and the activities of birds insect and other animals and therefore must be factored into climate-change model predictions.
In cattle the distal skeleton consists of two rudimentary dew claws and two symmetrical and elongated middle digits that form the cloven hoof
The animals sometimes nicknamed killer slugs are known to do their fair share of damage in fields and gardens.
It is ranked also among the 100 of the worst invasive animal and plant species in Central europe that are thought to have a significant negative impact on biodiversity economy and health.
Therefore the animals were identified using DNA sequence data lead author Prof. Markus Pfenninger who conducts research on Bik-F
Through crop raiding a form of human-wildlife conflict hundreds of thousands of marginalized farmers are losing edible crops to damage from these troublesome animals each year.
It turns out that the amount of methane produced varies substantially across individual animals of the same ruminant species. To find out why this is
Moreover as Attwood notes there needs to be an incentive for farmers to incorporate low methane animals into their flocks that is achieving better performance with the low methane animals
Domestic yaks were bred once with bison in northern Canada in the 1920's in an attempt to make for more cold-hearty animals.
While these poisons are meant to kill rodents they have unintended consequences of harming and killing animals that prey on rodents.
which is analogous to stem cells in animals. EBB1 also plays a role in suppressing genes that prepare trees for dormancy in the fall
and feral cats have been quite severe on native fauna. Dingoes are managed as a pest in New south wales the country's most populous state.
He has studied the influence of carnivores on their prey--such as deer and elk--and on vegetation from aspen trees to willows.
#Endangered species baby boom at zoothe Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute celebrated several births recently.
of which were endangered species. A short-eared elephant shrew was born May 8 at the Zoo's Small Mammal House.
The first pair of twin fishing cats was born at the National Zoo in May 2012.
Only one other facility accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has bred successfully fishing cats since 2009.
Three loggerhead shrike chicks hatched in Mid-may at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute In front Royal Va. Loggerhead shrikes also called butcher birds are songbirds that hunt small animals by impaling them on thorns or barbed wire.
It's estimated that freshwater fishes make up more than 6%of the world's annual animal protein supplies for humans--and the major and often only source of animal protein for low income families across Bangladesh Indonesia and the Philippines added Tanentzap.
and animals that live in these ecosystems. Now new research funded by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station (NHAES) at the University of New hampshire College of Life sciences
Scientists already knew that flowering plants in contrast to animals require not one but two sperm cells for successful fertilisation:
The study is the first to pinpoint the genetic differences that make sheep different from other animals.
This team--the International Sheep Genomics Consortium--compared the sheep's genes with those of other animals--including humans cattle goats and pigs.
Sheep were one of the first animals to be domesticated for farming and are still an important part of the global agricultural economy.
Successfully reducing deforestation is essential as forests are home to a wide range of plants and animals and vital to the livelihoods of indigenous communities.
or livestock--we lose vital resources put animals at risk of extinction and release massive quantities of carbon dioxide stored in the trees
because pigs are much closer to humans than many other test animals. Many medical researchers prefer conducting studies with pigs
because they are more anatomically similar to humans than other animals such as mice and rats Prather said.
and scale of humans than other animals and they respond to health threats similarly. This means that research in pigs is more likely to have results similar to those in humans for many different tests and treatments.
Previous studies have shown already that it is safe for higher animals which means it has real potential as a pesticide and offers us a safe alternative to some of those currently on the market.
and sunlight and respires less just like an animal or human being says lead author Jianwu (Jim) Tang an assistant scientist in the MBL Ecosystem Center.
According to Bradford the use of mean responses can mask the local-scale information such as the abundance of soil fungi and animals
and other animals and the risk--while minimal--may stand in the way of public acceptance.
Livestock now represents the largest biomass among terrestrial vertebrates ahead of that of the human population and far ahead of that of wild animals.
and spread of zoonotic infectious agents originating in wild animals. Finally it is estimated today that one in three human in the world--1. 46 billion--is obese or overweight a problem to
and tissue transplants from animals. Sachs and his team developed a strain of inbred miniature swine with organs that are close in size to those of adult humans.
while the animals were under anesthesia--the grafts adhered and developed a vascular system within 4 days of implantation.
