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Flies of the World Embrace Vegetarianism

By Guest PostFebruary 2, 2013Nature, Scienceagricultural pests, animal kingdom, australia, bracken ferns, brassicas, canolas, change of lifestyle, convergent phenotypes, cyanogenic compounds, detoxify the plants, earth, evolutionary biologists, Facebook, family drosophilidae, fly detectives, genetic changes, genetic pathways, genome biology evolution, good model organisms, hawaii, hawaiian lineage, herbivores, herbivorous fly species, insects, levels of alcohol, microbe eating flies, mt lemmon, mustard plants, new zealand, noah whiteman, North America, north american flies, organisms, papua new guinea, richard lapoint, scaptomyza nigrita, South Pacific, toxic plants, united kingdom, university of arizona, vegetarianism

Microbe-eating flies from at least three different locations around the world recently have evolved into herbivores, feeding on some of the most toxic plants on Earth. Fly detectives and UA evolutionary biologists Noah Whiteman and Richard Lapoint are trying to find out what genetic pathways led the flies to such a major change of lifestyle.

For millennia, they buzzed through the woods, contentedly munching yeasts off the surfaces of leaves, bracken and rotting duff on the forest floor. But now, flies in the family Drosophilidae, whose disparate members dwell in areas all across the planet, have evolved into all-out vegetarians with a wicked diet of plants that are deadly to most other organisms.

What, University of Arizona scientists would like to know, has caused these flies, yeast-feeders for nearly 80 million years, to independently go cold turkey with respect to their formerly meaty diets? (more…)

Better Outlook for Dwindling Black Macaque Population in Indonesia

By Guest PostJanuary 30, 2013Naturemacaque population, north sulawesi culture, sulawesi black macaques, tangkoko nature reserve

Since at least the 1970s, the population of critically endangered Sulawesi black macaques living in an Indonesian nature reserve has been dropping. But a new study by researchers at the University of Washington and in Indonesia shows that the population has stabilized over the past decade. (more…)

Student’s Curiosity Produces Ecological Buzz

By Guest PostJanuary 29, 2013Environment, Natureabout publishing papers, aerial imagery, cape cod, ecology, Environment, experimental ecologist, geographic information systems, geology class, gis assisted analysis, gis technology, great depression era, historical aerial photography, jon witman, mark bertness, marsh grass, mosquito populations, open curriculum, outdoors, plague, postdoc, project, provocative research, recreational fishing, salt marsh habitats, salt marshes, sesarma crabs, sesarma reticulatum crab, spartina alterniflora, students at brown, tyler coverdale

Students studying what they love is a well-established principle at Brown. For Tyler Coverdale, that meant the outdoors, the environment, and, ultimately, some provocative research on Cape Cod salt marshes through GIS-assisted analysis of historical aerial photography. He loves it.

Tyler Coverdale’s newly published study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment on the collapse of salt marsh habitats along Cape Cod tells an intriguing, if unfortunate, tale of how three different human activities spanning 70 years finally added up to a problem that no one anticipated. The story of how he made the discovery — which is generating some buzz in ecology — while a Brown undergraduate is a tale of happier serendipities. (more…)

Scientists Use Marine Robots to Detect Endangered Whales

By Guest PostJanuary 27, 2013Naturedigital acoustic monitoring, endangered whales, gliders, marine robots, ocean going robots, surveying for whales

Two robots equipped with instruments designed to “listen” for the calls of baleen whales detected nine endangered North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of Maine last month. The robots reported the detections to shore-based researchers within hours of hearing the whales (i.e., in real time), demonstrating a new and powerful tool for managing interactions between whales and human activities. (more…)

Keepers of Prometheus: The World’s Oldest Tree

By Guest PostJanuary 25, 2013Nature, Sciencebristlecone pine researchers, dendrochronologists, keepers of prometheus, oldest bristlecone pine, study tree rings, tree called prometheus, tree ring research

After a nearly 5,000-year vigil upon a Nevada mountaintop, an ancient tree now finds its home in the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. A member of the long-lived Bristlecone pine species, the tree called Prometheus is the oldest individual ever known to have lived. Its age was not accurately known until a few years ago.

On a craggy, windswept peak in a lonely Nevada wilderness stands a grove of old-growth trees. Gnarled and twisted, shaped by the weather and whirling winds into erratic growth forms, their roots have clung to the pebble-strewn mountainside for literally millennia. (more…)

Study Finds Severe Climate Jeopardizing Amazon Forest

By Guest PostJanuary 20, 2013Environment, Natureamazon basin, Amazon rainforest, amazonia, amazonian droughts, amazonian trees, atmospheric condition, california, carbon cycle, carbon dioxide, climate change, climate phenomenon, cloud, decaying wood, degradation, double whammy, drought, earth, ecosystem, effect, forest, forest canopy, forest recovery, global data, katrina, large scale, megadrought, NASA, quikscat spacecraft, radar data, rainfall measuring mission, rainforest, rainforest ecosystem, rita, sassan saatchi, satellite, satellite microwave, scatterometer radar, sea surface temperature, seawinds scatterometer, size of california, southern, steady decline, tropical, tropical atlantic, united kingdom, university of oxford, vegetation, water availability, western amazonia, wildfire, yadvinder malhi

PASADENA, Calif. – An area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005, finds a new NASA-led study. These results, together with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.

An international research team led by Sassan Saatchi of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzed more than a decade of satellite microwave radar data collected between 2000 and 2009 over Amazonia. The observations included measurements of rainfall from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and measurements of the moisture content and structure of the forest canopy (top layer) from the Seawinds scatterometer on NASA’s QuikScat spacecraft. (more…)

Invading Species Can Extinguish Native Plants Despite Recent Reports

By Guest PostJanuary 10, 2013Environment, Naturebenjamin gilbert, california, colonization, ecologist, eeb, effect of invasion, eth zurich, extinction dynamics, federal institute, habitat, initial invasion, invaded ecosystem, invading exotic plants, invasive grass, james cornwell, jonathan levine, local extinction, native biodiversity, native habitat, native plants, non native species, pnas, quantitative model, sea of exotics, species, species to extinction, swiss, technology zurich, university of toronto, wild

TORONTO, ON – Ecologists at the University of Toronto and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) have found that, given time, invading exotic plants will likely eliminate native plants growing in the wild despite recent reports to the contrary.

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reports that recent statements that invasive plants are not problematic are often based on incomplete information, with insufficient time having passed to observe the full effect of invasions on native biodiversity. (more…)

Captive Hyenas Outfox Wild Relatives

By Guest PostJanuary 8, 2013Natureanimals in captivity, captive animals, captive hyenas, captive spotted hyenas, problem solving skills, wild spotted hyenas

When it comes to solving puzzles, animals in captivity are, well, different animals than their wild brethren. (more…)

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