Ecology & Zoology
Want to send a message to possible invaders? Pile dead bodies high and deep. A new species of wasp does just that.
This wasp with a unique nest-building strategy was discovered in the forests of southeast China. The "bone-house wasp" shuts off its nest with a chamber full of dead ants in order to protect its offspring from enemies, as shown by Michael Staab and Prof. Dr. Alexandra-Maria Klein from the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Freiburg as well as scientists from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
No other…
Scorpions build a platform on which to warm up before the evening hunt.
Researchers investigated the burrows of wild Large-Clawed Scorpions (Scorpio maurus palmatus) in the Negev Desert of Israel.
After trapping the scorpions, they prepared replica casts of their burrows by filling them with molten aluminium. Once the casts had solidified, they were then dug out to be analyzed by a 3-D laser scanner and computer software. Rather than being simple holes in the ground, it was found that the burrows followed a very sophisticated design.
Each burrow began with a short, vertical…
Locusts decide the most nutritious plant to eat based on ambient temperature - they choose their food and then where they digest it according to how hot it is.
The researchers used two species of grass that are commonly eaten by locusts in Australia. The first, Kangaroo grass, gives a high protein diet at high temperatures and a high carbohydrate diet at low temperatures. In wheat, the protein/carbohydrate ratio does not change with temperature, but locusts are able to absorb the nutrients more effectively at higher temperatures.
Consequently, locusts raised on Kangaroo grass reach a…
Many humans can't remember what they had for dinner last night. Nor can many other creatures. Some have exceptionally short memories. Defying popular convention, a new study finds that fish, believed to have a memory span of only 30 seconds, can actually remember context and associations up to twelve days later.
The researchers studied African Cichlids (Labidochromis caeruleus), a popular aquarium species. These fish demonstrate many complex behaviours, including aggression, causing the scientists to predict that they could be capable of advanced memory tasks.
Each fish was…
It's commonly believed that plant growth can be influenced by sound and that plants respond to wind and touch.
Researchers at the University of Missouri took it a step farther than playing classical music for ivy. They conducted a chemical and audio analysis and determined that plants respond to the sounds that caterpillars make when eating plants and that the plants respond with more defenses.
"Previous research has investigated how plants respond to acoustic energy, including music," said Heidi Appel, senior research scientist in the Division of Plant Sciences in the College of…
Cave beetles are one of the most iconic species found in subterranean habitats. They were historically the first living organisms described by science that are adapted to the conditions of hypogean - subterranean - life.
Now, the unusual habitat of the Krubera cave, 2,140 meters deep. in the Western Caucasus has revealed a new species of beetle, named Duvalius abyssimus. Ana Sofía Reboleira, researcher from the Universities of Aveiro and La Laguna, and Vicente M. Ortuño, from the University of Alcalá, named it in Zootaxa.
"The new species of cave beetle is called Duvalius…
A small, drab and highly inconspicuous moth has been flitting nameless about its special niche among the middle elevations of one of the world's oldest mountain ranges, the southern Appalachian Mountains in North America. A team of American scientists has now identified this new to science species as Cherokeea attakullakulla.
It was frequenting these haunts for tens of millions of years before the first humans set foot on this continent, all the while not caring in the least that it had no name or particular significance, but it will probably still get listed as endangered.
Among the…
Due to the president making bee colonies a national priority, there is a lot of talk from environmentalists about banning neonicotinoid pesticides but they may be blaming out of convenience rather than evidence.
Car and truck exhaust fumes can be bad for humans and for pollinators too. In new research on how pollinators find flowers when background odors are strong, University of Washington and University of Arizona researchers have found that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.
When the calories from one feeding of a…
Cloudina were tiny, filter-feeding creatures that lived on the seabed during the Ediacaran Period, which ended 541 million years ago. Fossil evidence indicates that animals had soft bodies until the emergence of Cloudina. Now they are involved in a new study which sheds light on how one of Earth's oldest reefs was formed.
Researchers have discovered that one of these reefs – now located on dry land in Namibia – was built almost 550 million years ago, by these first animals to have hard shells. Scientists say it was at this point that tiny aquatic creatures developed the ability to…
A new paper in Science identifies the regulatory molecules involved in the genetic and developmental pathways that electric fish have used to convert a simple muscle into an organ capable of generating a potent electrical field.
The work establishes the genetic basis for the electric organ, an anatomical feature found only in fish.
The most shocking part to non-biologists? It evolved independently half a dozen times in environments ranging from the flooded forests of the Amazon to murky marine environments.
The study provides evidence to support the idea that the six electric fish lineages,…