#How does the price of cheese influence perceptions of wolves? Relationships between humans and wolves are linked often to conflicts with livestock breeding activities.
Contrary to a widespread belief among western environmentalists these conflicts don't only occur only in western countries
Indeed in many countries livestock breeding activities have been dealing with wolves for centuries and rural societies have developed paths to coexistence through protection of livestock and control of wolf populations.
However the world is changing and rural societies are facing changes that can affect the way they relate to large carnivores like wolves.
It is particularly obvious in countries which went through dramatic and rapid transition processes after the fall of USSR and Yugoslavia.
Researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research conducted ethnological investigations based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews on human-wolf relationships in Kyrgyzstan (2003-2007
Wolf hunting was affected also in Kyrgyzstan as economic and logistical means supporting intensive wolf hunting were no longer available after the collapse of the USSR. The studies revealed that these changes in hunting
and husbandry practices have led to modifications of the human--wolf interactions as well as of the social and environmental contexts of human--wolf relationships.
In Kyrgyzstan wolves used to be seen as an intelligent alter ego of humans and were regarded as respectable enemies that had to be controlled
and as an animal that should be eliminated. In Macedonia livestock breeding is weakened a activity facing economic difficulties.
In this context wolves are perceived not as the main threat to their future but as an additional threat
and Yugoslavia have resulted in an increased vulnerability of local people to wolf damage and a concomitant reduced acceptance for wolves.
All these changes contribute to changes in the perception of the wolf and to an increase in the perception of conflicts even in countries where humans and wolves have coexisted continuously.
The results show that the human-wolf relationship is dynamic as well as highlighting the necessity of understanding the broader socio-economical context within which human-wildlife conflicts are embedded
and the challenge pastoralists are facing in a changing world. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
#Hunting for meat impacts on rainforest, fruit tree seed dispersalhunting for meat in the African rainforests has halved the number of primates.
The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by the primates and this leads to a reduction in the numbers of important fruit trees and changes to the rainforest.
The animals that are hunted include almost all mammals including gorillas and chimpanzees and some small species of monkey.
Both apes and small monkeys play an important role in seed dispersal in the rainforest as they feed on a variety of different fruits.
As the number of primates declines as a result of hunting their seed spreading role also declines. If fewer fruit seeds are spread fewer fruit trees will grow in the forests.
Many of the trees which have seeds that are dispersed by primates are also important to people
because primates cannot live in a forest without fruit trees. Ola Olsson would like to see better protection for nature reserves and national parks and better information and education of local people in the villages.
if the carcasses can be sold in the towns where people are prepared to pay high prices for ape meat.
and featured on the cover their early study found that mice that were fed these tomatoes in freeze-dried ground form had less inflammation
Scientists fed the tomatoes to mice that lacked the ability to remove low-density lipoprotein (LDL or bad cholesterol) from their blood and readily developed inflammation and atherosclerosis when consuming a high-fat diet.
The researchers found that mice that ate the peptide-enhanced tomatoes which accounted for 2. 2 percent of their Western-style high-fat diet had significantly lower levels of inflammation;
Several hours after the mice finished eating the intact peptide was found in the small intestine
#Chemical trickery explored to help contain potato pestthe pale cyst nematode Globodera pallida is one bad roundworm.
Unchecked the pest burrows into potato roots to feed obstructing nutrients and causing stunted growth wilted leaves and other symptoms that can eventually kill the plant.
There the chemicals stimulate G. pallida eggs to hatch Normally this helps ensure the survival of emerging juvenile nematodes.
and planting sticky nightshade as a trap crop whose roots exude the chemicals but don't support the nematode's reproduction.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by United states Department of agriculture-Research Education and Economics.
and his colleague Tsuyoshi Shimmura placed birds under constant light conditions and turned on recorders to listen and watch.
which aren't learned like songbird songs or human speech the researchers say. We still do not know why a dog says'bow-wow
'and a cat says'meow'Yoshimura says. We are interested in the mechanism of this genetically controlled behavior
and believe that chickens provide an excellent model. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Cell Press.
