The tastiest root

There are many insects which spend part of their lives below ground, feeding on the roots of various plants. While much is known about their above-ground lives, less is known about what they do underground. Focusing on the clover root weevil (Sitona lepidus), an insect that attacks white clover (Trifolium repens) throughout Europe and the United States, Scott Johnson, Peter Gregory (Scottish Crop Research Institute, UK), and Xioxian Zhang (University of Abertay, UK) used

The damage done to Spain’s Guadalajara province by July’s fierce forest fire has been measured from space by Envisat.

The four-day blaze began on 16 July, when a barbecue in pine woodland went out of control, spread by strong winds across a very dry landscape. Eleven volunteer firefighters died tackling the blaze, which at its height threatened to engulf the nearby villages of Selas and Ablanque. Firefighters succeeded in creating a fire-break to stop its spread, backed up

A simple tank-and-siphon system for removing oil from oily water and protecting the environment is about to be launched internationally by an engineering team from the University of New South Wales.

The Extended Gravity Oil Water Separation (EGOWS) concept is an improvement on the industry-standard American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity separator that has been widely used for the last 60 years.

The API separator, originally designed for oil refineries, is not designed

“Have you ever driven down the road and seen someone mowing the lawn wearing a mask? This is an example of the relationship between allergies and mold spores in lawns. Dr. Phil Colbaugh, research plant pathologist at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Dallas, cites a common image seen in Texas throughout the warm weather months.

Colbaugh is studying the relationship between landscaping choices and practices, seasonal weather and potential exposure to allergenic m

Breaking up families can be sad, but in a new method for selecting passive livestock animals, that’s a main ingredient for better long-term productivity, according to a Purdue University geneticist.

The new breeding program, designed to get the best out of the animals, is the first major advance in classical breeding in 20 years, said William Muir of the Purdue Department of Animal Sciences. By picking less aggressive individual animals from a broad range of families, t

How fast a lineage divides may explain why some areas contain more species than others. The Cape of South Africa is one of the most floristically diverse regions on Earth and many species are found nowhere else. There are two broad explanations for high species richness in the Cape: either the Cape represents an old, relatively undisturbed area that has accumulated species richness gradually over time or the recent onset of its Mediterranean-type climate triggered rapid diversification.

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The development of bone structures in alligator eggs raised under varying oxygen concentrations creates a link to fossil records of the evolution of vertebrates and prehistoric atmospheric oxygen concentrations, according to a paper to be presented at the Earth System Processes 2 meeting in Alberta, Canada.

“Alligator eggs are an ideal self-contained unit for studying the effects of oxygen on development – they have a limited food source in the yolk and they are incubated i

The San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) reached a significant goal on Aug. 2 when scientists drilled into a seismically active section of the fault approximately two miles below the surface of the Earth.

“This is a milestone for SAFOD,” says Mark Zoback, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University. “For the first time, scientists have drilled directly into the San Andreas Fault Zone at a depth that will allow us to observe earthquakes up close for decades to come.”

One in a new generation of computer climate models that include the effects of Earth’s carbon cycle indicates there are limits to the planet’s ability to absorb increased emissions of carbon dioxide.

If current production of carbon from fossil fuels continues unabated, by the end of the century the land and oceans will be less able to take up carbon than they are today, the model indicates.

“If we maintain our current course of fossil fuel emissions or accelerat

Long-distance dispersal (LDD) of wind-borne organisms is central to quantifying risk for transgenic escape and gene flow, control of pests and invasions, persistence in fragmented landscapes and species co-existence; yet LDD remains notoriously difficult to define, measure and model. This difficulty has shaped the current paradigm that the frequency and spatial extent of LDD events are almost impossible to predict.

In the September issue of The American Naturalist, G. G. Katul (Duke Uni

Ecological specialization is an important process underlying the self-organization of ecosystems. Insight into this process leads to a better understanding of the structure and functioning of the real and complex ecosystems surrounding us. In an article in the September issue of The American Naturalist, Tineke A. Troost and colleagues address these fundamental issues, while focusing on a simple but common aquatic system.

Their research integrates three separate threads of modern ecolog

Study says Nicargua are last stop for endangered green turtles

Sea turtles that receive the highest protection in Costa Rica and other neighboring countries are dying by the thousands at the hands of unregulated – and unsustainable – commercial fishing in Nicaragua, according to a study by the Bronx Zoo based Wildlife Conservation Society.

The study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Herpetologica, found that turtles tagged in Nicaragua have only little mor

China’s rainy season has led to serious flooding in the north-east and south of the country. A joint Chinese-European team is gathering Envisat radar imagery of the developing situation to give the authorities a way to swiftly assess affected areas and plan their responses.

Summer flooding is nothing new in these regions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), though this year it is proving particularly severe, with more than 800 casualties countrywide and 2.45 million peop

Researchers have obtained further evidence that one of the oldest biological laws can also be applied to bacteria living in the sump tank reservoirs of machines in an engineering workshop in Oxford, according to a paper published in Environmental Microbiology.

Scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) in Oxford, found that the patterns of abundance and genetic diversity of bacteria living in oil-based metal-cutting fluid reservoirs were similar to those found in

After reviewing new sound recordings from the White River of Arkansas, an independent team of ornithologists has confirmed the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Working from previously unpublished data provided to them in the last few days by John Fitzpatrick and colleagues at Cornell University, ornithologists at Yale, the University of Kansas, and Florida Gulf Coast University have concluded that the bird has been indeed been detected for the first time in decades.

Teams responding to devastating flooding in Romania received assistance from orbit, with satellite images and maps of affected areas provided in near-real time following activation of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters.

Torrential rainfall across Southeast Europe has led to serious floods across Romania, described as the worst for half a century. Some 31 counties out of 42 have been affected, the worst hit being the counties of Bacau, Vrancea and Galati in Mo