Late last year, I described evidence suggesting that urban and rural song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) have different "personalities," or suites of behaviors that show repeatability within individuals. Recently, similar patterns were found for an Old World relative, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus), providing further support for the hypothesis that rural and urban habitats select for different types of individuals.

A group of studies says that salmon raised in man-made hatcheries can harm wild salmon through competition for food and habitat. Salmon, which survived millions of years of evolution, are in danger from...salmon.

The studies provide new evidence that fast-growing hatchery fish compete with wild fish for food and habitat in the ocean as well as in the rivers where they return to spawn and even raises questions about whether the ocean can supply enough food to support future increases in hatchery fish while still sustaining wild salmon. 

My very first mentor in cephalopod research was Eric Hochberg at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. I think I was seventeen when he welcomed me into the museum's secret catacombs (at least, that's how I thought of them) of preserved specimens. Awe washed over me as I stared at shelves upon shelves of jarred octopuses.

Eric introduced me to the California pygmy octopus, Octopus micropyrsus, which would proceed to fascinate me for the rest of my undergraduate career. I saw more of them in jars than I ever did alive, though I kept doggedly digging through kelp holdfasts trying to find them. Reclusive little beasts.

If bugs have their own Tori Amos, she is likely writing about sexual conflict and how reproduction exists at all given that it can be so costly, especially to females. One aspect of this conflict concerns how females respond to increased mating events that are of more benefit to males than to themselves. 

New work discusses how some males, instead of mating conventionally, take the awkward step of piercing and penetrating their mate through her body wall. This mating behavior is known as traumatic insemination and it potentially comes at a great physiological cost to the female.

One of the most common topics here on Anthrophysis is urbanization, a process that influences, among other things, habitat structure, resource availability, temperatures and other microclimate variables, species interactions, animal behavior, biodiversity, and reproductive success. Urban environments tend to have fewer vertebrate species and greater levels of homogeneity. In birds--one of the best-studied groups in this context--it appears that urban areas favor generalist species, those with a broad environmental tolerance, and those with a larger relative brain size.

Giant flea-like animals, possibly the oldest of their type ever discovered, bit creatures much larger than they are 165 million years ago - and lived to talk about it.

These flea-like animals, were similar to modern fleas but 10 times the size of a flea you might find crawling on your family dog – with a proboscis and an extra-painful bite to match.  Dinosaurs were likely not amused.

"In a conservation funding climate that is characterized by insufficient resources, and where donors...are increasingly demanding that return on investment be demonstrated, conservation fencing decisions cannot continue to be based solely on ecological intuition." This is the assessment of a group of Australian collaborators seeking a practical method of identifying the best sites for erecting conservation fences.