News leads from the USDA FS Southern Research Station

The following are leads for stories on ongoing Forest Service research to restore habitat for the Louisiana pine snake, red-cockaded woodpecker, cerulean warbler, Indiana bat, American eel, and North American freshwater mussels.

Louisiana Pine Snake – Louisiana pine snake, a species of conservation concern, is associated with the longleaf pine forests of the West Gulf Coastal Plain. Craig Rudolph uses radiotelemetr

Comparative studies of leaf evolution in the California Chaparral

In an article published in the May 2004 issue of The American Naturalist, David D. Ackerly (Stanford University) compares the evolution of twelve lineages of the California Chaparral.

Which came first–trait or environment? This question lies at the heart of the study of adaptation by natural selection. In Mediterranean-type climates, many woody plants have small, tough, evergreen leaves (dubbed ’scleroph

It is virtually impossible for a prospective Magellanic penguin mother to find or build a soft spot to lay her eggs. So it turns out that her eggs come with extra-thick shells to withstand being laid on hard surfaces and survive being kicked around during penguin fights.

But it takes a lot of extra calcium to produce thicker shells, and a penguin can’t just run to the corner drugstore to pick up some calcium-rich antacid tablets. New research led by a University of Washington biologist

Future potential for the production of new wonder drugs – including anti-cancer agents – from marine animals and plants, is under threat according to biodiversity expert Professor Carlo Heip, speaking at the European marine science and ocean technology conference EurOCEAN 2004 in Galway, today.

According to Professor Heip, marine biodiversity – the richness of life in the sea – is being undermined by overfishing, pollution, the introduction of exotic or alien species from other countries, by

If rising global temperatures cause the ice streams of Western Antarctica to break up, major cities and agricultural heartlands the world over would be submerged. Researchers from the University of Leeds’ School of Geography are set to embark on a £1m, three-year project to find out exactly how stable they are.

The project, the biggest of its kind to date, will drill up to 2.2km down into the Rutford ice stream in Western Antarctica to determine its stability and see how close it is to break

If imported fire ants dreamed – and who knows if they do or don’t – then a tiny protozoa could be their worst nightmare.

Even better news: Texas A&M University System entomologists have completed a survey that detected the protozoa in fire ant colonies in approximately 120 of the 157 Texas counties where they have been found.

Once a colony is infected, the protozoa debilitates the queen, the workers and even the larvae. The disease shortens their the ants’ life sp

Loggerhead sea turtles may be getting sick because of environmental exposure to toxic organic chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (or PCBs) and pesticides, according to a new study led by Duke University, with collaboration from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and other organizations.

Released on April 21 in the online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives, the study found that turtles with higher concentrations of contaminants had poorer health. T

Seas and oceans are a vital resource for Europe and the world, particularly in terms of fishing and extracting minerals. But our oceans are now under intense pressure from over-exploitation and more than ever need to be managed in a sustainable way. To help ensure the protection and sustainable use of marine resources, 500 leading scientists, policy makers and other stakeholders will meet today, and for three days, at the EUROCEAN2004 conference in Galway (Ireland). The Commission will present lates

Lablab, a drought-tolerant, summer annual legume native to the tropics, could be a valuable addition to the Texas forage repertoire, according to a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station scientist.

“An accelerated lablab breeding and evaluation program will start for this summer to provide improved cultivars for both livestock and wildlife management systems in Texas,” said Dr. Ray Smith, Experiment Station legume breeder based at the Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Ext

During research carried out in the Netherlands, Marilia Santos Silva discovered that some tobacco plants die if a virus infects them, whereas others survive.

A virus can quickly and completely infect a plant by spreading through the plant’s vascular system. This is analogous to human viruses spreading through the circulatory system in the human body. Santos Silva discovered that the cowpea mosaic virus could not penetrate the vascular system of some tobacco plants. In the future

IRD scientists have revealed, in an article just published in Nature, that the cooling event known in the Northern Hemisphere as the Younger Dryas (about 12 000 years B.P.) was expressed in the Pacific by the absence of any South Pacific Convergence Zone activity and the movement of tropical waters closer to the Equator. This observation shows the interaction which occurs between the low and high latitudes and provides boundaries relevant for building ocean-atmosphere climatic models. Geochemical ana

A family of pesticides used increasingly nationwide in place of more heavily restricted organophosphate pesticides has accumulated in many creek sediments to levels that are toxic to freshwater bottom dwellers, according to a new study.

The pesticides, called pyrethroids (pie-REE-throids), have been considered safe for fish and other organisms that live in the water column, but no one has studied their effect on sediment-dwelling organisms, such as midge larvae or shrimp-like amphipods, sai

A “dead zone,” like the Stephen King novel of the same name, is a place where life can end. The horror meister probably wasn’t thinking about fish.

Dead zones are areas of the ocean where marine life – especially large quantities of fish – mysteriously die and where future marine life may never have a chance.

One well-known dead zone is near the Mississippi River delta area, where the nearby Sabine and Atchafalaya Rivers flow into southern Louisiana. Texas A&M University at G

Scientists corral, band and release over 300 threatened flamingoes for research

With South America’s Mars-like Altiplano region serving as a surreal back-drop, a group of scientists from the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently braved frigid temperatures, high winds, and altitudes of over 11,000 feet to fit bands on 300 threatened James’ flamingoes chicks. Working in Eduardo Avaroa Faunal Reserve in southern Bolivia, the banding effort is part of a multi-natio

Dolphins off the coast of East Africa are exposed to a number of threats, like indirect catching, hunting, and environmental impact. In her dissertation at the Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Sweden, Eva Stensland has studied behavioral ecology in Indo-Pacific bottlenose and humpback dolphins, off Zanzibar, Tanzania.

For the last decade dolphin tourism around the southern coast of Zanzibar has replaced the previous hunting of dolphins, where they were used as bait for shark fis

A team of expert marine biologists and chemists has carried out research which proves for the first time that oceans and shores are contaminated with microscopic fragments and fibres of plastic.

Eight scientists from the Universities of Southampton and Plymouth and the Plymouth-based Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science have today (Friday 7 May) published their findings in the prestigious international journal Science.

The article ’Lost at Sea: Where Is All the Plasti