Ecology & Zoology

Sweet Viceroy Butterflies Turn Sour To Stop Predators

Limenitus archippus, the viceroy butterfly is a mimic, modeling its orange-and-black colors after the queen butterfly, a bug that tastes so disgusting predators have learned not to eat it or anything that looks like it, including viceroys. The apparent dep ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 26 2019 - 8:00am

Amiskwia Sagittiformis: Weird Chimera Worm May Finally Get Its Place In The Tree Of Life

Ribbon worm? Arrow worm? Since the discovery of its fossil over a century ago, paleontologists have speculated about what branch of evolution Amiskwia sagittiformis was on. Charles Doolittle Walcott, who first described it, compared it to the a group of oc ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 26 2019 - 9:47am

Megachile Pluto: Wallace's Giant Bee Was Never Extinct, It Was Just Hard To Find

Megachile pluto, Wallace's giant bee, is the world's largest, with a wingspan more than 2.5 inches. Though it should be easy enough to see, some had believed it was extinct because it hadn't been seen by western scientists since 1981. In Jan ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 28 2019 - 4:27pm

World's Oldest Semen As Viable As Sperm From Last Year

Semen stored in a laboratory in Sydney has been defrosted and successfully used to impregnate 34 Merino ewes, with the resulting live birth rate as high sperm frozen for just 12 months. The authors believe the sperm used is the oldest viable stored semen ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 17 2019 - 6:39pm

Darwin's Raw Dog Food Ironically Uses No Biological Science And Will Poison Your Pet

Everyone in 2019 likes to claim their beliefs are grounded in evidence.  The most anti-science groups, from the journalism department at New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to Greenpeace, still claim to have evidence-based decision-ma ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Aug 12 2019 - 9:19am

Leishmaniosis: Dog To Dog Transmission Without Biting Reported

Canine leishmaniosis is a potentially fatal infection caused by the parasite Leishmania infantum, carried by the female sand fly and transmitted in its bite. It is zoonotic, so can be passed on to people but dogs have been known to pick up the infection a ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 5 2019 - 5:39pm

High Extinction Rate Does NOT Mean Imminent Mass Extinction- Truth Behind The Climate Slogan

Yes we are getting extinctions at a far higher rate than normal. But it is nowhere near a mass extinction yet. Just the start of a slide towards one that may play out towards the end of this century and in the 22nd century. Also we are not risking a major ...

Article - Robert Walker - May 1 2019 - 3:06pm

'Loser Effect' After Being Defeated Evolves Separate From Fighting Ability

The "loser effect"- avoiding violence after losing a fight- evolves independently of any change in fighting ability, according to results after scientists studied male broad-horned flour beetles, which regularly fight over females, to see how lon ...

Article - News Staff - May 28 2019 - 6:56pm

Plant Sex: Striped Maple Trees Often Flip Sexes, While Females Are More Likely To Die

In only 10 percent of flowering plant species do female and male flowers exist on separate plants, where they typically remain female or male throughout their lifetime. The other 90 percent combine both sexes in one plant. ...

Article - News Staff - May 29 2019 - 9:03am

Water-Filled Elephant Tracks Are Predator-Free Highways For Frogs

Researchers doing observations in Myanmar's Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary found that rain-filled tracks of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) were filled with frog egg masses and tadpoles. The tracks can persist for a year or more and provide temporary ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 4 2019 - 12:27pm