Tag: "west" at biology news

Massive herds of animals found to still exist in Southern Sudan

... and sitatunga. Southern National Park, located west of the Nile, did not fare as well. Here the team observed a 90 percent loss of some key species since the ’80s. According to Elkan, “We saw no buffalo where in 1981 there were estimated to have been 60,000, and only one group of elephants was sighted...

Antarctic icebergs -- Hotspots of ocean life

... productive systems such as upwelling areas of the west coast of the U.S. or ice-edge communities in polar oceans. As diatoms are the preferred food for krill, we expect the changes in phytoplankton community composition to favor grazing as a key biological process involved in carbon sequestration around ...

Dinosaur hearing, listening to muscle noise, quieter cubicles

...as they travel from location to location along the west coast of North America. Transients, which also distinguish themselves by feeding primarily on other marine mammals such as seals, refrain from vocalizing while hunting so that prey will not be alerted to their presence. When they begin feeding, they...

Cornell lab confirms deadly fish virus spreading to new species

...e; gizzard shad die-offs from VHSV in Lake Ontario west of Rochester and in Dunkirk Harbor on Lake Erie also have been reported. This month the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources made a presumptive identification of the virus for the first time in the Lake Winnebago chain of inland lakes about 25 m...

Male owls pitch their hoots to advertise body weight to competitors

... 2003 and June 2005 on the isle of Oléron, off the west coast of France, where Christian Bavoux and Guy Burneleau have been studying the local scops owl population since 1981. The authors have analyzed several hundreds of hoots recorded from 17 territorial males and demonstrated that the pitch of the voc...

Iowa State University botanists identify new species of North American bamboo

...nited States, from New Jersey south to Florida and west to Texas. River cane (Arundinaria gigantea) occurs in low woods and along riverbanks. Switch cane (Arundinaria tecta) is found in non-alluvial swamps, moist pine barrens, live oak woods and along sandy margins of streams. "Most people have no idea...

Fish growth changes enhanced by climate change

...nd long-lived deep-ocean fish species in the south west Pacific are consistent with shifts in wind systems...he apparent changes in growth rates. In the south west Pacific east of Tasmania sea surface temperatures have risen nearly two degrees, based on the result...

Rearing an army to save wheat

... cages placed over wheat at the Post Agronomy Farm west of Bozeman, Mont. He deliberately infested the enclosed wheat with wheat stem sawflies, and then introduced the parasitic wasps. His research explored whether supplemental food provided as nectar from flowering plants or as honey water increases the ...

Small, smaller, smallest -- The plight of the vaquita

...he Gulf of California (north of 30º45'N and mainly west of 114º20'W), an area rich and diverse in marine mammals. It is somewhat surprising that the porpoises are limited to such a small area when there are no obvious physical barriers to prevent them from moving into the rest of the Gulf. However, there ...

Edge density key to controlling gypsy moth spread

...e currently found from Maine to North Carolina and west into Wisconsin where they defoliate trees and occasionally, cause extensive damage to northern deciduous forests. "We analyzed historical data on the spread of the gypsy moth in the U.S. and found that its invasion has been characterized by regul...

Study suggests evolutionary link between diet, brain size in orangutans

...ylor said. But that work sampled animals only from west Borneo and not from resource-limited east Borneo, she added. In their own studies, as well as in studies by other researchers, "we see greater anatomical differences amongst the Bornean populations than we see between the Bornean and Sumatran popul...

Tamed 11,400 years ago, figs were likely first domesticated crop

...found at a second site located some 1.5 kilometers west of Gilgal. The scientists compared the ancient figs to modern wild and domesticated variants and determined that they were a mutant selectively propagated by humans. In this variety of fig, known as parthenocarpic, the fruit develops without insect ...

Ecosystem services and invasive species

...gy I. Freshwater mussels in the Hatchie River in west TennesseeTuesday August 8, 2006, 5 ?6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall, Cook Convention Center The Hatchie River runs 220 miles through western Tennessee. David Kesler, Naomi Van Tol (Rhodes College), and colleagues from the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency ...

Use of stone hammers sheds light on geographic patterns of chimpanzee tool use

...e nut-cracking behavior was confined to the region west of the N'Zo-Sassandra River in Cote d'Ivoire. Because there are no relevant ecological or genetic differences between populations on either side of this "information barrier," explain the researchers of the new study, the implication had been that nu...

Widespread elephant slaughter discovered in Chad

...he tusks removed. "Two days later we were flying west of that area when we saw a poachers' camp. The sec...ade is increasing. Zakouma is only about 150 miles west of the conflict area of Darfur and is in the path of recent rebel activity in Chad, thus security is...

Rare Chinese frogs communicate by means of ultrasonic sound

...ous area, alive with noisy waterfalls and wildlife west of Shanghai. "Nature has a way of evolving mechanisms to facilitate communication in very adverse situations," Feng said. "One of the ways is to shift the frequencies beyond the spectrum of the background noise. Mammals such as bats, whales and dolp...

Invasive species harms native hardwoods by killing soil fungus

...the East and Midwest, with recent sightings as far west as Oregon. While many mechanisms -- from the absence of natural predators or parasites to the disruption of long-established interactions among native organisms -- have been proposed to explain the success of invasive species, this new work is the f...

Marine mammals are on the frontline of failing ocean health

... and humans. "Recent, frequent red tides off the west coast of Florida correlated with a 54% increase in emergency room admissions for respiratory illnesses, including, pneumonia, asthma attacks, and other respiratory problems," says Gregory Bossart of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. Scie...

Sweetgum tree could help lessen shortage of bird flu drug

... Georgia and Alabama, but also can be found as far west as Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma and northward in parts of Illinois. Although shikimic acid is found in the leaves and bark of the tree, it is most abundant in the fruit, Poon says. In the mature tree, the fruit emerges as a green seedpod that lat...

Ancient trans-Atlantic swarm brought locusts to the New World

... ago, a massive swarm of locusts took off from the west coast of Africa and made an unlikely voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to colonize the New World, says an international team of researchers. Using genetic evidence from more than 20 species of locusts, scientists from the Universities of Toronto, Ari...

1 2 3