Climate change plus human pressure caused large mammal extinctions in late Pleistocene
...xtinct, serious consequences for many large animal species that weathered the Pleistocene extinction could be...ng to result in inevitable extinction of many more species and unpredictable ecosystem changes," he said. The authors' warnings are based on a review of previo...Cigarette smoke causes breaks in DNA and defects to a cell's chromosomes, Pitt study finds
... instability is most likely due to reactive oxygen species that form as the cell is exposed to the various chemicals in smoke. Treating the smoke-exposed cells with different antioxidants, agents that block formation of reactive oxygen species, prevented most occurrences of anaphase bridge formation and sign...Scientists sequence genome of kind of organism central to biosphere's carbon cycle
...e in California, gives insight into how the diatom species Thalassiosira pseudonana prospers in the marine en...work also shed additional light on how this diatom species uses fats, or lipids, that it is known to store in huge amounts. "Learning the actual pathways they...New research shows plants can shuffle and paste gene pieces to generate genetic diversity
...e known to flourish. Recent studies indicate that species evolve through the generation of new genes and/or gene variants that help a population adapt to a changing environment, for example, or to inhabit a different niche. Why are transposable elements so successful? Some think that they are simpl...Study: Emission of smog ingredients from trees is increasing rapidly
...Ten years from now, woodlands may have more of one species than another, and you could call that natural change. But here in New Jersey, the mix of trees is affected by the population of deer, and they are entirely under our control. In other parts of the country, it is the fire-suppression policies." Notin...A test case for DNA barcodes to identify species
...ied," the need for a fast and easy way to identify species has never been greater. With too few specialists t...dly and accurately identify individuals from known species and from an entirely new species. In the open access journal, PLoS Biology, Paul Hebert and colleagu...Hidden diversity: DNA 'barcoding' reveals a common butterfly is actually 10 different species
...ood plant and ecosystem. However, as many as six species can live in the same place, which strongly suggest...ersity. "It raises the questions of how many other species out there are really multiple species like this one and what that might mean to wildlife conservatio...DNA barcode finds four new bird species
...e task of identifying Earth's estimated 10 million species has daunted biologists for centuries - fewer than ... two Canadian institutions have uncovered four new species of North American birds. The findings are reported in the September 28 issue of Public Library of Sc...Researchers devise potent new tools to curb ivory poaching
..., to help conservationists find ways to keep those species from extinction. Wasser and his colleagues have t...tection dogs to find the droppings from endangered species over large remote areas. The dogs can track up to 18 species at once at distances greater than a qua...Punching the timeclock of life
...t, the more likely it is to reproduce, forcing the species to change, or evolve, over time. Longo's theory, in contrast, hinges on a process called "group selection," believed by most scientists to be wrong because it proposes that selection happens at the group level rather than the individual . ...Tracing genes, biologists show lizard migration is traced to Florida
...aid Kolbe. "We discovered that once an introduced species gets established in an area it can become a source...ntroduced populations was to see if the introduced species are having an impact on the Floridian ecosystem. It has been noted, Kolbe said, that Anolis sagre...Rice finds 'on-off switch' for buckyball toxicity
... disruption of the cell membrane by oxygen radical species generated by the buckyballs. Colvin and her colleagues emphasize that the study only fills in part of the puzzle regarding fullerene toxicity. For example, because cytotoxic studies look only at cells in culture, they don't tell scientists what happe......ana and Canada). The find may also represent a new species or hold clues to migration patterns of these animals. Once airlifted and transported by truck to the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, museum paleontologists will work to unlock the evidence within the fos...Master of antimalarial resistance
... resistance to the drug chloroquine in the malaria species Plasmodium falciparum, may be responsible for resistance to several other antimalarial drugs as well, a team of researchers reports in the 24 September issue of the journal Molecular Cell. The discovery of pfcrt's "central role" in malarial drug resi...Researchers ID chlorophyll-regulating gene
...ent. The researchers disabled the PIF1 gene in the species Arabidopsis thaliana, a mustard plant, and compare... Primitive plants, such as mosses and some species of fern, thrive in moist, humid environments where their spores can stay safely above the soil surfa...New fossil sheds light on old mystery
...ell-preserved fossil of a newly discovered reptile species may explain the function of the extremely long nec...of the extremely long neck that characterizes some species of this group, including Tanystropheus longobardicus, which was discovered in the 1850s. About twice...New hydrothermal vents discovered as 'South Pacific Odyssey' research begins
...st in the Lau Basin, we can expect to discover new species there--species that perhaps will hold new and unique secrets to share with us," Fisher said. "The microbes at sites like these--thriving in super-hot temperatures--likely have their own remarkable biochemical pathways and capabilities that we are on......s proposals to list them as a federally threatened species have been rejected due to a lack of data that documents declines caused by human related threats. ...NSF awards 22 new projects for plant genome research
...ae, a group of plants that includes important crop species such as lettuce, sunflower and artichoke, as well as noxious weeds such as Russian thistle. This work should shed light on the processes that shaped the genomes of these plants during domestication and identify the traits that lead to weediness. And ...NSF and AIBS sign cooperative agreement for NEON project office
...eases, and the causes and consequences of invasive species all result from complex interactions between human, natural and physical systems," said Elizabeth Blood, program director in NSF's division of biological infrastructure, which funded the award. "These systems change over time and cross all levels of...