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Viral TikTok star Emmanuel—an emu who gained a vast online following thanks to videos shared by his owner at Knuckle Bump Farms in Florida—has reportedly fallen sick with avian influenza.View the full article -
Liz Truss, the new U.K. prime minister, isn't a fan of solar farms. In 2014, when she was environment secretary, she described rows of panels arranged in a field to capture energy from the sun as a "blight on the landscape." Eight years later, as a candidate for the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, she said they were a threat to U.K. food supplies. Now her government seems intent on banning new solar farms by redefining some of the most promising sites for building them as prime farmland.View the full article
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The border wall snaking along the US-Mexican border was built to keep migrants out—but conservationists say the towering metal barrier also stops wildlife from moving between natural habitats.View the full article
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Global wildlife populations have fallen by nearly 70% in less than 50 years, conservationists warned as they called for immediate action to halt the nature and climate crises.View the full article
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Vertebrate genomes are repositories for retrovirus code that was deposited into germ line as inherited endogenous retroviruses during evolution. Researchers from Uppsala University and Princeton University now provide new findings about retroviral establishment and distribution among Darwin's finches. The findings are being published in Nature Communications.View the full article
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When you think of friendship, what comes to mind? Is it a phone conversation that lasts late into the night? Watching a movie and sharing a pizza? Enjoying some laughs over a beer? Friendship is a central part of the human experience. Our stories, our songs and our conversations are fabrics woven with threads of friendship.View the full article
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Wildlife populations plunge 69% since 1970: WWF
PhysOrg posted a topic in Bird Research in the Media
Wild populations of monitored animal species have plummeted nearly 70 percent in the last 50 years, according to a landmark assessment released Thursday that highlights "devastating" losses to nature due to human activity.View the full article -
A new study by researchers at the University of Washington shows that losing a particular group of endangered animals—those that eat fruit and help disperse the seeds of trees and other plants—could severely disrupt seed-dispersal networks in the Atlantic Forest, a shrinking stretch of tropical forest and critical biodiversity hotspot on the coast of Brazil.View the full article
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A newly released State of the Birds report for the United States reveals a tale of two trends, one hopeful, one dire. Long-term trends of waterfowl show strong increases where investments in wetland conservation have improved conditions for birds and people. But data show birds in the United States are declining overall in every other habitat—forests, grasslands, deserts, and oceans.View the full article
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A new analysis of old data suggests that the endangered erect-crested penguin's bizarre nesting habits—rejecting the first egg they lay—is because they can't feed two chicks, and the second, larger egg has a better chance of success. Lloyd Davis of the University of Otago in New Zealand and colleagues describe these findings and their implications for penguin conservation in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 12, 2022.View the full article
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A specialist in plastic waste management, artists, musicians, computer scientists, and a poet-ornithologist who advocates for Black people in nature are among this year's 25 winners of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's prestigious fellowships known as "genius grants" that honor discipline-bending and society-changing people whose work offers inspiration and insight.View the full article
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Fallow land is effective in protecting wild birds—but only if it remains undisturbed for at least two years, according to a study by Julia Staggenborg and Nils Anthes from the Institute for Evolution and Ecology at the University of Tübingen. Published in Conservation Letters, the study evaluates 143 previous research papers, making it one of the most comprehensive studies to date in Europe on the protection of farmland bird species.View the full article
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Many prey species have eyespot markings that are believed to ward off predators. But how, and does a predator's angle of approach make them less effective? Dr. Hannah Rowland and Dr. John Skelhorn write for Frontiers about their research, published today in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, into how these protective patterns on moth wings convince birds it's not worth attacking the insects.View the full article
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In 1868, the naturalist Charles Darwin wrote that differences in plumage coloration between male and female birds of the same species were likely the result of sexual selection: Female birds—he used the peahen and peacock as an example—seemed to prefer the showiest males. A new study of thrushes offers evidence that another dynamic is at play, and helps explain why this phenomenon, called sexual dichromatism, is not universal among birds, its authors say.View the full article
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Dramatic decline in Adélie penguins near Mawson
PhysOrg posted a topic in Bird Research in the Media
Long-term monitoring has revealed a 43% decline in a large Adélie penguin population off the East Antarctic coast, near Mawson research station, over the past decade.View the full article -
International trade in animals not regulated by multilateral agreements is putting them under increasing threat. More than three times the number of unregulated animal species are being imported into the United States compared to the number of regulated species.View the full article
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The sight of hundreds of thousands of bats streaming from their roost at dusk is one of nature's great spectacles. Swarms can be so dense they resemble rising smoke at a distance. But the aerial antics of the birds of prey that hunt them are just as astonishing.View the full article
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A giant kangaroo that once roamed on four legs through remote forests in the Papua New Guinea Highlands may have survived as recently as 20,000 years ago—long after large-bodied megafauna on mainland Australia went extinct, new research indicates.View the full article
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Global demand for exotic pets is increasing, a trend partly caused by social media and a shift from physical pet stores to online marketplaces.View the full article
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For as long as the Salton Sea has faced the threat of ecological collapse, some local residents and environmentalists have advocated a radical cure for the deteriorating lake: a large infusion of ocean water.View the full article
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In 2018, 49,000 people in Japan were ordered to evacuate their homes as the strongest typhoon in 25 years, Typhoon Jebi, was on course to make landfall. Among those heading for shelter were my colleague Ken Yoda, professor of behavior and evolution, and his team, who were doing their annual field season studying a type of seabird called streaked shearwaters.View the full article
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Pinyon-juniper woodlands host unique wildlife and wildlife habitat, as well as areas for hiking and outdoor recreation. They are also part of a web of healthy ecosystems that, together, help to balance water availability, storage and runoff; and prevent erosion. A new study published in Global Ecology and Biogeography and led by University of Nevada, Reno researcher Robert Shriver sheds new light on what is happening in pinyon-juniper woodlands across the West. The research is unique, in that it looks at both tree mortality, as well as recruitment, or new seedlings and saplings, to calculate a "net effect." And, the news isn't necessarily good, particularly in warmer, drier locations.View the full article
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In June of 2020, Stephen Gosser, a self-described "diehard birder," was out in the woods of Western Pennsylvania when he thought he heard the song of the elusive and strikingly beautiful scarlet tanager. The blood-red bird with black wings and tail is a favorite among birders for both its beauty and rarity, as the birds prefer to stay hidden high in the forest canopy.View the full article
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Research from Charles Darwin University (CDU) has identified opportunistic feeding behaviors of magpie geese across the Top End, with new solutions to improve management of the iconic bird as the Territory heads into peak mango season.View the full article
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Scientists have shed light on the vast distances traveled by vultures—with several birds regularly commuting over 1,200 km in week-long excursions.View the full article
