Jump to content
Ornithology Exchange (brought to you by the Ornithological Council)

PhysOrg

| RSS Feeds
  • Posts

    11,681
  • Joined

Posts posted by PhysOrg

  1. Occurring in the genomes of most living organisms, transposable elements (TEs) are short DNA sequences that have the ability change their position. By means of various molecular mechanisms—so-called copy-paste or cut-and-paste—they can 'jump' to another place within the genome. The genes contained in transposable elements are therefore known as jumping genes. Depending on the position into which they insert in the genome, this can have negative consequences for the host—the organism lending its genome which they inhabit. Host species thus evolved protection mechanisms to restrict the activity of TEs. However, TEs have found ways to circumvent these protection mechanisms.

    View the full article

  2. Why have some plant species changed pollinators in their evolution? An international team of researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Suzhou (China) studied the reproductive systems of three sister species pairs, where one species is pollinated by insects and the other by hummingbirds. Mechanisms were discovered that explain the switch from insect to bird pollination. The study has now appeared in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

    View the full article

  3. Recent advances in wildlife tracking techniques have enabled large-scale data collection on the detailed movements of many animal species. The application of these approaches has revealed new insights into how animals use their environment, interact with one another, and respond to environmental and anthropogenic change—details that were previously impossible to explore.

    View the full article

  4. In the yards behind the slaughterhouses—also called abattoirs—of Ethiopia, an ecological shift is unfolding that has echoes of similar crises all over the world. Species with a clear and effective ecological role are in serious decline, and the less-specialized but more aggressive species that have moved in to take their place are not only less effective, but are harmful to their ecosystem which, in this case, includes humans.

    View the full article

  5. A team of researchers from Dongguan University of Technology and the Royal Veterinary College has found that female barn owls use their tails in unexpected ways. In their paper published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface, the group describes their analytical drag model using high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFDs).

    View the full article

  6. Predators kill prey and prey attempt to avoid being killed by predators; the former obviously reduces the number of prey but, according to a new study, fear (avoiding being killed) can itself halve the population size of prey in 5 years or less, by so impairing parental investment and care fewer than half as many young reach adulthood and those that do are permanently handicapped.

    View the full article

  7. Nagoya University physiologists have furthered understanding of the bird neural circuitry that allows them to distinguish where a specific sound is coming from. Their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, could help scientists understand the basics of how mammalianbrains compute the time difference between a single sound arriving at each individual ear, known as 'interaural time difference." This ability is an integral component of sound localization.

    View the full article

×
×
  • Create New...