#Last Straw: How The Fortunes Of Las vegas Will Rise Or Fall With Lake Meadthe bathtub ring can be seen for miles.
We peck like sandpipers along the edges for the small treasures the restless waves wash up.
We peck like sandpipers along the edges for the small treasures the restless waves wash up.
Another photo depicts a dead albatross on Midway Island in the Pacific its open stomach revealing hundreds of brightly colored plastic bits.
The proposed expansion--roughly 2000 additional square miles--would encompass the largest upwelling site in North america better protecting the nutrient-rich waters that support everything from reefs and seabird colonies to endangered whales.
and wetlands are required certainly simply to ensure healthy populations of birds like the stone curlew as well as to sustain a wide range of endangered plants.
In the Viewpoint piece Williams along with Jeffrey G. Willet Phd from Kansas Health Foundation and Gregory Miller MD MBA from the New york state Office of Mental health underscore the benefits to patients noting that collaborative
Although a connection hasn't been made definitively heavy flows of nutrient-rich freshwater into the estuaries are suspected in die offs of eelgrass manatees and pelicans;
#Influenza virus in wild birds in Norwayducks and gulls are the natural hosts of Influenza a virus.
Ragnhild Tønnessen's Phd research project has characterised Influenza a viruses in gulls and ducks in Norway.
Wild birds particularly ducks and gulls are the natural hosts for Influenza a viruses which can cause disease in animals and humans.
and gulls were analysed at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute. Samples collected from Rogaland County in the Southwest of Norway during the hunting seasons (August-December) of 2005-2007 and 2009-2010 were studied.
and that the virus occurrence was higher in dabbling ducks than in gulls. The virus prevalence was lowest in December.
but not the highly pathogenic H5n1 virus. The complete genetic material from a total of five influenza viruses from mallard and common gull were sequenced and characterized.
Tønnessen studied the role that gulls play in the transfer of virus genes between these two continents.
Genes from American avian influenza viruses were detected not in the European gull viruses studied. However within avian influenza viruses from Eurasia she found that virus genes were exchanged between influenza viruses typically found in gulls and ducks respectively.
During the breeding seasons of 2008 and 2009 Tønnessen studied the occurrence of influenza virus in the black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) at Hornã¸ya in Finnmark in Northern Norway.
Low amounts of influenza virus were detected in 5-15%of the samples from adult kittiwakes
and she discovered that more than 70%of the adult birds had developed antibodies against Influenza a virus. The majority of the kittiwakes had antibodies against an influenza virus subtype typically found in gulls namely H16.
Ducks can become infected with influenza virus through consumption of surface water contaminated with faeces shed by virus infected birds.
Experiments performed by Tønnessen showed that influenza virus subtypes primarily found in gulls (i e.
To assess if a typical influenza virus subtype from gull can infect chickens Tønnessen inoculated chickens with an H16n3 virus obtained from herring gull.
These results suggest that H16n3 virus from gull can cause a limited infection in chickens.
and H16 subtypes primarily infect gulls Tønnessen examined whether the internal proteins of these viruses have particular signatures (amino acid composition) possibly related to host adaptation.
Ragnhild Tønnessen defended her doctoral research on 27th august 2013 at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science with a thesis entitled Epidemiology and Host Adaptation of Influenza a viruses in Gulls#.
In an article published recently in the American Ornithologist Union's publication The Auk research wildlife biologist Scott Stoleson of the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station suggests that forest regrowth in clearcuts
Naturalists are very comfortable with the idea of animals gaining a biological advantage by choosing to live together in high density'colonies'--such as ant nests or seabird rookeries--in certain parts of the landscape notes Hall.
They are commonly found across species of birds including those that lay blue eggs as well as non-blue eggs within a single population like the cuckoo and guillemot.
and tended to have fewer babies says the study's first author James Ruff who recently earned his Ph d. at the University of Utah.
When you look at a mouse in a cage it's like trying to evaluate the performance of a car by turning it on in a garage Ruff says.
Potts and Ruff conducted the study with University of Utah biology lab manager Linda Morrison and undergraduates Amanda Suchy Sara Hugentobler Mirtha Sosa and Bradley Schwartz and with researchers Sin
and food webs that did not sustain the abundance of large sharks whales seabirds and seals of the modern ocean.
Indeed large marine animals--sharks tunas whales seals even seabirds--mostly became abundant when algae became large enough to support top predators in the cold oceans of recent geologic times.
The researchers led by Sara Jaeger Jeremy Mcrae and Richard Newcomb of Plant and Food Research in New zealand found that for four of the ten odors tested there was indeed a genetic association suggesting that differences in the genetic make-up determine
#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
#Why are murdered gull chicks, especially on Sundays? Why are murdered gull chicks especially on Sundays? How does man influence the size of gull populations?
