The idea for the study emerged from modern animal conservation practices where landscape connectivity--the degree to
It was developed within the monitoring of fauna recolonization developed in the burnt area after the fire.
Professor Eduardo Mateos affirms that postfire management practices must consider the strong relationship between animal and plant communities.
Social learning in animals usually involves one individual observing and imitating another although other kinds of communication can also be involved said Mirwan.
and the animals they carried with them. The study led by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD)
Researchers from Oxford university Save the Elephants and Disney's Animal kingdom carried out a series of audio experiments in
and Oxford university who led the study with Dr Joseph Soltis a bioacoustics expert from Disney's Animal kingdom and colleagues.'
We were trying to understand how animals move in trees; how muscle in general deals with something as complex as climbing a tree with its horizontal and vertical inclines the tiny little branches
Now we have new questions about how animals work. No one has looked ever at this before said Timothy Higham an assistant professor of biology and Foster's graduate adviser.
and study them in a lab as opposed to measuring the muscles in the animal as it's moving.
and it can help us answer questions about how these animals are doing what they're doing
modulation and decoupling Foster surgically inserted electrodes into the forelimbs and hind limbs of seven male green anole lizards.
This has unearthed a lot of questions about ecology evolution how parts of animals evolve and how they respond to their environment.
#Strange bird, sea turtle hatchlings released on protected Indonesian beachworking on a remote and protected beach in Indonesia conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society
and PALSÂ#local partner organizationâ#ecently celebrated the release of rare animal hatchlings into the wild part of a plan to save the olive ridley sea turtle
All hatchlings emerged from protected nests on a 950-meter beach that is now owned and managed by PALS (Pelestari Alam Liar dan Satwa or Wildlife and Wildlands Conservation).
and participant in the Maleo Conservation Project. â#oethe protection of the beachfront lands which are critical nesting grounds for both species will help safeguard this part of Indonesiaâ##s natural heritage. â#The hatchling
#In addition to conservation efforts in the field WCS also works to conserve maleos at its Bronx Zoo headquarters where curators have reared successfully maleo chicks by recreating the specialized conditions needed for successful reproduction and incubation.
Heidi and Harvey Bookman and the Critically Endangered Animals Conservation Fund of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
which raised cattle and consumed the animals'fresh milk. The research was led by Alessia Ranciaro a postdoctoral fellow in Penn's Department of Genetics in the Perelman School of medicine
and animals that are indigenous to these areas. Greater area than tropical rain foreststropical grassy areas cover a greater area than tropical rain forests support about one fifth of the world's population
#Concerns raised about using beta agonists in beef cattleuse of certain animal drugs known as beta agonists in cattle production has received considerable national attention.
Less land would be used to grow the crops used to feed the animals and therefore less fuel to produce the same amount of beef.
This increase in death loss raises critical animal-welfare questions. We believe an inclusive dialogue is needed to explore the use of animal drugs solely to improve performance yet have no offsetting health benefits for the animals to
which they are administered. This is particularly needed for those drugs that appear to adversely impact animal welfare such as beta agonists.
I've worked all my career to improve how animals are handled and these animals are just suffering.
It has to stop. Grandin generally speaks on issues at the slaughter houses with lame cattle due to beta agonists
To paraphrase Dr. Grandin we owe the animals we raise for food a decent life
We certainly need to better understand the manner in which animals fed beta agonist die at the feedlot
and work out how to balance the societal benefits of beta agonist use with societal expectations concerning the welfare of animals raised for food.
These new findings were reported by scientists from the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research Berlin (IZW.
because few other animals than bats disperse seeds into open habitats says Daniel Lewanzik doctoral candidate at the IZW and first author of the study.
The last dzud alone in 2009-10 killed at least 8 million animals and destroyed the livelihoods of countless herders.
These can be read somewhat like tree rings to estimate the abundance of livestock over time via layers of fungal spores that live in the dung of animals;
consequently these small seldom-seen animals may play a significant role in regulating the capture of carbon from leaf litter in forest soils.
