Ecology & Zoology

Le Rouge Et Le Noir: Why The Black Dahlia Gets Its Color

How some dahlia s, white, yellow, red or purple, get their color is well known, but the  molecular mechanism behind the black dahlia has been a mystery. A new study shows that the distinctive black-red coloring is based on an increased accumulation of ant ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 24 2012 - 11:51am

Galapagos Tortoises Get Around

The Galapagos giant tortoise, the largest living species of tortoise (and in the top 10 reptiles), likes to move around.  We know this because scientists with the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and the Charles Darwin Foundation have used GPS technol ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 27 2012 - 4:30pm

Paternal 'Voice' Recognition- How Even Tiny Animals Avoid Inbreeding

Paternal recognition, being able to identify males from your father's line, is one way that mammals avoid inbreeding- some can do this is through recognizing the calls of paternal kin. This was thought to occur only in large-brained animals having co ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 30 2012 - 8:58am

Shoot Apical Meristem: Plant Organ Development Breakthrough

Plants grow upward from a tip of undifferentiated tissue called the shoot apical meristem. As the tip extends, stem cells at the center of the meristem divide and increase in numbers and the cells on the periphery differentiate to form plant organs, such ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2012 - 7:00am

Old School: Small Patches Of Native Plants Boost Pollination In Large Orchards

Scientists have reaffirmed that pollinator services of large agriculture fields can be enhanced with a simple cost-effective measure- the creation of small patches of native plants within fruit orchards. ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 5 2012 - 12:30pm

Angiosperms- Understanding Darwin's 'Abominable Mystery'

What Charles Darwin famously called "an abominable mystery", the apparent sudden appearance and rapid spread of flowering plants in the fossil record, is the topic of a paper which proposes new evidence that flowering plants- angiosperms- evolve ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 9 2012 - 1:00pm

Plant Growth In Zero Gravity

Plant growth patterns are influenced by a variety of stimuli, including gravity. Terrestrial plant roots exhibit characteristic behaviors called 'waving' and 'skewing' and those are thought to be gravity-dependent events.  Not so, acco ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 7 2012 - 4:30am

Frankincense Resin Secretory System Analyzed Just In Time For Christmas

If you are in the Western world, you likely know the tale of the Three Wise Men who brought gifts for the baby Jesus. The value of gold is still obvious today, but while people have heard of myrrh and frankincense, most don't know what they were for, ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 10 2012 - 12:00pm

Pauline Avibella: Tiny New Species Discovered

Researchers have announced discovery of a species of animal related to crabs, lobsters and shrimps that is new to science. ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 12 2012 - 11:40am

Nycticebus In Borneo:: New Species Of Primate, Same Toxic Bite

The slow loris (Nycticebus) is a primate genus closely related to the lemur and found across South East Asia, from Bangladesh and China's Yunnan province to the island of Borneo. The slow loris is rare amongst primates for having a toxic bite, and is ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2012 - 1:22am