Are animals as irrational as humans?
... choice in both economics and biology predict that preferences will be rational, or consistent across contexts, as a result of being motivated by self interest or, in the case of animals, reproductive success. Yet many studies report that when making decisions people often take shortcuts, using cognitive heurist...Stanford biologist working to restore native forests to Hawaii
... restoring forest on grazing land and the cultural preferences of ranchers. By integrating these factors into a "decision analysis" model, Goldstein hopes to determine what tradeoffs will make koa forest restoration an attractive option. Selling conservation Daily knows that for landowners to buy into conserva...An invasion of cheats: The evolution of worthless nuptial gifts
...copulation, researchers have now shown that female preferences can be exploited by males who are "cheating" on th...arise though males' sensory exploitation of female preferences for nutritious gifts. Natasha R. LeBas and Leon R. Hockham: "An Invasion of Cheats: The Evolution of...Flocking together: Study shows how animal groups find their way
...iments by introducing two subgroups with differing preferences about which direction to move. The overall group c...ision even though individuals are not aware of the preferences of others or whether they are in a majority or minority. Couzin, who divides his time between Prince...Cricket's finicky mating behavior boosts biodiversity
...ity. "Animals with nervous systems and brains have preferences and can make choices," says Tamra Mendelson, an evolutionary biologist at Lehigh. "Changes in these preferences and choices appear to drive speciation. "That raises the question: Can something seemingly so indivi...Children's taste sensitivity and food choices influenced by taste gene
...ts, accounting for individual differences in taste preferences and food selection, report a team of researchers f...sweet-tasting foods, as well as why taste and food preferences appear to change with age. "The sense of taste is an important determinant of what children eat. We...Amino acids in nectar enhance butterfly fecundity: A long awaited link
...tly nectar amino acid production by plants, nectar preferences of and fitness benefits to butterflies. This article by Jovanne Mevi-Schtz and Andreas Erhardt will appear in the April 2005 issue of The American Naturalist. ...Rhesus monkeys can assess the visual perspective of others when competing for food
...ive more experiments, the monkeys revealed similar preferences for an experimenter who could not see them, rather than one who could. Most notably, they reliably stole food from a competitor with only his eyes averted, rather than one facing perfectly forward, as well as an experimenter with a piece of cardboard...Highly adaptable genome in gut bacterium key to intestinal health
...utrient landscape and quickly changing its dietary preferences so that it can use whatever is most plentiful. In fact, it can call on a larger repertoire of genes related to carbohydrate digestion than any other microbe we know of." Next, the researchers will use germ-free mice to investigate how B. theta inter...Earth's services in peril, report concludes
...ncluded, and they should explore changing consumer preferences and new business opportunities created by the demands of a changing world....Study in Royal Society journal on holly as an indicator of climate change
...viduals prefer the habitat of their youth. Habitat preferences can assist the formation of two species out of one as it fosters matings between individuals specialised on the same environment. The paper considers a model where initially an unspecialised species equally exploits two different habitats. During the...Study in Royal Society journal on world's only horned rodent
Biology Letters MHC-assortative facial preferences in humans by Dr SC Roberts, Dr AC Little, Professor L Gosling, Mr BC Jones, Professor DI Perrett, Mr V Carter and Professor M Petrie As choosing a genetically dissimilar mate is possible using smell, we tested whether faces display the same informat...Environment and genetic influences play different roles in boys' and girls' gender-role behavior
...etics seems to play a larger role in little girls' preferences for dolls over trucks, according to a study published in the July/August 2005 issue of the journal Child Development. The study, conducted by researchers from King's College London and City University in London, also found that the shared environmen...Study reveals new information on the direct and indirect mate choice in lekking animals
...election on male traits. This is when females have preferences for "external traits" determined by male competition. One suggested example is when females prefer to mate at certain sites that males fight over, claimed to be important in lekking animals. However, a new report published in the August 2005 issue o...MBL researchers probe how an ancient microbe thrives and evolves without sex
...the same surrounding sequences, which may indicate preferences for specific locations. Indeed, many of them appear to be located at the tip of the chromosome in an area called the telomere, different from the gene-rich portions of the genome, whereas most species tend to have DNA transposons dispersed throughout...The ecological effects of the Chernobyl disaster
... area, as well as examining age, sex, and nesting preferences to determine the amounts and types of radiation accumulating in the birds. In the presentation, Gaschak will discuss how quantities of 90Sr and 137Cs vary with feeding, nesting and migration habits. Timothy Mousseau will present "Consequences of radi...Native plant eaters have gourmet palates
... of the study, they took a broader view of feeding preferences by feeding 57 native and 15 exotic plant species c...data from the scientific literature on the feeding preferences of terrestrial herbivores, including three native grasshoppers and one native and four exotic slugs....'Patient-choice' C-section rate rises 36%: HealthGrades study
...nducting this study, so consumers are making their preferences known." The rise of 36.6 percent in the nation's "patient-choice" C-section rate represents an increase from 1.9 percent to 2.6 percent of deliveries in the years 2001, 2002 and 2003 for women with no history of C-sections. The study covers deliverie...Satellite technology allows scientists to track warm sharks in cold polar seas
...mulate a larger dataset on the sharks' habitat and preferences with a greater accuracy than we've been able to do before." Seasonal migrations To tag salmon sharks, Block and her colleagues traveled to Prince William Sound in the Gulf of Alaska during the summer. There, in calm fjords, they encountered acrobat...Multiple genes permit closely related fish species to mix and match their color vision
...e prominent role of nuptual coloring in the mating preferences of these species, the cichlids offer a unique opportunity to study how color vision can undergo change in rapidly evolving species. For example, because color plays a significant role in mate choice, differences in color vision could greatly influenc...