Credit: Daniel Peter
The lists of Earth s endangered animals and plants are getting increasingly longer. But in order to stop this trend, we require more information. It is often difficult to find out exactly where the individual species can be found and how their populations are developing. According to a new overview study published in
Methods in Ecology and Evolution by Dr Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and her colleagues, specially trained detection dogs can be indispensable in such cases. With the help of these dogs, the species sought can usually be found faster and more effectively than with other methods.
Credit: Andreas Dietzel.
For the first time, scientists have assessed how many corals there are in the Pacific Ocean and evaluated their risk of extinction.
While the answer to how many coral species are there? is Googleable , until now scientists didn t know how many individual coral colonies there are in the world. In the Pacific, we estimate there are roughly half a trillion corals, said the study lead author, Dr Andy Dietzel from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU). This is about the same number of trees in the Amazon, or birds in the world.
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IMAGE: Photographs showing a non-invaded area [left] and an area invaded by Urochloa brizantha [palisade grass, right] / Gabriella Damasceno) view more
Credit: Gabriella Damasceno
Invasive alien species, defined as animals and plants that breed and disperse in a landscape beyond their native range, have negative environmental, social, and economic impacts. One example among many is the forage grass genus Brachiaria, originally African and introduced to Brazil to form cattle pasture. It has become a major threat to the survival of native species and biodiversity at several spatial scales.
Complete eradication of invasive species is often impracticable. Attempts to do so have had undesirable consequences and even been damaging because merely withdrawing an invasive species does not restore the original environment, as in the areas of Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) invaded by pines. Instead of eradication, therefore, the goal should be continuous management, acc
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IMAGE: Stone tools are used for digging, seed pounding, and stone-on-stone percussion. The monkeys can serve as a model to help understand how humans evolved to use tools view more
Credit: Tiago Falótico/EACH-USP
A group of researchers including Tiago Falótico, a Brazilian primatologist at the University of São Paulo s School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH-USP), archeologists at Spain s Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) and University College London in the UK, and an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, have published an article in the
Journal of Archeological Science: Reports describing an analysis of stone tools used by bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) that inhabit Serra da Capivara National Park in Piauí State, Brazil. It is the first systematic study to characterize the tools used by capuchin monkeys living in the wild.