Monthly Archives: November 2018

'Old-fashioned fieldwork' puts new frog species on the map

Months of old-fashioned scientific fieldwork -- more than 2,000 surveys of chirping frog calls, hundreds of photos of individual frogs and tiny tissue samples taken from them -- has helped define the range and unique characteristics of the recently discovered Atlantic Coast leopard frog.

A study published this month in the journal PLOS ONE pinpointed the...

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Drying Canadian wetland drives muskrat decline

Indigenous communities have used muskrat fur to make clothing for generations and the animal's meat is considered a seasonal delicacy. But it turns out decades of trapping are not primarily responsible for the animal's decline across North America.

Instead, 46 years of satellite imagery show the Peace-Athabasca Delta has been drying since the 1970s, significantly reducing...

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For ants, unity is strength — and health

When a pathogen enters their colony, ants change their behavior to avoid the outbreak of disease. In this way, they protect the queen, brood and young workers from becoming ill. These results, from a study carried out in collaboration between the groups of Sylvia Cremer at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria)...

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Gigantic mammal 'cousin' discovered

During the Triassic period (252-201 million years ago) mammal-like reptiles called therapsids co-existed with ancestors to dinosaurs, crocodiles, mammals, pterosaurs, turtles, frogs, and lizards. One group of therapsids are the dicynodonts. Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden, together with colleagues in Poland, have discovered fossils from a new genus of gigantic dicynodont. The new species...

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