Surprisingly, rugby can be used to understand honest signaling
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0PLoS One “Detecting Deception in Movement: The Case of the Side-Step in Rugby“
A Minor Post, Articles, CommunicationAquatic food chains have gotten longer and less diverse over evolutionary time
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0PLos One “Shorter Food Chain Length in Ancient Lakes: Evidence from a Global Synthesis” What I wonder is: what is the mechanism by which these communities evolve away from their initial “short-and-wide” configuration?
A Minor Post, Articles, Community Ecology, PredationMesocosm experiment considers the effects of human modification of community structure
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0PLoS One “Effects of Trophic Skewing of Species Richness on Ecosystem Functioning in a Diverse Marine Community“
A Minor Post, Articles, Community EcologyNew study on birds uses remote tracking to provide detailed behavioral data
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0PLoS One “From Sensor Data to Animal Behaviour: An Oystercatcher Example” Miniaturization is going to make observing previously-unobservable animal behaviors possible.
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Experiments (General)Big felines have lots of commensal fans
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0Science Now “Pumas Leave Table Scraps” This is an interesting story because it suggests that Pumas maintain strong ecological interaction strengths with not just their prey but also all these commensal species. This finding makes it a lot harder to discount top predators as simply consumers whose only role is in depleting prey populations: for Read More
A Minor Post, Commensalism, Community Ecology, Predation, WebA comparison of behaviorally-based animal diseases reminds us of the kingdom in which we belong
Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0The New York Times “Our Animal Natures” I find it particularly interesting how domesticated animals find themselves in some of the same behavioral traps (addiction, self-harm, obsessive-compulsiveness) as domesticated humans. This certainly suggests that mismatch theory has some validity.
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Mismatch theoryNew comprehensive data synthesis favors a pluralistic explanation for Eurasian mammoth extinction
Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0The Christian Science Monitor “What killed the woolly mammoth? A whole bunch of things, say scientists“
A Minor Post, Articles, Extinction, Fossil DataThe Australian Government blocks coal mine to protect the Great Barrier Reef
Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0Science “Fears of Damage to Great Barrier Reef Delay Mine“
A Minor Post, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Habitat Destruction, Sustainable EnergyNow if you could only keep your cytosine methylated you might live forever
Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0ScienceNow “Aging Is Recorded in Our Genes“
A Minor Post, Articles, Genetics, SenescenceBonobo sequence establishes that humans are equally but dissimilarly related to our chimpanzee relatives
Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0Nature “The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes” Nature News “‘Hippie chimp’ genome sequenced” ScienceNow “Bonobos Join Chimps as Closest Human Relatives“
A Minor Post, Articles, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Phylogenetics, Primates, Primatology, Web