Co-authors of the study are Mara Vitolins Dr. PH. Timothy Morgan Ph d. Caroline Blackwell B. S. Scott Isom M. S. Carolyn Pedley M d. of Wake
and it turns up heads five times in a row we have this strong feeling that it will turn up tails on the sixth try explains Jim Lyons an associate professor of kinesiology at Mcmaster University and lead researcher on the project.
and a refuge for 11 globally-threatened bird species. They are also a vital fishing grazing and traditional rice farming resource for around 1. 1 million people.
These unique grasslands are home to many threatened birds including by far the largest remaining population of the critically endangered Bengal florican--the world's rarest bustard.
This bird has experienced a dramatic population decline of 44 per cent in seven years due to the destruction of its grassland habitat.
Other birds under threat in this area include sarus cranes storks ibises and eagles. Rural communities have been left vulnerable to land-grabbing and privatisation of-communal grasslands.
#New insights on invasive fly threatening US fruit cropshumans aren't the only species with a sweet tooth.
Research from North carolina State university shows that the invasive spotted-wing vinegar fly (Drosophila suzukii) also prefers sweet soft fruit--giving us new insight into a species that has spread across the United states over the past four years
The female flies use serrated blades on the tip of their abdomens to cut through the skin of ripe fruit
if the pest can't be controlled. While ongoing studies explore pesticide-based approaches to control D. suzukii the new research from NC State should help scientists and farmers with other control options.
and birds we've come up with a technique to predict sites where these viruses could mix
--and use the researchers'models to identify other hotspots--for increased monitoring of flu in humans livestock poultry and wild birds.
when viruses from humans and animals exchanged genes to create a new virus in a process called reassortment.
Recent research using mice confirms that genes from bird flu and human flu can combine to create dangerous new flu strains.
Swine which are susceptible to both bird and human flu could serve as a mixing vessel for reassortment between the two viruses.
and animals should be monitored for novel viruses which could help predict and prevent the next pandemic he said.
The research focused on two flu strains that studies in mice have shown can combine with lethal results:
Not all flu outbreaks whether bird or human are tracked. The scientists had to identify indicators of flu outbreaks such as dense poultry populations
#Mass strandings of pilot whales may not be driven by kinship, DNA profiles showbiologists since Aristotle have puzzled over the reasons for mass strandings of whales and dolphins in
which groups of up to several hundred individuals drive themselves up onto a beach apparently intentionally.
and often fatal beachings of otherwise healthy whales. One hypothesis regarding the reason for strandings is that care-giving behavior mediated largely by family relationships plays a critical role.
or a few whales because of sickness or disorientation triggers a chain reaction in which healthy individuals are drawn into the shallows in an effort to support their family members.
A recent study published in the Journal of Heredity questions this explanation using genetic data to describe the kinship of individual long-finned pilot whales involved in mass strandings in New zealand and Tasmania.
The largest of these strandings included more than 150 whales all of which died. The study found that stranded groups are not necessarily members of one extended family evidence that contradicts the hypothesis that stranding groups all descend from a single ancestral mother.
Long-finned pilot whales are the most common species to strand en masse and it has long been assumed this tendency was related to the species'social organization.
Previous studies have shown that pilot whales have a matrilineal social organization in which neither males nor females disperse from the group into
This group structure is also found in killer whales but is thought otherwise to be rare in mammals.
If kinship-based social dynamics were playing a critical role in these pilot whale strandings first we would expect to find that the individuals in a stranding event are in fact all related to each other.
Second we would expect that close relatives especially mothers and calves would be found in close proximity to each other
which are inherited from both parents from 490 whales involved in 12 stranding events. Contrary to the hypothesis that stranding groups consist of whales descended from a single ancestral mother (the extended matriline hypothesis) multiple matrilines were found in the groups stranded together.
In some strandings the researchers assessed the spatial relationships of individual whales on the beach.
The position of each stranded whale was mapped to determine if individuals found near each other were related.
No correlation was found between location and kinship even when considering only the location of nursing calves and their mothers who were separated often widely
and juveniles had no identifiable mother among the other beached whales. Several scenarios could account for the lack of spatial cohesion including the disruption of social bonds among kin before the actual strandings commented Oremus.