These and many other questions are answered in the doctoral thesis of Kees Camphuysen from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research NIOZ.
Camphuysen will defend his thesis at the University of Groningen on 21 june 2013. Kees Camphuysen has been doing research on seabirds
since 1973 and since 2006 his focus has been on seagulls in the Texel dunes. There he focused special attention on the European herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull.
Since the sixties the number of herring gulls has increased enormously then stabilized and subsequently strongly declined.
The lesser black-backed gull which established itself in The netherlands around 1930 suddenly became much more numerous later
and this species has eclipsed finally the herring gull in numbers. Has the lesser black-backed gull supplanted the herring gull by taking up the best spots
or did it win the competition for food? Or does the decline in herring gulls and the increase of lesser black-backed gulls maybe have nothing to do with each other?
From Camphuysen's research it appears that both gull species have benefited from an expanded food offering caused by people.
Herring gulls have learned to tap food in landfills while lesser black-backed gulls in particular were attracted by the fish waste that was put overboard at sea.
Now that the majority of landfills are covered and the fishing fleets are shrinking both gull species are finding it more difficult to find food.
It seems that the increase and decrease of both species is influenced not directly by each other.
Camphuysen also discovered a remarkable rhythm in the growth of the chicks and also that much more cannibalism took place over the weekend than on weekdays (gull chicks that were pecked to death by adult gulls and sometimes eaten).
It turned out that gulls especially during chick care rely heavily on fish waste thrown overboard from fishing boats.
Bad luck for these birds: at the weekend the fishing fleet is largely in the harbour.
This weekly rhythm is a problem especially in the second half of the chick care period (in July)
when there is barely enough food to be found for the hungry chicks. The fleet is expected to shrink even more in the coming years.
The problem of food shortage will continue to increase as a result but then not only at the weekend.
European policy wherein by-catch may no longer be put overboard will clearly have consequences for both gull species. How they will react to this is difficult to predict.
A strong inland increase of gulls looking for alternative food sources is one of the likely effects.
Camphuysen has equipped also gulls with a GPS data logger so as to be able to see where they look for food.
It emerged that lesser black-backed gulls foraged much further afield than herring gulls. Lesser black-backed gulls also went oftener and further onto the North sea following fishing boats.
One lesser black-backed gull which had three youngsters that were not growing well took a desperate measure
and flew via Hoorn to Amsterdam in order to hang out in the Leidsestraat there. Who knows did she eat chips there or a kebab roll?
Wouter Van dongen and colleagues at the Vetmeduni Vienna have examined the gastrointestinal bacteria of chick and adult black-legged kittiwakes.
& Diversit Biologique (EDB) Toulouse and from the US Geological Survey Anchorage to study the cloacal bacterial assemblies of black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla).
From a youthful hodgepodge to a stable communitythere turned out to be a great variety of bacterial species in the guts of kittiwake chicks
The Salinas River and its tributaries are an important rest stop on the Pacific Flyway a major migration route for neotropical songbirds and home to raptors and shorebirds.
#Worlds oldest-known wild bird hatches another chicka Laysan albatross known as Wisdom--believed to be at least 62 years old--has hatched a chick on Midway Atoll National Wildlife
Staff and volunteers stationed on Midway are responsible for monitoring the health of the beautiful seabirds that arrive every year by the hundreds of thousands to nest.
Upon the seabirds'arrival field staff monitor them and gather information for one of the longest and oldest continuous survey data sets for tropical seabirds in the world.
Wisdom has worn out five bird bands since she was banded first by U s. Geological Survey scientist Chandler Robbins in 1956.
Albatross lay only one egg a year but it takes much of a year to incubate
As Wisdom rewrites the record books she provides new insights into the remarkable biology of seabirds Peterjohn said.
Sue Schulmeister manager of the Midway Atoll NWR said Wisdom is one is one of those incredible seabirds that has provided the world valuable information about the longevity of these beautiful creatures
This information helps us measure the health of our oceans that sustain albatross. Almost as amazing as being a parent at 62 is the number of miles this bird has logged likely--about 50000 miles a year as an adult
About Albatrossalbatross are legendary birds for many reasons--in Samuel Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a sailor has to wear an albatross around his neck as punishment for killing the bird.
According to seafaring legends albatross are the souls of lost sailors and should not be killed. However as reported by James Cook sailors regularly killed
and ate albatross. Albatross are remarkable fliers who travel thousands of miles on wind currents without ever flapping their wings.
They do this by angling their 6-foot wings to adjust for wind currents and varying air speeds above the water.
