Dange

Falling ants glide back to trunk to avoid dangers of forest floor

An amazing variety of arboreal animals have learned to glide through the forest, from flying squirrels to flying lizards and frogs, and even ?frightening as it sounds ?snakes. Gliding ants ?the only wingless insects known to actively...

Too much water may be as dangerous as too little during long-distance athletic events

Drinking water during a long-distance race may do serious harm rather than keep you safe from injury if you're drinking too much, according to a cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Runners or any long-distance athletes who drink too much water during a race could put themselves at jeopardy for developing hyponatremia, a condition marked by a loss in the body's sodium content th...

Cattle grazing may help rather than hurt endangered species

An article published in the latest issue of Conservation Biology finds that cattle grazing plays an important role in maintaining wetland habitat necessary for some endangered species. Removing cattle from grazing lands in the Central Valley of California could, inadvertently, degrade the vernal pool habitat of fairy shrimp and tiger salamanders. Cattle grazing influences the rates of evaporati...

How satellite tracking revealed the migratory mysteries of endangered Atlantic loggerhead turtles

Their journeys are among the longest in the animal kingdom and they have largely remained a mystery until now. An international team of scientists led by the University of Exeter have uncovered the migratory secrets of endangered loggerhead turtles in West Africa and the results could have huge implications for strategies to protect them. In a paper in the journal Current Biology, Dr Brend...

When in danger humans are similar to a deer in the headlights

Standing still when a threat is detected is a defensive, protective reaction. This ancestral and automatic behavior allows the prey to stay unnoticed by a potential predator. A new study published in Psychophysiology finds that humans, like many other complex animals, freeze when encountering a threat. The mere picture of an injured or mutilated human induces this reaction. When viewing these unp...

Leading scientists rank endangered dolphins, porpoises most in need of immediate action

Leading marine scientists for the first time have assessed dolphin and porpoise populations around the world which are severely threatened by entanglement in fishing gear and recommended nine urgent priorities for action in a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. These nine projects highlight species threatened by bycatch that will most likely benefit from immediate action and will cont...

Colorful bacteria more dangerous

A new study in the July 18 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine shows that gold-colored bacteria are more harmful than their unpigmented relatives. A group of scientists led by Victor Nizet (UCSD, San Diego, CA) have discovered that the molecules that give certain bugs their color also help them resist attack by immune cells called neutrophils. Scientists and clinicians have known...

Time and money make a difference in endangered species recovery

Since passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, over 1,300 endangered species have been protected in the United States and its territories. In the forthcoming issue of Ecology Letters, Male & Bean assess 14 years of endangered plant and animal status trends and show that the length of time species are protected, and the amount of money spent on their conservation are key variables in exp...

Costly breeding programs for endangered species pay off

Comparative studies of captive breeding strategies conducted at Rice University bolster the case for costly and sometimes troublesome breeding programs that preserve maximum genetic variability in small populations of endangered species. Worldwide, zoos spend millions of dollars each year transporting rare animals thousands of miles in order to breed them with their most distantly related...

Removing egg from nest may help save endangered whooping crane

Removing an egg from the endangered whooping crane's nest increases the species chances of survival despite governmental concerns about tampering with nature, says a University of Alberta scientist. Dr. Mark Boyce, from the Faculty of Science, studied the policy of removing from Wood Buffalo National Park one of two whooping crane eggs laid and raising it in a "foster-parenting" program....

Dangerous tricksters: Some bacterie use immune cells to reproduce

Macrophages are effective weapons used by our immune system to absorb and digest pathogenic intruders. Some bacteria, however, can subvert this defence mechanism and even multiply within the macrophages. Cell biologists at the University of Bonn have revealed such a strategy in a recently publication in the journal 'Traffic' (Vol. 6, No. 8, August 2005, pp.635-653). Their findings reveal that the...

Envisat radar surveillance protects endangered prehistoric fish

A satellite surveillance zone within the southern Indian Ocean is helping protect the endangered Patagonian toothfish from pirate fishing vessels. Perched between Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica, the windswept French territory of the Kerguelen Islands is one of the remotest places on Earth. Even so, fishing vessels are lured there by the prospect of catching one valuable species fo...

The dangerous legacy of lead

Although lead is a well-known human health hazard, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have discovered a new aspect of how it may work in mice to harm the function of T-cells, which regulate the body's immune response to bacteria, viruses and other bugs. The discovery adds insight to the latest trend in lead research, as scientists shift their emphasis from the immedi...

Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food

The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley. The results, to be published online by early March 2006 in the journal Conservation Biology, suggest that feeding further down the food web...

Seal rookeries could provide a reliable food source for endangered California condors, study finds

A team of scientists is proposing that endangered California condors raised in captivity be released near seal and sea lion rookeries so that the birds can once again feast on the carcasses of marine mammals as their ancestors did centuries ago. The researchers from Stanford University and four other institutions base their conclusion on the feeding behavior of modern and early condors and...

Rare Tibetan antelope listed as endangered

Three-dimensional ultrasound probes built by researchers at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering have imaged the beating hearts of dogs. The engineers said their demonstration showed that the probes could give surgeons a better view during human endoscopic surgeries in which operations are performed through tiny "keyhole" incisions. If the probes prove beneficial in human testing, the advanc...

