Ecology & Zoology

A series of experiments on honey bees foraging for food has revealed that the bees warn their nest mates about dangers they encounter while feeding with a special signal that is akin to a 'stop sign' for bees. The bees were attacked by nearby colonies while fighting for food at an experimental feeder and produced a specific signal to stop nest mates who were recruiting others for this dangerous location. Honey bees use a waggle dance to communicate the location of food and other resources. Attacked bees directed "stop" signals at nest mates waggle dancing for the dangerous location. Writing…

Do Disturbed Snails Have Panic Attacks? Whilst researching some applications of the laws of thermodynamics to the biochemical processes in living things, I came across some very intriguing facts about snails.  Living things react to changes of heat in the environment in two broad ways: through  thermoregulation or through thermoconformity.  Thermoconformers are constrained to follow the temperature of their immediate environments.  Thermoregulators adjust their temperatures within a range which may lie within, or overlap, the environmental temperature range. It is fairly…

A collaborative study involving scientists from 12 UK research institutions, universities and conservation organizations suggests that the trend towards earlier UK springs and summers has been accelerating. The study, published recently in Global Change Biology, is the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment so far of long-term changes in the seasonal timing (phenology) of biological events across marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments in the UK, the authors say. Researchers gathered  more than 25,000 long-term phenology trends for 726 species of plants and animals. More than…

Oh criminy, are we still confused? Didn't we go over this like a zillion times? Wasn't Deep-Sea News' excellent primer on how Humboldt Squid are Not The Same Thing as Giant Squid clear enough? Sigh. Just let a few fishermen catch a few hundred Humboldt squid, and suddenly the headlines are blaring: GIANT SQUID INVADE CALIFORNIA ZOMG!1!! Tonic gets a prize for biggest species mix-up, though: Mostly popular as a source of food along the European Mediterranean coast, the giant squid is starting to catch on in restaurants and fish markets in other parts of the world. We suspect that in southern…

Former failed CEO and current political candidate Carly Fiorina has campaign staff who don't mind thinking outside the box a little. How far outside?   Portraying your opponent as a demonic animal with red glowing eyes and your constituents as sheep is pretty far out. Carly Fiorina.  And here I thought only the way she ran a  public company was insane.    There's not much I can add to this, other than to be proud I witnessed a video event that media and journalism students decades from now will watch and study; sort of like that video of the Hindenburg bursting into…

Quantum biology?   Sure, it doesn't get as much attention as its physics counterpart but special proteins called light-harvesting complexes are getting some attention for the field and a team of University of Toronto chemists say they have observed quantum mechanics at work in photosynthesis of marine algae.Light-harvesting complexes are used in photosynthesis to capture sunlight and funnel its energy to nature's solar cells – other proteins known as reaction centres. Scholes and his colleagues isolated light-harvesting complexes from two different species of marine algae and…

The return of biting arctic air to southeastern Wisconsin froze my enthusiasm for strolling the block, but activated my wondering about kinds of organisms that thrive in icy ecosystems, or arctic extremophiles. Crustaceans, worms, diatom chains, unicellular algae, bacteria and viruses grow cozily within brine-filled crystal containers that form in the northern hemisphere's oceans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I find myself unable even to daydream about finding a refuge in such an ever-gelid environment. I will not be joining the local Polar Bear…

The LA Times is way more awesome than I ever realized. First, they have this section called "LA Unleashed: All things animal in southern California and beyond." That's one awesome. Next, LA Unleashed includes a daily feature called "Your Morning Adorable: The best way to start your day, in our opinion, is with a great animal photo or video." That's two awesome. Finally, today's Morning Adorable was a cephalopod, and not just any cephalopod, but a pretty obscure deep-sea glass squid dubbed the Piglet Squid. That's three awesome! Now, of course, I complain. We don't normally think of the words…

I have been known to admit that I fell in love with cephalopods because they are the closest things to aliens coexisting with us on our home planet. (I love aliens.) Clearly I am not the only person to come to this conclusion: The giant Humboldt squid could be some sort of alien species from a 1980s science fiction film. Flashing white and red like a Klingon stealth cloak, they blanket an area to attack and devour any creature they can, including each other. They employ long tentacles covered with suckers and claw-like "teeth" to grasp their prey and bring it in to a large, hard black beak,…

Scientists from the University of Kentucky and the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya have discovered a new predatory thrips – Karnyothrips flavipes – which feeds on the eggs and larvae of the coffee berry borer Hypothenemus hampei. The authors say the discovery could have important implications for the management of the coffee berry borer throughout the world. Their study, the first to quantitatively prove predation on the coffee berry borer, is published online in Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature. The coffee berry borer H. hampei is the most…