Ecology & Zoology

Nature's Stock Market- Predicting Boom And Bust Ecologies

The natural world behaves a lot like the stock market, with periods of relative stability interspersed with dramatic swings in population size and competition between individuals and species. While scholars may be a long way from predicting the ins and out ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 29 2008 - 4:00pm

Tree With 45 Million Year Fossil History Shows Effects Of Ancient Climate Change

A "living fossil" tree species is helping a University of Michigan researcher understand how tropical forests responded to past climate change and how they may react to global warming in the future, according to research in the November issue of ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 30 2008 - 10:56pm

Frisky Squirrels At UC Davis To Go On Birth Control

Awww. Isn't this squirrel just so cute? You might think that now, but stare long enough at the beady eye of this Eastern Fox Squirrel (Family Sciuridae: Sciurus niger Linnaeus), and you'll see that it's actually a reproducing nightmare overr ...

Article - Jen Palmares Meadows - Nov 13 2008 - 2:27pm

Raising The Veil Of Evolution- Turning Annuals Into Perennials

Annual crops grow, blossom and die within one year. Perennials overwinter and grow again the following year. The life strategy of many annuals consists of rapid growth following germination and rapid transition to flower and seed formation, thus preventing ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 9 2008 - 5:50pm

The Revenge of the Ground Sloth

Around 10,000 years ago, in the region of the United States now known as the Appalachians, lived one of the most impressive mammals ever to inhabit North American. With a height of over 8 feet, and weighing up to 800 pounds, the giant ground sloth (Megalon ...

Blog Post - Michael Windelspecht - Nov 9 2008 - 6:21pm

Sex Life And Handed Behavior Of The Pond Snail

A third-year undergraduate student, Hayley Frend, at The University of Nottingham has had her research into the sex life of the pond snail published in the peer-reviewed journal Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.   With a grant of £1,500 from the Nuffi ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 11 2008 - 10:53pm

Fiddler Crabs Know How To Bluff

Dishonesty may be more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously thought. A team of Australian ecologists has discovered that some male fiddler crabs “lie” about their fighting ability by growing claws that look strong and powerful but are in fact w ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 11 2008 - 11:05pm

Stickleback Fish Elections Usually Come Down To Looks Too

Humans would never agree that elections sometimes come down to looks.   Science disagrees.   Some argue that Barack Obama won because he looks younger and healthier than John McCain while others contend that having twice as much money makes any candidate m ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 13 2008 - 2:14pm

Sustainable Agriculture- What Ants Knew 50 Million Years Before We Did

One of the most important developments in human civilization was the practice of sustainable agriculture, but we were not the first- ants have been doing it for over 50 million years. Just as farming helped humans become a dominant species, it has also hel ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 16 2008 - 9:57pm

Sex Change- Taking It To The Fishes

At a younger age I was completely enthralled with undersea life. Since high school biology, the difference between freshwater anatomy and marine physiology led me conduct some not so nice tests on goldfish. Hey, they were only 10 cents each, plus, I wanted ...

Article - Ashley Cox - Nov 21 2008 - 12:46pm