#Wolf Decline Could End World's Longest Predator-Prey Studymoose eat balsam fir trees. When the moose population expands unchecked by predation fewer fir seedlings can grow large enough to escape into the canopy above the reach of moose
and reproduce. There is already a missing generation of trees from between about 1910 when the moose arrived on the island
and 1940 when the wolves came. Most of Isle Royale s balsam firs are thus either older than 100 years and near the end of their lives or young and short enough to be browsed to death.
In other words wolves are vital for the proper function of the ecosystem as we know it (something that has been shown over and over again
whether the top predator is wolves lions or sharks). But there's a problem: the wolves are in trouble.
So far this year only 10 have been counted in aerial surveys. This is primarily because the population has suffered from inbreeding being isolated from other groups of wolves on the mainland.
The last outside wolf to arrive was a male who came via an ice bridge in 1997 providing a much-needed boost of genetic diversity siring 34 pups.
For the second time since 1997 a 15-mile ice bridge has formed once again connecting the island with land
and offering a stray wolf or wolves a chance to reach the island or to allow the wolves on the island to wander off.
But nobody knows what will happen. The decline of Isle Royale's wolves has initiated a debate among scientists--what to do?
Should wolves be imported to add much-needed genetic diversity? Or should wolves just be allowed to die out?
Many say that a watch and wait policy is the best for now--perhaps a wolf
or two will arrive naturally and add some diversity to the island. But if that doesn't happen scientists are divided on what to do.
Some suggest letting nature take its course. However it's not like wolves haven't been impacted by humans even on the island.
Dozens were killed by a virus linked to domestic dogs in the 1980s for example and in 2012 three wolves were found dead in an abandoned mine pit.
To learn more about the controversy and the details of the iconic study read the story at Nature.
And for a firsthand story of one scientist's work on the island check out this long feature at the Lansing State Journal. u
#Letters From Charles Darwinthese letters originally appeared in the March 1903 issue of Popular Science.
I cannot even grapple with the idea even with races of dogs cattle pigeons or fowls;
It bears on design that endless question. Good night good night! Read the rest of the letters in the March 1903 issue of Popular Science magazine c
These results indicate a shift from the standard bird knee-driven bipedal locomotion to a more hip-driven locomotion typical of crocodilians (the only other extant archosaur group) mammals
#Sloth Fur Might Yield New Drugssloths are cute. Take this video of baby sloths being washed:
Until today this video might represent sheer joy. But a new study causes a different reaction:
New research you see has found that chemicals excreted by microbes in sloth fur had potent activity against a host of human pathogens
The study found that chemicals isolated from fungi in three-toed sloths were deadly for parasites that cause malaria and Chagas disease (Plasmodium falciparum and Trypanosoma cruzi respectively.
The research was only a partial cataloguing of microbes that live in sloth fur which the scientists describe as a potential goldmine for drug discovery.
It's not surprising on the face of it that sloths harbor some interesting microscopic fur-friends: Cyanobacteria have been known to cover their coats coloring them green
and not exactly easy to procur for your average researcher--the three-toed sloths (Bradypus variegatus) used in this study were found in a Panamanian nature reserve.
That contrasts with English smell descriptions which often compare smells with things using phrases such as smells like bananas or smells like a wet dog. tpã:
and bearcats have a tpã smell. CÃ Ã Â s: petrol smoke bat droppings bat caves some species of millipedes wild ginger roots
and wild mango wood all have this smell. plã Âaeâ this means a bloody smell that attracts tigers.
Squirrel blood and crushed head lice(!!have it. It is distinct from pã Âh which is the smell that blood raw fish
For example in villages in which residents forage primarily it's important not to bring home animals that have the smell that attracts tigers.
#A Glue That Seals Heart Defectsnearly a decade ago Jeffrey Karp was playing around with a new biodegradable polymer he'd made.
and a team of surgeons and engineers to develop a glue that they recently tested in hearts of living rats and pigs.
