Showing 20 articles starting at article 641

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Ecology: Endangered Species, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Algorithms can predict what movies or songs you might like, but they can also predict which species a predator would most likely eat. Researchers have been using machine learning to identify species interactions, and can predict which species are most likely to go extinct, so that intervention can be planned before this happens.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A team has identified a protein that modifies the cellular machinery responsible for producing cellulose, which could inform the design of more stable, cellulose-enriched materials for biofuels and other functions.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Research shows global cooling of the climate 10 million years ago led to an explosion of diversity in terrestrial orchids.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists have unveiled a new mechanism that plants use to sense temperature. This finding could lead to solutions to counteract some of the deleterious changes in plant growth, flowering and seed production due to climate change.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Financial payments made by land developers to offset their impacts on threatened species may fall short, according to new research.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Plant roots have their own thermometer to measure the temperature of the soil around them and they adjust their growth accordingly. Through extensive experiments, a team was able to demonstrate that roots have their own temperature sensing and response system. In a new study, the scientists also provide a new explanation for how roots themselves detect and react to higher temperatures. The results could help develop new approaches for plant breeding.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Indonesia, home to the largest tropical rainforest in Southeast Asia and over 17,500 islands, is a country packed with biodiversity and endangered species. However, scientists studying the region's species and ecosystems are getting banned from Indonesia, and conservation plans are being blocked. A team of conservation researchers with long-term experience in Indonesia discuss scientific suppression and other research challenges they have witnessed while working in the region. They offer suggestions for how to promote nature conservation, protect data transparency, and share research with the public in this and other regions of the world.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Extinct dwarf hippos that once roamed Madagascar lived in forests rather than open grasslands preferred by common hippos on mainland Africa. The findings suggest grasslands that now cover much of the enormous island off the eastern coast of southern Africa were a relatively recent change facilitated by people rather than a natural habitat sustained in part by these famously large vegetarians.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Research has revealed that Queensland native forestry, including timber harvesting, could actually help conserve biodiversity and mitigate climate risks.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers are using a new model to clarify why millions of years ago more animal species from Asia made the leap to the Australian continent than vice versa. The climate in which the species evolved played an important role.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have discovered some of the largest early prehistoric stone tools in Britain.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid-induced mass extinction 66 million years ago. But not all the birds alive at the time made it. Why the ancestors of modern birds lived while so many of their relatives died has been a mystery that paleontologists have been trying to solve for decades. Two new studies point to one possible factor: the differences between how modern birds and their ancient cousins molt their feathers.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Biomechanical studies on the arachnid-like front 'legs' of an extinct apex predator show that the 2-foot (60-centimeter) marine animal Anomalocaris canadensis was likely much weaker than once assumed. One of the largest animals to live during the Cambrian, it was probably agile and fast, darting after soft prey in the open water rather than pursuing hard-shelled creatures on the ocean floor.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Analysis of global tracking data for 77 species of petrel has revealed that a quarter of all plastics potentially encountered in their search for food are in remote international waters -- requiring international collaboration to address.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Amazon river dolphins are under threat from fishing and proposed new dams and dredging, research shows.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Increasing opportunities for up-close encounters with sharks and other animals are making wildlife tourism one of the fastest growing tourism sectors -- leading ecology experts to venture to one of the world's main sites to investigate the effects of tourism on endangered whale sharks. At Oslob in the Philippines, Flinders University's Southern Shark Ecology Group and Global Ecology Lab joined local Filipino researchers to measure how the daily feeding regimes for resident whale shark population might have affected their behaviour and physiology by assessing their activity and metabolic requirements.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Urea reacts extremely quickly under the conditions that existed when our planet was newly formed. This new insight furthers our understanding of how life on Earth might have begun.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A recent study shows that European bird communities have shifted northeastward in the past 30 years. These shifts are faced with obstacles such as mountain ranges and coastlines. Overall, bird communities are moving towards cooler areas but not fast enough to keep up with increasing temperatures.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists have filled a major gap in the state's fossil record -- describing the first known Jurassic vertebrate fossils in Texas. The weathered bone fragments are from the limbs and backbone of a plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, the group that includes humans, dogs and bats, has been revealed by in-depth analysis of the fossil record, showing they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short time before the dinosaurs went extinct.