and defending against herbivores--already since decades ecologists have suggested that these are important characteristics of successful plants.
and germination rate to the speed of growth the competitive ability and the resistance against herbivores like caterpillars.
Interestingly at the end mainly traits related to interactions between plants and plants or plants and animals were important reports Anne Kempel first author of the study.
Accordingly plants that were defended well against voracious insects were the most successful ones in the long run. Our results are in line with general theories on community assembly
--which means that they have to withstand herbivores pathogens and competitors to persist in a community.
and PNAS respectively unveil a long shared history of co-evolution between the host and the pest and the unexpected success of asexually produced mildew offspring.
SS was delivered to the animals in a controlled way to their drinking water. The team did not get the result they expected.
#Lesser prairie-chicken nest survival may decline by 2050lesser prairie-chicken nest survival may decrease to a level considered too low to sustain the current population by 2050 according to a new report by Texas Tech
and West Texas. The study assessed the potential changes in number of eggs laid in a nest incubation start date
Increased temperatures and reduced humidity may lead to lesser prairie-chicken egg death or nest abandonment. The research showed that warm winter temperatures had the largest negative effect on reproductive success. Scientists suggest that above-average winter temperatures were correlated with La Niã a events
and nest there allowing for better odds that some nests will be successful. The lesser prairie-chicken has experienced widespread declines in abundance
--and drawbacks--of grazing by larger vertebrates such as cows and sheep but we haven't studied in detail the impact slugs might have particularly on very young plants in meadows that we are trying to restore
Newcastle University's Dr Gordon Port a senior lecturer and an expert in pest management said:
#Snakes devour more mosquito-eating birds as climate change heats forestsmany birds feed on mosquitoes that spread the West Nile virus a disease that killed 286 people in the United states in 2012 according to the Centers
Birdsalso eat insects that can be agricultural pests. However rising temperatures threaten wild birds including the Missouri-native Acadian flycatcher by making snakes more active according to University of Missouri biologist John Faaborg.
He noted that farmers public health officials and wildlife managers should be aware of complex indirect effects of climate change in addition to the more obvious influences of higher temperatures and irregular weather patterns.
A warmer climate may be causing snakes to become more active and seek more baby birds for food said Faaborg professor of biological sciences in MU's College of Arts and Science.
Although our study used 20 years of data from Missouri similar threats to bird populations may occur around the world.
Increased snake predation on birds is an example of an indirect consequence that forecasts of the effects of climate change often do not take into account.
In the heart of Missouri's Ozark forest cooler temperatures usually make snakes less active than in the edge of the forest or in smaller pockets of woodland.
However during abnormally hot years even the interior of the forest increases in temperature. Since snakes are cold-blooded warmer temperatures make the reptiles more active
and increase their need for food. Previous studies using video cameras found that snakes are major predators of young birds.
Over the past twenty years fewer young Acadian flycatchers (Empidonax virescens) survived during hotter years according to research by Faaborg
and his colleagues published in the journal Global Change Biology. Survival of young indigo buntings (Passerina cyanea) also decreased during warmer years.
Faaborg suggested that a likely reason for decreased baby bird survival in hot years was an increase in snake activity.
Faaborg his colleagues and his former students collected the data used in the study during two decades of fieldwork.
Low survival in the Ozark nests harms bird numbers in other areas Faaborg said. Birds hatched in the Ozark forest spread out to colonize the rest of the state and surrounding region.
Small fragments of forests in the rest of the state do not support successful bird reproduction
so bird populations in the entire state depend on the Ozarks. In addition to his position in the College of Arts and Science Faaborg is an adjunct professor in the School of Natural resources in MU's College of Agriculture Food and Natural resources.
The American Associate for the Advancement of Science elected Faaborg a fellow in 2001. Story Source:
Overall the chickens purchased at the farmers markets carried higher bacterial loads than the birds purchased at grocery stores.
and animal-welfare issues in large animal-agriculture operations that supply food to supermarket chains may explain why consumers are switching to locally grown and locally processed foods.
and are more active than the Y chromosomes of other primates according to researchers. This discovery may help biologists better understand how cattle
and other mammals evolved as well as help animal breeders and farmers better maintain and enhance fertility in the cattle industry said Wansheng Liu associate professor of animal genomics Penn State.
or beef production as a sign of herd success but even as milk production goes up the animal's fertility goes down
The researchers identified 1274 genes in the male specific region of the bovine Y chromosome compared to the 31 to 78 genes associated in the Y chromosomes of various primates.
