March 16, 2008, 9:46 PM CT

Turtle nesting threatened by logging practices

Endangered sea turtles are victims of sloppy logging practices in the west central African country Gabon, as per a research studyled by William Laurance, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The study will be published online in the journal Oryx later this month.

Sea turtle nesting attempts are impeded by lost or abandoned logs that accumulate along the countrys coastal beaches. Logs are floated downriver from forests to coastal lumberyards in the Gabonese Republic, but some float out to sea and then wash ashore, where they form large tangles.

In an aerial survey, Laurances teamco-coordinated by J. Michael Fay of the Wildlife Conservation Societycounted more than 11,000 logs along Gabons beaches. In the most important area for turtle nesting, Pongara Beach, more than one-third of the beach was blocked by logs. In some places, researchers found up to 247 logs per kilometer of beach.

Its really sad to see what the logs are doing to the turtles, Laurance said. Sea turtles move very slowly on land. When a log blocks their path, sometimes they just give up and return to the sea. In other cases they lay their eggs too close to the waterline, where the eggs are killed by seawater. Turtles also become entangled among the logs and die......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:12:56 GMT

Cool Animal: Red Panda

This Red Panda has stolen my heart, and while not being strictly "cool," they're so darn cute that I must share. According to my research, their red and white markings are designed to blend in with their moss and lichen-filled environment. That soft, oddly red-orange fur covers the entirety of their body, including the pads of their feet, and they wrap those fluffy striped tails around their bodies to keep warm. In general, they are super-fuzzy, and their bright red color and bear-like appearance makes them cool in my book.

Visit the Red Panda Fact Sheet from the National Zoological Park for more info. Posted by: Meieli Sawyer Detoni      Read more     Source

March 11, 2008, 10:42 PM CT

Why flamingos are in the pink of health

A University of Leicester ecologist is setting out to discover why flamingos are so in the pink of health - in the poo!

Dr David Harper, of the Department of Biology at the University of Leicester, has been studying lesser flamingos for nine years.

His research has been carried out in the lakes of East Africa but new investigations he has carried out for the first time in India have- by his own admission given him rather a shock.

He said: Lesser flamingos are graceful, majestic, birds. They are not the ones you can see at the zoo, because they are very difficult to maintain in captivity, but the ones that you see on television in their hundreds of thousands, crowded into a few specialist lakes in East Africa.

I have been studying them, on these lakes in Kenya and Tanzania, but earlier this month I returned from India, having carried out a preliminary investigation of the population there, and I had rather a shock.

In Africa the lesser flamingo, with its beautiful pink plumage, stands for everything that is pure and pristine. A number of of the lakes where it feeds, occasionally with a million birds crowded together when the food is good, are almost untouched by mans activities.

In complete contrast to Africa, where lesser flamingos only live on inland soda lakes and are never seen at the coast, in India I watched 20,000 lesser flamingos happily feeding on tidal mudflats in front of an oil refinery, a petrochemical plant and creeks bringing untreated waste from millions of people in the slums of Bombay......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 11, 2008, 10:04 PM CT

Harlequin frog in remote region of Colombia

Bogot, Colombia, March 11, 2008After 14 years without having been seen, several young researchers supported by the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP), have rediscovered the Carrikeri Harlequin Frog (Atelopus carrikeri) in a remote mountainous region in Colombia.

The critically endangered Carrikeri Harelquin frog was recently rediscovered by the Project Atelopus team in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountains in Colombias Magdalena department. Colombia is one of the worlds richest countries in amphibian diversity with more than 583 species. Unfortunately, in the past several years, there has been a decline in amphibian populations particularly in higher elevations in Colombia.

By discovering that the endangered frog still exists, we hope it will show how important conservation is, said Luis Alberto Rueda, scientist for the Project Atelopus team who led the expedition. And we plan to continue with our research so that we can better assist in helping to ensure that this frog will not become extinct.

In addition to Rueda, who is part of the GECOH (Grupo de Ecofisiologa, Comportamiento y Herpetologia) of the University of the Andes, the individuals who are part of the Atelopus team of scientist include: Oswaldo Cortes, Giovanni Chaves, Erika Salazar, Jose Gil, Sergio Pulido, Astrid Nossa, Fabian Tavera, Jenny Gallo, Ximena Villagrn and Nidia Rodriguez members of the Ecodiversidad Colombia Foundation (www.ecodiversidad.org)......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 11, 2008, 9:54 PM CT

Arctic climate models in polar bear decision

The pending federal decision about whether to protect the polar bear as a threatened species is as much about climate science as it is about climate change.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is currently considering a proposal to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, a proposal largely based on anticipated habitat loss in a warming Arctic.

Climate models - mathematical representations of the natural processes affecting climate - factored heavily in the scientific information requested by the FWS to guide its official recommendation, which was due Jan. 9. While researchers have used such models for decades, their use in this decision demonstrates the growing recognition of the value of modeling to predict future climate conditions and inform policymaking.

Eric DeWeaver, the physical climatologist on the International Polar Bear Science Team and a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reviewed existing climate models to identify those that best represent observed changes in sea ice - a crucial component of polar bear habitat - and which are expected to best predict future conditions in the Arctic.

His findings, detailed in a U.S. Geological Survey report provided to the FWS, were applied in subsequent reports to predict how Arctic sea ice changes over the next 100 years will likely affect polar bear populations......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 11, 2008, 9:53 PM CT

Female katydids' mates

Katydid (or didnt she?) respond to the mating call of her suitors. As per researchers at the University of Missouri, one species of katydid may owe its ecological success and expanded habitat range to the ability of male katydids to adjust their mating calls to attract females.

