SerpentResearch.Com
Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History
Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History
New research by scientists at the University of Calgary has found that plants, ranging from canola to rice to tomatoes, actively shut down their own ability to take up iron when they experience drought. It’s a finding that could have implications for the nutritional value of agricultural crops.
A celebrated scheme for human-wildlife coexistence is now at risk of failing due to lack of long-term government investment, new research has found.
Deer keds—biting flies found across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas—use their eyes and flight to locate a host, typically deer, but occasionally humans or other mammals. Once they land, however, they shed their wings permanently and spend the rest of their lives crawling through fur and feeding on blood.
Non-native wall lizards living in Cincinnati, Ohio, have thrived against the odds thanks to an ability to expand their population more quickly than any inbreeding-amplified harmful genes could weaken their chances for survival, new research suggests.
New research reveals a potential link between the gut microbes of a fish and global ocean processes, offering new insight into how marine ecosystems help regulate ocean chemistry and the marine carbon cycle. The study, titled “Symbiotic bacteria may support calcium carbonate precipitation in the Gulf toadfish,” is published in the journal PLOS Biology.
Bright colors in animals are beautiful but often considered risky because they are more obvious to predators. However, conspicuous colors can also serve defensively, signaling toxicity or even luring predators away from more vulnerable body parts.
There’s a conundrum that has perplexed biologists since Charles Darwin himself. Why do some exotic species take off as invasive pests while others don’t?
For decades, ecologists have theorized that the extinction of one important species could set off a chain reaction of losses throughout an ecosystem. Now, new research offers some of the clearest real-world evidence that this idea of coextinction is not just theoretical.
The red pipefish (Notiocampus ruber) is a rare relative of seahorses and seadragons found only in Australia.
Orangutans have one of the slowest life histories among mammals, and a new study now shows just how long orangutan mothers continue to breastfeed their offspring. An international team has demonstrated that wild orangutan juveniles keep consuming their mother’s milk continuously until at least six and a half years of age, confirming one of the longest breastfeeding periods known among mammals.
The relationship between predators and prey in the wild is underscored by an evolutionary arms race spanning millions of years, but new research has found modern human activity is reshaping the rules.
When the Dome Fire tore through the Mojave Desert in 2020, it reduced 1 million Eastern Joshua trees to blackened skeletons. Scientists expected the underground ecosystem to be equally devastated. Instead, they found it thriving.
There is a forever chemical lurking in the world’s oceans that could be fundamentally altering the biology of marine life before it even hatches. PFOS, a notorious member of the PFAS family of chemicals, is known for its ability to bioaccumulate, binding specifically to proteins in the blood and liver. While it’s long been recognized as a pollutant, scientists are only beginning to understand how it changes an organism from the inside out.
Conservationists are in a race against time to prevent one of the world’s rarest island plants from disappearing forever, after seeds collected from the only surviving wild Dendroseris neriifolia tree arrived at the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) at Kew Wakehurst in Sussex last month.
For years, scientists studying bowhead whales have relied on a simple idea: if a whale makes a long, square or U-shaped dive, it’s feeding time. A new study demonstrates that assumption may not hold water.
Wild dolphins are known for their complex social lives, but new research shows those social networks can be influenced by human activity.
Despite the intensity of modern exploration, the eastern Mediterranean continues to yield unexpected discoveries. On the small Greek island of Kastellorizo, researchers have documented a previously unknown cave cricket thriving within a network of man-made tunnels.
New research has unearthed new insights into the disruptive and detrimental effects that human-produced electromagnetic noise can have on the ability of bats to migrate effectively. The study, published in the journal Science, and led by researchers at Bangor University, the University of Latvia and the University of Oldenburg, in Germany, has revealed unexpected effects of exposure to electromagnetic noise that is an ever-present feature of urban environments.
Some plants are not the sitting ducks they appear to be when they come under attack. If a hungry caterpillar starts to chomp on the succulent leaves of a common bean plant, a highly sophisticated defense system kicks into action. The plant sends out a chemical distress signal that summons predatory wasps to its aid. Now, a study published in the journal Science Advances reveals how the plant pulls off this trick.
Wild pigs are generally considered among the world’s most problematic invasive mammals. But a major new study from Aarhus Universitet shows that the introduced animals may actually have beneficial effects in North American forests.
Spotted hyenas live in hierarchically organized groups (clans). An individual’s dominance over another determines priority access to resources such as food or mating partners, and thus reproductive success. However, the rank within the clan can be calculated using different metrics—and that matters. Using data from almost 500 hyenas collected over 28 years, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) showed that different metrics best predict the animals’ reproductive success—depending on which reproductive trait they examined.
A new study of British wrens has provided new insights into the inner workings of “island syndromes,” according to research led by the University of Birmingham. The paper, published in the Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society, reveals that different subspecies of island wrens are evolving independently, with the team finding particularly strong evidence of “island gigantism” in two of the studied populations.
An irreversible shift in the chemical makeup of the Arctic Ocean driven by climate change is disrupting the region’s food chain, a study suggests. Widespread loss of Arctic sea ice has led to a sharp fall in levels of a key nutrient, affecting populations of plankton, fish, seabirds and marine mammals, say researchers. Their analysis reveals that exposure to sunlight of vast shallow regions of the ocean previously covered by ice fuels a process that breaks down the nutrient—nitrate—and removes it from seawater. The study appears in Communications Earth & Environment.
When a team of researchers recorded a low thundering underneath the surface of the Hudson River, they thought they were hearing the muffled rumble of trains. A closer look and listen led to a much more interesting discovery: The thunder came from Atlantic sturgeon—an iconic and endangered species—spawning in the depths of the river.
The old “monkey see, monkey do” adage may rest on some neuroscientific evidence, finds a new Yale study. To examine how the primate brain facilitates cooperative behavior among individuals during social interaction, a team of researchers trained pairs of marmoset monkeys to cooperate in a task.
In some parts of the world, autumn brings welcome relief from mosquitoes, such as the Northern house mosquito (Culex pipiens). As the days grow shorter, the waning light is a signal for them to enter a winter state of dormancy called diapause.
Global climate change is reshaping agricultural ecosystems. As warmer winters become more prevalent, snow droughts caused by insufficient snowfall are becoming more frequent. This leaves winter wheat, which relies on snow cover for insulation and water supply, vulnerable to low-temperature frost damage and water stress, posing a major threat to global food security.