The tests Karp and del Nido performed included closing heart defects in laboratory rats and closing cuts in the arteries of pigs.
and wildlife campaigners would raise awareness within China of the dramatic scale of elephant poaching the New york times reported:
n Samper president and chief executive of the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement that the society congratulated the Chinese government for showing the world that elephant poaching
and that elephants will once again flourish. Patrick Bergin chief executive of the African Wildlife Foundation described the event as a courageous and critical first step by China to elevate the important issue of wildlife trafficking
and elephant poaching among its citizens and around the world. While the United states crushed nearly all of the ivory in its possession China's stockpile likely exceeds 45 tons of ivory the World Conservation Society estimated i
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.
Ruminants are estimated to comprise the largest single human-related source of methane. By reflecting the latest estimates of greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of a life-cycle
Unlike nonruminant animals such as pigs and poultry ruminants produce copious amounts of methane in their digestive systems.
Although CO2 is the most abundant greenhouse gas the international community could achieve a more rapid reduction in the causes of global warming by lowering methane emissions through a reduction in the number of ruminants the authors said than by cutting CO2 alone.
In addition to reducing direct methane emissions from ruminants cutting ruminant numbers would deliver a significant reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of feed crops for livestock they added.#
#Among agricultural approaches to climate change reducing demand for meat from ruminants offers greater greenhouse gas reduction potential than do other steps such as increasing livestock feeding efficiency or crop yields per acre.
International climate negotiations such as the UNFCCC have not given#oeadequate attention#to greenhouse gas reductions from ruminants they added.
and colleagues infected mouse immune cells known as macrophages with each of the 29 strains they had collected representing global diversity.
She notes that a strain adapted to long-term survival in rats may cause a fatal infection in mice
In the same way that the genome sequence of the platypus--a survivor of an ancient lineage--can help us study the evolution of all mammals the genome sequence of Amborella can help us learn about the evolution of all flowers said Victor Albert of the University
In the same spirit we leave out sherry and biscuits for Santa and some carrots for his reindeer.
Beginning in 2009 the Conservancy's scientists injected the female bison with porcine zona pellucida (PZP) a contraceptive that had been used for fertility control in zoos wild horses and white tail deer.
#A roly-poly pika gathers much moss: High-fiber salad bar may help lagomorphs survive climate changein some mountain ranges Earth's warming climate is driving rabbit relatives known as pikas to higher elevations
or wiping them out. But University of Utah biologists discovered that roly-poly pikas living in rockslides near sea level in Oregon can survive hot weather by eating more moss than any other mammal.
Our work shows pikas can eat unusual foods like moss to persist in strange environments says biology professor Denise Dearing senior author of the new study published online today in the February 2014 issue
of Journal of Mammalogy. It suggests that they may be more resistant to climate change than we thought.
By consuming mosses that grow on the rockslides where they live the pikas are released from foraging outside the safety
or be killed by weasels and hawks says Varner. Few herbivores consume moss because it's so nutritionally deficient.
The pikas in our study actually set a new record for moss in a mammal's diet:
The study also found the low-elevation pikas build much smaller food caches to survive the winter compared with pikas in typical high-elevation habitat she adds.
Like rabbits and hares pikas produce a fraction of their feces in the form of caecal (pronounced see-cull) pellets
Pikas and rabbits and their gut microbes are the ultimate recycling factory Dearing says. They ingest low-quality food over and over again
Pikas in the Mistthe Order lagomorpha has two families: one with rabbits and hares the other with pikas.
Pikas are native to cold alpine climates--often above 8200 feet elevation--in North america Asia and Eastern europe.
Although a few species dig burrows they usually live in rocky areas and crevices near meadows or in talus slopes.
and Oregon and to a lesser extent Colorado--pikas have gone extinct in some mountain ranges and moved to higher elevations in others.
In the gorge--which runs roughly 30 miles east-to-west--these American pikas--Ochotona princeps--live among the rocks on moss-covered talus slopes.
The existence of these low-elevation pikas--which also inhabit the Washington side--has been known
A 2009 study documented these pikas lived in a warmer wetter climate than usual. But until now no one had looked at exactly how they survive.
