Yale Research Reveals Ancient Moth’s True Colors
A research team led by Yale University scientists has for the first time determined the original colors of an ancient moth, based on nearly 50 million-year-old fossils from Germany. (more…)
Category Archives: Nature
HIMB Scientists Develop Website to Aid with Climate Change Research
A team of researchers from UH Mānoa’s Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) has developed an interactive global map of corals and zooxanthellae, commonly known as flagellate protozoa, as part of a hybrid web application titled GeoSymbio. This application provides global-scale biological and ecosystem information on symbiotic zooxanthellae called Symbiodinium, which are uni-cellular, photosynthetic dinoflagellates that live inside the cells of other marine organisms like anemones, jellyfish and corals.
The GeoSymbio application provides the genetic identification and taxonomic description of over 400 distinct Symbiodinium subclades or genetic lineages in invertebrate hosts that have been sampled from a variety of marine habitats, thereby providing a wealth of information for symbiosis researchers in a single online location. By utilizing Google Apps, the team was able to develop this web-based tool to discover, explore, visualize and share data in a rapid, cost-effective and engaging manner. (more…)
Bird Song Yields a New Understanding of Cooperation
*A bird duet springs forth from each bird’s knowledge of the entire song*
The site of a volcano isn’t the first place one might think of to study cooperation. But neuroscientist Eric Fortune of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues went to the slopes of Antisana volcano in Ecuador to study cooperation as it plays out with a very special songbird, the plain-tailed wren. Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the researchers report their observations in the Nov. 4, 2011, issue of Science.
Rapidly alternating their singing back and forth, female and male wrens cooperate to sing a duet that sounds as if a single bird sang it. The researchers assumed that the brain of each bird would have a memory of its own part of the duet, and also have a memory of the cues from its partner. They were surprised to find that both brains had a record of the complete duet–a performance that neither bird can do by itself. (more…)
Insects Scared to Death of Fish
University of Toronto biologists find higher mortality among dragonflies exposed to undue stress
The mere presence of a predator causes enough stress to kill a dragonfly, even when the predator cannot actually get at its prey to eat it, say biologists at the University of Toronto. (more…)
Zoning Laws Can Help Pandas and People Live in Peace
EAST LANSING, Mich. — As the world’s biodiversity hotspots are increasingly stressed by their human neighbors, zoning is becoming a common strategy to balance environmental protection and human needs. But a recent study conducted by Michigan State University researchers shows zoning for conservation demands reality checks. (more…)
Two New Bee Species Are Mysterious Pieces in the Panama Puzzle
Smithsonian scientists have discovered two new, closely related bee species: one from Coiba Island in Panama and another from northern Colombia. Both descended from of a group of stingless bees that originated in the Amazon and moved into Central America, the ancestors of Mayan honeybees. The presence of one of these new species on Coiba and Rancheria Islands, and its absence from the nearby mainland, is a mystery that will ultimately shed light on Panama’s history and abundant biodiversity. (more…)
New Computer Programme Promises to Save the Whales
Researchers at the University of Montreal have developed a computer programme that enables regulators to evaluate the ecological and economic tradeoffs between marine mammal conservation, whale watching and marine transportation activities in the Saint Lawrence Estuary. (more…)
Is Chivalry the Norm for Insects?
The long-standing consensus of why insects stick together after mating has been turned on its head by scientists from the University of Exeter. (more…)