A collaboration between astrophysicists and ecologists at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) is helping to monitor rare and endangered species and stop poaching. Astrophysical software and techniques are applied to thermal infrared imagery captured by drones to automatically detect and identify animals -- even at night, when most poaching activity occurs. The drones can survey...
Ancient sea worm eats, poops and leaves behind evidence of Cambrian biodiversity
In the Mackenzie Mountains of Canada, University of Kansas researcher Julien Kimmig has uncovered details of the Cambrian food web on an ocean floor that once played home to a scattering of bivalved arthropods, hyoliths and trilobites.
The 500-million-year-old poop of a primordial, predatory sea worm tells their story.
A new paper appearing today in the journal...
Global warming can turn monarch butterflies' favorite food into poison
LSU researchers have discovered a new relationship between climate change, monarch butterflies and milkweed plants. It turns out that warming temperatures don't just affect the monarch, Danaus plexippus, directly, but also affect this butterfly by potentially turning its favorite plant food into a poison.
Bret Elderd, associate professor in the LSU Department of Biological Sciences, and...
Spa therapy helps Japan's snow monkeys cope with the cold
Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, have been enjoying regular baths in the hot spring at Jigokudani in Japan for decades -- and have even become a popular tourist attraction. A team of researchers led by Rafaela Takeshita of Kyoto University in Japan have now published the first study to scientifically validate the benefits...
Digital life team creates animated 3-D models of sea turtles from live specimens
The Digital Life team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, creators of an online catalog of high-resolution, full-color 3D models of living organisms, announce today that they have released two new, online full-color animated models of a loggerhead and a green sea turtle through a collaboration with sea turtle rescue and research institutions.
In collaboration with...
Extinct monitor lizard had four eyes, fossil evidence shows
Researchers reporting in Current Biology on April 2 have evidence that an extinct species of monitor lizard had four eyes, a first among known jawed vertebrates. Today, only the jawless lampreys have four eyes.
The third and fourth eyes refer to pineal and parapineal organs, eye-like photosensory structures on the top of the head that play...