They also said the genes in the bovine Y chromosome were much more transcriptionally active compared to other mammals.
Most researchers believed that the Y chromosome of cattle would be similar to the Y chromosome of other mammals
Currently the gene content and transcription pattern of the bovine Y chromosome is the only non-primate Y chromosome that researchers have studied in depth according to Liu.
The X and Y sex chromosome in most mammals began to diverge after 160 million years of evolution.
and to control disease in otherwise healthy animals being raised in crowded or unhygienic conditions that promote disease.
He explains that some countries such as The netherlands have banned routine use of antibiotics in animal feed mainly over concerns about an increase in MRSA.
Matthew Wheeler a University of Illinois Professor of Animal Sciences and member of the Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering research theme at the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) worked with a team of five
and experimental surgery suite to the hospital and clinic Wheeler said. The large-animal model is the roadway to take this device from the bench top to the bedside.
For more than 40 years pigs have served as medical research models because their physiology is very similar to humans.
or perfected in animal models Wheeler said. Through the use of animal models scientists and doctors are able to perfect techniques drugs and materials without risking human lives.
First Wheeler sent a CT scan of a pig's trachea to Scott Hollister a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.
or PCL which Wheeler has used in more than 100 large-animal procedures. Next Wheeler developed a strategy to implement the device
and U-M associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology Glenn Green carried out the surgical procedure. After the splint was placed the pigs'tracheobronchomalacia symptoms disappeared All of our work is inspired physician Wheeler said.
Babies suffering from tracheobronchomalacia were brought to ear nose and throat surgeons but they didn't have any treatment options.
April and Bryan Gionfriddo believed their son's chance of survival was slim until Marc Nelson a doctor at Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio mentioned researchers from the University of Michigan were testing airway splints similar to those used in Wheeler's study.
It's not very rare Wheeler said. It's really not. I think it's very rewarding to all of us to know that we are contributing to helping treat or even cure this disease.
More data from Wheeler's large animal trials will be essential to show the long-term viability of this procedure before it can be used to save the lives of other children born with this disorder.
In future trials Wheeler plans to add stem cells to the splint in order to accelerate healing.
As the next two years of IBEX data filled in the observational hole in the downwind direction researchers found a second tail region to the side of the previously identified one.
The slow solar wind heads down the tail in the port and starboard lobes at low-and mid-latitudes and at least around the Sun's minimum in solar activity fast solar wind flows down it at high northern and southern latitudes.
seven-year study findswind power development does not ruffle the feathers of greater prairie chicken populations according to the results of a seven-year study from a Kansas State university ecologist and his team.
and that these grassland birds are affected more by rangeland management practices and by the availability of native prairie and vegetation cover at nest sites.
Unexpectedly the scientists also found that female survival rates increased after wind turbines were installed. With the arrival of wind energy projects in Kansas and throughout the Plains Sandercock and his team were part of a consortium of stakeholders--including conservationists wildlife agencies
and wind energy companies--who studied how these wind projects influence grassland birds. We had a lot of buy in from stakeholders
and we had an effective oversight committee said Sandercock who studies grassland birds. The research will certainly aid with wind power site guidelines
The researchers studied the birds for seven breeding seasons and captured nearly 1000 total male and female birds around lek sites
which are communal areas where males gather and make calls to attract females. Females mate with the males
and then hide nests in tall prairie grass The scientists researched many different features of prairie chickens and their biology:
patterns of nest site selection; reproductive components such as clutch size timing of laying eggs and hatchability of eggs;
but the avoidance within the home range doesn't seem to have an impact on nest site selection or nest survival.
because wind turbines may keep predators away from nest sites. Female mortality rates are highest during the breeding season
because females are focused more on protecting clutches than avoiding predators Sandercock said. What's quite typical for these birds is most of the demographic losses are driven by predation.
We can say that with confidence Sandercock said. What's a little unclear from our results is
whether that increase in female survivorship was due to the effects of wind turbines on predators.
The researchers also found that conservation management practices seem to have the strongest effect on the birds Sandercock said.
Prairie chickens are ground-nesting birds and need adequate cover for their nests to survive. Grazing and fire management practices can affect how much nesting cover is available for chickens.
A lot of what drives nest survival is the local conditions around the nest Sandercock said. Do they have good nesting cover
or not Our results are important because they suggest ways for mitigation. The team is conducting follow-up studies to test mitigation strategies that may improve habitat conditions for prairie chickens.
and how it affects prairie chickens and grassland songbirds. Patch-burn grazing involves dividing a pasture into three parts and burning a third of the pasture each year.
