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Tag: "desert" at biology news

Why do insects stop 'breathing'? To avoid damage from too much oxygen, say researchers

...ects that do not show this pattern -- for example, desert beetles. While we have shown that insects monitor oxygen precisely, we do not know how that happens or which tissues and cells are involved. Once we're equipped with a better knowledge of the insect breathing pattern it could shed light on when pesti...

Scientists find fossil proof of Egypt's ancient climate

...,000 years ago, what everyone considers an eternal desert was actually a thriving savannah, complete with humans, rhinos, giraffes and other wild life. Evidence for the hominin presence abounds near the lake in the form of Middle Stone Age artifacts such as stone scrapers and blades. "The artifacts provid...

Robot-based system developed at Carnegie Mellon detects life in Chile's Atacama desert

...se they are exposed to extreme UV radiation in the desert environment. This characterization also may explain why such a high proportion of the bacteria from the most arid site are pigmented ?red, yellow or pink ?as they grow in the laboratory, according to Minkley. The first phase of the ASTEP project beg...

Finding hidden invaders in a Hawaiian rain forest

...ntains so many different types of ecosystems, from desert grasslands to tropical rain forests, Carnegie's ecological remote sensing program has focused on the area as the ideal outdoor research laboratory for devising the next generation of aircraft and spacecraft observations. Now we've added a major focus...

Stealth Worms May Improve Insect Pest Control

...on-chemical and non-toxic pest control programs in desert and semi-desert areas. "These nematodes from Jordan have the potential to provide an environmentally safe alternative for controlling insect pests in agricultural and forestry systems, and also for controlling insect pests of human and veterinary im...

Innovative collaboration brings Arctic science into the classroom

...ls in the environment. Dr. Holmes has also studied desert streams in the southwestern United States, stream/riparian ecosystems in France, and estuaries in Massachusetts. Dr. Holmes earned his Ph.D. from Arizona State University, his M.S. from the University of Michigan, and B.S. from the University of Texa...

Life detection instrument passes key test on road to Mars

...ds, and JPL scientist Frank Grunthaner visited the desert last year, but were not able to test the complete, integrated analyzer. This year, Skelley, Mathies and other team members carried the complete analyzers in three large cases to Chile by plane - in itself a test of the ruggedness of the equipment - ...

Locusts' built-in 'surface analysis' ability directs them to fly overland

...clination to fly over land rather than water. The desert locusts, known scientifically as Schistocerca gregaria, are able to swarm for great distances and in numbers measuring in the millions. During the locust invasion of November 2004 in Israel, it appeared that a swarm came in an easterly direction over...

Did humans cause ecosystem collapse in ancient Australia?

...drought-resistant trees, shrubs and grasses, to C3 desert plants. " Why did the scientists point to humans as the instigators of the ecological changes? First, they ruled out the other usual suspect--global climate change. They looked at their data in 15,000-year intervals back to 140,000 years ago. The pe...

Newly discovered birdlike dinosaur is oldest raptor ever found in South America

...faunal composition, La Buitrera resembles the Gobi desert in its abundance of fossils and their exquisite state of preservation," Apestegua adds. A cast of the unusual dinosaur is on public display on the upper floor of The Field Museum in the MacDonald's Preparation Lab. It will be part of Evolving Planet...

Scientists pinpoint inflammation gene

...nex Pharmaceuticals. The company was studying the desert sand rat, an animal that, like humans, has certain individuals with a greater propensity than others for obesity and diabetes, as well as the inflammation associated with those conditions. ChemGenex researchers found that the obese and diabetic sand ...

Ancient trans-Atlantic swarm brought locusts to the New World

...drum: why are the closest relatives of the African desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) found in the New World, rather than Africa? The desert locust is one of the world's most economically important insects, and is capable of forming massive ...

Warming trend may contribute to malaria's rise

... has been on the rise in some highland regions and desert fringes. Because the life cycle of the mosquito that transmits malaria and the microorganism that causes the disease are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature, some scientists have speculated that rising average temperatures may be making con...

Some like it hot: Worms at deep-sea vents favor a fiery 45-55°C

...ly under such conditions; in one previous study of desert fire ants, all died within one minute of exposure to a temperature of 55 degrees Celsius. Such ants will survive brief forays into similarly hot areas to obtain food, but do not choose to remain in superheated environs as Alvinellids do. "We specula...

Microbes hitchhike across Atlantic on desert dust

...ion counts increased with the presence of airborne desert dust. "The phenomenon known as desert-dust storms...ust across oceans and continents. Since a gram of desert soil may contain as many as 1 billion bacterial cells, the presence of airborne dust should correspo...

UCLA scientists strengthen case for life more than 3.8 billion years ago

...pest ocean, on the highest mountain, in the driest desert and the coldest glacier, and deep down in the crustal rocks and sediments." An unanswered question is how life originally could have arisen from lifeless molecules and evolved into the already sophisticated isotope fractioning life forms recorded i...

Tiny airborne particles are a major cause of climate change

... of small amounts of aerosols such as sea salt and desert dust. These tiny particles serve as the seeds around which water vapor in the air condenses, forming tiny water droplets that rise as they release heat. As the small droplets rise, they collide and merge with larger droplets. When the droplets reach ...

Pollutant haze heats the Arctic

...ple living in Salt Lake City or other mid-latitude desert climates experience the same effect during winter. "When clouds are present, it doesn't get as cold at night as when they are absent," says Garrett. Smaller cloud droplets making the cloud a better blanket is the same physical behavior that explain...

Copying nature could save us energy, study shows

...llenges. Researchers are currently looking at the desert cockroach (to develop a new kind of dehumidifier t...or Vincent, Director of the Centre. "From the way desert cockroaches gather water to the way wasps bore a hole into a tree, nature has developed a myriad of ...

Where have all the butterflies gone?

...hile northern California was soaked, the southwest desert has had a very dry "La Nina" winter, leaving littl...butterflies had given up on trying to breed in the desert and headed north; a handful were seen in Davis on Feb. 11. Shapiro and his students have seen only o...

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