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Tag: "competing" at biology news

Bigger horns equal better genes

...r, once the ibex mature to the age when they begin competing for reproductive mates (7 to 12), horn length varies according to genetic diversity: the greater the diversity, the greater the length of the horns. The researchers believe the horn length discrepancies are evidence to support the mutation accum...

Genome of Clostridium botulinum reveals the background to world's deadliest toxin

...antibiotic’ — a chemical called boticin that kills competing bacteria." Genome sequences can tell us a lot about the biology of the organism, but research into clostridia has been hampered by the lack of a good genetic system. Professor Nigel Minton, Professor of Applied Molecular Microbiology at The Univer...

Survival of the rarest: Fruit flies shed light on the evolution of behavior

...earchers found that when the fruit fly larvae were competing for food, those that did best had a version of the...i. "So you'll have an advantage because you're not competing with the sitters who stay close to the initial resource. On the other hand, if you're a sitter and y...

Female-led infanticide in wild chimpanzees

...r sex ratios and put increased pressure on females competing for foraging areas. In their report, the authors note that the Sonso community had experienced a significant population increase in the ten years prior to the infanticide observations (42 individuals in 1996 to 75 in 2006), and that there had been an...

Man's best friend lends insight into human evolution

...r dominant individuals, or even deceive them, when competing for food. But it turns out that chimps are not very good at drawing inferences about others' mental states in cooperative situations ?such as when an experimenter (or another chimp) helpfully points to hidden food. This is a skill that humans already...

Hofmeyr skull supports the 'Out of Africa' theory

...quity from sub-Saharan Africa has meant that these competing genetic models of human evolution could not be tested by paleontological evidence. The skull from Hofmeyr has changed that. The surprising similarity between a fossil skull from the southernmost tip of Africa and similarly ancient skulls from Europ...

Living with water scarcity -- world must act now

...Instead of viewing water for food as different and competing from water for environment, we need to consider ag...with difficult choices and tradeoffs. Reconciling competing demands on water requires informed negotiations by the many stakeholders involved in water with tran...

Too much of a good thing? Excess nutrients or water limit biodiversity

...nsequently reduces the number of opportunities for competing species to coexist. Put another way, it reduces the number of niches, allowing a few species to dominate. The study, conducted by David Tilman, Regents Professor of Ecology, and Stanley Harpole will be published March 25 in the online version of ...

Theory of oscillations may explain biological mysteries

...hronized chaos? the interaction between two weakly competing consumers of a food resource can be transformed by the arrival of a third competitor to provide unpredictable opportunities for the newcomer to invade. Vandermeer holds out hopes that the study of oscillations in biological populations will lead to i...

Genetic surprise confirms neglected 70-year-old evolutionary hypothesis

...ether it actually happened in nature. Eventually a competing theory involving the gradual accumulation of mutations was shown to occur in nature so often that geneticists largely dismissed the moving-gene hypothesis. "We knew going into this that it was a risky experiment," says Masly. "But we hoped we could ...

For Pacific white shrimp, gender matters when competing for food

...ly win over smaller shrimp of the same gender when competing for food, male shrimp will almost always beat female shrimp ?even though adult males of the species are typically much smaller than the adult females of the same age. "Both size and gender are important factors in acquiring food," says study author ...

Different strategies underlie the ecology of microbial invasions

...the ability of bacteria to spread their viruses to competing bacteria. In a new study, researchers have compared two different general ways in which bacteria compete with one another, and they have found that each strategy seems to be particularly effective under different ecological circumstances--for example...

Recycled paper and compost could both be key tools to control plant disease

...rwick should have gardeners and commercial growers competing for both recycled paper and organic waste composts. The University's plant research department, Warwick HRI, is finding that recycled paper based composts are proving to be a major weapon in the fight against a range of plant diseases. A University...

Researchers find that bumblebees' flower choice matters

...flowers and the first to show that the presence of competing plant species influences mating patterns. "Using multiple strategies," he says, "we are able to answer questions that no one else has." ...

Evolutionary forces explain why women live longer than men

...the males are just entering the breeding scene and competing aggressively for social status and females. From the tail of the peacock to the blinged-out SUV, males compete aggressively for female attention, and that costs them something. In nature, it means riskier physiology and behavior for the males, suc...

Scientific issues associated with carbon-neutral energy sources such as cellulosic ethanol

...es of renewable energy . "However, because of competing uses for land, a central challenge for 21st century biologists is to increase the efficiency of solar energy capture to the theoretical limit by rational methods. In order to accomplish this we need to acquire and integrate all aspects of knowledge ...

Life and death in the hippocampus: what young neurons need to survive

...mature cells vying for connectivity and young guys competing with both the mature cells and their peers to fit in. You are selecting for the cell that performs best in this environment." The Gage lab previously showed that the rate at which new neurons emerge from stem cells depends on an animal's activity. ...

Losing sleep undoes the rejuvenating effects new learning has on the brain

...interesting to expand our findings to see if other competing processes are similarly affected by sleep restrict...o ignore stimuli and rapid attention switching are competing processes, with healthy individuals ignoring familiar stimuli as their primary strategy. It would be...

Rochester scientists develop fast-working biosensor

...e Health "It's clearly faster and cheaper than any competing technology. This is another step on the way to point-of-care diagnostics." The technology potentially could detect any biological entity, Miller said. A physician someday, for example, could use the technology in his office to confirm a streptococca...

Predators keep the world green, ecologists find

...is the world green? It also seems to put to rest a competing theory that plants protect themselves from herbivores through physical and chemical defenses. The researchers drew their conclusions from study of a Venezuelan valley flooded 20 years ago by a hydroelectric project. The research, reported in the M...

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