Preliminary data shows that patch-burn grazing seems to provide enough cover for ground-nesting birds Sandercock said.
and encoded ASCII letters spelling out RICE OWLS into the bits. Setting adjacent bits to the on state--usually a condition that leads to voltage leaks and data corruption in a 1r crossbar structure--had no effect on the information he said.
#Live from the hens egglike a contortionist twisted the chick is lying in its eggshell brain eyes and beak visible in levels of grey.
The head of the spirally-rolled bird was the main reference point. We have focused on the brain and the vitreous body of the eye as bright and distinctive identifying features.
and point out that H7 influenza has a tendency to become established in bird horse and swine populations and may spillover repeatedly into humans.
and the implications of past outbreaks for predicting the future course of the current H7n9 epizootic an epidemic among animals are uncertain write the authors.
Also H7 viruses have the ability to mutate from a low pathogenicity form to a high pathogenicity form in birds a scenario that can lead to large-scale culling and ultimately to human exposure to the virus among poultry workers.
The authors point out that many H7 viruses have adapted to infect mammals including horses and pigs
and H7n9 might arguably be more likely than other avian viruses to become human-adapted write the authors.
and causes increases in algal blooms greenhouse gases and insects like mosquitoes that carry disease.
#Second door discovered in war against mosquito-borne diseasesin the global war against disease-carrying mosquitoes scientists have believed long that a single molecular door was the key target for insecticide.
This door however is closing giving mosquitoes the upper hand. In this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a team of researchers led by Michigan State university has discovered a second gateway that could turn the tide against the mosquitoes'growing advantage.
For many years pyrethroid insecticides have been deployed in developing countries to fend off diseases such as malaria dengue fever and more.
because they eliminate mosquitoes while having few if any side effects on humans said Yuzhe Du MSU electrophysiologist and one of the lead authors.
Our discovery of a second receptor in the mosquitoes'sodium channel gives us a better understanding of how the insecticide works at a molecular level as well as could lead to ways to stem mosquitoes'resistance to pyrethroids.
Mosquitoes don't die from the toxin per se. They die from sodium overdose. With the door jammed wide open their cells gulp down sodium which overexcites their nervous system and eventually leads to paralysis and death.
In the last decade growing resistance in mosquitoes has been detected in many countries. At the molecular level resistance appears as mutations in the primary receptor in the sodium channel that allow mosquitoes to survive exposure to the insecticide.
The discovery of the second receptor in the sodium channel however opens up more avenues to increase pyrethroids'effectiveness.
One of the keys to the success of this research was our cloning of a mosquito sodium channel for the first time said Ke Dong MSU insect toxicologist and neurobiologist and the paper's senior author.
The revelation not only explains much of pyrethroid resistance found in mosquito populations worldwide but also helps answer why they affect insects but not humans and other mammals.
Since this is a growing issue with cockroaches bedbugs fleas potato beetles and other crop pests the discovery could lead to benefits for the pest-control industry and farming.
Our finding may ultimately improve global prediction and monitoring of pyrethroid resistance in mosquitoes and other arthropod pests Dong said.
It could have broad impacts in agriculture and medicine that affect people's lives especially in developing countries.
Sheng Yang He a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Investigator and an MSU University Distinguished Professor in the DOE Plant Research Laboratory and Plant
which can live out of water for extended periods has a strong jumping technique on land to locate new food resources avoid predators escape poor water conditions
or to escape predators and search for terrestrial prey such as crickets. Bass are stranded only temporarily on land
when chased out of the water by a predator caught in a current and washed onto land
''Sustainability requires consideration of economic environmental and social priorities'added Dr Michael Appleby of the World Society for the Protection of Animals.'
Policies to achieve the right balance between animal and crop production will benefit animals people and the planet.'
'Agriculture is a potent sector for economic growth and rural development in many countries across Africa Asia and South america.
and animals bone tools animal bones and--perhaps most importantly--the richest deposits of charred plant remains ever recovered from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near east.
and lentils together with domestic animals later accompanied farmers as they spread across western Eurasia gradually replacing the indigenous hunter-gather societies.
