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Tag: "bats" at biology news

Molecular biology fills gaps in knowledge of bat evolution

...e present work advances our understanding of where bats originated, when they diversified and how differen...he hypothesis that the group of large fruit-eating bats from the tropics, that fly mostly during the day - known to biologists as megabats - emerged from fo...

Vampire bats keep out of trouble by running

Although most people think of bats as stealthy mammals that flit about in the night s...versity study. It's known that the common vampire bats of Central and South America behave much more like four-legged terrestrial mammals, in that they lik...

UCLA scientists reveal how Nipah virus infects cells

... sickening 265 people and killing 105. Spread from bats to pigs to humans, the outbreak infected more than 200 pig farmers and killed 40 percent. Desperate to contain the outbreak, the government ordered its military to kill more than 1 million pigs, resulting in economic devastation to the country. In B...

Birds and bats sow tropical seeds

... of replanted species would be dispersed by birds, bats and primates. That's less and less the case today ...rops of bat- and bird-dispersed fruits. Birds and bats living in nearby forests will fly to the bait to eat the fruit and will likely drop seed from forest...

Bats use touch receptors on wings to fly, catch prey, study finds

...But an Ohio University neurobiology professor says bats have a "feel" for it, too. John Zook's studies of...eting, revive part of a long-forgotten theory that bats use their sense of touch for nighttime navigation and hunting. The theory that bats fly by feel was...

Frog’s ear canal may provide insights for understanding human hearing loss

...ultrasounds for communication, much like dolphins, bats and some rodents. It does so, the researchers report, to make itself heard above the din of low-frequency sounds produced in its surroundings so that it can communicate territorial information to other males of its species. In addition to helping res...

Study: Competition for sex is a 'jungle out there'

...r of pollinating species ?bees, flies, birds, even bats -- is one contributor to pollen limitation. But it's not the only one. Habitat fragmentation is a proven cause of pollen limitation, as well as development. "These findings have global implications given the importance of biodiversity hotspots fo...

Rare Chinese frogs communicate by means of ultrasonic sound

...ibians in China. Feng continues to study frogs and bats to understand how the brain processes sound patter...insects and rodents, echolocation by ultrasound in bats and dolphins, are just a few examples. "That frogs can communicate with ultrasound adds to that lis...

Ecologists home in on how sperm whales find their prey

...ty's Journal of Animal Ecology, sperm whales ?like bats ?use echolocation consistently to track down their prey at depth. Working in the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and the Ligurian Sea, scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of St Andrews attached acoustic recording t...

Cultural transmission in bats: When listening for dinner, bats learn from their neighbors

...rom each other--researchers have demonstrated that bats that use frog acoustic cues to find quality prey c...groups, the researchers measured the rate at which bats learned new foraging information: in this case, the novel (experimental) association of the calls of...

Vampire bats recognise their prey's breathing

...ay in the open access journal BMC Biology, vampire bats of the species Desmodus rotondus could recognise r...much better than human participants could. Vampire bats feed on the same prey over several nights and the authors of the study propose that the bats use bre...

Parallel evolution: Proteins do it, too

...el of morphology---birds can fly, insects can fly, bats can fly, and they've all evolved this capability independently. But at the DNA and protein sequence level, it's very rare to find parallel evolution. This paper provides a real example," said Zhang, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary ...

What animals can tell us about hemorrhage, organ transplants and aging

...als with a lower metabolic rate. A study of birds, bats and rodents finds differences within their cells that may help explain the longer-than-expected life span of birds and bats, Kristan said. These are just two of the symposia taking place at the conference. There are plenty of fresh and interestin...

Fragmentation rapidly erodes Amazonian biodiversity

...rest understory that need animals such as birds or bats to disperse their seeds and pollen.? Fragmentation is also changing the dynamics and structure of the forest. Tree communities in fragments are highly unstable, losing and gaining species at a high rate. Fragments also tend to lose many of their ...

To elude bats, a moth keeps its hearing in tune

...t would seem likely that by using high ultrasound, bats would make their hunting calls inaudible to moths....ecomes more sensitive to the frequencies that many bats use when attacking moths. Furthermore, the ear remains tuned up in this way for several minutes afte...

Bats prey on nocturnally migrating songbirds

...s a control. The results elegantly showed that the bats ate only insects in summer, included some songbird...migrating passerines appears unique not only among bats but also within the whole animal kingdom. Although carnivorous bats feeding on small-sized vertebrat...

New sucker-footed bat discovered in Madagascar

...le find because the new bat belongs to a Family of bats endemic to Madagascar--and one that was previously considered to include only one rare species. The new species, Myzopoda schliemanni, occurs only in the dry western forests of Madagascar, while the previously known species, Myzopoda aurita, occurs...

Bones in motion: Brown scientists to create new 3-D X-ray system

...w system. "Imagine animated X-ray movies of flying bats or flexing knees. It's very cool technology that is also very important from a biomedical standpoint." The system will be designed and built with a $1.8-million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, one of the nation's largest philanthropic organiz...

Bats get the munchies too!

...l the night before. It appears that Egyptian fruit bats also crave particular types of sugar to reduce the...h as figs and dates, as they ripen. Egyptian fruit bats prefer these fruits when they are ripe, however high concentrations of ethanol (around 1%) are toxic...

Invasion of the island bats

...re Caribbean bat community, encompassing groups of bats as different from each other as aerial insectivore...es, and frugivores. The evolution of Caribbean bats suggests that far from being isolated destinations, the West Indies have had a dynamic, two-way rela...

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