Wild Biology News - March 2009 Archives

A venomous tale: Vipers shape lizards' tail-shedding abilities (3/31/2009)

University of Michigan ecologists and their colleagues have answered a question that has puzzled biologists for more than a century: What is the main factor that determines a lizard's ability to shed its tail when predators attack? ...> Full Article

Team approach appears to work best for insect colonies (3/30/2009)

Ants and bees have long been recognized as tireless workers, but now new research suggests they behave like model citizens too. Unlike herds of bison or shoals of fish -- where individuals may appear to be team players but actually behave according to their own interests -- some animals, including ants and bees, really do have the best interests of the group at heart. ...> Full Article

Crabs' memory of pain confirmed (3/29/2009)

New research published by a Queen's University Belfast academic has shown that crabs not only suffer pain but that they retain a memory of it ...> Full Article

Biologists demonstrate that size matters... in snail shells (3/28/2009)

A team of biologists at the University of Pennsylvania has completed a research study begun in 1915 and determined that a snail making its home in the northwest Atlantic Ocean has experienced a dramatic increase in the size of its shell during less than a century, providing a clear illustration of how fast and effectively change can occur. ...> Full Article

Team IDs genesis of mass migrations (3/27/2009)

Observations of fish apply to other animals; could aid conservation ...> Full Article

Spiders, frogs and gecko among exciting discoveries found in Papua New Guinea (3/26/2009)

Jumping spiders, a tiny chirping frog and an elegant striped gecko are among 56 species believed new to science discovered during a Conservation International Rapid Assessment Program expedition to Papua New Guinea's highlands wilderness. ...> Full Article

Deep-sea corals may be oldest living marine organism (3/25/2009)

Deep-sea corals from about 400 meters off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands are much older than once believed and some may be the oldest living marine organisms known to man. Researchers from Lawrence Livermore, Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Cruz have determined that two groups of Hawaiian deep-sea corals are far older than previously recorded. ...> Full Article

Phytoplankton is changing along the Antarctic Peninsula (3/23/2009)

As the cold, dry climate of the western Antarctic Peninsula becomes warmer and more humid, phytoplankton -- the bottom of the Antarctic food chain -- is decreasing off the northern part the peninsula and increasing further south, Rutgers marine scientists have discovered. ...> Full Article

Flight of the bumble (and honey) bee (3/22/2009)

Bees prefer shortest distance between two flowers ...> Full Article

Ream offers first look at how bats land (3/21/2009)

A Brown University-led research team has documented for the first time how bats land. The results are surprising: not all bats land the same way. The findings, which appear in the Journal of Experimental Biology, could offer new insights into how the second-largest order of mammals evolved. ...> Full Article

Gene decides whether coral relative will fuse or fight (3/20/2009)

When coral colonies meet one another on the reef, they have two options: merge into a single colony or reject each other and aggressively compete for space. Now, a report in the March 19 Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, has found a gene that may help to decide that fate. ...> Full Article

Female mammals follow their noses to the right mates (3/18/2009)

Historically, most examples of female mate choice and its evolutionary consequences are found in birds. But that doesn't mean mammals aren't just as choosy, researchers say. It just means that mammal mate preferences may be harder to spot. ...> Full Article

A new view of oceanic phytoplankton (3/17/2009)

In a just-published paper in Nature, an international team of scientists, including two University of Hawaii at Manoa microbial oceanographers, describe a novel strategy for phytoplankton growth in the vast nutrient-poor habitats of tropical and subtropical seas. ...> Full Article

Tracking tigers in 3-D (3/16/2009)

New software developed with help from the Wildlife Conservation Society will allow tiger researchers to rapidly identify individual animals by creating a three-dimensional model using photos taken by remote cameras. ...> Full Article

Female birds 'jam' their mates' flirtatious songs (3/15/2009)

When a single female is nearby, female antbirds will sing over the songs of their male partners in an apparent attempt to keep their messages from getting through, according to a new report published online on March 12 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Males respond to that interruption by singing a different tune. ...> Full Article

Long, sexy tails not a drag on male birds (3/15/2009)

Experiments show that hummingbirds suffer few energy costs when they grow long tails ...> Full Article

Texas-sized tract of single-celled clones (3/14/2009)

Biologists find world-record colony of amoebae in Houston cow pasture ...> Full Article

Crickets may predict human survivability during global warming (3/13/2009)

UCF scientist Wade Winterhalter landed an $860,000 grant from the US Department of Energy for an innovative study involving crickets that may provide clues about whether or not humans can survive global warming. ...> Full Article