Monitoring the Pika Salad Barvarner and undergraduates conducted the study on two talus slopes--each about 3. 5 acres--surrounded by a forest of Douglas fir western red cedar and bigleaf maple near the Gorge Trail near Wyeth Ore.
Each site had at least eight resident pikas. They studied the sites in 2011 and 2012 mainly during June through August
when the pikas were most active. The scientists surveyed the abundance of lichens mosses ferns grasses sedges rushes forbs shrubs and trees along the two rockslides.
and counting exactly what species of plants the pikas ate. Each pika was observed at least five times.
The diet analysis included only adult pikas although juveniles from new litters were seen. We counted the numbers of mouthfuls of food they ate
and then collected samples of those foods in the amount we saw them eating per mouthful Varner says.
Overall the biologists watched 220 hours of pika behavior including 1577 individual bouts of foraging.
The food samples were analyzed for how much the pikas ate and for nutrition and fiber content.
and Livesixty percent of the pikas'diet by dry weight came from moss at both sites with the rest from grasses lichens ferns forbs shrubs and some fir needles.
The pikas favored two species: hoary rock moss and big red-stem moss. Varner is unaware that pikas have been seen eating moss elsewhere and certainly not in this quantity.
To our knowledge this study represents the highest degree of voluntary moss consumption reported for a mammalian herbivore in the wild
although wood lemmings have survived on a pure moss diet in a laboratory Varner and Dearing write.
Svalbard reindeer consume up to 54 percent moss in winter but most reindeer eat only 22 percent to 30 percent moss.
Brown lemmings can consume up to 40 percent moss during Arctic winters. And Soay sheep can eat up to 30 percent moss in winter.
Analysis of the pikas'caecal pellets showed they contained six times more protein than the moss they ate.
Less snow cover low in the Columbia Gorge--only about 20 days per winter--means the pikas there collect smaller haypiles (about 10 pounds per animal per year by dry weight) for winter than do pikas at high elevations
in Colorado (about 60 pounds per animal per year in a 1997 Dearing study. The haypiles contained little moss but had forbs shrubs
Yet in both places the haypiles equaled about three ounces per animal per day of annual snowpack also showing the low-elevation pikas didn't need to prepare for winter as much because of the availability of their year-round salad bar.
In cooperation with the Oregon Zoo and local wildlife agencies Varner has helped begin a citizen science program in the Columbia river Gorge so local hikers can help monitor the pikas.
Pikas also exist in some other low-elevations places including in California's Sierra nevada and in lava flows in Idaho and Washington state.
#Rainforest rodents risk their lives to eathungry rodents that wake up early are much more likely to be eaten than rodents getting plenty of food and shut-eye according to new results from a study at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
Scientists equipped agoutis common rainforest rodents and ocelots their feline predators with radio collars and tracked them 24/7 via an automated telemetry system on Barro Colorado Island.
Agoutis were most active in the daytime. Ocelots were most active at night. Agoutis eat tree seeds.
Ocelots eat agoutis said Patrick Jansen research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and assistant professor at Wageningen University.
Where food is hard to find agoutis spend more time foraging and are more likely to be eaten by an ocelot.
To determine when it was dangerous for agoutis to be active scientists first recorded daily activity patterns of agoutis as well as ocelots.
Camera traps placed across the island photographed all animals that passed in front of the lens and recorded the time.
During the day thousands of agoutis were active but few ocelots prowled the island. Around sunset as agoutis sought the shelter of their burrows the ratio of ocelots to agoutis jumped
and then droped again around sunrise. Radio signals produced by an animal's transmitter collar were picked simultaneously up by radio towers around the island.
Researchers could watch the animals'activity online. When an animal stopped moving scientists saw a flat line much like the electrocardiogram of a heart-attack victim on their screens.
When agoutis died researchers quickly arrived on the scene to determine the cause of death.
Placing a video camera at the scene allowed them to know if a predator returned to eat the remains.
