behavior – Page 2 – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

Ship noise impairs feeding and heightens predation risk for crabs

By Guest PostJuly 23, 2013Environment, Natureandy radford, animal behaviour, behavior, bristol, crabs, ecologically critical effects, ecosystems, feeding, marine invertebrates, metabolic rate, play dead behavior, potential predators, predation risk, ship noise, shore crab, steve simpson, university of exeter

A study published in the journal Animal Behaviour found that the noise of passing ships disrupts feeding for the common shore crab.

Perhaps worse, the team from the Universities of Exeter and Bristol also found that when threatened, crabs took longer to retreat to shelter and lost their natural ‘play dead’ behaviour.

In coastal seas around the world noise caused by humans is a dominant feature, with construction and transportation fundamentally modifying ocean soundscapes.

Working with the same common shore crabs that children delight in catching on crablines in UK harbours, the team found ecologically-critical effects of ship noise-playback on behaviour. (more…)

Using earthquake sensors to track endangered whales

By Guest PostJune 19, 2013Natureamplitude, behavior, dax soule, deep ocean environments, earth, earthquake sensor, earthquake sensor data, endangered whales, fin whale surfacing, gps, greenland, greyhounds, juan de fuca, michelle weirathmueller, neptune canada, oceanography, pacific northwest coast, ridge, sea, seafloor geology, seafloor seismic data, seafloor seismometers, seattle area, second largest animal, seismically active zone, seismometer networks, smartphone, swimming behavior, track, university of washington, uw doctoral student, vocalizing whale, washington coast, whale calls, william wilcock

The fin whale is the second-largest animal ever to live on Earth. It is also, paradoxically, one of the least understood. The animal’s huge size and global range make its movements and behavior hard to study.

A carcass that washed up on a Seattle-area beach this spring provided a reminder that sleek fin whales, nicknamed “greyhounds of the sea,” are vulnerable to collision when they strike fast-moving ships. Knowing their swimming behaviors could help vessels avoid the animals. Understanding where and what they eat could also help support the fin whale’s slowly rebounding populations. (more…)

Do songbirds hold key to stuttering?

By Guest PostJune 14, 2013Natureaustralian songbird, behavior, brain, california based, grammy awards, grammy foundation, j devin mcauley, jennifer lampen, juli wade, key to stuttering, language skills, laura dilley, michigan state university, million americans, process rhythm, recording academy, scientists, songbirds, soo eun chang, speech production, zebra finch

A tiny Australian songbird may hold the answer to discovering the biological source of stuttering, which affects 3 million Americans and is notoriously difficult to treat.

A team of Michigan State University scientists will investigate the brain and behavior of the zebra finch in the first in-depth study of whether stuttering stems from a lack of rhythm. (more…)

Brainwaves reflect ability to beat built-in bias

By Guest PostJune 13, 2013Scienceactivity, behavior, brain science, brainwaves, brown institute, brown university, cognitive control, eeg scalp monitors, genetic, humans, ian eisenberg, james cavanagh, marc guitart masip, michael frank, neurological roots, obsessive compulsive disorder, pavlovian bias, prefrontal cortex, psychological factors, quentin huys, situational factors, specific brain activity, symbols, university college london, university of zurich, vertebrates

Many animals, including humans, harbor ingrained biases to act when they can obtain rewards and to remain inactive to avoid punishment. Sometimes, however those biases can steer us wrong. A new study finds that theta brainwave activity in the prefrontal cortex predicts how well people can overcome these biases when a better choice are available.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Vertebrates are predisposed to act to gain rewards and to lie low to avoid punishment. Try to teach chickens to back away from food in order to obtain it, and you’ll fail, as researchers did in 1986. But humans are better thinkers than chickens. In the May 8 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers show that the level of theta brainwave activity in the prefrontal cortex predicts whether people will be able to overcome these ingrained biases when doing so is required to achieve a goal. (more…)

Bittersweet: Bait-Averse Cockroaches Shudder at Sugar

By Guest PostJune 9, 2013Nature, Scienceayako wada katsumata, behavior, behavioral resistance, bittersweet, coby schal, cockroaches, entomologist, genetic changes, german cockroaches, glucose, glucose averse roaches, jules silverman, loss of function, memory, mutations, normal cockroaches, north Carolina, paraglossae, receptor neurons, roach bait poison, state university, sugar, types of food

Sugar isn’t always sweet to German cockroaches, especially to the ones that avoid roach baits.

