When sitting on a nest to incubate eggs, a bird is physically stuck and most vulnerable to attacks of any kind, so coping without stress and other significant costs is important. For Common Loons, black flies are a common blood-feeding pest and can cause nest abandonment and decreased fledging rates. This has impacts on not...
Do bats adapt to gates at abandoned mines?
Abandoned mines can serve as roost sites for bats, but because the mines pose serious risks to humans, officials often install gates at their entrances. With more than 80,000 abandoned mines in the southwestern United States, these subterranean habitats are important to bat survival as human disturbances from recreation and other activities at natural caves...
Bees love blue fluorescent light, and not just any wavelength will do
Researchers at Oregon State University have learned that a specific wavelength range of blue fluorescent light set bees abuzz.
The research is important because bees have a nearly $15 billion dollar impact on the U.S. economy -- almost 100 commercial crops would vanish without bees to transfer the pollen grains needed for reproduction.
"The blue fluorescence just...
Human immune response in the fruit fly
Washington State University researchers have seen how both humans and fruit flies deploy a protein that plays a critical role in their immune responses to invading bacteria. The discovery gives scientists a model organism with which to explore ways to boost the human immune system and create infection-fighting medicines.
Naturally, there are enormous differences between humans...
Lion conservation research can be bolstered by input from a wide-range of professionals
The conservation of lions, while maintaining the well-being of people that live around them, is a complex problem that should be addressed by a wide-range of professionals working together, suggests a new review published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Rather than focusing solely on human-lion interaction, factors such as the environment,...
Factor important for ZIKA Virus host species restriction
Princeton University researchers Qiang Ding, Alexander Ploss, and colleagues have identified one of the mechanisms by which ZIKA virus (ZIKV) circumvents immune control to replicate in human cells. The paper detailing this work appears June 18, 2018 in PNAS.
In 2013, and again in 2015, the world witnessed devastating outbreaks of ZIKV, a hitherto obscure member...