#Top ten new species for 2014an appealing carnivorous mammal a 12-meter-tall tree that has been hiding in plain sight
The top 10 is designed to bring attention to the unsung heroes addressing the biodiversity crisis by working to complete an inventory of earth's plants animals and microbes.
A New Carnivore Hidden in Trees Bassaricyon neblina Location: Ecuador The appealing olinguito resembling a cross between a slinky cat
It is an arboreal carnivore that belongs to the Family procyonidae which includes the familiar raccoon.
It is the first new carnivorous mammal described in the Western hemisphere in 35 years. Its apparent dependence on cloud forest habitat means deforestation is a threat.
It ends up looking much like a carnivorous sponge as well as feeding like one extending pseudopods (a protist's version of arms) outside the shell to feed on invertebrates that have become trapped in the spiny structures.
Interestingly they are the same caves where carnivorous sponges were discovered first. Clean room Microbes: Alien Invaders?
or hitchhike on other cave animals such as bats or crickets to travel longer distances. Why inventory mattersi have been participating in the top 10 since its beginning in 2008 and
and animals to solve the same survival problems that humans face. By studying the millions of ways in
and animals of home the smell of spring and the sound of running water. Nothing nothing could ever compensate for that he said.
#With climate changing, Southern plants outperform Northerncan plants and animals evolve to keep pace with climate change?
Candace Williams an MSU doctoral student in biochemistry conducted the research in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison the Memphis Zoo
and the National Zoo in Washington D c. Williams presented her findings at the American Society for Microbiology in Boston in May.
To investigate the microbes Williams collected fecal samples from two giant pandas and one red panda at the Memphis Zoo.
The team also obtained samples from a red panda at the National Zoo. Williams used advanced genetic sequencing techniques to determine what gastrointestinal bacteria were present.
The Chinese government has established 50 panda reserves within the animals'home range. Additionally China has banned logging to preserve the habitat of the declining species. With gastrointestinal disease causing the greatest natural mortality of red
and giant pandas a greater understanding of the digestive microbes will assist in maintaining captive panda populations housed at zoos Williams said.
One type of animal that naturally produces all fatty acids is the c. elegans roundworm and in 2004 Kang's group reported that mice transgenic for a c. elegans gene called fat-1 converted omega-6s into omega-3s in their tissues.
Since our 2004 report on the fat-1 mouse our lab and many others have been working towards the generation of larger omega-3-producing animals--including pigs sheep
Concerned hunters and foresters sent the carcasses to the University of Veterinary medicine Vienna for analysis. Extensive investigations have revealed now that the animals died of bacterial pneumonia caused by two strains of bacteria that are highly unusual in chamois.
Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) share their habitat with a number of other wild animals as well as with farm animals.
Because of the risk of disease transmission between species when dead or sick animals are discovered by hunters
The analysis revealed that the animals had died of a massive pneumonia. The causes of the pneumonia turned out to be bacteria with the evocative names Mannheimia glucosida (in honour of the German biologist Walter Mannheim nothing to do with the German town) and Bibersteinia trehalosi.
It is against the law to administer medical treatment to wild animals so we don't really have many possibilities to prevent an epidemic explains Annika Posautz from the pathology team of the Research Institute.
All we can do is try to minimize contact between animals for example by avoiding the use of salt licks.
and the animals were suffering from parasite infestation. The combination of these two factors weakened their immune systems and probably led to the deaths.
It is then possible to put emergency measures in place including increased monitoring of the animals
and his colleagues used data from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to compare wood packaging infestation rates from 2 years prior to U s. implementation
and 103 new species of plants and animals in 2013 with some research divisions anticipating higher numbers for 2014.