Seventeen of 19 dead agoutis found in the study were killed by ocelots. Most kills happened just before sunrise and just after sunset
when relatively few agoutis are active. Scientists compared daily activity patterns of agoutis between parts of forest with contrasting abundance of palm seeds.
First they determined at what times agoutis entered and exited their burrows based on changes in radio signals.
Second they placed camera traps at the entrances and recorded the time an agouti entered
and exited. Both methods showed that agoutis in areas with less food left their burrows earlier
and entered their burrows later than agoutis in food-rich areas. Hungry agoutis were much more active at twilight
and were more likely to get killed by an ocelot. We knew that hungry animals tend to take more risks said Jansen.
But this is the first study to so thoroughly document the behavior of both predator and prey.
Next Jansen will examine what the differences in predation risk mean for seed dispersal by agoutis which bury seeds as food reserves in numerous scattered caches.
Once an ocelot kills an agouti the agouti can no longer eat its food reserves Jansen said.
These seeds may germinate and establish a new tree. Hungry agoutis plant trees but may never see the fruit of their labor--a fascinating feedback loop.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Economically valuable sweet-gum trees: Taxonomy and nine new combinationsthe sweet-gum family Altingiaceae is a small group of wind-pollinated trees that produce hard woody fruits that contain numerous seeds.
and goats (ruminants) and it further found that this is the case regardless of the product involved
#Cat domestication traced to Chinese farmers 5, 300 years agofive-thousand years before it was immortalized in a British nursery rhyme the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt was doing just fine living alongside farmers in the ancient Chinese village of Quanhucun a forthcoming study
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has confirmed. At least three different lines of scientific inquiry allow us to tell a story about cat domestication that is reminiscent of the old'house that Jack built'nursery rhyme said study co-author Fiona Marshall Phd a professor of archaeology in Arts
& Sciences at Washington University in St louis. Our data suggest that cats were attracted to ancient farming villages by small animals such as rodents that were living on the grain that the farmers grew ate
and stored. Set for early online publication in PNAS during the week of Dec 16 the study provides the first direct evidence for the processes of cat domestication.
Results of this study show that the village of Quanhucun was a source of food for the cats 5300 years ago
and the relationship between humans and cats was commensal or advantageous for the cats Marshall said.
Even if these cats were domesticated not yet our evidence confirms that they lived in close proximity to farmers
and that the relationship had mutual benefits. Cat remains rarely are found in ancient archaeological sites
and little is known about how they were domesticated. Cats were thought to have first been domesticated in ancient Egypt where they were kept some 4000 years ago
but more recent research suggests close relations with humans may have occurred much earlier including the discovery of a wild cat buried with a human nearly 10000 years ago in Cyprus
. While it often has been argued that cats were attracted to rodents and other food in early farming villages and domesticated themselves there has been little evidence for this theory.
The evidence for this study is derived from research in China led by Yaowu Hu and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Hu and his team analyzed eight bones from at least two cats excavated from the site.
Using radiocarbon dating and isotopic analyses of carbon and nitrogen traces in the bones of cats dogs deer
and other wildlife unearthed near Quanhucan the research team demonstrated how a breed of once-wild cats carved a niche for themselves in a society that thrived on the widespread cultivation of the grain millet.
Carbon isotopes indicate that rodents domestic dogs and pigs from the ancient village were eating millet
but deer were not. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes show that cats were preying on animals that lived on farmed millet probably rodents.
At the same time an ancient rodent burrow into a storage pit and the rodent-proof design of grain storage pots indicate that farmers had problems with rodents in the grain stores.
Other clues gleaned from the Quanhucun food web suggest the relationship between cats and humans had begun to grow closer.
One of the cats was aged showing that it survived well in the village. Another ate fewer animals and more millet than expected suggesting that it scavenged human food
or was fed. Recent DNA studies suggest that most of the estimated 600 million domestic cats now living around the globe are descendants most directly of the Near Eastern Wildcat one of the five Felis sylvestris lybica wildcat subspecies
still found around the Old world. Marshall an expert on animal domestication said there currently is no DNA evidence to show
whether the cats found at Quanhucun are descendants of the Near Eastern Wildcat a subspecies not native to the area.