Protecting endangered species helps reduce poverty

Saving endangered species like pandas, gorillas and tigers helps reduce poverty and improve the lives of local communities, according to a new World Wildlife Fund report. Now as the eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity opens today in Curitiba, Brazil, WWF urges the CBD and member governments to integrate species conservation work into efforts to alleviate pov...

Scientist warns of threat to last stronghold of endangered turtle

A major conservation effort, led by Dr Brendan Godley of the University of Exeter, has just got underway to help protect endangered leatherback turtles which nest in Gabon, West Africa. The region is thought to be the animals' last global stronghold, as pacific populations dwindle precariously. It's hoped the project, to tag and track the animals, will uncover their migratory secrets and p...

Crucial site for endangered frogs and birds saved

Fast action by an alliance of conservation groups battling global extinctions has saved one of the world's most important sites for endangered species. American Bird Conservancy (ABC), Conservation International (CI), and Fundación ProAves of Colombia stepped in to protect the 1,600-acre site on the northwest slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta massif, on the Caribbean coast of Colom...

Underwater listening devices yield discoveries about endangered large whales

Why whales emit their characteristic calls remains largely a biological mystery, but listening for the distinctive underwater sounds provides a valuable way to track the movements of endangered large whales. Autonomous data-recording devices equipped with hydrophones (underwater microphones), deployed in remote waters off Alaska, have been used in recent years to track seasonal occurrences of bl...

Study identifies substances in grapefruit juice that interact dangerously with some drugs

New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has identified and established the substance in grapefruit juice that causes potentially dangerous interactions with certain medications. For almost a decade, people have been told by their doctors and pharmacists to avoid grapefruit juice if they are being treated with certain medications, including some drugs that control...

Race to halt global amphibian crisis boosted by rediscovery of endangered Colombian frogs

The rediscovery of two frog species feared extinct has made a new Colombian protected area the focal point for efforts to save amphibians from a deadly fungus decimating their populations in Central and South America. Scientists recently found the two Critically Endangered frogs ?the Santa Marta harlequin frog (Atelopus laetissimus) and the San Lorenzo harlequin frog (Atelopus nahumae) ?fo...

A human taste for rarity spells disaster for endangered species

The shady pursuit of endangered bird eggs made international headlines in May 2006 when Colin Watson, widely considered Britain's most notorious illegal egg collector, died after falling from a 12-meter tree, allegedly while hunting a rare egg. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds estimates that up to 30 of Britain's most vulnerable species are targeted by collectors. Classical economics...

Commercial fishing causes dangerous fluctuations in fish populations

Commercial fishing causes serious fluctuations in fish populations leaving them in danger of total collapse, says new research published today. These fluctuations mean current measures in place to control fish stocks may not be sufficient to ensure their sustainability. The research, which is published in today's Nature, involved compiling the largest ever survey of both exploited fish an...

Climate change has surprising effect on endangered naked carp

Forthcoming in the January/February 2007 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, a groundbreaking study reveals an unanticipated way freshwater fish may respond to water diversion and climate change. Endangered naked carp migrate annually between freshwater rivers, where they spawn, and a lake in Western China, where they feed and grow. However, Lake Qinghai is drying up and becoming incr...

Newly discovered behavior in cancer cells signals dangerous metastasis

The most aggressively malignant cancer cells have a "toggle switch" that enables them to morph into highly mobile cells that invade other tissues and then nest comfortably in their new surroundings, a new study in rats suggests. This picture of how cancer cells shift between two alternating states -- travelers and nesters -- represents a new understanding of how cancer metastasizes, or spr...

Jefferson scientists find high glucose before surgery raises risk of dangerous complications

Patients who have high blood sugar before undergoing surgery run an increased risk of developing blood clots, deep vein thrombosis and even pulmonary embolism after surgery. Boris Mraovic, M.D., assistant professor of anesthesiology in the Artificial Pancreas Center at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and his colleagues examined records of nearly 6,...

Endangered shortnose sturgeon saved in Hudson River

For the first time in U.S., and probably global, history a fish identified as endangered has been shown to have recovered -- and in the Hudson River, which flows through one of the world's largest population centers, New York City. The population of shortnose sturgeon, which lives in large rivers and estuaries along the Atlantic coast of North America, has increased by more than 400 percen...

Update on census of world's most endangered cat -- Female Amur leopard found dead

Following the April 18 announcement that only 25 to 34 of the Amur or Far Eastern leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) remain in the wild, World Wildlife Fund says the number must now be revised because a female Amur leopard was killed. Anonymous tips led officers of two leopard anti-poaching squads to the body of the leopardess on April 20 about two miles from Bamburovo village within th...

Saving endangered whales at no cost

By comparing the productivity of lobster fishing operations in American and Canadian waters of the Gulf of Maine, researchers have identified ways in which cost-saving alterations in fishing strategies can substantially reduce fishing-gear entanglements of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The findings appear in the January 9th issue of the journal Current Biology, published b...

Legal ruling may put endangered species in danger

Ecologists and philosophers across the nation are protesting a new and narrowed definition of "endangered species." In a letter sent Monday to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and the House Committee on Natural Resources, they warn that the new definition—spelled out in a legal opinion from the Solicitor of the U.S. Depa...