But the extra emphasis on biodiversity due to degradation of natural habitats and accelerating extinction rate of plants and animals worldwide has placed a higher emphasis on researchers documenting
For example during an international effort to document all animals and plants living on and in the waters surrounding the island of Moorea in French polynesia Florida Museum invertebrate zoology curator Gustav Paulay dredged from the deep sea a new hermit crab that exemplifies a rarely documented process in which hermit crabs move out of their shells
Museum scientists described 56 new species of fossil plants and animals. Among these the world's oldest-known grape species Indovitis chitaleyae discovered in 2005 and described in 2013 pushed the record of the Vitaceae (grape) family into the Late Cretaceous about 66 million years ago.
Florida Museum vertebrate paleontology collections manager Richard Hulbert described the 5-million-year-old fossils of Rhizosmilidon a carnivorous saber-toothed cat from the same lineage as the famous
because knowledge of the kinds of plants and animals that lived here in the past provide us with a framework for understanding today's ecosystems.
In the course of their lives the males compile a species-specific bouquet that they store in the pockets on their hind legs.
Animals such as white-tailed deer the Florida panther and migratory birds that depend on native vegetation such as mangrove for food
The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will review the joint UF/IFAS and USDA petition for the thripsâ##release Overholt said.
association with grazing animals such as cattle and other livestock. This bird is native to tropical and subtropical Africa southern Europe and western Asia.
While the cattle egret is not currently a threat to native fauna in Brazil throughout most of its geographic distribution it has the potential to produce adverse effects as evidenced by its occupation of island environments.
and inclinations from monogamy to addiction to animals'including humans'underlying biology. To that growing list they're adding division of labor--at least in killer bees.
In much of the Great plains too little precipitation falls to replace that needed by humans plants and animals.
In many symbiotic relationships host animals and their microbial symbionts are partners that make up a whole--neither one can function without the other
A study by University of Miami researchers reveals how at the cellular level an animal
but that is labor-intensive so it might be used on vegetation the animals drag into their burrows.
herbivore richness through time the researchers report in today's (May 2) issue of PLOS ONE.
When minerals are rare in the soil animals sometimes gather salt and other rare minerals and proteins from sweat tears urine and even blood.
when the virus is allowed to penetrate the cells of the animals. The target cells of these lentiviruses are the macrophages.
and premature culling (the livestock are separated from the flock) of the infected animals which leads to an increase in the restocking rate in the flock and considerable economic losses.
The author of the work studied the role played by this molecule in the development of various pathologies associated with infection So after analysing the MR expression in 124 tissue samples from 31 animals we saw that there was a greater expression of the mannose receptor in the more affected organs.
save endangered animals cheaplychanging cattle fields to forests is a cheap way of tackling climate change
This would cost very little money said senior scientist Dr David Edwards of the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant sciences.
There are a number of insects that are associated commonly with animals such as house flies and cockroaches said Ludek Zurek K-State professor of microbial ecology
House flies are common where animal manure is produced including in cattle poultry and swine operations.
not only to treat infections in animals but also in helping animals grow. Antibiotics in low doses are added as feed additives primarily in poultry
and swine diets he said. The outcome is that the animals grow faster. At the same time if you use low doses of antibiotics extensively that poses selective pressure on bacteria in the digestive tract of these animals and results in antibiotic resistance.
Humans experiencing more problems with antibiotic resistance could be due to many potential reasons Zurek said including overuse of antibiotics in human medicine and human connection to antibiotic use in food animals.
There are likely many other potential environmental connections as well so it's hard to pinpoint specific infections
and where the antibiotic resistance originated. In addition to the insects Zurek and his research team have showed also that wild birds such as ravens
All EU countries banned antibiotic use as growth promoters in food animals. Lowering the use of antibiotics in animal industry will be another step to lower prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment
These practices include better management of pastureland by rotating where animals graze planting better grasses more frequently
and animals and is found in many foods--on weed control efficacy crop injury and squash yields of yellow squash.
and then protected it from all herbivores including the crabs. To assess whether any site had too much nitrogen they took leaves of the grasses at each site back to the lab ground them up
'--whereby animals and humans become inefficient at a task when they are bombarded with lots of distracting information--the team pumped a mixture of plant smells into a greenhouse growing tomato plants.