If the Quanhucun cats turn out to be close descendents of the Near Eastern strain it would suggest they were domesticated elsewhere
and later introduced to the region. We do not yet know whether these cats came to China from the Near east
whether they interbred with Chinese wildcat species or even whether cats from China played a previously unsuspected role in domestication Marshall said.
This question is now being pursued by researchers based in China and in France. Story Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by Washington University in St louis. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Climate change puts 40%more people at risk of absolute water scarcity, study sayswater scarcity impacts people's lives in many countries already today.
The evaluation of eight ibex populations in the Grison Alps showed that the North Atlantic Oscillation
since the revival of the ibex hunt in Grison where professional gamekeepers consequently measure and digitize each specimen.
Further analyses are necessary to fully understand the complete potential of the ibex dataset in Grison.
and colleagues in UD's fashion and apparel studies department has resulted in collaborations with well-known companies such as Nike Puma
In Northern Finland reindeer grazing is the key factor in lichen reduction. Slow-growing lichens in Southern Finland can also suffer due to the rapid growth of
and filled the same ecological role that kangaroos or deer play today. But no one had suspected that they
--or other dinosaurs for that matter--had fleshy structures on the tops of their heads. Until now there has been no evidence for bizarre soft-tissue display structures among dinosaurs;
An elephant's trunk or a rooster's crest might never fossilize because there's no bone in them Bell explains.
This is equivalent to discovering for the first time that elephants had trunks. We have lots of skulls of Edmontosaurus but there are no clues on them that suggest they might have had a big fleshy crest.
#New species of horse, 4. 4 million years oldtwo teams of researchers including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse
About the size of a small zebra Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli--named for geologist Giday Woldegabriel who earned his Phd at Case Western Reserve in 1987--had toed three hooves
The horse fills a gap in the evolutionary history of horses but is also important for documenting how old a fossil locality is
This horse is one piece of a very complex puzzle that has many many pieces.
The long slender bone indicates this ancient species was an adept runner similar to modern zebras
The horse had longer legs than ancestral horses that lived and fed in forests about 6 million to 10 million years ago Simpson said.
The change helped the more recent horses cover long distances as they grazed and flee lions sabre-tooth cats
and hunting hyenas that would run down their prey. The other fossils they found included teeth which are taller than their ancestors
'and with crowns worn flatter--more signs the horses had adapted to a grazing life. Analyses of the isotopic composition of the enamel confirmed that E. woldegabrieli subsisted on grass.
Grasses are like sandpaper Simpson said. They wear the teeth down and leave a characteristic signature of pits
Horse expert Raymond L. Bernor from the Laboratory of Evolutionary Biology at the Howard University college of Medicine in Washington D c. led the fossil analysis. The bones
which remain at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis ababa Ethiopia showed this was a significantly different animal than the horses more than 5 million years old and those 3 5 million years old and younger.
In mammals competing against other males is the key to gaining access to females and increasing reproductive success. But humans are different--female choice plays an important role
--or they could come back with a squirrel monkey. These men showed similar increases in testosterone and cortisol regardless of
Enclosures and guard dogs Attacks on livestock and crop raids are more common the closer villages are to the national park. Livestock keepers in the villages located close to the protected areas are on constant guard with arrows
and the use of guard dogs were preferred more in the villages that were the farthest away from the protected areas.
Primates are seen as the worst plague and the animals that are the most destructive. Olive baboons vervets and other primates are the main culprits.
The next most damaging animals are elephants. Elephants are only a problem close to the park says Mwakatobe.
Diseases from wild animals can also spread to domesticated animals. Disease and loss of livestock due to them is a bigger problem in the villages closest to the national park. Illegal bushmeat markets
While the hunting of bushmeat is most common close to Serengeti illegal markets are also found in the villages further away.
but zebras antelopes and other animals may also pass through villages on their way to elsewhere.
She recommends further studies of the conflicts between humans and other primates. Mwakatobe thinks that a combination of several kinds of guarding practices will be the most effective in minimizing animal raids on crops.
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