In a study published May 24 in the journal Science, North Carolina State University entomologists show the neural mechanism behind the aversion to glucose, the simple sugar that is a popular ingredient in roach-bait poison. Glucose sets off bitter receptors in roach taste buds, causing roaches to avoid foods that bring on this taste-bud reaction. This aversion has a genetic basis and it eventually spreads to offspring, resulting in increasingly large groups of cockroaches that reject glucose and any baits made with it.

In normal German cockroaches, glucose elicits activity in sugar gustatory receptor neurons, which react when exposed to sugars like glucose and fructose – components of corn syrup, a common roach-bait ingredient. Generally, roaches have a sweet tooth for these sugars. (more…)

‘A better path’ toward projecting, planning for rising seas on a warmer Earth

By Guest PostApril 30, 2013Environment21st century, Antarctica, basins, behavior, christopher little, climate change, climate change policy, coastal planning, computer algorithms, continental ice sheets, geosciences, greenland, ice sheet dynamics, ipcc, massive ice sheets, methodology, michael oppenheimer, monte carlo simulations, nathan urban, Nature, polar ice sheets, princeton university, projection, risk tolerance, sea level, sea level change, sparse data, upper bounds

More useful projections of sea level are possible despite substantial uncertainty about the future behavior of massive ice sheets, according to Princeton University researchers.

In two recent papers in the journals Nature Climate Change and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers present a probabilistic assessment of the Antarctic contribution to 21st-century sea-level change. Their methodology folds observed changes and models of different complexity into unified projections that can be updated with new information. This approach provides a consistent means to integrate the potential contribution of both continental ice sheets — Greenland and Antarctica — into sea-level rise projections. (more…)

Mending the Minnesota

By Guest PostMarch 16, 2013Environmentbasin, behavior, catastrophic flood, clean water, climate change, data, earth surface dynamics, ecology, efi foufoula georgiou, evolution, glacial deposits, jacques finlay, mending the minnesota, minnesota river, riverine systems, surface water runoff, thresholds, university of minnesota, utah state university, watershed, wsc

A study of its basin paves the way for cleaner water everywhere

The Minnesota River’s usually placid surface belies its status as a river —and a watershed—in need of help.

The river is naturally prone to heavy sediment loads. It runs through rich glacial deposits, in a channel carved by a catastrophic flood at the end of the last ice age, when a large lake formed by glacial meltwater gave way. (more…)

Force is the Key to Granular State-Shifting

By Guest PostFebruary 21, 2013Scienceadding energy, behavior, change, change in force, dirt, granular materials, granular system, heat, james puckett, karen daniels, north Carolina, plastic granules, plastic material, property of equilibration, sand, state, state of material, state university, thermodynamic system, thermodynamics, thermometer, transition, types of particles, underlying ideas

Ever wonder why sand can both run through an hourglass like a liquid and be solid enough to support buildings? It’s because granular materials – like sand or dirt – can change their behavior, or state. Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that the forces individual grains exert on one another are what most affect that transition.

Physicists have explored the changing behavior of granular materials by comparing it to what happens in thermodynamic systems. In a thermodynamic system, you can change the state of a material – like water – from a liquid to a gas by adding energy (heat) to the system. One of the most fundamental and important observations about temperature, however, is that it has the ability to equilibrate: a hot cup of tea eventually cools to match the temperature of the room. (more…)

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