The warming of Finland's climate is already evident in Finnish fauna; birds for example are migrating earlier in the spring and later in the autumn.
and other animals is under heavy pressure from changes in land use and severe ongoing drought.
As global demand for beef and animal feed increased in the early 2000s annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged to more than 20000 km2 per year--prompting global outrage
And why only about five of the 148 species of large wild mammalian herbivores or omnivores?
or animals been domesticated in modern times? If nothing else the tiny percentages of domesticates suggests there are limitations to human agency
because it brought together people working on plants and animals and archeologists and geneticists. I hadn't really thought much about animal domestication
and animals said Marshall. We used to think cats and dogs were real outliers in the animal domestication process
Once animals such as donkeys or cattle were caught Marshall said the changes humans sought to make were pretty minimal.
In the donkeys and other transport animals it's not affiliative tame behavior the herders want Marshall said.
What they care about more than anything else is that their animals stay alive. So artificial selection is acting in the same direction as natural selection
or maybe pushing even harder because humans often place animals in harsher conditions than natural ones.
because plants and animals were domesticated before humans invented writing and so figuring out what happened has been a matter of making do limited with the evidence that has survived.
or size differences or pathology that might plausibly be related to animals living with people. Sometimes there aren't morphological shifts that are easy to find
If we've got concentrations of dung that means animals were being corralled she said. Olsen on the other hand seeks to identify genes in modern crop species that are associated with domestication traits in the plant such as an erect rather than a sprawling architecture.
and animals will go extinct over the next century because of human activities mostly due to our agricultural methods.
and animals into the crops pets and livestock we know today. Generally any mutations that are widespread in domestic plants
and animals but absent from their wild relatives are assumed to have played a key role in the process spreading as people
People say the greatest animal in Africa is the lion or the elephant but honeybees are more essential
but in some other parts of the world lower quality of animal plus poor forage quality leaves much room for improvement in livestock efficiency.
Scientists now think wild animals interbred with domesticated ones until quite recentlymany of our ideas about domestication derive from Charles darwin
It is from Darwin that we inherit the ideas that domestication involved isolation of captive animals from wild species and total human control over breeding and animal care.
in Chile Marshall wrote a review article that summarizes recent research on the domestication of large herbivores for The Modern View of Domestication a special feature of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published April 29.
Our livestock is losing genetic diversity even faster than some wild animals because of management practices like artificial insemination Marshall said.
A walk on the wild sidefor most of history artificial selection on large herbivores was probably weak Marshall said Herders could not afford to kill many animals particularly large-bodied animals with long gestation periods.
Wild animals are generally faster stronger and better adapted to the local conditions than domesticated ones.
So for example Beja herders in Northeastern Africa intentionally bred their donkeys with African wild asses in order to produce stronger transport animals.
But even in the case of pigs or cattle interbreeding between domestic and wild animals has created long and complex evolutionary and domestication histories that challenge assumptions regarding genetic isolation and long-held definitions of domestication.
The anomaly is isolated the domestic population not the prolonged interbreeding among domestic and wild animals
The first chapter of On the Origin of Species discusses the domestication of animals such as as pigeons cattle
At the end of the last Ice age people in many spots around the globe shifted from hunting animals
or even in landraces varieties of plants and animals that are adapted highly to local conditions Olsen said that wasn't tapped during the domestication process.
Epistasis and environmental effects in domestication genesby selecting animals for coat color animal breeders may have stabilized certain epistatic
and environmental interactions in companion animals (see photos at right). But when the plant scientists looked at comparable genetic mechanisms in domesticated plants they found the reverse to be true.
