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Tag: "wing" at biology news

Undergraduate research shows leaderless honeybee organizing

...onsists of bees making contact and vibrating their wing muscles rapidly, appears to be a general instruction to fly. The researchers document that the workers stop using the vibration signal when the queen flies and leaves the nest with the swarm. Piping, however, continues in the swarm, as the bees ne...

Is there a pilot in the insect?

...ravel through specialized neurons to stimulate the wing muscles, which let the insects correct their flight and avoid crashes. Could these same neurons be used in a sort of "automatic pilot"? This is what Nicolas Franceschini, Franck Ruffier and Julien Serres have just shown. These biorobotics specialists...

A case of mistaken identity for the ivory-billed woodpecker?

...e Pileated Woodpecker's distinctive black trailing wing edges can be spotted in the Luneau video as the wings stroke downwards. Previous analysis suggested these were the black wingtips of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Collinson argues that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's rediscovery remains unproven: "Wi...

Bats prey on nocturnally migrating songbirds

...y. The ability of giant noctules to prey on the wing upon nocturnally migrating passerines appears unique not only among bats but also within the whole animal kingdom. Although carnivorous bats feeding on small-sized vertebrates are not rare, they all live in the Tropics and collect their prey from sub...

UF scientists discover new genus of frogmouth bird in Solomon Islands

... Second, it has distinct barring on the primary wing feathers and tail feathers, where other frogmouths are more uniform. Its speckles are larger, and the white spots on its breast and underbelly are more pronounced than on other frogmouths. Two other genera of frogmouths exist: one in southeast As...

Bumblebee house warming -- it takes a village

.... They observed and videotaped the incubation and wing fanning, or cooling, performed by individual worke...ncubation behavior, O'Donnell said workers vibrate wing muscles to shunt down heat to their abdomen, which is held in close contact with a comb containing t...

Giant insects might reign if only there was more oxygen in the air

...rge insects -- dragonflies had two-and-a-half-foot wing spans, for example. The air's oxygen content was 35% during this period, compared to the 21% we breathe now, Kaiser said. Researchers have speculated that the higher oxygen concentration allowed insects to grow much bigger. Tubes carry oxygen ...

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

... before present throughout the Levant, the western wing of the Fertile Crescent." ...

Copying nature could save us energy, study shows

...ces are a relatively recent phenomenon. The stable wing in aeroplanes, Velcro and self-cleaning paint are all simple devices based on natural inspiration. The Centre for Biomimetic and Natural Technologies at the University of Bath is helping extend this principle to more advanced engineering challenges....

Scientists force viruses to evolve as better delivery vehicles for gene therapy

...affer, who also is an affiliate of the UC Berkeley wing of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3). "In the viral realm, this approach is essentially untapped." This technique could be used to improve many other characteristics of AAV to make it a better delivery vector for ge...

Honeybee decision-making ability rivals any department committee

...the other bees to stimulate them to activate their wing muscles. Once every bee has its thorax warmed to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the swarm lifts off toward its new home. "This is a striking example of decision making by an animal group that is complicated enough to rival the dealings of any department com...

Scientists crack code for motor neuron wiring

...ins expressed by motor neurons that project to the wing in chick embryos. "It became clear that these proteins weren't randomly expressed, but were expressed in highly precise patterns that corresponded to anatomically-defined motor neuron pools," said Jessell. Dasen's functional analysis revealed a Hox ...

USC researchers track down the stem cells that create feathers

... bilaterally symmetric feathers found on the adult wing are designed for taking flight. What Chuong and his colleagues found, to their surprise, was that the orientation of the ring of feather stem cells is related to the type of feather being generated: the stem cell ring is horizontally placed in radi...

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

...rbulent airflow ?stimulates the hair. When a bat's wing isn't properly angled or curved during flight, air passing next to the wing can become turbulent. Merkel cells help bats stay aerodynamically sound by alerting them when their ...

Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food

...eeding period, while all-white breast feathers and wing feathers are lost in the post-breeding period. The researchers were thus able to relate the diet of the murrelet to the environmental and fishing conditions at the time the feather was created. "In this paper, we're trying to tease apart climate sig...

Wright bros. upstaged! Dinos invented biplanes

...r called Microraptor gui used a two-level, biplane wing configuration to fly from tree to tree in the earl...r could not have extended its rear limbs to form a wing directly behind the front wing. More likely, and more aerodynamically stable, would have been a rear...

Female butterflies go for sparkle -- not size -- when choosing to mate

... some of the evolutionary reasons behind butterfly wing patterns in the African satyrid butterfly, Bicyclu... and color. They then tested female preference for wing size, eyespot size, quantity of eyespots on the wing, eyespot and pupil color, and pupil reflectivit...

Single gene is genetic switch for fly sexual behavior

...fly is a complicated business of tapping, singing, wing vibration, and licking, but a single gene is all t...evelopment of a particular anatomical feature like wing structure have been studied extensively, but there are very few studies of switch genes that control...

Researchers reveal secrets of flying snakes

...s or lizards or gliding birds, maintain a constant wing structure, unlike these flying snakes that whip their bodies through the air. "Although all of these other animals may make small adjustments while gliding, none are as dramatic, rhythmic and dynamic as the flying snake," Socha said. During his firs...

Bee mites suppress bee immunity, open door for viruses and bacteria

...ed bees in China. "I do not recall seeing deformed wing bees in the Chinese bee. Chinese honey bees have g... believe that a combination of bee mites, deformed wing virus and bacteria is causing the problems occurring in hives across the country. "Once one mite be...

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