#In grasslands remade by humans, animals may protect biodiversity: Grazers let in the light, rescue imperiled plantsa comparative study of grasslands on six continents suggests there may be a way to counteract the human-made overdose of fertilizer that threatens to permanently alter the biodiversity of the world's native prairies.
let grazing animals crop the excess growth of fast growing grasses that can out-compete native plants in an over-fertilized world.
The herbivores or grazing and browsing animals feed on tall grasses that block sunlight from reaching the ground making the light available to other plants.
and subtracting herbivores. We have a worldwide experiment going on but it's completely uncontrolled. Gruner a member of the Nutrient Network (which participants have nicknamed Nutnet)
In each group one plot was fenced to keep grazing animals out. One was treated with a set dose of fertilizers to mimic the effect of excess nutrients from human sources
but was fenced not so the animals could graze. One was fenced both and fertilized. And one was left alone.
In some places native animals were abundant. At others they'd been replaced mostly by domestic animals like cattle goats and sheep.
and grazing animals were kept out the variety of plants in the experimental plots decreased. Where animals were allowed to graze in the fertilized plots plant diversity generally increased.
The researchers'data analysis concluded that the grazers improved biodiversity by increasing the amount of light reaching ground level.
But grazing animals cut down the light-blocking plants and give the others a chance to bloom.
The effect was greatest where large animals wild and domesticated grazed on the test plots:
In places where the only grazers were small animals like rabbits voles and gophers the grazers'effect was weak and variable.
The multiyear study was conducted on Cornell land near Freese Road in Ithaca where the deer density is about 39 animals per square kilometer--about 10 times greater than it was before European settlement in the late 1700s.
Experts from the University's Department of Animal and Plant sciences studied the reproductive lives of 416 Asian elephant mothers in Myanmar Burma
Dr Adam Hayward of the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant sciences said:
which are typical of most animals. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Sheffield.
and sulphur in adult human bone collagen and compared these with ratios in ancient and modern plants and animals from the location
and consuming wild animals--especially fruit bats--and that whatever horticultural food they produced was relied not heavily on she says.
Thousands of these animals have been exported to Asia and Africa in an attempt to alleviate malnutrition.
but sick animals can make people sick. In low-and middle-income nations 13 livestock-related zoonoses (diseases transferable between animals and humans) cause 2. 4 billion cases of human illness and 2. 2
million deaths each year. Animal management should include measures to control transmissible diseases by improving hygiene quarantining new arrivals on farms
Supplements can boost the productivity of ruminant animals by encouraging microbes in the rumen to grow quickly
and provide the animals with better nutrition. Also with some supplements animals can produce more milk and meat for proportionally less greenhouse gas.
Raising animals for milk and meat is considered often at odds with the challenge of feeding a growing human population
but for undernourished communities there are health benefits to consuming healthy animal products. However the goal of public health should be a balanced diet across all countries with a target of no more than 300 grams of red meat per person per week.
Keeping animals provides wealth status and even dowry payments. However the benefits of keeping animals are disrupted
when conventional grazing and mixed-farming practices are replaced with industrial systems that prioritise short-term production. Policies to encourage high welfare efficient management should consider cultural as well as natural factors.
Plants animals and people all depend on forests and may all face additional challenges as temperatures increase
Dung beetles recount the nature of the pastthe biologists behind the new research findings synthesized decades of studies on fossil beetles focusing on beetles associated with the dung of large animals in the past or with woodlands and trees.
Large animals in high numbers were an integral part of nature in prehistoric times. The composition of the beetles in the fossil sites tells us that the proportion
and number of the wild large animals declined after the appearance of modern man. As a result of this the countryside developed into predominantly dense forest that was cleared first
Bring back the large animals to Europeif people want to restore self-managing varied landscapes they can draw on the knowledge provided by the new study about the composition of natural ecosystems in the past.
An important way to create more self-managing ecosystems with a high level of biodiversity is to make room for large herbivores in the European landscape--and possibly reintroduce animals such as wild cattle bison and even elephants.
because they create the habitat occupied by a tremendous diversity of other plants and animals.
