Life Sciences
petnoyer | September 24, 2007Researchers used stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen on old and new parts of the shells of 44 Bahaman green turtles (Chelonia mydas) to examine changes in sea turtle diets between their juvenile and elder stages.
The results indicate green sea turtles spent their "lost years' in the deep ocean as carnivores feeding on jellyfish, before moving closer to shore and switching to a vegetarian diet of seagrasses. The new research was published in the online journal Biology Letters. Karen Bjorndal led the study. She is a zoologist and director of the University of Florida's Archie Carr Center…
clock | September 21, 2007Velociraptor Had Feathers:
A new look at some old bones have shown that velociraptor, the dinosaur made famous in the movie Jurassic Park, had feathers. The discovery was made by paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History.
Personal Genomes: Mainstream In Five Years, But Who Should Have Access?:
Imagine this: you visit your clinician, undergo genetic testing, and then you are handed a miniature hard drive containing your personal genome sequence, which is subsequently uploaded onto publicly accessible databases. This may sound like science…
voltagegate | September 19, 2007
Coyote population densities are much lower in areas where their territory overlaps with wolves, according to a study done by the Wildlife Conservation Society. It's not pure numbers that they're talking about here, it's how many animals can be found within a certain area, and when there's wolves about, the density drops by about 33 - 39 percent for coyotes (percentages from different study areas). Despite the lower densities, coyotes still far outnumber wolves in these areas.
So what's going on here?
It's not predation. Wolf predation on coyotes accounts for only about 16 percent of…
clock | September 18, 2007There are 28 new articles up on PLoS ONE today. As always, I offer you my own picks, but you go there and look at all of them, then read, rate, comment and annotate:
Living with the Past: Nutritional Stress in Juvenile Males Has Immediate Effects on their Plumage Ornaments and on Adult Attractiveness in Zebra Finches:
The environmental conditions individuals experience during early development are well known to have fundamental effects on a variety of fitness-relevant traits. Although it is evident that the earliest developmental stages have large effects on fitness, other developmental…
chaoticutopia | September 18, 2007What sort effects will temperature change have on our planet? Sure, the melting of the ice caps and the raising coastlines seem like important issues to address, as do hurricanes, droughts, and the management of fossil fuels. But what about the little things?
Wouldn’t temperature change have an effect on smaller, more sensitive organisms prior to affecting large organisms like ourselves? A degree or two difference may not mean very much to you or I... that’s not even the difference between a sweater day and a t-shirt day. Yet, what if you were a cold-blooded insect? How about a single-celled…
clock | September 17, 2007Cyprian Honeybees Kill Their Enemy By Smothering Them:
For the first time, researchers have discovered that when Cyprian honeybees mob and kill their arch enemy, the Oriental hornet, the cause of death is asphyxiation. They reported their findings in Current Biology.
More...
Cell Death In Sparrow Brains May Provide Clues In Age-related Human Diseases:
A remarkable change takes place in the brains of tiny songbirds every year, and some day the mechanism controlling that change may help researchers develop treatments for age-related degenerative diseases of the brain such as Parkinson's and…
clock | September 13, 2007
Fire Ants Killing Baby Song Birds At High Rates:
Red imported fire ants may be killing as many as a fifth of baby song birds before they leave the nest, according to research recently completed at Texas A&M University.
Ecologist Finds Dire Devastation Of Snake Species Following Floods:
In science, it's best to be good, but sometimes it's better to be lucky.
Fossil Whale Puts Limit On Origin Of Oily, Buoyant Bones In Whales:
A fossilized whale skeleton excavated 20 years ago amid the stench and noise of a seabird and elephant seal rookery on California's Año Nuevo Island turns out to be…
grrlscientist | September 12, 2007tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg
Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus,
who worked with Irene Pepperberg for more than 30 years.
Image: Brandeis University.
Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, has managed something that most of us never will: his obituary is in today's LATimes (even more remarkable, it was in yesterday's NYTimes);
Some scientists have questioned whether Alex was as smart as he seemed. African grey parrots are very social birds, and some scientists…
pharyngula | September 12, 2007(This article is also available on Edge, along with some other rebuttals to and affirmations of Haidt's piece.)
Jonathan Haidt has a complicated article on moral psychology and the misunderstanding of religion on Edge. I'm going to give it a mixed review here. The first part, on moral psychology, is fascinating and a good read that I think clarifies a few ideas about morality. The second part, though, where he tries to apply his insights about morality to the New Atheists*, fails badly. I can see where he has thought deeply about morality, but unfortunately, he hasn't thought clearly about…
clock | September 11, 2007Holy Cow! Every Tuesday night I like to link to 5-6 of the brand new papers on PLoS ONE that I find personally most intriguing. But today, it is so difficult to choose - I want to highlight something like 20 out of today's 39. So, here are a few and you definitely go and see the whole list for yourself (and you know the drill, as I parrot it every week: read, rate, comment):
Impedance-Matching Hearing in Paleozoic Reptiles: Evidence of Advanced Sensory Perception at an Early Stage of Amniote Evolution
Insights into the onset of evolutionary novelties are key to the understanding of amniote…
tsmith | September 10, 2007 September 8th was world rabies day. In the United States, this was celebrated with the news that the canine rabies strain appears to be eliminated from this country. In the U.S., rabies in both humans and domestic animals remains rare, though the virus remains endemic in several species of wildlife (especially raccoons, skunks, and bats). However, worldwide, rabies remains a significant public health problem, causing an estimated 50-60,000 deaths per year worldwide--one death every ten minutes. More after the jump...
