Ecology & Zoology

Plants somehow respond to environmental cues and dangers, especially virulent pathogens, despite a lack of eyes or ears. How is that possible? It's thanks to hundreds of membrane proteins that can sense microbes or other stresses, but only a small po ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 20 2018 - 12:05pm

Don't Trust Government To Deliver Welfare Standards For Chickens

Claims of secret meetings and manipulation of the policy agenda. A split in government ranks, and threats to withdraw from a national review. It’s all just part and parcel of the latest round in the development of Australian animal welfare standards and g ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 11 2018 - 6:46pm

Journalists Continue To Hope, But There Is No Beecopalypse Or Colony Collapse Disorder

USDA has reported that honeybees are down 4 percent for 2017, which set off another flurry of Beepocalypse claims by corporate journalists who desperately want to believe that modern science is killing us. What gets left out of the story is that the 4 perc ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2018 - 10:10am

New York Government Sues To Be Allowed To Deplete More Fish

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman is clearly on the campaign trail for his next job, because even in a state that is lawsuit happy like New York he is setting records for most pointless emails about investigations and lawsuits. But now he says ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 26 2018 - 11:43am

The Northern White Rhino Should Stay Extinct

A geriatric semi-captive rhino died in Kenya recently. “Sudan”, a 45-year-old northern white rhino was put to sleep as vets decided, after months of ill health, that his condition had deteriorated to the point where the levels of pain and quality of life ...

Article - The Conversation - Apr 6 2018 - 5:30am

Aggressive Moths More Resilient To Climate Change

More competitive animal species, with males that compete intensively for mates, might be more resilient to the effects of climate change, according to a paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Sexual selection can provide a buffer against climate chan ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 16 2018 - 1:49pm

Moving The Goal Posts On Bees: Now Their Microbiome Is At Risk

The mix of bacteria (microbiome) of bee bread, the long-term food supply stored within a hive for young bees, is now at risk, according to a new estimate. The scholars are blaming modern monoculture farming, commercial forestry and gardeners could be makin ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 19 2018 - 5:51am

Dogs Can Detect Laurel Wilt Disease In Avocado Trees

If a study has 229 trials and there are only 12 false positives, that is a good result. ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 10 2018 - 2:05pm

Monarch Butterflies: Carbon Dioxide Reduces Medicinal Properties Of Milkweed Plants That Protect Therm From Disease

Mounting levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide reduce the medicinal properties of milkweed plants that protect monarch butterflies from disease, according to a recent experiment. ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 10 2018 - 1:26pm

Great Tits Have Same Impulse Control As Chimpanzees

Impulse control is associated with larger cognitively advanced animals like humans and other primates, but there are exceptions, like ravens. Now a recent study shows that the great tit, a common European songbird, has a tremendous capacity for self-contro ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 30 2018 - 10:45am