In fact the separation of related whales might actually be a contributing causal factor in the strandings rather than simply a consequence.
The results of this study have important implications for rescue efforts aimed at refloating stranded whales.
Often stranded calves are refloated with the nearest mature females under the assumption that this is the mother explained Scott Baker co-author and Associate Director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State university.
To answer this question the researchers conclude that genetic samples are needed from all whales involved in strandings including from those individuals that do eventually make it back to sea.
what is available for the mouse brain and make it publicly available. But they don't want to stop with tool development.
Choline deficiency has been tied to cognitive deficits in the mouse and human and we're developing a pig model to study the direct effects choline deficiency has on brain structure
when detecting the presence of a predator near their hive which in turn causes an attack response to the possible predator.
For this purpose they simulated a predator attack and observed whether the bees advised the rest of their conspecifics of the danger of gathering nectar at a certain plant.
Evasive alarm pheromones provoke an escape response in insects that visit a particular flower and until now we were not sure of the role that these pheromones played in social bees.
Our results indicate that unlike solitary bees social bees use this type of alert system on flowers to warn their conspecifics of the presence of a nearby predator as explained by Ana L. Llandres from the University of Tours
and lead author of the study published in the'Animal Behaviour'journal. In order to determine whether social and solitary bees responded to these olfactory alarm signals an experiment was performed using individuals from both types and from different countries:
In some plants the predator attack was simulated by trapping the bees with pincers whereas in other cases control plants were used in
Solitary bees responded similarly in the case of flowers that had been attacked by control predators and control flowers.
if a predator attack had been simulated previously. This study supports the idea that the sociability of bees is linked to the evolution of warning signals.
#Goats milk with antimicrobial lysozyme speeds recovery from diarrheamilk from goats that were modified genetically to produce higher levels of a human antimicrobial protein has proved effective in treating diarrhea in young pigs demonstrating the potential for food products from transgenic animals to one
These results provide just one example that through genetic engineering we can provide agriculturally relevant animals with novel traits targeted at solving some of the health-related problems facing these developing communities.
In this study Murray and colleagues fed young pigs milk from goats that were modified genetically to produce in their milk higher levels of lysozyme a protein that naturally occurs in the tears saliva and milk of all mammals.
and cows contains very little lysozyme prompting the effort to boost lysozyme levels in the milk of those animals using genetic modification.
#Whales streaming baleen tangles to trap fooddiving and plunging through the waves to feed some whales throw their jaws wide
and engulf colossal mouthfuls of fish-laden water while other species simply coast along with their mouths agape (ram
or skim feeding) yet both feeding styles rely on a remarkable substance in the whales'mouths to filter nutrition from the ocean:
and decided to find out more about how the flexible material filters whale-sized mouthfuls of water.
He publishes his discovery that baleen is a highly mobile material that tangles in flowing water to form the perfect net for trapping food particles at natural whale swimming speeds in The Journal of Experimental Biology.
Whales usually carry 300 of these structures on each side of their mouths#arranged perpendicular to the direction of water flowing into the mouth
In addition the baleen fringes of the skim-feeding bowhead whale's bristles are twice as long as the lunging humpback's. Having obtained baleen samples from the body of a stranded humpback during graduate work at the New england Aquarium
and collected samples from ram-feeding bowheads in Alaska Werth began to compare how well the baleen trapped minute latex beads carried in flowing water.
First he tested a small section of each type of baleen in a flow tank as he varied the flow speed from 10 to 120 cm/s
which corresponds exactly with the swimming speed of bowhead whales skimming through shoals of copepods. However when he compared the porosity of the baleen of both species he was surprised by the similarity of the performances despite the whales'different feeding styles.
Having found that baleen filters best at the natural swimming speed of skim-feeding bowheads Werth is keen to scale up
and investigate how full-sized 4 m long baleen plates performstory Source: The above story is provided based on materials by The Journal of Experimental Biology.
#Bat disease: More accurate, sensitive DNA test allows early identification of fungus causing white nose syndromeeven after researchers studying White Nose Syndrome (WNS) established that a fungus called Geomyces destructans is at the heart
either on a bat or in soil has been difficult and time consuming because a variety of closely related Geomyces species found where bats hibernate have the potential to cause false positives using previous DNA testing.
