Dwarf mistletoe reveals its sexual secrets
...g of these parasitic plants start to grow on a new tree host after being eaten and deposited by a bird, co...rasites suck water, minerals and sugars from their tree hosts, stunting their growth and in some cases killing the trees. These include economically importa...NASA finds trees and insect outbreaks affect carbon dioxide levels
...leaves and other foliage parts. The findings about tree planting and insect control are the subjects of tw...y Potter. Other co-authors of the paper related to tree planting, include Matthew Fladeland, also of NASA Ames, and Steven Klooster, Vanessa Genovese and Ma...Research team discovers first evidence of microbes living in a rock glacier
...of microbial activity in a rock glacier high above tree line in the Rocky Mountains, a barren environment previously thought to be devoid of life. Found in an intermittent stream draining from the glacier, the evidence includes traces of dissolved organic material and high levels of nitrates, said Mark ...Hummingbirds lose power at high altitudes
... PNAS paper also includes the most complete family tree of hummingbirds ever produced, representing 75 of ... you have to account for the phylogeny the family tree that shows you how species are related to one another," said coauthor Jimmy A. McGuire, assistant pr...University of Chicago researchers discovered that humans are a 'privileged' evolutionary lineage
...idence that humans occupy a unique position in the tree of life. Simply put, evolution has been working very hard to produce us humans."...Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, January 2005
FORENSICS The telltale tree . . . Logs confiscated by police at a Texas murder scene and the work of a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory may help put a killer behind bars. Using a technique called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, Madhavi Martin obtained "chemic...Ecologists see the primeval wood for the trees
...n woodland in Europe today, so ecologists analyse tree pollen, several thousands of years old, preserved in lakes and peat bogs to reconstruct primeval forest. But the analysis is open to interpretation, as Dr Mitchell explains: "As every hay fever sufferer knows, pollen blows about in the wind and this ...Experimental radar provides 3-D forest view
...We were able to extract the difference between the tree canopy and the forest floor and from knowing tree height, we can use specially-developed algorithms to estimate forest biomass with a reasonable degre...Biodiversity hotspots identify conservation priorities
...demics), about a third of the world's oak and pine tree species, and over 1,500 vertebrate species (including 134 endemic species). Among many charismatic flagship species in the region is the volcano rabbit or zacatuche (Romerolagus diazi), one of the world's smallest rabbits, which is found only in the ...Family trees of ancient bacteria reveal evolutionary moves
...olution of Cyanobacteria, Blank drew up a backbone tree using multiple genes from whole genome sequences. Additional species were added to the tree using ribosomal RNA genes. Morphological characters, for instance, the presence or absence of a she...New species of coral discovered off southern California
...on against disease and evil spirits. The Christmas tree coral was first noticed by the researchers during dives for surveys of rockfishes on deep rocky banks about 40 miles off the coast, west of Los Angeles. Many of the deepwater reefs in southern California harbor remarkably healthy communities of cora...Falling ants glide back to trunk to avoid dangers of forest floor
...and then made this nice little cascade back to the tree trunk," said Yanoviak via phone from Iquitos. "Tha...called Cephalotes atratus are able to land on the tree trunk and climb back up, as compared to a mere 5 percent that would be expected to land on the trunk...Falling canopy ants glide home
...e ground, glide backwards to the trunk of the same tree with incredible accuracy. This is the first publi...kers got stuck in my hand while I was sitting in a tree crown. When I brushed them off, they appeared to glide rather than fall haphazardly," Yanoviak recal...Tree-ring data reveals multiyear droughts unlike any in recent memory
...modern water systems experiences." Scientists used tree rings, which indicate how much a tree grows each year, to determine when forests in the Columbia River Basin experienced drought. Tree gro...Scientists will discuss remarkable advances in whale research at the annual meeting of AAAS
...acean ''family trees.'' ''The shape of that family tree tells us a lot about how the population has changed over time,'' he explains. ''The parts of the tree that bulge out mean that the population was bigger and doing well at that point in the past. The par......e ability to read genes to counting the rings of a tree but looking at the history of an entire population, not just an individual. Knowing the history of populations is critically important to managing their future, says Palumbi, especially for populations like these whales that have figured out how to...New science sheds light on rebuilding fisheries
...le understand that you can cut down a 100 year old tree in five minutes, but that it takes 100 years to grow a new one. Old fish are the same way, they accumulate over decades, even centuries, and in a flash they're gone we can remove them much faster than they can rebuild." Evolution in Our Lifetimes...New dinosaur raptor found; First in Southern Hemisphere
...ke bones or muscles, or even behavior. We find the tree structure that is most compatible with whatever da... Neuqun. Counting Neuquenraptor, the raptor family tree now has eleven official branches, including Velociraptor, Utahraptor, and pint-sized Microraptor. Al......erns on the moths the team were able to mimic real tree characteristics and identify which pattern combinations were the most successful. Professor Innes Cuthill said: "The rate at which mealworms were eaten by birds gives a measure of how effective each combination was at preventing detection by a predat...... The fingerprints showed where the native dominant tree 'ohia' (Metrosideros polymorpha) has been taken ov...ities. On Kilauea Volcano, the native Metrosideros tree typically has a low concentration of nitrogen in its leaves ( .6% to .8%), while the invading Canary...