Ecology & Zoology

200 Plus: Bowhead Whales May Hold Key To Long Life

Bowhead whales can live to be over 200 years and show little evidence of the age-related disease that are apparent in humans in our senior years. There may soon by answers why, thanks to a complete bowhead whale genome and identify key differences compare ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2015 - 7:16pm

Winter Hibernation Energy Drain: How White-Nose Syndrome Kills Bats

Researchers have developed a detailed explanation of how white-nose syndrome is killing bats in parts of North America- the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans makes bats die by increasing the amount of energy they use during winter hibernation. Researche ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 6 2015 - 11:35am

The Invasion Of The Intersex Demon Shrimp

Up close and personal with the demon shrimp. Amaia Green Etxabe- University of Portsmouth By Alex Ford,University of Portsmouth Demon vs killer shrimp sounds like the latest CGI movie to come out of Hollywood. But in fact these are two particularly pernic ...

Article - The Conversation - Jan 8 2015 - 2:30pm

Hope For Headshaking In Horses

Headshaking in horses, a neuropathic facial pain syndrome, often leaves affected horses impossible to ride and dangerous to handle, and can result in euthanasia. It affects between 10,000 and 20,000 animals in the UK each year and there are no consistently ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 11 2015 - 9:00am

Recreational Fishing Linked To Mediterranean Environmental Harm

Up to 10% of adults living in developed countries fish for food and recreation and a new paper finds that in the Mediterranean Sea that could be up to 10% of the total production of fisheries- a large amount that is basically un-regulated outside buying a ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 12 2015 - 1:30pm

Forget Spidey Sense, Fish Sixth Sense Uses Flow Signals And Hydrodynamic Antennae

A team of scientists has identified how a "sixth sense" in fish allows them to detect flows of water, which helps resolve a long-standing mystery about how these aquatic creatures respond to their environment. The work in Physical Review Letters ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 12 2015 - 5:27pm

Go It Alone? Sex And The Single Primrose

Sex or no sex?  If you want to be healthier as a species over time, sexual reproduction is the way to go, according to a new study.  It's a long-debated topic among biologists- some argue that sexual reproduction is superior because species don' ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 18 2015 - 12:10pm

Deep-Diving Marine Mammals Get Heart Arrhythmias

Dolphins and seals have had eons to adapt to aquatic life, but they can still be taxed while pushing the boundaries, according to a paper in Nature Communications which found a surprisingly high frequency of heart arrhythmias in bottlenose dolphins and We ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 17 2015 - 12:19pm

Brown-Headed Cowbirds And The Not-So-Great Escape

By: Leigh Cooper,   Inside Science (Inside Science) – Despite their agility in flight, birds often find themselves unable to escape vehicles – a conundrum that puzzles scientists. To solve the mystery, a new study brought brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ...

Article - Inside Science - Feb 4 2015 - 10:32am

Functional Gene Transfer: How A Sea Slug Came To Photosynthesize Like A Plant

A brilliant-green sea slug can live for months at a time "feeding" on sunlight like a plant and now scientists have the first direct evidence that its chromosomes have some genes that come from the algae it eats.  Those genes help sustain photosy ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 3 2015 - 4:27pm