Males of the katydid species Neoconocephalus triops, which can be found from Peru to Missouri, produce calls to attract females for mating that change with the seasons. The males summer calls are much faster than their winter calls. Johannes Schul, MU associate professor of biological sciences, observed that females were attracted only by a specific speed of the calls and this preference changed with temperature.

Warm females preferred much faster calls than cold females, Schul said. The fast summer calls attracted females only at high temperatures and the slow winter calls only at lower temperatures. Thus, during the winter, females prefer cool guys, and in the summer they like them hot.

As per Schul, male calls exhibit substantial flexibility. At equal temperatures, summer males, or those that mature during the summer, produce calls with a higher pulse rate than winter males, or those that mature in late winter/early spring. The research team tested the katydids preferences by placing females on a spherical treadmill and tracking the speed and accuracy of their responses to recordings of male calls......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 11, 2008, 5:28 AM CT

Mystery behind the strongest creature in the world

The strongest creature in the world, the Hercules Beetle, has a colour-changing trick that researchers have long sought to understand. Research published recently, Tuesday, 11 March, in the New Journal of Physics, details an investigation into the structure of the species peculiar protective shell which could aid design of intelligent materials.

The Hercules Beetle is remarkable, not only for its strength, able to carry up to 850 times its own weight, the protective outgrowth of the insects exoskeleton, aka its shell, also changes from green to black as its surrounding atmosphere gets more humid.

Scientists from the University of Namur in Belgium have used the latest imaging techniques to study the shell of the beetle - a scanning electronic microscope to determine the structure responsible for the colour and a spectrophotometer to analyze how the light interacts with this structure.

The light interferes with the structure to produce the green colour of the shell. When water penetrates through the widely-open porous layers, it destroys the interferences phenomenon leading to a black colouration.

The scientists used dry specimen of the beetles shell to test in laboratory conditions.

The beetle, commonly found in the rainforests of Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil, is still rather mysterious though. As eventhough dry specimen of the shell could be relied on to change when humid conditions were introduced, the living specie that scientists also had in the lab were not as consistent......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 9, 2008, 6:02 PM CT

Wandering Albatrosses Follow Their Nose

The first study of how individual wandering albatrosses find food shows that the birds rely heavily on their sense of smell. The birds can pick up a scent from several miles away, U.S. and French scientists have found.

"This is the first time anyone has looked at the odor-tracking behavior of individual birds in the wild using remote techniques," said Gabrielle Nevitt, professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis and an author on the study with UC Davis graduate student Marcel Losekoot of the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Henri Weimerskirch of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.

Wandering albatrosses fly for thousands of miles across the ocean, commonly gliding a few feet above sea level. Floating carrion, particularly squid, make up a large part of their diet.

Albatrosses nesting on Possession Island in the southwestern Indian Ocean were fitted with GPS receivers that recorded their exact position every 10 seconds and stomach temperature gauges that noted every meal. When the birds returned to land after a foraging trip, the scientists removed the equipment and downloaded the data.

They observed that the birds commonly flew across the wind, which allows them to cross plumes of scent drifting downwind and is also the best strategy for energy-efficient soaring......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 9, 2008, 4:34 PM CT

Photograph depicts wolverine in California

Forest Service scientists believe an Oregon State University graduate student working on a cooperative project with the agencys Pacific Southwest Research station on the Tahoe National Forest has photographed a wolverine, an animal whose presence has not been confirmed in California since the 1920s.

Katie Moriarty, a wildlife biology student, was conducting research on another carnivore called the American marten when a remote-controlled camera she set photographed the animal on February 28, 2008. Forest Service scientists who are experts at detecting rare carnivores believe the photographed animal is a wolverine.

The North American wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family. Adult males weigh 26 to 40 pounds, while females are 17 to 26 pounds. It resembles a small bear, with a bushy tail and broad head. Its diet includes carrion, small animals, birds, insects and berries.

U.S. populations are found largely in the Northern Cascades in Washington, and Northern Rockies in Montana and Idaho. The nearest known resident population is about 900 miles north of the Tahoe National Forest in Northern Washington.

Attempts have been made for decades to photograph wolverines in California, according to Bill Zielinski, a Forest Service scientist with the Pacific Southwest Research Station and an expert at detecting wolverines, marten and fisher. He said periodic sightings have occurred, but never scientifically confirmed using detection methods that produce verifiable evidence......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

March 7, 2008, 5:23 AM CT

Stevens chemists identify compounds to lure nutria

A 10-pound rodent pest called nutria ravaging southern wetlands in the US, which has been particularly damaging to the marshland ecology in the Mississippi Delta following Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, may have finally met its match thanks to molecular science that includes the work of Professor Athula B. Attygalle, an expert in molecular chemistry and mass-spectrometry based at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and a team of researchers from Cornell University and University of Iowa.

The biology of the nutria species allows it to reproduce at rapid speed, making it an unwieldy animal to control if released into the wild. A female nutria averages about five young per litter, but can birth as a number of as 13 at a time. A female can breed again within two days after giving birth, meaning one nutria can have up to three litters per year.

To get a sense of their productivity, 20 nutria brought to Louisiana in the 1930s bred an estimated 20 million animals within two decades, as per a wildlife group in Maryland that tracks nutria data, quoted in a recent report by Louisiana journalist Chris Kirkham.

Eventhough nutria were brought to all parts of the country, said Kirkhams report , warm weather in Louisiana has boosted their numbers. Already under pressure from saltwater intrusion, the marshes also have to deal with the nutria and their voracious appetite for the vital marsh roots that keep wetlands intact......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source