Save Threatened Species by Giving Them Treated Cotton for Nests
When University of Utah biologists set out cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide, wild finches in the Galapagos Islands used the cotton to help build their nests, killing parasitic fly maggots to protect baby birds. The researchers say the self-fumigation method may help endangered birds and even some mammals.
“We are trying to help birds help themselves,” says biology professor Dale Clayton, senior author of a study outlining the new technique. The findings were published online May 5, 2014, in the journal Current Biology. (more…)
Results Could Aid Future Efforts to Monitor Health
Bacteria are invisible to the naked eye, but they reside on nearly every surface humans encounter—including the skin. Uncovering the role these microorganisms play in human health is a major focus of research in skin microbiology, but little is known about the identity or function of skin bacteria in other mammals.
In a paper published in the open access journal PLOS ONE, researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues identified a core skin bacterial community that humpback whales share across populations, which could point to a way to assess the overall health of these endangered marine mammals. (more…)
Scientists have identified a new species of ancient porpoise with a chin length unprecedented among known mammals, and suggest the animal used the tip of its face to probe the seabed for food. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Fish, unlike humans, can regenerate nerve connections and recover normal mobility following an injury to their spinal cord. Now, University of Missouri researchers have discovered how the sea lamprey, an eel-like fish, regrows the neurons that comprise the long nerve “highways” that link the brain to the spinal cord. Findings may guide future efforts to promote recovery in humans who have suffered spinal cord injuries.
“There is a lot of attention to why, following a spinal cord injury, neurons regenerate in lower vertebrates, such as the sea lamprey, and why they don’t in higher vertebrates, such as humans,” said Andrew McClellan, professor of biological sciences in the College of Arts and Science and director of the UM Spinal Cord Injury Research Program (SCIRP). (more…)
Human beings would probably be known as pilosals rather than mammals if Carl Linnaeus had not been a proponent of breast-feeding. For social and political reasons, the famed taxonomist labeled the class of animals to which humans belong with a reference to their practice of suckling their young rather than to their evolutionarily older characteristic of having hair.
This is just one of the hundreds of surprising pieces of information that readers will glean from the far-reaching and fascinating How We Do It: The Evolution and Future of Human Reproduction, a new book by Robert Martin, a member of the University’s of Chicago’s Committee on Evolutionary Biology and curator of biological anthropology at the Field Museum. (more…)
Average Growing Nation Can Expect 10.8 Percent More Threatened Species by 2050
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The ongoing global growth in the human population will inevitably crowd out mammals and birds and has the potential to threaten hundreds of species with extinction within 40 years, new research shows.
Scientists at The Ohio State University have determined that the average growing nation should expect at least 3.3 percent more threatened species in the next decade and an increase of 10.8 percent species threatened with extinction by 2050.
The United States ranks sixth in the world in the number of new species expected to be threatened by 2050, the research showed. (more…)
In stunning color, new biodiversity research from North Carolina State University maps out priority areas worldwide that hold the key to protecting vulnerable species and focusing conservation efforts.
The research, published onlinein Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pinpoints the highest global concentrations of mammals, amphibians and birds on a scale that’s 100 times finer than previous assessments. The findings can be used to make the most of available conservation resources, said Dr. Clinton Jenkins, lead author and research scholar at NC State University. (more…)