The infection not only harms animals and farmers'profits but also drives more systemic antibiotic use on dairy farms than any other disease.
and animals to help them grow. Our long term aim is to better understand these interactions
H7 bacteria use the same method of colonising the surface of plants as they do when colonising the intestines of animals.
but are actively interacting with both plants and animals. While outbreaks of vegetable-associated E coli outbreaks are rare in the UK
Dr. Natia Kopaliani Dr. David Tarkhnishvili and colleagues from the Institute of Ecology at Ilia State university in Georgia and from the Tbilisi Zoo in Georgia used a range of genetic techniques to extract
or animals solasenol (used to produce vitamins E and K) and xanthophylls (an additive in chicken feeds).
In agriculture and forestry for example it could be used to keep animals from gnawing on trees.
and react only when the seeds are bitten by a herbivore. Stark describes the successful research method as imitating nature
The new rankings will be used in a major conservation initiative called the Edge of Existence program at the London Zoo.
The zoo has identified already several species like the huge monkey-eating Philippine eagle that are endangered at once distinct
Comparatively little is known about the methane production of other animal species --but one thing seems to be clear:
Ruminants produce more of the gas per amount of converted feed than other herbivores. The only other animal group that regularly ruminates like ruminants are camels.
This includes alpacas llamas dromedaries and Bactrian camels. They too have chambered multi forestomachs. They too regurgitate food from the forestomach
In cooperation with Zurich Zoo and private camel keepers scientists from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich have measured methane production in three types of camelids.
and the solubilization reduces absorption of these compounds into the body says Jandacek who was the principal investigator on a 2005 study that found that olestra removed toxins from animals.
At the same time people kill wild animals for food trade or to defend lives or property and human activities degrade wildlife habitat.
published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Chalk rivers found from Dorset to Cambridgeshire sustain a diverse range of protected animals
By better understanding the history of the animals we domesticate we can better understand ourselves.
whether that is through breeding more disease-resistant animals or finding ways to increase dairy or beef production.
Our results challenge the common misconception that goats aren't intelligent animals--they have the ability to learn complex tasks
The successful studies in animals may lead to clinical testing in humans. If this approach is successful the impact will be huge in terms of reducing side effects. says Perumal.
and animals kill good and bad bacteria. Scientists can use the UF study's findings to begin to develop better drugs that target bad pathogens
Like other small animals that live for only two or three years these birds had until now been thought to die in large numbers during cold winters.
The findings come from a 20-year study of long-tailed tits run by Professor Ben Hatchwell at the Department of Animal and Plant sciences.
Many of the plants and animals found on these ridges including the red widow spider are restricted to these high dry areas.
Our findings show that there is a link between disruption of the native animal community and invasion by nonnative plant species says Carol Horvitz professor of ecology in the University of Miami College of Arts
Similar links maybe found in other ecosystems between disrupted fauna and declining diversity of flora.
Our findings imply that management of overabundant grazing animals would be beneficial for conservation of plant biodiversity says Horvitz who is also a founding member of UM's Institute of Theoretical and Mathematical Ecology.
The red lipid-rich aril a fleshy pulp surrounding the seeds of Clusia is highly attractive to many animals.
and establishment of the investigated tree species. This is particularly relevant as other animal and plant species may follow the species that facilitates the establishment of others.
In the medium term this will enhance living conditions for a number of other animal
Indeed by the mid-1990s the Tiburã n herd had grown to a stable population of 500 animals one of the most successful large mammal introductions in the world.
and extinct herbivores to determine that bighorn sheep formed the dung mat. This determination was confirmed later by conservation geneticists at Oregon State university who used specialized techniques to extract
The ancient sequences differed substantially from other large herbivores that might have been present. Further the DNA sequences were not identical to the modern bighorn populations on Tiburã n Island giving confidence to the researchers'claim that the sequences do not derive from modern use of the cave by introduced bighorn sheep.
The findings are published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. The research was conducted on dogs that would willingly eat cheese
A similar effect was reported also in studies of monkeys where the animals would eat both grapes and cucumbers but preferred one grape over one grape plus a slice of cucumber when given the option.
and other primates but can occur in other mammalian species at least those that are organized socially such as carnivores like wolves dogs
We've looked at many other components namely the populations of animals in the area
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