Thomas Stocker are proposing a combination of six different specific global and regional climate targets in their work
According to researchers animals on organic farms should have supplemented their diets with natural sources of iodine such as seaweed
The concentration of nutrients in animal food products is linked to the diets of the animals reared.
while in organic farming animals depend on the mineral content in soil which may not be sufficient. For this reason researchers at the University of Santiago de compostela compared the mineral and toxic elements of organic and conventional milk taken from over thirty farms located in the northeast of the Iberian peninsula.
#Surviving fasting in the coldking penguin chicks survive harsh winters with almost no food by minimising the cost of energy production.
A new study to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Valencia on the 3rd july shows that the efficiency of the mitochondria the power house of the cell is increased in fasted king penguin chicks.
King penguin chicks are socially and morphologically well adapted to harsh environmental conditions however they experience a severe energy challenge during the cold sub-Antarctic winter
and Prof Damien Roussel at the Ecology of Natural and Man-impacted Hydrosystems laboratory in France looked for the first time at how the king penguin chicks'mitochondria in skeletal muscle the main heat producing tissue in birds function during fasting in the winter.
We found that the efficiency of mitochondrial functioning increased in fasted winter-acclimatized king penguin chicks.
This study shows how king penguins are able to produce heat to survive the cold without depleting their energy stores an essential mechanism to survive the cold
which among birds have unrivalled an fasting endurance (up to 5 months). Fasting in the cold represents a bioenergetics trade-off between sparing energy for body maintenance
which include the well-known bug MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). New Staph strains are emerging in people who have close contact with livestock animals
and for this reason have been given the name livestock-associated Staph. While everyone in the study had direct
Many industrial livestock operations raise animals in large conferment buildings and use antibiotics including non-therapeutically in animals'feed
and water to promote their growth. Previous studies have detected strains of drug-resistant S. aureus from livestock first among farm workers and subsequently in hospital and community settings in Europe.
At industrial livestock operations animals are grown in large confinement buildings using antibiotics. At antibiotic-free livestock operations animals are grown without the use of antibiotics typically outdoors on pasture.
Researchers tested the S. aureus isolated from nose swabs for resistance to a range of antibiotics
#Insecticide causes changes in honeybee genes, research findsnew research by academics at The University of Nottingham has shown that exposure to a neonicotinoid insecticide causes changes to the genes of the honeybee.
The study published in the online journal PLOS ONE supports the recent decision taken by the European commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoids amid concerns that they could be linked to bee deaths.
There is growing evidence connecting the decline in the honeybee population that pollinates one-third of the food that we eat
and insecticides but this is the first comprehensive study to look at changes in the activity of honeybee genes linked to one of the recently banned neonicotinoids imidacloprid.
and showed that a very low exposure of just two parts per billion has an impact on the activity of some of the honeybee genes.
The researchers identified that cells of honeybee larvae had to work harder and increase the activity of genes involved in breaking down toxins most likely to cope with the insecticide.
Such changes are known to reduce the lifespan of the most widely studied insect the common fruit fly
and lower a larva's probability of surviving to adulthood. Dr Stã ger said: Although larvae can still grow
Should the bees be exposed to additional stresses such as pests disease and bad weather then it is likely to increase the rate of development failure.
This is a very significant piece of research which clearly shows clear changes in honeybee gene activity as a result of exposure to a pesticide
and have welcomed the recent approach by the European commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoid pesticides as this will allow for research into the impact on both pollinators and agricultural productivity.
In the Animal Frontiers paper Neumeier describes a recent experiment using biotechnologies. In the experiment a test group of cattle were treated with biotechnologies.
Researchers measured gas output by placing finishing steers in a special corral that traps emissions.
#Nuke test radiation can fight poachers who kill elephants, rhinos, hipposuniversity of Utah researchers developed a new weapon to fight poachers who kill elephants hippos rhinos and other wildlife.
By measuring radioactive carbon-14 deposited in tusks and teeth by open-air nuclear bomb tests the method reveals the year an animal died
and thus whether the ivory was taken illegally. This could be used in specific cases of ivory seizures to determine
and help us learn about fossil animals and how they lived says Cerling a distinguished professor of geology and geophysics and biology at the University of Utah.
--and thus absorbed by plants and animals in the food chain. The carbon-14 was formed in the atmosphere by U s. and Soviet atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in Nevada and Siberia from 1952 through 1962.
Iain Douglas-Hamilton founder of Save the Elephants; and Samuel Andanje Patrick Omondi and Moses Litoroh all of the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Ivory Trade Drives Elephant Slaughterinternational agreements banned most trade of raw ivory from Asian elephants after 1975 and African elephants after 1989.
if an elephant is from Africa or Asia says Uno who earned his University of Utah Ph d. last year.
