In the mountains of the Sichuan Province of southwestern China, the Wolong Panda Nature Reserve is home to both the endangered peaceful mountain dwellers it is mandated to protect and the residents of the valley where the habitat of the giant panda is being restored. It’s also home base for research that holds important insights into the future of pandas and people. (more…)
CORVALLIS, Ore. — The first-ever estimate of how fast frogs, toads and salamanders in the United States are disappearing from their habitats reveals they are vanishing at an alarming and rapid rate. (more…)
Bethesda, MD — Dinosaurs are often thought of as large, fierce animals, but new research highlights a previously overlooked diversity of small dinosaurs. In the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, a team of paleontologists from the University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and University of Calgary have described a new dinosaur, the smallest plant-eating dinosaur species known from Canada. Albertadromeus syntarsus was identified from a partial hind leg, and other skeletal elements, that indicate it was a speedy runner. Approximately 1.6 m (5 ft) long, it weighed about 16 kg (30 lbs), comparable to a large turkey. (more…)
Hydrogen sulfide, the pungent stuff often referred to as sewer gas, is a deadly substance implicated in several mass extinctions, including one at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago that wiped out more than three-quarters of all species on Earth.
But in low doses, hydrogen sulfide could greatly enhance plant growth, leading to a sharp increase in global food supplies and plentiful stock for biofuel production, new University of Washington research shows. (more…)
AUSTIN, Texas — Invasive “crazy ants” are displacing fire ants in areas across the southeastern United States, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. It’s the latest in a history of ant invasions from the southern hemisphere and may prove to have dramatic effects on the ecosystem of the region.
The “ecologically dominant” crazy ants are reducing diversity and abundance across a range of ant and arthropod species — but their spread can be limited if people are careful not to transport them inadvertently, according to Ed LeBrun, a research associate with the Texas invasive species research program at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory in the College of Natural Sciences (more…)
Some plants, such as succulents, have managed to grow very plump leaves. For that to happen, according to a new study in Current Biology, plants had to evolve 3-D arrangements of their leaf veins in order to maintain adequately efficient hydraulics for photosynthesis.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A garden variety leaf is a broad, flat structure, but if the garden happens to be somewhere arid, it probably includes succulent plants with plump leaves full of precious water. Fat leaves did not emerge in the plant world easily. A new Brown University study published in Current Biology reports that to sustain efficient photosynthesis, they required a fundamental remodeling of leaf vein structure: the addition of a third dimension. (more…)
Data from the research plots on Tumamoc Hill reveal changes in the Sonoran Desert and have been important to key advances in the science of ecology
Researchers at the University of Arizona’s Tumamoc Hill have digitized 106 years of growth data on individual plants, making the information available for study by people all over the world. (more…)
Some thirty million years ago, Ganges river dolphins diverged from other toothed whales, making them one of the oldest species of aquatic mammals that use echolocation, or biosonar, to navigate and find food. This also makes them ideal subjects for scientists working to understand the evolution of echolocation among toothed whales.
New research, led by Frants Havmand Jensen, a Danish Council for Independent Research | Natural Sciences postdoctoral fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, shows that freshwater dolphins produce echolocation signals at very low sound intensities compared to marine dolphins, and that Ganges river dolphins echolocate at surprisingly low sound frequencies. The study, “Clicking in shallow rivers,” was published in the journal PLOS ONE. (more…)
