Ecology & Zoology

A third-year undergraduate student, Hayley Frend, at The University of Nottingham has had her research into the sex life of the pond snail published in the peer-reviewed journal Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.  With a grant of £1,500 from the Nuffield Foundation, Frend, who is a student in the School of Biology,  has shown that just like humans the pond snail is genetically programmed to use the left or right handed side of its brain to perform different tasks.  In the past it was presumed that only humans use different sides of their brains to carry out different tasks…

Around 10,000 years ago, in the region of the United States now known as the Appalachians, lived one of the most impressive mammals ever to inhabit North American. With a height of over 8 feet, and weighing up to 800 pounds, the giant ground sloth ( Megalonyx jeffersonii to scientists) was a formidable sight. However, the ground sloth, like most large land mammals in North America, went extinct. Why is still a mystery to scientists - some believe that it may have been the result of a change in climate, others suggest that it may have been from predation by humans. Such is the case for many…

Annual crops grow, blossom and die within one year. Perennials overwinter and grow again the following year. The life strategy of many annuals consists of rapid growth following germination and rapid transition to flower and seed formation, thus preventing the loss of energy needed to create permanent structures. They germinate quickly after the winter so that they come out before other plants, thus eliminating the need to compete for food and light. The trick is basically to make as many seeds as possible in as short a time as possible.  Perennials have more evolved life strategies for…

Awww. Isn't this squirrel just so cute? You might think that now, but stare long enough at the beady eye of this Eastern Fox Squirrel (Family Sciuridae : Sciurus niger Linnaeus), and you'll see that it's actually a reproducing nightmare overrunning a campus or orchard near you. In fact, the Eastern Fox Squirrel is reproducing so quickly that researchers at the University of California Davis are putting them on birth control. Sara Krause, a UC Davis ecology doctoral student, will be leading a birth-control research program to prevent a population explosion of these non-native tree squirrels.…

A "living fossil" tree species is helping a University of Michigan researcher understand how tropical forests responded to past climate change and how they may react to global warming in the future, according to research in the November issue of  Evolution. Symphonia globulifera is a widespread tropical tree with a history that goes back some 45 million years in Africa, said Christopher Dick, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who is lead author on the paper. It is unusual among tropical trees in having a well-studied fossil record, partly because the oil industry…

The natural world behaves a lot like the stock market, with periods of relative stability interspersed with dramatic swings in population size and competition between individuals and species. While scholars may be a long way from predicting the ins and outs of the economy, University of Calgary biologist Edward McCauley and colleagues have uncovered fundamental rules that may govern population cycles in many natural systems. Their discovery is published today in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. "Ecological theory has always predicted that predator-prey relationships cause large…

A world-first: birth of a white rhino after artificial insemination with frozen sperm. The rhino baby, a male, was born at 4:57am in the Budapest Zoo on the 22nd of October 2008. In June 2007, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin artificially inseminated his mother, the rhino cow Lulu, with frozen bull semen. The rhino baby weighed 45 kilos. It is in good health and was accepted by his mom. The birth is “an important success for species conservation and preservation of biodiversity”, says Dr. Robert Hermes, one of the IZW-scientists performing the…

China's farmers and merchants should take advantage of new agricultural and business opportunities that could help mitigate some effects of the annual flooding behind the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, according to an Ohio State University wetland expert. The level of water in the reservoir behind the dam will top off at 575 feet above sea level during the coming winter. The reservoir pool, covering abandoned cities, houses and farm fields formerly populated by an estimated 1.5 million people, will extend over 400 square miles – equivalent to the land area of Hong Kong. Then by summer…

Nalini Nadkarni of Evergreen State College currently advises a team of researchers who sport shaved heads, tattooed biceps and prison-issued garb rather than the lab coats and khakis typically worn by researchers. Why is Nadkarni's team composed of such apparently iconoclastic researchers? Because all of her researchers are inmates at Cedar Creek Corrections Center, a medium security prison in Littlerock, Washington. Why did Nadkarni recruit inmates into her research team? "Because," she explains, "I need help from people who have long periods of time available to observe and measure the…

A Gecko's ability to climb sheer walls has long caught the attention of scientists and they've been trying for years to duplicate this strange talent. Major universities such as UC Santa Barbara, Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Dayton have recently come to grips with materials that mimic a gecko's ability to stick. Some new research in Science on this is referenced below but there have been a few others over the last year also. With this recent research, the structural composition of the zoological magic behind the gecko's sticky feet has nearly been reproduced, and…