Nineteen of 21 species of albatross are threatened with extinction according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
The birds ingest large amounts of marine debris--by some estimates 5 tons of plastic are fed unknowingly to albatross chicks each year by their parents.
In addition albatross are threatened by invasive species such as rats and wild cats which prey on chicks nesting adults and eggs.
Albatross evolved on islands where land mammals were absent so have no defenses against them.
which could in turn affect the migratory prey that reside in the area in the summer such as sea birds and barnacle geese.
what people think of as crummier images says Curtis Woodcock a remote sensing specialist at Boston University who employs a similar method to Kennedy to build an image of the landscape out of Landsat data pixel by pixel.
The imagery produced by Landtrendr is a remarkable tool for looking at change over time says Woodcock.
and Astronomy have calculated that it would take 2425907 seagulls rather than the 501 described in Roald Dahl's James
The physics of aircraft was applied later to calculate the number of seagulls it would have taken for the giant peach to be lifted.
Along the west coast of North america winds lift deep nutrient-rich water into sunlit surface layers fueling vast phytoplankton blooms that ultimately support fish seabirds and marine mammals.
and lower reproductive success for seabirds underscoring the importance of upwelling for the conservation of endangered animals and management of commercially important fisheries.
To study the effects of changing strength of upwelling on marine life the team integrated data on how quickly fish grew every year since the 1940s the timing of seabird egg laying since the 1970s and the fledgling success of seabirds since the 1970s.
Black noted that changes in upwelling strength did not affect just fish and seabirds. In a sense these representative species were just the tips of the iceberg.
In general shorebirds along the coasts are squeezed into shrinking strips of habitat due to development. But among the 49 coastal species examined there has been a steady rise in population of 28 percent
Forty-two of them are pelagic (open ocean) species. Birds like the Laysan albatross and black-footed albatross are facing increasing levels of oil contamination plastic pollution and greatly reduced amounts of prey fish due to commercial fishing operations.
Rising sea levels due to climate change also put their low-elevation breeding habitats in the Hawaiian and Marshall islands at risk of flooding.
More than half of all U s. shorebird species are on the Watch List including the piping plover long-billed curlew and red knot.
Bald eagles brown pelicans peregrine falcons--all species once headed the way of the passenger pigeon--are now abundant.
Rick Snipes president of The Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation said he was impressed with the researchers'findings.
and parasite study done in the United states in more than 80 years Snipes said. To date we have invested $4. 3 million In operation Idiopathic Decline
Many fish marine mammals and birds are also found in kelp forest communities including rockfish seals sea lions whales gulls terns snowy egrets as well as some shore birds.
and gulls it was moderate; in squirrels and passerines it was lower and in partridges it was low.
but sulphur is particularly useful to estimate the consumption of Yellow-legged Gulls (Larus michahellis).
Last year a pair of researchers linked the drop in the populations of grassland bird species such as the upland sandpiper and the Henslow's sparrow to insecticide use rather than to a rapid decline of grasslands a more commonly accepted theory.
For example in the Fernando de Noronha archipelago the cattle egret drives adult native seabirds away from their nests in breeding colonies
and places to provide habitat for migrating shorebirds and waterfowl in the Pacific Flyway. To learn more about the Sapsuckers'Big Day in the Southwest visit www. birds. cornell. edu/Bigdaystory Source:
and Audubon California in the journal Western Birds scientists document the importance of irrigated agricultural crops in California's Central Valley to a conspicuous shorebird.
Crops like alfalfa provide critical habitat for the Long-billed Curlew the largest shorebird in North america and a species of continental conservation concern.
Curlews can't survive in the Central Valley without irrigated agriculture given the loss of most of their historic shallow-water habitats in summer
and certain types of agriculture (e g. rice alfalfa) provide nearly all of the habitat used by millions of ducks geese shorebirds and other waterbirds every fall winter and spring.
In the study Point Blue scientists Audubon California and a host of volunteers studied the curlews for three years.
Observers recorded over 20000 curlews: about 93%were in the central and southern portions of the Central Valley concentrating in areas extensively flood irrigated for alfalfa
and irrigated pasture to the benefit of both farmers and curlews. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Point Blue Conservation Science.
and a stomach like a cow while still another the Abbott's Booby breeds only on Christmas Island.
The scientists monitored skuas in Adã lie Land and the Kerguelen Islands for ten years and showed that
when these seabirds exhibit high mercury levels in their blood their breeding success decreases. This is the first time that toxicological measurements have been combined with a population study carried out over such a long period in the Antarctic and Subantarctic.
In the Polar regions many seabirds such as skuas were known to accumulate this toxic element at high levels in their tissues.
For the first time the researchers have carried out a ten-year population study of two seabird species: brown skuas living in the Kerguelen Islands (Subantarctic) and south polar skuas living in Adã lie Land (Antarctica.