San francisco. In the morning each bee goes looking individually for a sugar source then comes back to the hive
and does a dance in front of the other bees describing the location of what it's found which helps the hive decide collectively where the best source is said senior scientist Matthew Krummel Phd a UCSF professor of pathology.
In experiments with a mouse model of human immune function the scientists vaccinated mice for listeria a common bacterium that causes food-borne illness
and then exposed the animals to the bacteria. Mice in which the critical differentiation period was allowed to occur unimpeded remained healthy protected from a potentially lethal infection.
In mice in which T-cell differentiation was blocked said Krummel it was as if the mice had never been vaccinated at all.
Krummel said the work also opens up new paths of research in immunology which his laboratory is currently pursuing.
Now that we know that there is a nexus at which the cells are integrating their responses we might be able to design cells that will join that nexus
while the mouse model of human immune response is robust and very well-grounded research will ultimately have to take place in humans
and more emphasis on neatness blocking cracks where insects can enter and other so-called integrated pest management (IPM) measures scientists have concluded.
Their study appears in the ACS'journal Environmental science & Technology. Chensheng Lu and colleagues cite previous studies showing that urban low-income multifamily public housing dwellings are prone to severe pest infestation problems.
Families in Boston public housing developments for instance rank pest infestation pesticide use and pest allergies second only to crime as matters of concern.
In an effort to encourage use of IPM which reduces reliance on traditional pesticides Lu's team studied exposure to 19 pesticides among children in 20 families in Boston's public housing.
along with indications--such as sighting of live pests or pest debris--that traditional pesticides were not effective.
and randomly selected homes in the U s. should accentuate the need for alternative pest management programs the report states.
IPM focuses on eliminating the cause of pest infestations by minimizing access to food water hiding places
and other openings in walls to prevent entry of pests. The authors acknowledge funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
#Bitter melon juice prevents pancreatic cancer in mouse modelsa University of Colorado Cancer study published this week in the journal Carcinogenesis shows that bitter melon juice restricts the ability of pancreatic cancer cells to metabolize glucose
After studies in cell cultures the group showed that mouse models of pancreatic cancer that were fed bitter melon juice were 60 percent less likely to develop the disease than controls.
The Agarwal Lab is now applying for grants that will allow them to move the study of bitter melon into further chemoprevention trials in mouse models of pancreatic cancer.
We can predict the animal's behavior to stand according to their core temperature Allen said.
The research was presented Mar 12 as part of the Animal Behavior Housing and Well being Oral Session. Story Source:
Mycelium is comparatively inexpensive too as it can grow on farm waste that can't be fed to animals
and inhibiting the invasion of aggressive nonnative species including Scotch broom and hairy cat's ear.
which covers most of Arizona western New mexico and northern parts of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua.
and vegetation productivity in some parts of the North as the ramifications of amplified greenhouse effect--including permafrost thawing frequent forest fires outbreak of pest infestations
and Senior Scientist Woods Hole Research center Falmouth USA Think of migration of birds to the Arctic in the summer and hibernation of bears in the winter:
African lions and villagers would benefit from fences to protect them from each other according to a new study by University of Minnesota researcher Craig Packer published online by Ecology Letters on March 5.
In an interview he called for an international Marshall Plan to erect fences where possible to protect people lions elephants
and wildlife from each other but without a massive increase in conservation funding nearly half of unfenced lion populations could decline to near extinction over the next 20-40 years.
And in the long run it would be more cost-effective to maintain lion populations in fenced reserves.
Fenced reserves maintained lions at 80 percent of their potential population capacity on annual management budgets of about $500 per square kilometer
Even though lion habitat has been reduced by at least 75 percent over the last century more still remains than can possibly be conserved said Packer a professor in the Department of Ecology Evolution and Behavior.
and zebra that could never be enclosed within a fenced reserve so the lions'last stand should be thought out carefully in terms of those places that can safely be fenced
and lions into much closer proximity the incidence of lion attacks on humans and livestock has increased substantially.
