Ecology & Zoology

Male Honeybees Inject Toxins During Sex That Cause Temporary Blindness

Though bees can live for years, their mating period is brief so male honeybees use a bee version of Flunitrazepam (Rohypnol- colloquially roofies) to improve their chances of being the successful dad. They inject vision-imparing toxins during sex that caus ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2019 - 10:13am

Ecologists Say Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments Give Birds Anorexia

A team of ecologists exposed Zonotrichia leucophrys (white-crowned sparrows) to the seed treatment known as imidacloprid (in the class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids) and say the measured weight mass declined in just a few hours, which led to the ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 12 2019 - 7:33pm

Palorchestes Azael: Wombat Ancestor Weighed 2,000 Lbs.

When we think of marsupials (carrying young in a pouch) they are small and cute (opossum, wombat) to a little more menacing (kangaroos in boxing gloves) but nothing like  Palorchestid marsupials, an extinct group of Australian megafauna, who were large, ha ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 15 2019 - 1:39pm

How Flawed Is Environmental Law? Ask The Paiute Cutthroat Trout After 8 Years Of Environmental Groups Blocking Its Restoration

Eight years ago I wrote about how environmental lobbyists working for environmental lawyer groups kept the federal government in such a tail-chasing frenzy nothing could ever really get accomplished. My frustration was over the Paiute cutthroat trout, a ra ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Oct 2 2019 - 11:59am

How Varroa Mites Exploit Beekeeping

There has been some ongoing concern about bee colonies, even fears of an impending "colony collapse disorder", but both the fears and the causes have been misplaced, recent studies have shown. Rather than being a mysterious effect due to pesticid ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 2 2019 - 1:39pm

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder Was Caused By Varroa Mites- These Scientists Are Helping Find A Biological Solution

A decade ago there was concern about a mass die-off of bees, and while they rebounded nicely, it shone a light on a problem that has occurred since recordkeeping of bees first began over a thousand years ago. Mass die-offs are common. While it was once bel ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 4 2019 - 4:42pm

Wrangel Island And The Last Of The Woolly Mammoths In 2,000 BC

Global warming did once kill off a once-common species, but it was the transition from the last Ice Age to the current warming period, starting 15,000 years ago. That well-known species was the woolly mammoth but it managed to hang on until 2,000 B.C. Its ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 7 2019 - 10:16am

The Ecology Of Vampire Bats- And Why They Switched From Rainforest Mammals To Cattle

Vampire bats that live in Latin America have switched to blood meals from cattle instead of from rainforest mammals, ecological physiologists report in the Journal of Comparative Physiology B. They say that the conversion of rainforests ecosystems into liv ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 8 2019 - 10:18pm

Falcons See Prey At Twice The Speed Of Humans- And What That Means For All Bird Care

You may be aware that film runs at 25 frames per second because humans will then not see it as individual images. These 'blinks per second' are measured in Hertz and some humans can see up to 60 Hz. You may not sleep well if you have a light blin ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2019 - 11:50am

Release The Kraken Genome!

Sailors have told tales of giant tentacled sea monsters for millennia. In ancient times, it was the Kraken. In more recent work, Jules Verne delighted and terrified the public while reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. The monstrous Architeuthis dux, the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 17 2020 - 12:30pm