Flowers attract pollinators fruits attract seed-dispersing animals plants express stress responses and organisms communicate with each other in many ways via color.
and the PRRS virus. In production animals inflammation is costly. Inflammation reduces feed intake and it diverts nutrients away from growth to the immune system Pettigrew said
instead of waving them away with their forelegs or fleeing they let the males court them with showy behavior like pushups and head bobs.
Protocol used to demonstrate brucellosis-free bison from infected herdsa new study from the USDA Animal
if it could successfully be used to qualify the animals as brucellosis-free. Results of the study indicated that it is feasible to take young bison from an infected population
During the study blood samples were collected from the animals every 30-45 days and tested for brucellosis.
Those animals that tested positive were euthanized and those remaining were tested until all had two consecutive negative tests.
and birthing events all animals testing negative were held until they produced their first calf and showed no evidence of the disease in newborn calves birth fluids or blood.
The results of this study indicate that under the right conditions there is an opportunity to produce live brucellosis-free bison from even a herd with a large number of infected animals like the one in Yellowstone national park said Dr. Jack
The UM &r protocol could facilitate such relocation by demonstrating animals are disease-free and would not transmit brucellosis to cattle or other animals.
At the same time a movement to ecologically restore bison to large landscapes is gaining momentum throughout the United states
The Yellowstone animals passing through this system of testing are critical to conserving the diversity of the bison genome over the long term.
and how to better interpret results when screening animals for this disease. It is our hope that several satellite herds of Yellowstone bison can be assembled from the animals that graduate through this quarantine process.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wildlife Conservation Society. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Large herd animals like bison or mammoths likely lived on the highland steppe tundra because they graze.
Many smaller animals birds elk and moose (which browse shrubs instead of grazing on grass) would have been in the shrub tundra he adds.
Across the world people are struggling to survive in the same areas as endangered animals
She has been working to better understand how these elusive and isolated animals move about and use natural resources.
When funds were needed they would track the animals down and sell them. It was an idea
Pairing calves seems to change the way these animals are able to process information said Dan Weary corresponding author and a professor in UBC's Animal Welfare Program.
and animals Weary says adding that the switch from an individual pen to a paired one is often as simple as removing a partition.
The risk of one animal getting sick and affecting the others is real when you're talking about large groups
Pheromones are released chemicals from the body of animals and insects that are used to attract mates or relay danger.
and deforestation caused by expansion of agriculture as well as methane released by the animals themselves with a lesser amount coming from manure management and feed production.
and continued yield increases in the crop sector will lead to shifts to richer animal diets in the future.
As major hubs of plant-animal interactions throughout the world flowers are ideal venues for the transmission of microbes among plants and animals.
The ordered pattern of cells in most other animals'eyes are thought to be the optimal arrangement
but also take into account the animals inhabiting the ecosystem and human livelihoods. They also noted that such efforts could benefit from more targeting of areas most favored by pandas.
The emphasis on genetic diversity is a relatively new concern in ecosystem restoration projects where there has been an understandable urgency to move plants and animals back into an area as quickly as possible.
In a study appearing in the journal Animal Cognition researchers Alexandra Rosati at Yale university and Kerri Rodriguez and Brian Hare of Duke compared spatial memory skills across five species of lemurs living in captivity at the Duke Lemur Center--fruit-eating red-ruffed
A total of 64 animals took part in the studies which measured their ability to remember the locations of food treats in mazes and boxes.
Animals living in captivity don't have to forage for food in the same way they do in the wild so the differences the experiments found are probably innate not learned the researchers said.
because they helped the animals deal with other challenges such as foraging for food. The researchers point out that the most social species in this study--the ring-tailed lemurs--fell in the middle of the pack in terms of spatial memory skills.
Their method is applicable to any transporter from any organism thereby enabling the otherwise exceptionally difficult analysis of transport processes in the tissues of plants and animals.
and certain types of cancer and for treating disorders of the immune system in animals and humans.
