FLORA FAUNA - AFRICA DAILY

New plant research solves a colorful mystery

Mar 17, 2017 (SPX)

Research led by scientists at the John Innes Centre has solved a long-standing mystery by deducing how and why strange yet colourful structures called 'anthocya...

When the sea ice melts, juvenile polar cod may go hungry

Mar 17, 2017 (SPX)

Polar cod fulfil a key role in the Arctic food web, as they are a major source of food for seals, whales and seabirds alike. But the polar cod themselves might ...

Cyprus poachers kill 2.3 million songbirds in 2016

Mar 16, 2017 (AFP)

Poachers in Cyprus killed an estimated 2.3 million birds in autumn 2016, including 800,000 on a British military base, conservation groups said Thursday. Poachi...

Large freshwater species are at the greatest risk of extinction

Mar 15, 2017 (UPI)

Megafauna species living in freshwater habitats are some of the most vulnerable to extinction, new research shows. Across the globe, large freshwater species ar...

Milkweed losses may not fully explain monarch butterfly declines

Mar 15, 2017 (SPX)

Steep declines in the number of monarch butterflies reaching their wintering grounds in Mexico are not fully explained by fewer milkweeds in the northern part o...

Study: Some bed bugs climb better than others

Mar 15, 2017 (UPI)

No bed bug trap is foolproof. Some bed bugs can elude the confines of contraptions set by experienced pest management professionals. That's because, according t...

Leap onto land saves fish from being eaten

Mar 15, 2017 (SPX)

Fish on the South Pacific island of Rarotonga have evolved the ability to survive out of water and leap about on the rocky shoreline because this helps them esc...

Science unravels spiders' monstrous food web

Mar 14, 2017 (AFP)

The world's spiders eat 400-800 million tonnes of insects every year -- as much meat and fish as humans consume over the same period, a study said Tuesday. In t...

Vietnam seizes 100 kgs of rhino horn from Kenya

Mar 14, 2017 (AFP)

Vietnam police seized more than 100 kilograms of rhino horn smuggled into the country in suitcases from Kenya on Tuesday, the latest illegal haul in the wildlif...

How big brains evolved could be revealed by new mathematical model

Mar 13, 2017 (SPX)

A new mathematical model could help clarify what drove the evolution of large brains in humans and other animals, according to a study published in PLOS Computa...

Stressed seabirds not concerned with offspring, study says

Mar 13, 2017 (UPI)

Researchers have found that little auk seabirds care only about themselves, rather than their offspring, in stressful situations. Researchers from Vetmeduni Vie...

Species appears to evolve quickly enough to endure city temperatures

Mar 09, 2017 (SPX)

The speed at which a tiny ant evolves to cope to its warming city environment suggests that some species may evolve quickly enough to survive, or even thrive, i...

A light rain can spread soil bacteria far and wide

Mar 09, 2017 (SPX)

A good rain can have a cleansing effect on the land. But an MIT study published this week in Nature Communications reports that, under just the right conditions...

A backup copy in the central brain

Mar 09, 2017 (SPX)

Insects have a spatial orientation memory that helps them remember the location of their destination if they are briefly deflected from their route. Researchers...

Bird-slaying snakes ravage island forests

Mar 08, 2017 (AFP)

A non-native snake species that has already wiped out most of Guam's tree-dwelling birds is also decimating the Pacific island's forests, researchers said Wedne...

Remains of leukemia ancestor found in bat genome

Mar 07, 2017 (UPI)

Scientists found genetic traces of early leukemia ancestors in the genomes of bats. The discovery, detailed in the journal PNAS, fills the "last major gap" in t...

Study shows how skates, rays and sharks sense electrical fields

Mar 07, 2017 (SPX)

Sharks, rays and skates can hunt for prey hidden in the sandy sea floor by "listening" for faint traces of bioelectricity - they can literally sense their prey'...

Ants adapt surprisingly quickly to rising city temperatures

Mar 07, 2017 (UPI)

Evolution isn't relegated to large timescales; it can be measured across timespans as small as a century. New research in Cleveland, Ohio, shows acorn ants ther...

Poachers kill rare giant elephant in Kenya

Mar 06, 2017 (AFP)

One of Africa's oldest and largest elephants was killed by poachers in Kenya on Monday, according to a conservation group that protects the dwindling group of g...

Study sheds new light on how species extinction affects complex ecosystems

Mar 06, 2017 (SPX)

Research by the University of Southampton has found that methods used to predict the effect of species extinction on ecosystems could be producing inaccurate re...