Ecology & Zoology

Froghoppers, also known as spittlebugs, are the champion insect jumpers, capable of reaching heights of 700 mm - more than 100 times their own body length. Research published today in BMC Biology reveals that they achieve their prowess by flexing bow-like structures between their hind legs and wings and releasing the energy in one giant leap in a catapult-like action. Images of the insects flexing and jumping are described in the research carried out by Malcolm Burrows from the University of Cambridge and his colleagues. Burrows' research focused on determining how the energy generated by the…

Plants in a forest respond to stress by producing significant amounts of a chemical form of aspirin, scientists have discovered. The finding, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), opens up new avenues of research into the behavior of plants and their impacts on air quality, and it also has the potential to give farmers an early warning signal about crops that are failing. For years, scientists have known that plants in a laboratory may produce methyl salicylate, which is a chemical form of acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin. But researchers had never before…

One of Britain's best-known species of seabird is increasingly attacking and killing unattended chicks from neighboring nests due to food shortages. Researchers at the University of Leeds and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology observed a dramatic increase in the number of adult guillemots deliberately attacking chicks of the same species in the last year. Hundreds of such attacks occurred, and many were fatal, with chicks being pecked to death or flung from cliff ledges. These disturbing findings, published online today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, indicate that social…

Scientists have discovered that certain fish are capable of glowing red. Research published today in BMC Ecology includes striking images of fish fluorescing vivid red light. Due to absorption of ‘red’ wavelengths of sunlight by sea-water, objects which look red under normal conditions appear grey or black at depths below 10m. This has contributed to the belief among marine biologists that red colors are of no importance to fish. Nico Michiels, from the University of Tübingen, Germany, led a team of researchers who captured the striking images in the article which, as he describes, “Shows…

AUSTIN, Texas—A new species of blind, subterranean, predatory ant discovered in the Amazon rainforest by University of Texas at Austin evolutionary biologist Christian Rabeling is likely a descendant of the very first ants to evolve. The new ant is named Martialis heureka, which translates roughly to "ant from Mars," because the ant has a combination of characteristics never before recorded. It is adapted for dwelling in the soil, is two to three millimeters long, pale, and has no eyes and large mandibles, which Rabeling and colleagues suspect it uses to capture prey. This new species of…

The crashing of the enormous fluked tail on the surface of the ocean is a “calling card” of modern whales. Living whales have no back legs and use their front legs as 'flippers' that allow them to steer. Their tails provide the powerful thrust necessary to move their huge bulk. Yet this has not always been the case, according to research in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Paleontologist Mark D. Uhen of the Alabama Museum of Natural History describes new fossils from Alabama and Mississippi that pinpoint where tail flukes developed in the evolution of whales.…

All 3,000 Virgin Trains staff (that get seen by customers) will be sporting a new look today following the delivery of new uniforms. The difference? All of the Wensum-supplied garments are 'eco-friendly.' What does that mean? Leave it to Richard Branson to make clothes that can be thrown in a washing machine an ecological PR move. Both the garments and the package are also recycleable, they say, and the manufacturer treats its workforce within full Human Rights conditions, though that would seem to be a bonus outside the environment.Eco friendly clothes are machine washable! Who knew…

We hear lots of concern about global warming and the world's rainforests, though they have even begun to thrive under warming conditions - but what about ancient rainforests, long before the Dawn of Man and the destruction we apparently set into motion just by evolving? The answer lies in underground coalmines in Illinois. There lay the remains of the first tropical rainforests to evolve on our planet around 300 million years - when the USA lay on the equator. An amazing feature of the forests is that they are preserved over a vast area. One example covers 10,000 hectares - the size of a city…

Contrary to the national "carbon budgets" as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol, a new analysis in Nature suggests that old growth forests are "carbon sinks" and they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries. Old growth forests around the world are not protected by international treaties and have been considered of no significance in the Kyoto Protocol. That perspective was largely based on findings of a single study from the late 1960s and these scientists now say it needs to be changed. An analysis of 519 different plot studies found that…

Even closely related plants produce their own natural chemical cocktails, each set uniquely adapted to the individual plant's specific habitat. Comparing anti-fungals produced by tobacco and henbane, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that only a few mutations in a key enzyme are enough to shift the whole output to an entirely new product mixture. Making fewer changes led to a mixture of henbane and tobacco-specific molecules and even so-called "chemical hybrids," explaining how plants can tinker with their natural chemical factories and adjust their product…