First studying the immune systems of cows and other animals helps us to understand how our own immune systems function.
and even beautifully preserved fossil leaves it's possible to say that the forest was closed a canopy one meaning the arboreal animals like Proconsul could easily move from tree-to-tree without coming to the ground.
and animals mature faster than large ones? Why has chosen nature such radically different forms as the loose-limbed beauty of a flowering tree and the fearful symmetry of a tiger?
'and animals'widely different forms evolved in parallel as ideal ways to solve the problem of how to use energy efficiently.
Named after The swiss biologist Max Kleiber who formulated it in the 1930s the law fits observations on everything from animals'energy intake to the number of young they bear.
and animals evolved in response to the same mathematical and physical principles. By working through the logic underlying Kleiber's mathematical formula and applying it separately to the geometry of plants
and animals the team was able to explain decades worth of real-world observations. Plant and animal geometries have evolved more or less in parallel said UMD botanist Todd Cooke.
The earliest plants and animals had simple and quite different bodies but natural selection has acted on the two groups so the geometries of modern trees
and animals are remarkably displaying equivalent energy efficiencies. They are both equally fit. And that is what Kleiber's Law is showing us.
The animal has to find a way to get rid of excess body heat. The obvious way is surface cooling.
So as animals get larger in size their metabolism must increase at a slower rate than their volume
If the surface area were the only thing that mattered an animal's metabolism would increase as its size increased at the rate of its mass to the two-thirds power.
or branching form that is common to tree limbs and animals'blood vessels but added in new assumptions about the volume of fluids contained in those fractal networks.
the speed at which nutrients are carried throughout the animals'bodies and heat is carried away. So the team members calculated the rate at
which animals'hearts pump blood and found that the velocity of blood flow was equal to the animals'mass to the one-twelfth power.
Animals need to adjust the flow of nutrients and heat as their mass changes to maintain the greatest possible energy efficiency.
That is why animals need a pump--a heart --and trees do not. Plugging that information into their equation the researchers found they had attained a complete explanation for Kleiber's Law.
and animals that are very different and they arrive at the same conclusion. That is what's called convergent evolution
It turns out the animals we keep for food and eggs may be substantially shaping the diversity of these viruses in the wild over time spans of decades.
and supervision costs while a more intimate knowledge of the local soil plants and animals enables smallholders to maximize output.
The 11 food values they chose to examine included freshness health hormone-free/antibiotic-free animal welfare taste price safety convenience nutrition origin and environmental impact.
and its carbon offset partner The Carbonneutral Company and Zoo Zurich. The carbon credit sales will support the Government of Madagascar's REDD+Project (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus conservation) in the Makira Natural Park and mark the first sale
Through carbon credit sales from avoided deforestation the Makira REDD+Project will finance the long-term conservation of one of Madagascar's most pristine remaining rainforest ecosystems harboring rare and threatened plants and animals
and Zoo Zurich and join us in this effort to conserve Madagascar's unique biodiversity through the sale of future carbon credits said Pierre Manganirina Randrianarisoa the Secretary general of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
and Zoo Zurich and we look forward to future purchases by other forward-thinking organizations. Said Rob Bernard Chief Environmental Strategist at Microsoft:
The ability to milk animals was a revolution in food production as for the first time humans did not have to kill animals to obtain food.
and other flora and fauna present in the Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary. The unique species composition high diversity and relatively intact forest structure underscore the importance of strengthening ongoing and future conservation measures at Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary as a key element of wider
Ensilage--a method traditionally used by farmers to turn grass into hay for winter animal feed--has potential to stop the seaweed rotting.
The study which compared the genetic code of TB-infected animals with that of disease-free cattle could help to impact on a disease that leads to major economic losses worldwide.
Despite intensive efforts over many decades bovine TB continues to have a serious impact on livestock at home and abroad affecting farm profitability and animal welfare.
whether the animal will get bovine TB or not; various environmental factors as well as differences in the TB bacteria may also affect susceptibility.
If we can choose animals with better genotypes for TB resistance then we can apply this information in new breeding programs alongside other control strategies.
