Ecology & Zoology

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

Turnabout: There Is A Meat Eating Plant In Canada

It's quite common for the circle of life to have animals eating plants in order to become bigger food for other animals and then animals die and become food for organisms in the soil but nature has flipped the script again.  ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 10 2019 - 1:55pm

Plastic-Eating Caterpillars Study Called Into Question By Independent Look At The Data And Methods

In April 2017, journalists promoted a claim about plastic bag eating caterpillars which led to sensationalistic coverage in worldwide media. They could eat the sea-sized floating islands of plastic bags that don't actually exist. The science community ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 9 2019 - 11:58am

Living Fossil: Elephant Shrew

Meet one of the most adorable of all the Living Fossil species, the Elephant shrew, Macroscelides proboscideus, one of 15 species of this order. These small, quadrupedal, insectivorous mammals strongly resemble rodents or opossums with their scaly tails, ...

Article - Heidi Henderson - Jul 22 2019 - 2:35am

Protoeaster Nodosus: Charmers Of The Indo-Pacific

  If you're lucky enough to swim in the warm, shallow waters of the Indo-Pacific region, you may encounter one of the most charming of all the sea stars, the Protoeaster nodosus. These beauties are commonly known as Horned Sea Stars or, my personal f ...

Article - Heidi Henderson - Jul 20 2019 - 9:32am

More 'Intensive' Beekeeping Doesn't Lead To More Bee Diseases

The number one killer of honeybees is not pesticides, despite expensive marketing campaigns by environmental groups trying to claim that is the case (1), and it isn't even the very lucrative industry of trucking bees around to engage in artificial pol ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jul 17 2019 - 10:09am

Horseshoe Crabs: Xiphosura Arthropods

Horseshoe crabs are classic living fossils. These marine and brackish water arthropods of the order Xiphosura are slowly evolving, conservative taxa. ...

Article - Heidi Henderson - Jul 24 2019 - 6:11pm

Has Your Relationship Been Disrupted? Blame Climate Change

In a warming climate change scenario, higher mean temperatures may have an impact on plants and animals by disrupting their mutually beneficial relationship: The pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris), for example, is sensitive to rising temperatures and will ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 24 2019 - 4:29pm

Lion King: In Reality It's More Game Of Thrones Than The Circle Of Life

Last week saw the release of the rebooted The Lion King, an attempt to capitalize on the billion-dollar success of the 1994 original. With a star-studded cast, the reboot closely follows the plot of the first movie (spoilers to follow, obviously). Mufasa, ...

Article - The Conversation - Jul 30 2019 - 5:00am