Not surprisingly villagers retaliate by killing lions to protect their families and their livestock. We must never lose sight of the fact that the costs of lion conservation ultimately derive from the need to protect people from these animals said Packer
And lions are not alone in causing widespread human misery. Elephants are in crisis too
and although they are largely being decimated by ivory poachers there's little support for elephant conservation in rural villages because of the enormous damage they cause to crops.
A fence that is lion-proof is also elephant-proof so a well-designed policy of fencing would protect more than just lions.
Because the findings from the Ecology Letters paper present such an enormous challenge for African governments and conservationists the best hope may be to advocate for a Marshall Plan for African wildlife conservation Packer said.
If we're serious about this it means establishing fences around very large areas such as the Selous Game Reserve
which is home to the largest remaining lion population in the world. Fencing the Selous
because fencing would protect humans as well as lions. Packer's own research has focused on lions in Serengeti National park for the past 35 years.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Minnesota. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
but it seems honeybees also get their buzz from drinking flower nectar containing caffeine. Publishing in Science researchers have shown that caffeine improves a honeybee's memory
and could help the plant recruit more bees to spread its pollen. In tests honeybees feeding on a sugar solution containing caffeine
which occurs naturally in the nectar of coffee and citrus flowers were three times more likely to remember a flower's scent than those feeding on just sugar.
Study leader Dr Geraldine Wright Reader in Neuroethology at Newcastle University explained that the effect of caffeine benefits both the honeybee and the plant:
So caffeine in nectar is likely to improve the bee's foraging prowess while providing the plant with a more faithful pollinator.
and tastes bitter to many insects including bees so we were surprised to find it in the nectar.
Just as black coffee has a strong bitter taste to us high concentrations of caffeine are repellent to honeybees.
Although human and honeybee brains obviously have lots of differences when you look at the level of cells proteins
Thus we can use the honeybee to investigate how caffeine affects our own brains and behaviours.
This project was funded in part by the Insect Pollinators Initiative which supports projects aimed at researching the causes
and consequences of threats to insect pollinators and to inform the development of appropriate mitigation strategies.
and agriculture since bees are essential pollinators for many crops and wild flowering species. If declines are allowed to continue there is a risk to our natural biodiversity and on some crop production.
Understanding a honeybee's habits and preferences could help find ways to reinvigorate the species to protect our farming industry and countryside.
When transgenic food animals are accepted by consumers the Enviropig perhaps would be one of the first innovations to be introduced into swine production said Forsberg.
#A new cryptic spider species from Africathe species from the genus Copa are very common spiders found in the leaf litter of various habitats.
The spiders from this cryptic ground-dwelling genus in the continental Afrotropical Region are revised in a study published in the open access journal Zookeys.
The species has a distribution falling entirely within the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Centre of Endemism in South africa where an extraordinary amount of endemic species is found with around 30 endemic reptiles and emblematic mammals such as the blue duiker antelope.
study findsa survey of bat activity in burned and unburned areas after a major wildfire in the southern Sierra nevada mountains found no evidence of detrimental effects on bats one year after the fire.
The study led by bat ecologist Winifred Frick of the University of California Santa cruz was published in the journal PLOS ONE on March 6.
because current understanding of how wildlife responds to fire is based almost entirely on studies of a limited number of species most of them birds Frick said.
Bats make up a large component of mammalian diversity in forest ecosystems where they play an important role as insect predators.
or positive impacts on a suite of bat species Frick said. Studies that show how animals respond to fire help inform the ongoing public policy debate over the role of fire in ecosystem management
and whether fires should be suppressed or allowed to burn on public lands according to coauthor Joseph Fontaine a fire ecologist at Murdoch University in Perth Australia.
This study fills a critical gap on how fire affects an important group of animals.
The study compared bat foraging activity in areas of unburned moderately burned and severely burned forest.
The researchers conducted surveys in 2003 using high-frequency microphones to record the ultrasonic echolocation pulses that bats use to hunt insects.
Of the 16 bat species known to live in the area some have distinctive sonic signatures
Fire may provide a pulse of insects immediately after the fire and create roosting habitat later on as snags decay
and coauthors Paul Heady of the Central Coast Bat Research Group and John Hayes of the University of Florida also contributed to the study.
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