Biosentients - Science Biology… etc

The Nazca booby, a Galpagos Island seabird, emerges from its shell ready to kill its brother or sister. Wake Forest University biologists and their colleagues have linked the murderous behavior to high levels of testosterone and other male hormones found in the hatchlings. The study appears in the June 18 edition of the online journal PLoS ONE available at http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.002460……..

Veterinarians at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo have performed the first successful reverse vasectomy on a Przewalski’s horse (E. ferus przewalskii; E. caballus przewalskii classification debated), pronounced zshah-VAL-skeez. Przewalksi’s horses are a horse species native to China and Mongolia that was declared extinct in the wild in 1970. Currently, there are approximately 1500 of these animals maintained at zoological institutions throughout the world and in several small reintroduced populations in Asia. This is the first procedure of its kind to be performed on an endangered equid species……..

The Wildlife Conservation Society has launched a study in Chile’s Karukinka reserve on Tierra del Fuego to help protect the guanaco a wild cousin of the llama that once roamed in vast herds from the Andean Plateau to the steppes of Patagonia. Today, the guanaco population has dwindled to perhaps half a million animals that live in highly fragmented populations due to habitat loss and competition from livestock. Tierra del Fuego, particularly Karukinka, holds the largest wild population of Chilean guanacos. The WCS study of these poorly understood members of the camel family will provide critical data to help restore one of the most endangered natural phenomena in Latin America the overland migration of guanacos a critical element to understanding biodiversity of the area……..

New evidence that chemical contaminants are finding their way into the deep-sea food web has been found in deep-sea squids and octopods, including the strange-looking “vampire squid”. These species are food for deep-diving toothed whales and other predators. In a study would be reported in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, Michael Vecchione of NOAA Fisheries’ National Systematics Laboratory and his colleagues Michael Unger, Ellen Harvey and George Vadas at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of The College of William and Mary report finding a variety of chemical contaminants in nine species of cephalopods, a class of organisms that includes octopods, squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses……..

Maternal diet influences the chances of having male or female offspring. Research published recently in BioMed Central’s open access journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology has demonstrated that ewes fed a diet enriched with polyunsaturated fats for one month previous to conception have a significantly higher chance of giving birth to male offspring……..

Scientists from the College of William and Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology and The Nature Conservancy have observed the record-setting migration of a shorebird from feeding grounds on the Delmarva Peninsula to breeding grounds on the McKenzie River near the Alaska-Canada border. The bird’s six-day flight is challenging conventional scientific thinking about long-distance migration routes and underscores the ecological importance of areas of the Delmarva Peninsula, which includes the state of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia……..

Throughout the overlooked depths of Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes, a small but important animal is rapidly disappearing. Until recently, the animal - a shrimplike, energy-dense creature called Diporeia - was a major food source for commercially important species like lake whitefish and a number of prey fish upon which salmon, trout and walleye rely……..

In 2003, haddock on Georges Bank experienced the largest baby boom ever documented for the stock, with an estimated 800 million new young fish entering the population. With typical annual averages of 50 to 100 million new fish in the last few decades, fisheries biologists have been puzzled by the huge increase and its ramifications for stock management. They have been looking for answers and may have found one - healthy adults……..

Silkworms have a unique ability to eat toxic mulberry leaves without feeling ill, and scientists have come one step closer to understanding why: silkworms contain a special digestive enzyme that is not affected by mulberrys toxic chemicals. Mulberry leaves contain an extremely high amount of alkaloids that inhibit enzymes that break down sucrose (sugar), and thus are potentially quite toxic. However, one type of sucrase called beta-fructofuranosidase is not affected by these alkaloids……..

22nd May 2008 The first study to determine the global threat status of 21 species of wide-ranging oceanic pelagic sharks and rays reveals serious overfishing and recommends key steps that governments can take to safeguard populations. These findings and recommendations for action are reported in the latest edition of Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems……..