Skuas are migratory birds that feed essentially on penguin eggs and chicks as well as fish. These formidable predators which live for up to 25 to 30 years accumulate mercury in their tissues.
The researchers first captured around a hundred south polar skuas and brown skuas and took blood samples to measure their mercury levels.
The birds were ringed then and released. For ten years the scientists returned to the nesting sites
in order to observe their breeding success. Skuas can rear one to two chicks per year. The first finding was that mercury levels in brown skuas were three times higher than in south polar skuas.
The researchers showed that in both species the higher the mercury levels in the birds the fewer chances they had of breeding successfully
and especially of rearing their chicks. Unexpectedly it is contaminated in the least species the south polar skua that the effects of mercury are the most obvious.
This could be due to the fact that in Adã lie Land the more severe environmental conditions combined with the increasing presence of other pollutants (pesticides PCBS) magnify the impact of mercury contamination.
if mercury contamination continues to increase skua populations could decline in the long term. The scientists call for further toxicological and demographic studies on other southern species
In addition to songbirds and woodpeckers boreal wetlands provide critical habitat for other park icons like moose loon and marten.
#Reintroduction experiments give new hope for plant on brink of extinctiona critically endangered plant known as marsh sandwort (Arenaria paludicola) is inching back from the brink of extinction thanks to the efforts of a UC
Arenaria cuttings root easily making it relatively straightforward to propagate large numbers of plants in the UCSC greenhouses.
Greenhouses director Jim Velzy will continue to maintain the collection of Arenaria plants to preserve the genetic diversity of the original population
and ruddy turnstones were second with 45. The more a strain was shared across wild bird types the more likely it was to be found in domestic birds a risk factor for spillover events.
For example gulls and shorebirds (Charadriiformes) carried ten strains that have not been identified in any other bird order.
#Deaths attributed directly to climate change cast pall over penguinsclimate change is killing penguin chicks from the world's largest colony of Magellanic penguins not just indirectly--by depriving them of food as has been documented repeatedly for these
and other seabirds--but directly as a result of drenching rainstorms and at other times heat according to new findings from the University of Washington.
but still too young to have grown waterproof feathers downy penguin chicks exposed to drenching rain can struggle
's Chubut Province the Global Penguin Society and the La Regina family. Boersma is lead author of a paper on the findings in the Jan 29 issue of PLOS ONE.
since 1983 at the world's largest breeding area for Magellanic penguins about halfway up the Atlantic coast of Argentina at Punta Tombo where 200000 pairs reside from September through February to have their young.
but steps could be taken to make sure the Earth's largest colony of Magellanic penguins have enough to eat by creating a marine protected reserve with regulations on fishing where penguins forage
Magellanics are sized medium penguins standing about 15 inches tall and weighing about 10 pounds. Males of the species sound like braying donkeys
Of the Earth's 17 species of penguins 10--including Magellanics--breed where there is no snow it is relatively dry
The findings are based on weather information collected at the regional airport and by researchers in the field as well as from penguin counts.
or beaten by other penguins. Just back from two months in the field Boersma said heat this season took a greater toll on chicks than storms.
Also contributing to increasing deaths from climate change is the fact that over 27 years penguin parents have arrived to the breeding site later
Besides the coast of Argentina Magellanic penguins also breed on the Chile-side of South america
and in the Falkand (Malvinas) Islands breeding ranges they share with some 60 other seabird species. These species also are likely to suffer negative impacts from climate change losing whole generations as the penguins have in the study
not only for Magellanic penguins but for many other species they write. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Washington.
#One tree likes seabird poop, next prefers fresh airoff the west coast of Peru seabirds deposit thick layers of guano that accumulates on the ground because of the lack of rain.
Guano has played historically a key role in agriculture worldwide because it is rich in plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous.
One species found nesting in a no-till soybean field the upland sandpiper was an exciting find.
The upland sandpiper is endangered a state species. It's doing badly throughout its range Ward said.
A study published in January 2014 in the ornithological journal The Auk provided the very first evidence of largely modern Hoatzins from the Miocene (15 million years ago) in Africa.
Along with the eggs and nestlings of greater sage grouse ravens also prey on the federally endangered Desert tortoise the endangered San Clemente Loggerhead shrike and the California Least Tern.
Penguin and Macmillan, maintain that they did not collude on e-book pricing. This essentially means that Hachette,
The two that are fighting it, Mcmillan and Penguin, their executives have made very clear statements,
So Random House and the two publishers that haven t settled, Penguin and Mcmillan, are at least for the moment,
Radiation reminds me of the albatross: It performs wondrous things and it generally doesn't harm you,
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