Currently 30000 elephants a year are slaughtered for their tusks so there is a desperate need to enforce the international trade ban
Only 423000 African elephants are left. Conservation groups say 70 percent of smuggled ivory goes to China.
and Somalia to kill elephants and sell tusks so they can buy guns. How the Study Was Performedneutrons from the nuclear tests bombarded nitrogen--the atmosphere's most common gas--to turn some of it into carbon-14.
The method in the study is a bit like telling a tree's age by its rings but instead of counting rings Cerling Uno and colleagues measured carbon-14 levels at various points along the lengths of elephants'and hippos'tusks
The researchers tested the accuracy of carbon-14 dating in 29 animal and plant tissues killed and collected on known dates from 1905 to 2008.
The samples included elephant tusks and molars hippo tusks and canine teeth oryx horn hair from monkeys and elephant tails and some grasses collected in Kenya in 1962.
and elsewhere and from Amina an elephant that died naturally in Kenya in 2006 and from Misha an African elephant euthanized in 2008 due to declining health at Utah's Hogle Zoo in Salt lake city. The analysis revealed that various tissues that formed at the same time have the same carbon-14 levels
and that grasses and the animals eating them had the same levels. By determining carbon-14 in these samples of known dates the researchers now can measure carbon-14 levels in other ivory to determine its age within about a year.
The four oldest samples--from animals died between 1905 and 1953--had minimal carbon-14
because they died before atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. So the test can identify pre-1955 ivory by its low pre-nuclear-test levels of carbon-14.
Cerling says the method can determine the year of death for any animal killed after 1955 identifying the time of the most recent tissue formation--at the base of a tusk or tooth for example.
The method is less precise for animals killed more recently; it can tell if an animal died between 2010 and 2013 but not more precisely.
It takes about 5700 years for half of carbon-14 to decay radioactively. But the amount in Earth's atmosphere after the 1950s and 1960s bomb tests faded much more quickly
what prehistoric and modern animals ate over time especially when combined with existing isotope analysis of ratios of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in teeth--data that reveal
whether animals ate diets based on tree and shrub leaves and fruits or upon grasses and grazing animals.
and teeth from elephants and hippos and elephant tail hair Cerling says. Extrapolating the growth rates of tusks teeth
and hair to fossil or modern elephants and other animals will help us improve the chronology of the diet history of an individual fossil
#Caterpillars attracted to plant SOSPLANTS that emit an airborne distress signal in response to herbivory may actually attract more enemies according to a new study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Plant science.
A team of researchers from Switzerland found that the odor released by maize plants under attack by insects attract not only parasitic wasps
which prey on herbivorous insects but also caterpillars of the Egyptian cotton leafworm moth Spodoptera littoralis a species that feeds on maize leaves.
These volatile organic compounds are known to be attractive to parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs inside other insects killing them Plants appear to use this strategy to fight back against herbivorous insects by calling for their enemies'enemies.
In contrast herbivorous insects tend to avoid the herbivore-induced volatile organic compounds. Adult moths and butterflies avoid food plants that are under attack by conspecifics.
This seems adaptive because it reduces both competition and the risk of predation by parasitoids.
But we found that S. littoralis caterpillars are attracted actually to the odor of damaged maize plants even
To determine what kind of odors the caterpillars preferred the researchers let the caterpillars chose among several odors by placing them in an olfactometer a device consisting of four tubes connected to a central chamber with each tube introducing an airflow carrying a different odor.
The caterpillars were more than twice as likely to crawl towards the odor from maize plants under attack by conspecifics than towards undamaged plants especially
and the caterpillars had fed already on maize. So what might be the advantage to the caterpillars of moving towards plants that are infested already?
When S. littoralis caterpillars drop from a plant they are highly vulnerable to predators and pathogens in the soil as well as to starvation.
The advantage seems to be fallen that caterpillars can quickly rediscover the plant on which they fed.
The caterpillars feed less and move more when exposed to high concentrations of the volatiles.
By moving away from freshly damaged sites they can minimize risk of predation and avoid competition explained Prof.
Turlings and colleagues propose that hungry S. littoralis caterpillars do the best of a bad job by moving towards volatile organic compounds released by damaged maize plants.
but at least the caterpillars are assured of a suitable plant. Adult moths on the other hand are much more mobile
and take little risk exploring the environment to discover the best food source --so they avoid maize that is already under attack.
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