Species in Biological News

Highest ever winter water temperatures recorded

... there are also other indicators such as tropical species reaching Tasmania. "It's important for us to ... phytoplankton, and zooplankton (biomass and species composition). Satellite images indicate the ... he was not aware of any reports of Indian Ocean species but he said fishers were concerned at what he ...

Scientists find universal rules for food-web stability

... food chains, in which individual animal or plant species function as predator or prey. Potential food webs not only differ by their species composition, but also vary in their stability. ... food webs, with the relationships between their species remaining constant over relatively long periods ...

Animal and plant communication at the ESA Annual Meeting

... other insects to birds and small mammals. One species of bug, however, has exploited this system. These ... in the family Coreidae, roam freely on one species of Acacia and feed on the plants' leaf tissue. ... better at avoiding predators Insect herbivore species often specialize on the host plants that they ...

National assessment done on potential invasive snail and slug pests in US

... the first-ever assessment of snail and slug species that are of potential threat to the nation's ... snail and slug pests globally to determine which species would be of greatest concern if introduced ... in their efforts to keep such invasive pest species out of the country. "The study is preliminary ...

Douglas-fir, geoducks make strange bedfellows in studying climate change

... measurements. But when you add in a second species and compare the growth rings of geoducks and ... species. "When we associate rings from one species with known sea surface temperatures, we can ... length of the instrument measurements. "Each species brings its own 'perspective' of past climate, ...

Naming evolution's winners and losers

... Mammals and many species of birds and fish are among evolution's ... Academy of Sciences , also shows that new species emerge nearly as often as they die off. ... slower than would have been expected. "Their species richness is so low, given how old they are," he ...

Humans 'damaging the oceans'

... include changes in the areas fish and other sea species can inhabit, invasions, extinctions and major ... increased UV exposure, toxic pollution, alien species and disease. The combined effect is to weaken the ability of many species to withstand these multiple stresses. Another ...

Sex in the Caribbean: Environmental change drives evolutionary change -- eventually

... Oceanography. The fossil record shows that if a species could shift from clonal to sexual reproduction it ... Sea was cut off from the Pacific Ocean, many new species appeared in the fossil record, and all reproduced ... relative amount of cloning and sex occurring in species over the last 10 million years in the Caribbean. ...

Freshwater fish at the top of the food chain evolve more slowly

... researcher at Harvard University. "Some species feed on insects, snails, or small crustaceans, ... elusive prey." For largemouth bass and other species that feed primarily on fish, the researchers ... examined museum specimens representing 29 species of centrarchid fishes. Using a chemical process ...

University of Toronto helps to 'barcode' the world's plants

... by which we can discover the many undescribed species that exist on earth," says Spencer Barrett, a ... barcoding has been widely used to identify animal species since its invention five years ago. But its use ... quality of the DNA sequences; and ability to tell species apart based on a sample of ...

Biologists rediscover endangered frog population

... of three frogs or toads on the federal Endangered species List in Southern California. Prior to this recent ... an important role in the re-establishment of this species across Southern California," said Adam Backlin, a ... History Museum's team is searching for all species of vertebrates animals with a backbone in a ...

UBC researchers help push for standard DNA barcodes for plants

... as a viable solution for uniquely identifying species in many animal groups. However, because DNA ... were immediately able to determine the correct species of plant, and in the rest of the cases were able ... standard would have to accommodate over 400,000 species of plants, and would be a key step toward ...

Warmer environment means shorter lives for cold-blooded animals

... (SoMAS), found that for a diverse range of species whose body temperatures vary with the temperature ... years, while in Russia, individuals of the same species live nearly 200 years," said Dr. Munch. "We ... variation in lifespan that we see in all sorts of species has a common physiological basis in temperature." ...

Humans lend a hand to critically endangered waterbird

... impact on one of the world's most threatened bird species can be beneficial rather than destructive - and ... findings show that this critically endangered species is largely dependent on the local farmers for ... will be crucial in saving this once common species from extinction," added Hugh. With fewer than ...

Red List overlooks island species

... tool for evaluating the conservation status of species around the planet, and according to these criteria all the species in the Canary Islands are endangered. However, ... Islands, has assessed the conservation status of species that are supposed to be under threat in the ...

Noise pollution negatively affects woodland bird communities, says CU-Boulder study

... is the first to indicate that at least a few bird species opt for noisy areas over quiet ones, perhaps ... in adjacent, quieter woodland sites. While bird species richness declined at noisy sites, the bird ... to show that noise pollution causes changes in species interactions within bird communities," said ...

High construction cost for cycads

... pace of decline is 65-80 times slower than other species for which this trait has been determined. The ... Cycas population is being threatened by alien species that feed on its leaves. Guam's alien deer and ... general lack of physiology research on Cycas species is a limitation to our understanding of this ...

New discovery suggests trees evolved camouflage defense against long extinct predator

... Many animal species such as snakes, insects and fish have evolved ... tree ( P. crassifolius ) a heteroblastic species which is native to New Zealand. This species goes through several strange colour transitions ...

Warming climate threatens California fruit and nut production

... hours between 32 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Each species or cultivar is assumed to have a specific ... those who specialize in producing high-chill species and varieties," Luedeling said. "We expect almost ... option would be transitioning to different tree species or varieties that do not demand as much winter ...

A global model for the origin of species independent of geographical isolation

... the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise -- dominates evolutionary theory. The first ... settle the debate which deals with the origin of species independent of geographic isolation. They demonstrated, using a computer model, how diverse species can arise from the arrangement of organisms ...