First, the news about the U.S. and dog rabies. Like most viruses,…
clock | September 9, 2007Primates Expect Others To Act Rationally:
When trying to understand someone's intentions, non-human primates expect others to act rationally by performing the most appropriate action allowed by the environment, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard University. The work was led by Justin Wood, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, with David Glynn, a research assistant, and Marc Hauser, professor of psychology at Harvard, along with Brenda Phillips of Boston University.
Brain's Timing Linked With Timescales Of The…
grrlscientist | September 8, 2007tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg
Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus and his colored blocks.
Image: EurekaAlert. [wallpaper size]
As you know, I have spent my life researching, breeding and living with birds, especially parrots. I have also had the distinct pleasure of meeting Irene Pepperberg several times, both at professional meetings as well as at avicultural meetings. However, yesterday, I received the devastating news that Alex the African grey parrot, who was both a study subject and…
clock | September 8, 2007It is not unusal to write an obituary when a great scientist passes away. It is much more unusual to do so when a lab animal does so. But when that animal is not just an experimental subject, but also a friend, colleague, teacher and collaborator, than the species boundaries lose importance. And Alex, the famous African Grey Parrot, was just that, and more, to Irene Pepperberg and to the entire field of cognitive ethology. He died yesterday, unexpectedly, at the age of 31 (about half the normal life expectancy for the species) and he will be sorely missed. You can send donations, that…
petnoyer | September 5, 2007Part one of four in a series about Greenpeace recent manned submersible expedition to two of the largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska.
One of the core principles taught to me and other students at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment is that the environmental movement at the turn of the century will be marked, or perhaps best remembered, by "the rise of non-governmental organizations (NGO's)" in the public policy arena. We learned that NGO activity expanded to fill a gap in civil society left open by a…
evolvingthoughts | September 5, 2007
Carl Zimmer has one of his usually clear and precise articles on recent work on the nature of life, focussing on the work of Carol Cleland, who is at the National Astrobiology Institute, despite reduced funding for actual science by the present administration. I met Carol last year when we both spoke at the Egenis conference on the philosophy of microbiology.
Carol argues that we do not have a theory of what life is. She may be right. One of her arguments is that if there were multiple "origins of life" events that used different chemistry, we may not even be able to "see" the others…
pharyngula | September 5, 2007Want to see Freeman Dyson and Richard Dawkins butt heads? It begins with a talk Dyson gave to an Edge conference in which Dyson (watch the whole talk) made these comments:
"By Darwinian evolution he [Woese] means evolution as Darwin understood it, based on the competition for survival of noninterbreeding species."
"With rare exceptions, Darwinian evolution requires established species to become extinct so that new species can replace them."
Dawkins rightly objects. Those are weird claims: the first is, I think, a misreading of Darwin. Darwin says something very different.
In the survival of…
purepedantry | September 4, 2007The issue of sympatric speciation -- or how to separate species emerge from a single species without geographic isolation -- is a contentious issue in evolutionary biology. How can two species emerge without reproductive isolation of two separate groups? Wouldn't they all just breed together, hiding any new genes in heterozygotes?
Bomblies et al. publishing in PLoS Bio have something interesting to say about that. The use a plant called Arabidopsis thaliana or thale grass to show that the answer might be in genes that regulate the immune response.
Just to get some background, the genes…
grrlscientist | September 3, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Among the animals Darwin spotted on the Galapagos Islands were the blue-footed boobies, Sula nebouxii excisa. The males show off their blue feet to potential mates with high-stepping dances.
Image: Stephen C. Quinn, AMNH. [larger].
Birds in Science
A new study published in the leading ornithological journal Ibis has uncovered that for the vast majority of bird species, there are more males than females. The discovery suggests that populations of many of the world's threatened birds could therefore be overestimated,…
clock | September 1, 2007Chaoslillith alerts:
Environmentalists Challenge Political Interference With 55 Endangered Species in 28 States, Seek to Restore 8.7 Million Acres of Protected Habitat Across the Country:
The Center for Biological Diversity today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the Department of the Interior for political interference with 55 endangered species in 28 states. The notice initiates the largest substantive legal action in the 34-year history of the Endangered Species Act.
At stake in the suit is the illegal removal of one animal from the endangered species list, the refusal to place three…