Robotic cameras join search for 'Holy Grail of bird-watching'
... Hopes that the ivory-billed woodpecker survived extinction were renewed last September along the Florida Panhandle when another team of scientists from Auburn and Windsor universities reported sightings and retrieved a number of audio recordings of the bird's distinctive double knock. Still, none of the evid...Birth rate, competition are major players in hominid extinctions
...nd years ago, they suffered a gradual decrease and extinction from about 30 to 26 thousand years ago. "Neandertal was extremely adept culturally," says Jablonski. "They had big brains, a wide variety of tools and were extremely successful as active, aggressive hunters of large game. We see evidence of hunting......ty patterns by modeling speciation, dispersal, and extinction of species as random, stochastic events. A new key review in the journal Ecography by Gotelli and McGill now provides an excellent overview of the current status of neutral models, ranging from their origins in statistical theory, clarifying their r...DNA gives new perspectives to understand the mysteries of nature
Scientific breakthrough: What caused the extinction of the woolly rhinoceros ten thousand years ago fr...of the Mediterranean in the south? What caused the extinction of the mammoth while other ice age mammals like the musk ox just barely survived to present day. A n...Female Antarctic seals give cold shoulder to local males
...have helped them recover so successfully from near extinction only 100 years ago. This could in turn affect how ...hange." Antarctic fur seals were nearly hunted to extinction in the 17th and 18th Centuries by commercial sealers. There numbers are now estimated at between 2 ...Cambodian vulture nests offer hope for species
...cies in Asia that have been driven to the brink of extinction across its entire range due to Diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug used for cattle that is highly toxic to vultures. Diclofenac has lead to global population declines as high as 99 percent in slender-billed and other vulture species. Diclofenac is...Climate change only one symptom of a stressed planet Earth
... The Earth is now in the midst of its sixth great extinction event. "The IPCC report, with its interdisciplinary approach to climate change, is a clear example of how the Earth needs to be considered as a coupled system in order to understand global environmental change," says Noone. "The study of the Eart...Paleontologists discover most primitive primate skeleton
... to 55 million years ago in the period between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the first appearance of a number of undisputed members of the modern orders of mammals. "Plesiadapiforms have long been one of the most controversial groups in mammalian phylogeny," said Michael J. Novacek, curator of paleontol...New studies find amazing concentration of species unique to East African mountains
...ecies, seventy-one are classified as threatened by extinction by the IUCN Red List. There are likely more species to be discovered in the mountains. One of the most exciting recent discoveries was that of a new genus of monkey--the "Highland Mangabey" (Rungwecebus kipunji). A further 15 new animals have recen...Why are lions not as big as elephants?
...reveal how this relationship might have led to the extinction of large carnivores in the past and why our larges...humans and have been shown to have higher rates of extinction in the fossil record than smaller species even prior to the evolution of man. Carnivores at the uppe...Large size crucial for Amazon forest reserves
...effects of reserve size and isolation on the local extinction and colonization of species. The species-specific estimates of effects of area and isolation on extinction and colonization processes permit prediction of effects of future fragmentation on bird communities ...Saving endangered whales at no cost
...s been slow to recover from past exploitation, and extinction remains a threat. The whale is virtually extinct in Europe, but a small population of about 350 individuals remains on the east coast of North America. A leading threat to the species is lethal entanglement by fishing gear: Photographic evidence indi...Study questions the 'biodiversity hotspot' approach to wildlife conservation
...the countless species of plants and animals facing extinction worldwide, according to a new study by scientists from Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Writing in the Dec. 15 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers s...Small, smaller, smallest -- The plight of the vaquita
...e been and are being taken to prevent the vaquitas extinction and promote its recovery" In a recent paper published in Mammal Review, the authors from Mexico and Canada reviewed the scientific issues, described previous and ongoing conservation efforts, and identified remaining obstacles, established priorities...Reef sharks threatened by overfishing
...arks are effectively on a fast track to ecological extinction becoming so rare that they will no longer play their part in the ecology and food web of the reef, says Robbins, the studys lead author. It also suggests that immediate and substantial reductions in fishing pressure will be needed to give threaten......ructure, whereas normally selective forces lead to extinction of intermediate genotypes. Furthermore, these bacteria are distributed globally, demonstrating that Typhi has spread inter-continentally on multiple occasions. The authors propose that the unusual population structure of Typhi reflects long-term car...A human taste for rarity spells disaster for endangered species
...loitation and rarity that drives a species into an extinction vortex. This phenomenon, the authors explain, res...at low population densities, which increases their extinction risk. The authors' model now shows that humans can trigger an "anthropogenic Allee effect" in rare s...Dramatic shift from simple to complex marine ecosystems occurred 250M years ago at mass extinction
CHICAGO--The earth experienced its biggest mass extinction about 250 million years ago, an event that wiped o...of land species. New research shows that this mass extinction did more than eliminate species: it fundamentally changed the basic ecology of the world's oceans. ...Varied diet of early hominid casts doubt on extinction theory, says Colorado U study
...elieved, clouding the notion that it was driven to extinction by its picky eating habits as the African continen...mer. The findings cast doubt on the idea that its extinction more than 1 million years ago was linked to its diet, he said. Paranthropus was part of a line o...Decoded sea urchin genome shows surprising relationship to humans
...sea lilies, and sea cucumbers. Following the great extinction of animals 250 million years ago, the modern sea urchins emerged as dominant echinoderm species. The purple sea urchin emerged in the North Pacific Ocean during a rapid burst of speciation and diversification 15-20 million years ago. There was great...