Herbicide drift was associated also with the declines of three species of herbivores including pea aphids spotted alfalfa aphids
Amoxicillin is used to treat various types of infections in animals Gehring said. The goats with lead intoxication show signs of kidney and liver damage so we had hypothesized this damage would inhibit the excretion of amoxicillin leading to higher drug concentrations in these animals.
The test involved intravenous and intramuscular administration of amoxicillin. Blood and urine samples were collected over a period of 10 weeks to measure serum protein and amoxicillin concentrations.
Surprisingly the lead-intoxicated goats actually had lower concentrations of amoxicillin compared to the healthy animals.
If these mean genes keep their roles in different animals and in different contexts then perhaps model organisms--such as bees and mice--can provide insights into the biological basis of aggression in all animals including humans the researchers said.
This is one of the first investigations to utilize large datasets consisting of thousands of different genes to ask
whether there are shared genes relating to similar forms of behavior across a very wide range of animals said Amy Toth assistant professor of ecology evolution and organismal biology Iowa State.
Teamwork on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjarosteffan-Dewenter and his doctoral student Alice Classen therefore wanted to understand how bees birds bats and other animals contribute to pollination
Contribution of animals to coffee cultivationthe results revealed that where birds and bats had access to the plants there was almost a ten percent higher fruit set. â#oewe believe that this is due to the fact that the animals eliminate pests that would
otherwise feed on the coffee plantsâ#says Julia Schmack (Bik-F Frankfurt). Reduced leaf damage is supposed to reduce the number of coffee cherries falling from the tree while ripening.
the impact of the animal provided services on the harvest was equally good in all three cultivation systems even in the unshaded plantations. â#oewe put this down to the mosaic landscape structure on Mount kilimanjaro with its gardens forests
#Excrement collected worldwide shows co-evolution of herbivores, their gut microbesan extensive study by Radboud University Nijmegen on excrement and rumen fluids in plant-eating mammals from all over
Herbivorous mammals are able to digest plant materials extremely efficiently thanks to certain microorganisms in their gastrointestinal system.
By investigating ciliates in excrement and gut fluids the researchers in Nijmegen have been able to shed light on the evolution of two sorts of herbivores:'
The sources included Nijmegen goats French deer sheep from Poland and Utrecht an Indian elephant from Burger's Zoo in Arnhem and zebras and an African elephant from Tanzania.
So from the evolutionary point of view the oldest animals have the oldest ciliates in their excrement.
#Bacterial fibers critical to human, avian infectionescherichia coli--a friendly and ubiquitous bacterial resident in the guts of humans and other animals--may occasionally colonize regions outside the intestines.
and thus presents a plausible target for future therapeutics aimed at these serious infections of both humans and animals.
Benefits extend far beyond grasshoppers as it can be adapted to any insect herbivores of interest.
and physiologically similar says Avanesyan who plans to continue to use the protocol to investigate plant defenses against insect herbivores.
#Researchers discover rare new species of deep-diving whaleresearchers have identified a new species of mysterious beaked whale based on the study of seven animals stranded on remote tropical islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans
A number of species in this group are known from only a handful of animals and we are still finding new ones so the situation with Deraniyagala's whale is not that unusual Dr Dalebout says.
Both species are known from only about five animals each. With the re-discovery of Mesoplodon hotaula there are now 22 recognised species of beaked whales.
and herbivores) and some of which may be beneficial (such as mycorrhizal fungi). By conducting a series of experiments on young plants the researchers have shown that the growth of the lodgepole pine is affected greatly by
and two-thirds of them are insectivorous which means they help farmers by preying on pests and reducing the need for insecticides.
Nearly every animal and plant species requires travelling some distance for nutrition reproduction and genetic diversity but few conservation or climate mitigation strategies take the connections between conserved lands into account.
and fauna needed for their survival under the climate change we're already committed to.
The researchers found no significant differences in abundance or diversity in detritivores herbivores predators or parasitoids.
The ARF binding mode to DNA has never been described in bacteria or animals. It appears to be exclusive to plants
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