A recently released study found some positive effects in Rhode Island after the state accidentally made prostitution legal for seven years
When the Rhode Island legislature inadvertently decriminalized indoor prostitution in the state from 2003 to 2009, it proved beneficial to UCLA public policy professor Manisha Shah. (more…)
LARAMIE, Wyo. — Migratory elk are coming back from Yellowstone National Park with fewer calves due to drought and increased numbers of big predators – two landscape-level changes that are reducing the benefits of migration with broader implications for conservation of migratory animals, according to a new study published in the journal Ecology.
The new study by the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit – a joint program involving U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Wyoming, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, describes a long-term decline in the number of calves produced annually by the Clarks Fork herd, a population of about 4000 elk whose migrants travel annually between winter ranges near Cody, Wyoming and summer ranges within Yellowstone National Park. Migratory elk experienced a 19 percent depression in rates of pregnancy over the four years of the study and a 70 percent decline in calf production over 21 years of monitoring by the WGFD, while the elk that did not migrate, known as resident elk, in the same herd experienced high pregnancy and calf production and are expanding their numbers and range into private lands outside of the park. (more…)
*Extinction of fishes 360 million years ago created natural ecology experiment*
In present-day ecology, the removal or addition of a predator in an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago.
What was bad for fish was good for the fish’s food, according to a paper published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers from the University of Chicago, West Virginia University and The Ohio State University found that the mass extinction known as the Hangenberg event produced a “natural experiment” in the fossil record, with results that mirror modern observations about predator-prey relationships. (more…)