Tall tale of giant stingray circles the globe (3/12/2009)

A huge freshwater stingray (Himantura chaophraya) caught, tagged and released in Thailand, was reported to be a world record size fish at 771 pounds. University of Nevada, Reno biologist Zeb Hogan, project leader for the Megafishes Project which hauled in the big stingray as part of their research, said that while the fish was definitely a contender, it was never weighed. ...> Full Article

American carnivores evolved to avoid each other, new study suggests (3/11/2009)

A large-scale analysis suggests that strategies that help America's carnivores stay away from each other have been a driving force in the evolution of many of these species, influencing such factors as whether they are active daytime or nighttime, whether they inhabit forests or grasslands, or live in trees or on the ground. ...> Full Article

Chimp's stone throwing at zoo visitors was 'premeditated' (3/10/2009)

Researchers have found what they say is some of the first unambiguous evidence that an animal other than humans can make spontaneous plans for future events. The report in the March 9 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, highlights a decade of observations in a zoo of a male chimpanzee calmly collecting stones and fashioning concrete discs that he would later use to hurl at zoo visitors. ...> Full Article

New explanation for a puzzling biological divide along the Malay Peninsula (3/8/2009)

More than 58 rapid sea level rises in the last five million years could account for an apparently abrupt switch in the kinds in of mammals found along the Malay Peninsula in southeast Asia -- from mainland species to island species -- in the absence of any geographical barrier, ecologists say. ...> Full Article

Tropical lizards can't take the heat of climate warming (3/7/2009)

Lizards living in tropical forests in Central and South America and the Caribbean could be in serious peril from rising temperatures associated with climate change. In fact, those forest lizards appear to tolerate a much narrower range of survivable temperatures than do their relatives at higher latitudes and are actually less tolerant of high temperatures, according to a University of Washington biologist. ...> Full Article

Scatological clues lead to an intimate view (3/6/2009)

Secret social drama among humanity's distant cousins ...> Full Article

Earth's highest known microbial systems fueled by volcanic gases (3/5/2009)

Gases rising from deep within the Earth are fueling the world's highest-known microbial ecosystems, which have been detected near the rim of the 19,850-foot-high Socompa volcano in the Andes by a University of Colorado at Boulder research team. ...> Full Article

It's in his smell (3/4/2009)

A female moth selects a mate based on the scent of his pheromones. An analysis of the pheromones used by the European Corn Borer, featured in the open access journal BMC Biology, shows that females can discern a male's ancestry, age and possibly reproductive fitness from the chemical cocktail he exudes. ...> Full Article

Final frontier: Mission to explore buried ancient Antarctic lake given green light (3/3/2009)

An international team of scientists led by the UK has been given the go-ahead to explore one of the planet's last great frontiers -- an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica's ice sheet. Buried under 3 km of ice, the lake -- the size of Lake Windermere -- may have been isolated for hundreds of thousands of years and could contain unique forms of life. ...> Full Article

Crafty Australian crayfish cheat (3/2/2009)

Australian and British scientists have found how puny crayfish cheat. Robbie Wilson from the University of Queensland explains that weak males cheat by intimidating stronger foes with their large claws. However, this shouldn't work because the tough guys should get wise. Wilson shows that large claws are risky; they make it harder to evade predators. Cheats get away with it because crayfish wouldn't bother to have big claws unless they really meant it. ...> Full Article

Great Lake's sinkholes host exotic ecosystems (3/1/2009)

Sinkholes penetrating the bottom one of North America's Great Lakes -- Lake Huron -- unexpectedly harbor exotic ecosystems akin to those in permanently iced-over Antarctic lakes and deep-sea, hydrothermal vents and cold seeps. ...> Full Article

DNA evidence is in, newly discovered species of fish dubbed H. psychedelica (3/1/2009)

"Psychedelica" seems the perfect name for a fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and behaves in ways contrary to its brethren, including bouncing like a ball along the seafloor instead of swimming. The fish, which has rare forward-facing eyes like humans, also has a secretive nature. That could be the reason they weren't spotted by divers until just last year nor described in the scientific literature until now. ...> Full Article

Shape-shifting coral evade identification (3/1/2009)

The evolutionary tendency of corals to alter their skeletal structure makes it difficult to assign them to different species. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology have used genetic markers to examine coral groupings and investigate how these markers relate to alterations in shape, in the process discovering that our inaccurate picture of coral species is compromising our ability to conserve coral reefs. ...> Full Article