Monthly Archives: August 2018

Logging site slash removal may be boon for wild bees in managed forests

New research suggests the removal of timber harvest residue during harvesting may be a boon for wild bees, an important step toward better understanding the planet's top group of pollinators.

The findings are important because bees are the driving force behind $100 billion in global economic impact each year, with insect pollinators enhancing the reproduction of...

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Zombie gene protects against cancer — in elephants

An estimated 17 percent of humans worldwide die from cancer, but less than five percent of captive elephants -- who also live for about 70 years, and have about 100 times as many potentially cancerous cells as humans -- die from the disease.

Three years ago, research teams from the University of Chicago and the University...

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Snake fungal disease alters skin microbiome in eastern Massasaugas

In the first study of its kind, researchers characterized the skin microbiome of a population of free-ranging snakes to begin to understand how the animals' environmental microbial community may promote disease resistance as well as how it may be disrupted by infection.

The study, which was recently published in Scientific Reports, a Nature research journal, focused...

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How MERS Coronavirus evolves to infect different species

In the past 15 years, two outbreaks of severe respiratory disease were caused by coronaviruses transmitted from animals to humans. In 2003, SARS-CoV (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) spread from civets to infect more than 8,000 people, leading to a year-long global public health emergency. MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus), first identified in 2012,...

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Fishing quotas upended by nuclear DNA analysis

For decades, mitochondrial DNA analysis has been the dominant method used to make decisions about fishing quotas, culling, hunting quotas, or translocating animals from one population of a threatened species to another.

A study published in Scientific Reports shows that, while mitochondrial DNA analysis is very useful for a number of applications, analysing genetic differences for...

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Illinois' imperiled eastern massasauga rattlesnakes retain genetic diversity

Habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and the loss of genetic diversity are the three main factors driving the extinction of many wild species, and the few eastern massasauga rattlesnakes remaining in Illinois have certainly suffered two of the three. A long-term study of these snakes reveals, however, that -- despite their alarming decline in numbers --...

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