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Tag: "predator" at biology news

Marine phytoplankton changes form to protect itself from different predators

... to scientists studying climate change because the predator that ultimately consumes the phytoplankton determi...e shape that made them largely immune to whichever predator was attacking, and this shift suppressed either the feeding or growth and reproduction of the consum...

In Iran, cheetahs collared for the first time

...e to livestock grazing, have pushed this important predator to the brink of extinction. Historically cheetahs have played a significant role in Iranian culture, being trained by its emperors to hunt gazelles in ancient times. Iranian biologist and director of the project in Iran, Dr Hooshang Ziaie said "Th...

Tracking sperm whales and jumbo squid

...irst attempt to simultaneously study a mesopelagic predator and its prey using electronic tagging techniques." Size matters The jumbo (or Humboldt) squid is a large cephalopod species found only in the Pacific. A mature jumbo squid can weigh more than 100 pounds and grow more than 6 feet long. Sperm w...

Massive coral death attributed to earthquake

...efs caused by the crown-of-thorn starfish, a coral predator that has devastated reefs in Australia and other parts of the world. "Finding the starfish damage is particularly important" says Dr Baird. "Most observers would attribute damage on this scale to more common reef threats in Indonesia such as cyani...

University of Alberta researchers unravel intricate animal patterns

...ehaviour exhibited by some schools of fish--when a predator is nearby, the school contracts in a tight aggregation, to expand again when the predator is gone. And we can try to compare this behaviour with the breather pattern described in our paper."...

Bats prey on nocturnally migrating songbirds

...But how to study the foraging habits of an elusive predator that chases its favourite prey several hundreds if not thousands of metres above the ground in total darkness? To elucidate the mysterious habits of giant noctule bats, an ambitious investigation led by young scientist Ana Popa-Lisseanu, under Pro...

New species declared: Clouded leopard on Borneo and Sumatra

...o and Sumatra program. “The fact that Borneo’s top predator is now considered a separate species further emphasizes the uniqueness of the island and the importance of conserving the Heart of Borneo.? Clouded leopards are the biggest predators on Borneo. Some grow to be as large as a small panther, and have...

Amur leopard still on the brink of extinction, scientists say

...omenko said, "What is really important is that the predator is on the brink of extinction. And still a unified...the reasons, we should research the ecology of the predator in a more profound way, using latest techniques such as automatic camera traps, radio tracking, gene...

New evidence of 'human' culture among primates

... ground, dislodged other stones that could hit the predator below. The main function of the act would appe...udspeaker", however. Partly, this is to advise the predator that it has been spotted. But Dr Moura also speculates that because the Capuchins spread out widely ...

Biologically inspired sensors can augment sonar, vision system in submarines

... line provides guidance for synchronized swimming, predator and obstacle avoidance, and prey detection and tracking. Equipped with an artificial lateral line, a submarine or underwater robot could similarly detect and track moving underwater targets, and avoid collisions with moving or stationary objects. T...

The great escape -- fleeing fish fall in line

...ct of being eaten, one might imagine that during a predator attack it is a case that all fish escape at once i... March ?4th April). Scientists mimicked an aerial predator attack by mechanical stimulation and used a high speed camera to record responses in schools of ten ...

Queen bee promiscuity boosts hive health

...nd energy and puts the queens at greater peril for predator attacks. "Even though just one male provides all the sperm that a queen needs for the rest of her life, queen honeybees go out on mating flights and obtain sperm from a dozen or more males," said lead author Thomas Seeley, Cornell professor of biol...

Pressured by predators, lizards see rapid shift in natural selection

...revious research has shown that when a terrestrial predator is introduced, these lizards take to trees and shrubs, becoming increasingly arboreal over time. Losos and his colleagues hypothesized that immediately following a predator's arrival, longer-legged -- and hence faster-running -- Anolis lizards would ...

Does natural selection drive the evolution of cancer?

.... The immune system often kills tumor cells like a predator hunting prey, and the tumor cells that develop defenses against the predation are the ones that survive and reproduce. An example of parasitism in the tumor environment can be seen in angiogenesis, in which a subset of tumor cells send chemical s...

Singing for survival

... the song, which would be important in the case of predator encounters. Songs usually begun with a series of ...ed by joining in the singing, matching the correct predator song, demonstrating that they understood the difference between calls." The researchers also obser...

Plants tell caterpillars when it's safe to forage

...hen the offender is a caterpillar and the summoned predator is a wasp. Just how much control such biotic factors exert over a forager's daily routine has remained an open question. But in a new study in the open access journal PLoS Biology, Kaori Shiojiri, Rika Ozawa, and Junji Takabayashi show that plant sig...

Tyrannosaur survivorship -- tough times for teens

...e excavation suggests that this was probably not a predator trap. Recognizing the importance of the site, Currie led an expedition in 1997 to try to find Brown's original quarry and returned annually with a group from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology to excavate the site. The number of Albertosaurus ...

Time of day tempers tadpoles' response to predators

...dpoles behave more conservatively in response to a predator chemical cue during the day because predation risk may still be fairly high and the tadpoles are going to feed very little anyway. That means the growth rate-to-predation risk ratio is low. At night, the ratio is higher because that's when the tadpol...

Mussels evolve quickly to defend against invasive crabs

...called "Divergent induced responses to an invasive predator in marine mussel populations." "It's the blendin...l selection favoring the recognition of this novel predator through rapid evolution of cue specifity or thresholds," Freeman and Byers write. Findings were co...

Seeing the serpent

...eloped good close-up eyesight to avoid a dangerous predator -- the snake. "A snake is the only predator you really need to see close up. If it's a long way away it's not dangerous," Isbell said. Neurolo...

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