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Camouflage really does reduce the chances of being eaten

By Guest PostFebruary 13, 2016Naturecamouflage, jolyon troscianko, martin stevens, natural selection, predators, protects animals

A ground-breaking study has confirmed the long held assumption that camouflage protects animals from the clutches of predators, and offers insights into the most important aspects of camouflage.

The research, by scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge, investigated the camouflage of ground-nesting birds in Zambia, using sophisticated digital imaging to demonstrate how they would appear from the perspective of a predator. (more…)

Scholars and scientists explore factors underlying serendipitous discoveries

By Guest PostJuly 3, 2014Sciencealexis licht, buckyballs, charles darwin, cosmic eruptions, donald levy, dylan gomes, dynamics, factors, fermilab, guillaume dupont nivet, himalayan mountains, lake erie, massive star system, megan kiminki, Milky Way, mine, Nanotechnology, natural selection, perfect yogi, rachel moon, radar, rick stevens, sensory mode, theory, tibetan uplift, vocal sacs, westerly winds, world wide web, yoga asanas, yogi miley cyrus

What do Velcro, Tang, penicillin, the structure of DNA and the World Wide Web have in common?

They all involved serendipitous discoveries—chance discoveries made by alert, curious scientists who were looking for other things when they happened across a fortuitous finding. Rather than ignoring their accidental discoveries, these curious, open-minded scientists harnessed their luck. “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” as Louis Pasteur put it. (more…)

Evolution of Earliest Horses Driven by Climate Change

By Guest PostFebruary 24, 2012Environment, Nature, Scienceaaron wood, atmosphere, bighorn basin, body size, cabin fork area, carbon, carbon dioxide, cause and effect, climate model, clydesdale, concentration, doug boyer, dwarfing phenomenon, earliest horse, evolution, florida museum of natural history, fossil, geochemical analysis, global temperature, h richard lane, horse teeth, industrial revolution, jonathan bloch, mammal, national science foundation, natural selection, North America, nsf, ocean, ornithologist, oxygen levels, paleocene-eocene thermal maximum, petm, prediction, ross secord, sifrhippus sandae, stephen chester, temperature, university of florida, university of nebraska lincoln, worland, yale

*The hotter it gets, the smaller the animal?*

When Sifrhippus sandae, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale.

It weighed in at around 12 pounds–and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia.

Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. (more…)

Pollution Triggers Genetic Resistance Mechanism in a Coastal Fish

By Guest PostFebruary 24, 20112 commentsEnvironmentacushnet river estuary, ahr2, amino acids, antibiotics, atlantic tomcod, bacteria, diana franks, Environment, evolutionary change, fish, fish populations, general electric facilities, genetic receptor, genetic resistance, hudson environment, hudson river, insecticides, insects, isaac wirgin, mark hahn, natural selection, new york, pahs, PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, protein, receptor gene, stress factors, superfund basic research, tomcod, toxicity, vertebrate population

For 30 years, two General Electric facilities released about 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into New York’s Hudson River, devastating and contaminating fish populations. Some 50 years later, one type of fish—the Atlantic tomcod—has not only survived but appears to be thriving in the hostile Hudson environment.

Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have joined colleagues from New York University (NYU) and NOAA to investigate this phenomenon and report that the tomcod living in the Hudson River have undergone a rapid evolutionary change in developing a genetic resistance to PCBs. (more…)

Tag Archives: natural selection

Camouflage really does reduce the chances of being eaten

Scholars and scientists explore factors underlying serendipitous discoveries

Evolution of Earliest Horses Driven by Climate Change

Pollution Triggers Genetic Resistance Mechanism in a Coastal Fish