woo

Alien woodwasp, threat to US pine trees, found in N.Y.

Despite dozens of interceptions at U.S. ports, a public enemy has infiltrated the nation's borders. Taken captive in Fulton County, N.Y., and identified by a Cornell University expert, the adult female alien is the only one of its kind ever discovered in the eastern United States. The discovery of a single specimen of Sirex noctilio Fabricius, an Old World woodwasp, raises red flags across...

Researchers: Treated wood poses long-term threat

Arsenic from treated lumber used in decks, utility poles and fences will likely leach into the environment for decades to come, possibly threatening groundwater, according to two research papers published online Wednesday. Researchers from the University of Miami, the University of Florida and Florida International University examined arsenic leaching from chromated copper arsenate, or CCA...

Woods Hole Research Center plans controlled burn in Amazon rainforest

Fire is an important agent of transformation in the Amazon landscape. Every year, low intensity fires burn thousands of square miles of Amazon forest. To study the effects of these fires on the forest, and the forests' ability to recover from repeated burning, Woods Hole Research Center scientists will burn two and a half square kilometers of forest in the transition forest of northern Mato Gross...

Independent researchers confirm the existence of ivory-billed woodpecker

Wo...

Male elephants woo females with precise chemistry

The exact chemical blend of a pheromone emitted by older male elephants in musth influences both a female elephant's interest in mating and how other surrounding elephants behave, a new study has found. The researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and the University of Auckland in New Zealand say the release of a specific proportion of two mirror images of the pheromone, fron...

Scientists sequence DNA of woolly mammoth

Experts in ancient DNA from McMaster University (Canada) have teamed up with genome researchers from Penn State University (USA) for the investigation of permafrost bone samples from Siberia. The project also involved paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History (USA) and researchers from Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The researchers' report on the first genomi...

Invasive species harms native hardwoods by killing soil fungus

An invasive weed that has spread across much of the U.S. harms native maples, ashes, and other hardwood trees by releasing chemicals harmful to a soil fungus the trees depend on for growth and survival, scientists report this week in the Public Library of Science. The tree-stifling alien, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), first introduced into the U.S. in the 1860s, has since spread to Canada...

Hantavirus found in African wood mouse

Researchers have discovered the first African hantavirus, a type of rodent-borne virus that can cause life-threatening infections in humans when it is inhaled through aerosolized rodent urine or droppings. A team led by Jan ter Meulen while he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar at the University of Conakry in the Republic of Guinea, identified the...

Monitoring poisons in the environment -- a woolly matter

Heavy metals are present in variable amounts in the natural environment in the UK. Dr Jennifer Sneddon (Liverpool John Moores University) will present the results of a pilot study assessing the use of upland sheep wool as a bio-monitoring device for natural levels of heavy metals in the Lake District and Wales at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow (31st March ?2nd Ap...

Computer scientists join in search for ivory-billed woodpecker

Computer scientists from Texas A&M University and the University of California, Berkeley, have installed a robot in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge to help natural scientists from Cornell University's Laboratory of Ornithology and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission find the rare ivory-billed woodpecker. The computer scientists ?Dr. Dezhen Song, assistant professor in Texas...

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

Video evidence that an extinct woodpecker is alive and well in Arkansas, USA may prove to be a case of mistaken identity. Research published today in the open access journal BMC Biology shows how fleeting images thought to be the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis could be another native woodpecker species. J. Martin Collinson compared David Luneau's Arkansas video footage fro...

Ancient DNA traces the woolly mammoth's disappearance

DNA lifted from the bones, teeth, and tusks of the extinct mammoths revealed a “genetic signature” of a range expansion after the...