Stories
University of Texas at Austin [ Watch the Video Copepod Nauplius Swimming at 10 Degrees C ] Olympic swimmers aren't the only ones who change their strokes to escape competitors. To escape from the jaws and claws of predators in cold, viscous water, marine copepods switch from a wave-like swimming stroke to big power strokes, a behavior that has now been revealed thanks to 3-D high-speed digital holography. Copepods are tiny crustaceans found in nearly every aquatic environment on...
University of California, Irvine Results will aid land management, policy decisions for coastal sage scrub restoration California sagebrush in the southern part of the state will adjust better to climate change than sagebrush populations in the north, according to UC Irvine researchers in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology affiliated with the Center for Environmental Biology. The results of their study, which appears online in Global Change Biology, will assist land...
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (MI) receives one of Ducks Unlimited's highest honors for her contributions to wetlands and waterfowl conservation. Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) March 29, 2013 Sen. Debbie Stabenow (MI), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, was presented last Friday with the 2013 Wetland Conservation Achievement Award, one of Ducks Unlimited's highest honors. "Senator Stabenow led the Senate in passing a comprehensive, bipartisan farm bill in 2012 – one of the few...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Mysterious crop circles started appearing in regular fashion across the UK in the 1970s, leading to many theories about their origin. As they grew in popularity, and began taking on very peculiar shapes, sizes and design patterns, many pointed to the stars, blaming ET for the crop-damaging, yet extraordinarily-elaborate patterns in the fields of the English countryside. And as these spherical designs became more and more elaborate,...
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Hybrid offspring of different house mice populations show a preference for mating with individuals from their father's original population Mate choice is a key factor in the evolution of new animal species. The choice of a specific mate can decisively influence the evolutionary development of a species. In mice, the attractiveness of a potential mate is conveyed by scent cues and ultrasonic vocalizations. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online With no conclusion to the raging climate change debate in sight, the Obama Administration, in conjunction with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), has decided to forge ahead with a new land conservation strategy designed to adjust for a much warmer future. The strategy, which will be executed in concert with state and tribal authorities, aims to protect wildlife as their historical habitats are being altered by the forces of...
Although it’s known that construction of homes in suburban areas can have negative impacts on native plants and animals, a recent study led by University of Massachusetts Amherst ecologist Susannah Lerman suggests that well- managed residential development such as provided by homeowners associations (HOA) can in fact support native wildlife. For their recent study published in Ecology and Society, Lerman and her colleagues Kelly Turner and Christofer Bang of Arizona State University...
Northern Research Station - USDA Forest Service Bubbling brooks and streams are a scenic and much loved feature of forest ecosystems, but long-term data at the U.S. Forest Service’s Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest suggests that more productive forests might carry considerably less water, according to a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mark Green, a research hydrologist with the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and an...
Terminix experts point to abundance of 2012 eggs soon to hatch Memphis, Tenn. (PRWEB) March 21, 2013 MEMPHIS, Tenn., Mar. 20, 2013 – As the old saying goes, “April showers bring May flowers.” But this year, Florida residents may be getting more than they bargained for with those springtime raindrops. A particularly wet 2012 summer resulted in flooding throughout the state and unleashed higher-than-normal numbers of pestiferous mosquitoes, including the recently-publicized...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Despite widespread use of fertilizers and nitrogen emissions by industrial processes, the amount of atmospheric nitrogen has remained consistent over the past 500 years, according to a new study in Nature. "People have been really interested in nitrogen in current times because it's a major pollutant," said study co-author Kendra McLauchlan, an assistant professor of geography at Kansas State University. "Humans are producing a lot...
Latest Ecology Reference Libraries
The Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) was occasionally previously known as Man O’War or man of War, a reflection of its rakish lines, aerial piracy of other birds, and speed. It’s widespread in the tropical Atlantic, breeding colonially in the trees in Florida, the Caribbean and the Cape Verde Islands. In addition, it breeds along the Pacific coast of the Americas from Mexico to Ecuador including the Galapagos Islands, as well. It is known as a vagrant as far from its...
The Guadalupe Storm Petrel is an extinct species of the Hydrobatidae family. It was a small seabird, almost undistinguishable from its relative, Leach’s Storm Petrel. The only ways to tell them apart was their circannual rhythm and the fact that the Guadalupe Storm Petrel is larger in size and its paler under coverts. They bred only on Guadalupe Island off Baja, California. The breeding season was set between the local subspecies of Leach’s Storm Petrel, the winder breeding Oceanodroma...
Profilicollis is a genus of acanthocephalan parasites that are found in crustaceans and shorebirds. Profilicollis parasites use decapod crustaceans as intermediate hosts and species of shorebirds as definitive hosts. The parasite first develops in mole crabs of North and South America. After it infects a mole crab, it becomes dormant until the crab is eaten by a suitable bird, such as a Surf scoter or Herring Gull. Once the parasite has passed through the stomach of the bird, it develops...
The oriental small-clawed otter (Aonyx cinerea) is also known as the Asian small-clawed otter. The range of this otter includes Burma, Bangladesh, India, Taiwan, Laos, southern China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. This otter was thought to be a single member in the genus Amblonyx, but it has been recently classified as Aonyx due to research on its mitochondrial DNA. The oriental small-clawed otter prefers to live in freshwater wetlands and mangrove swamps...
Conservation Biology is a peer-reviewed academic journal of the Society for Conservation Biology. It was established in 1987 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell. Conservation Biology was originally developed to provide a global voice for an emerging discipline. It quickly became the most important journal dealing with the topic of biological diversity. Editor-in-chief is Gary Meffe; managing editor is Ellen Main. Stanley A. Temple, President of the SCB from 1991-1993, said: “The...