Early initiation of Arctic sea-ice formation

... sediment cores. Today, different living diatom species are adapted to particular environmental ... ample evidence the presence of particular diatom species in sediment cores is diagnostic of conditions ... so to find fossilised Synedropsis species so well preserved and in such abundance is truly ...

Scientists report first remote, underwater detection of harmful algae, toxins

... the first remote detection of a harmful algal species and its toxin below the ocean's surface. The ... specialized, molecular-based measurements of species and toxin abundance, and transmits results to the ... the first autonomous detection of both a HAB species and its toxin by an underwater sensor," notes ...

Surviving mass extinction by leading a double life

... we have been able to prove that the planktonic species Streptochilus globigerus and the benthic ... Moreover, geochemical evidence shows that this species actively grows within the open-ocean surface ... and benthic domains. Such ecologically-flexible species are eminently suited to the recolonisation of the ...

Smaller plants punch above their weight in the forest, say Queen's biologists

... Previous studies revealed that larger plant species monopolize sunlight, water and other resources, limiting the number of smaller plant species that can exist around them. But new research has ... individuals or "host plants" of 16 woody plant species growing in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. ...

New theory on why male, female lemurs same size

... hypothesis, Dunham and Rudolf examined 62 primate species and found that copulatory plugs were most likely to occur in species where female sexual receptivity was very brief ... were the same size. This was true both for lemur species and for a few other species, like South American ...

Reintroduced Chinese alligators now multiplying in the wild in China

... population. An international workshop on the species was held in 2001, followed by recommendations for ... Endangered" on IUCN's Red List of Threatened species and is the most threatened of the 23 species of crocodilians in the world today. It is one of ...

Sex involved in plant defense

... ) plants, a plant family that has 259 different species 85 percent of which reproduce sexually with the ... of plants preferred to feed on the asexual species and lived longer while doing so. The results ... were more apt to munch on sexually reproduced species of plant. This most likely occurs, Johnson says, ...

NOAA bans commercial harvesting of krill

... adopted as Amendment 12 to the Coastal Pelagic species Fishery Management Plan (FMP), which was ... Advisory Councils." Amendment 12 adds all species of krill under a new category, "prohibited ... into a food source for numerous other species and are a principal food source for ...

Exploring standards to advance microbial genomics

... which one protein from each protein family or one species from each genus represents the group. Taking this ... all the genes from all the sequenced strains in a species the pan-genome for that species would constitute the genome representing ...

New theory gives more precise estimates of large-scale biodiversity

... Ask biologists how many species live in a pond, a grassland, a mountain range or ... 50 million species. A new way of estimating species richness reported this month in the journal ... "We know how to census the number of species in a square-meter plot or within an acre, but a ...

US-Mexico border wall could threaten wildlife species

... the potential effects of the security wall on two species the pygmy owl and bighorn sheep primarily ... could help them avoid predation by larger avian species and improve their chances for colonization." ... likely to be affected by the fence, especially species that have low rates of movement among habitat ...

Coralline algae in the Mediterranean lost their tropical element between 5 and 7 million years ago

... Almera, Spain) by way of a fossil register of 21 species collected in the two areas. "Coralline algae ... assemblages found in shallow water are extant species that are very common in the Mediterranean. ... of present-day coral reefs, such as Hydrolithon species with thick thalli, which were no longer present ...

Nitrogen research shows how some plants invade, take over others

... to gain nitrogen and how this allows plant species to invade and take over native plants. In an ... "Jean" Knops demonstrates why one invasive plant species is replacing native species -- it's because of its ability to take up and ...

Your own private global warming

... have collected individuals from a wide range of species commonly found in Antarctic waters and subjected ... levels of water temperature to learn how each species is prepared to cope with the conditions that they ... future. The study showed that several of these species are already living really close to their upper ...

The tiny difference in the genes of bacteria

... human diseases. One of them are vibrios: its species Vibrio cholerae is more commonly known as the ... due to ballast water or climate change, the species may also gain importance in Europe. As in the ... this method, we are able to say from which clam species the germ originates." The new technique can also ...

Ferns took to the trees and thrived

... aboard, and experienced a flowering of their own species diversity. "The canopy is there and -- boom -- ... By integrating genomic data from 400 living fern species with information from the fossil record, ... that ferns experienced three distinct pulses of species diversification, the Duke team's analysis shows ...

Scientists 'rebuild' giant moa using ancient DNA

... in New Zealand have identified four different moa species after retrieving ancient DNA from moa feathers ... community has not known what the 10 different species of moa looked like. "By using ancient DNA we have ... "The surprising thing is that while many of the species had a similar, relatively plain brown plumage for ...

Scientists find a biological 'fountain of youth' in new world bat caves

... what underlying mechanisms allow for some animal species to live a very long time with the hope that we ... proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and ... Journal . "As it turns out, one of these bat species lives out its long life in Florida. Since bats ...

The tiny difference in the genes of bacteria

... human diseases. One of them are vibrios: its species Vibrio cholerae is more commonly known as the ... due to ballast water or climate change, the species may also gain importance in Europe. As in the ... this method, we are able to say from which clam species the germ originates." The new technique can also ...

Your own private global warming

... have collected individuals from a wide range of species commonly found in Antarctic waters and subjected ... levels of water temperature to learn how each species is prepared to cope with the conditions that they ... future. The study showed that several of these species are already living really close to their upper ...