dispersal

The secret lives of whales

...derwater stepping-stones—food archipelagos?for the dispersal of deep-sea species. “If you calculate the abundan...t 5-10 kilometers away, which is a very reasonable dispersal distance for the animals that live on them,?says Smith. In the North Atlantic, where only 10% of hi...

Scientists find fossil proof of Egypt's ancient climate

...he possible role weather and climate played in the dispersal of humans "out of Africa" and into Europe and Asia...years ago was a critical time in the evolution and dispersal of African hominins. Our climate data from this 130,000-year-old humid event suggest that this would...

Oldest cranial, dental and postcranial fossils of early modern European humans confirmed

...y with recent humans and therefore document only a dispersal of modern humans into Europe. The radiocarbon dating of the Mladec assemblage confirms that they derived from the time period of the middle to late Aurignacian of Central Europe. Given the presence of multiple individuals, males and females, adult a...

Primates on the brink

...ealth of their surrounding ecosystems. Through the dispersal of seeds and other interactions with their environments, primates help support a wide range of plant and animal life that make up the Earth's forests. The 2004-2006 list focuses on the severity of the overall threat rather than mere numbers. Some on...

Nanobacteria in clouds could spread disease, scientists claim

...eria are excreted from the body in urine and their dispersal from the ground into the atmosphere and stratosphe... in clouds could play a crucial role in the global dispersal of infective agents, and might also play a prominent role in the nucleation of cloud drops. "This h...

Rabies spread speeds up

... potential leaks in vaccine corridors and sites of dispersal - the authors' simulations provide a valuable resource for anticipating alternate outbreak scenarios and preparing multiple game plans to prevent or contain them. They also indicate the best sites for establishing a new vaccine barrier. And given how...

Venom doc tracks down snake bioweapons

...ly Colubroidea, evolved glands for the storage and dispersal of their saliva approximately 60-80 million years ago. Since that time, various prey-immobilizing toxins have evolved from innocuous proteins that were normally produced in other body tissues. Scientists believe that snakes, rather than simply tweak...

Expanding forests darken the outlook for butterflies, study shows

...student Nusha Keyghobadi used samples of butterfly dispersal and genetic variability taken from the Kananaskis region in Alberta to show a correlation between less genetic diversity and smaller meadows. According to Roland, the altitude of the tree line in the Canadian Rockies is rising--likely due to global ...

Ships bring alien jellyfish invaders to our shores

...udy provides strong evidence that their world-wide dispersal post-dates European global shipping and trade that...il now our knowledge of natural and human-assisted dispersal of species has been insufficient to confidently track and predict the spread of non-indigenous marin...

Oldest dated evidence of cattle in southern Africa found

...rn Botswana figured prominently in the arrival and dispersal of livestock in southern Africa. The new dates support this view and confirm a long-term association between people and livestock in this part of the Kalahari. The discovery of the 2000 year old cow and sheep bones are important because of the long h...

New study of the world's smallest elephant

...oncerning the ecology, genetics, social structure, dispersal and conflicts with agriculture. Dr Benoît Goossens who will carry out the research, said the need for the project was identified by wildlife authorities in Sabah during a previous Darwin Initiative grant to study orangutans. He said: "There is cle...

Invasive species harms native hardwoods by killing soil fungus

...cern over the impact of accidental and intentional dispersal of alien invasive species across the globe," says Kristina A. Stinson, a plant population biologist at the Harvard Forest, Harvard's ecology and conservation center in Petersham, Mass. "In North America, thousands of nonnative plants and animals have...

Diverse tropical forests defy metabolic ecology models

...l trees depend on animals for pollination and seed dispersal and are constantly assaulted by insects, fungi, maelstrom and machete. Furthermore, soils, rainfall, the frequencies of hurricanes and fires, and assemblages of animals and plants in tropical forests all vary widely from one forest to another. Prosp...

Dogs keep dying: Many owners unaware of toxic dog food

...d because of the holiday these past few weeks, the dispersal of recall information was disrupted," says Sharon Center, a professor of veterinary medicine who specializes in liver function and disease at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, which is emerging as a central clearinghouse for information ...

Ancient global warming drove early primates' dispersal

... to North America by way of Greenland. The whole dispersal event happened within about 25,000 years. "It i...r of the U-M Museum of Paleontology. "The speed of dispersal and the speed of evolutionary change during dispersal are near the maximum for such rates observed t...

Can biological traits predict diversification rates in birds?

...s in birds that account for most of the variation: dispersal and feeding generalization. "Few studies have looked at ecological traits such as dispersal and feeding generalization as explanations for variation in rate of diversification, perhaps because...

K-Staters design and build a low-cost remote sensing tool for environmental studies

... in tricky or dangerous settings, such as studying dispersal of a smoke plume during a prairie fire; checking smokestack emissions; counting livestock in the pens at a feedlot; or checking crop fields for problem areas, for example. "We keep thinking of new civilian uses for it," Ham said. He also said it wil...

Ocean temperature predicts spread of marine species

...onal Academy of Sciences Early Edition. Knowing dispersal distance is a critical component for managing comm...gether than in colder water, since in warmer water dispersal distances tend to be shorter," O'Connor said. While a one degree increase in temperature at the o...

Some butterflies travel farther, reproduce faster

... "We may be selecting for genes that enhance the dispersal or migratory capability of animals when we fragment the landscape," Fescemyer said. The animals best able to migrate are more likely to survive and reproduce. "What we learn could apply to any organism that has to move to find food," he added Ålan...

'Ancestral eve' was mother of all tooth decay

...d the first oral bacterial evidence supporting the dispersal of modern Homo sapiens out of Africa to Asia. The team, led by Page Caufield, a professor of cariology and comprehensive care at NYUCD, discovered that Streptoccocus mutans, a bacterium associated with dental caries, has evolved along with its hu...

UCI scientists reconstruct migration of avian flu virus

...y Indochina, the strains appear largely limited to dispersal among local areas. Genetic sequences the scientists analyzed suggest that parallel evolution of different H5N1 strains lets the virus infect and cycle through different host species in a region, regardless of the host or vector species it infects ...

Madagascan tropical forests return thanks to better management and well-defined ownership

... ecologists trying to understand factors like seed dispersal and soil quality, our study clearly shows the importance of an increased understanding also of the social context behind forest regeneration," says Elmqvist. The loss of tropical forests is a concern worldwide since these forests harbor more than 50 ...

The kapok connection -- Study explains rainforest similarities

...n Earth through studies like this one." Oceanic dispersal links the world's rainforests, said Dick, "and thi...lans to continue investigating the role of oceanic dispersal to see if the same is true for other species and for entire plant communities. "This tree has bec...