FLORA FAUNA - AFRICA DAILY

Sun bears mimic each other's facial expressions

Mar 21, 2019 (UPI)

Sun bears are the world's smallest bear species. They make their home in the forests of Southeast Asia. Biologists at the University of Portsmouth spent two yea...

At Kenyan orphanage, baby elephants find a new life, and love

Mar 20, 2019 (AFP)

When he was just five months old, Luggard was found struggling to keep up with his herd in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park. He had been shot twice. One bullet ...

'Insectageddon' is 'alarmist by bad design': Scientists point out the study's major flaws

Mar 20, 2019 (SPX)

Query- and geographically-biased summaries; mismatch between objectives and cited literature; and misuse of existing conservation data have all been identified ...

Commercial agriculture reduces butterfly diversity by two-thirds

Mar 20, 2019 (UPI)

Scientists found the number of butterfly species in meadows next to commercial agriculture are two-thirds less than the number of butterfly species found in nat...

Research predicts what makes evolution go backwards

Mar 20, 2019 (SPX)

Instead, new research by McMaster behavioural scientists shows that in certain cases evolution works in the opposite direction, reversing individual improvement...

Monarch butterflies face hardships on fall migration

Mar 19, 2019 (UPI)

Most investigations of declining monarch butterfly numbers have blamed habitat losses among the insect's wintering grounds in Mexico, as well as the decline of ...

Thai tycoon faces verdict in black leopard poaching case

Mar 19, 2019 (AFP)

Construction magnate Premchai Karnasuta, whose company is behind major infrastructure projects such as Bangkok's monorail and its airport, was arrested by range...

Hungry moose are more tolerant of wolves

Mar 14, 2019 (UPI)

The findings, published this week in the journal Ecology, further complicate scientists' understanding of predator-prey relationships between wolves and big-gam...

Fast and furious: Vietnam's elephant race draws cheers, and critics

Mar 12, 2019 (AFP)

Locals say the race is a celebration of the much-revered animals -- traditionally thought of as family members in this part of Vietnam -- but conservation group...

Scientists share plans for planetwide biodiversity census

Mar 11, 2019 (UPI)

The new bio-tracking plan -- published this week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution -- features new strategies for collecting, organizing and translati...

Scientists engineer mouse 'smart house' to study behavior

Mar 11, 2019 (SPX)

The 'Autonomouse' system improves animal welfare whilst simultaneously enhancing the efficiency and reliability of research findings. The team of scientists and...

Ecologists find a 'landscape of fearlessness' in a war-torn savannah

Mar 11, 2019 (SPX)

"Large carnivores play a critical, and disproportionate, role in their ecosystems, and their populations are declining worldwide," said Justine Atkins, a gradua...

Using tiny organisms to unlock big environmental mysteries

Mar 11, 2019 (SPX)

So, if you want to understand how an ecosystem - be it a tropical forest, an agricultural zone, or a watershed - will fare in the face of natural and human-indu...

Wikipedia search patterns offer insights into biodiversity, migrations

Mar 07, 2019 (SPX)

Researcher John Mittermeier, an ornithologist and PhD student at the University of Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment, first got the idea for mini...

Getting more mileage from microsatellites

Mar 07, 2019 (SPX)

However, this known variation may not be sufficient to give a properly resolved picture in every species. In research presented in a recent issue of Application...

Lucky lab mice get to live in a 'smart house'

Mar 07, 2019 (UPI)

Researchers are constantly working to ensure external factors and outside influence, like the presence of a peering scientists, aren't influencing test results....

Disrupting wolf movements could protect vulnerable Canadian caribou

Mar 06, 2019 (UPI)

Researchers hypothesize the balance between predator and prey was upset by human incursions on the landscape, specifically the construction of linear features, ...

How plants learned to save water

Mar 06, 2019 (SPX)

Plants therefore have developed complex signalling pathways that optimize the opening width of stomata to match the environmental conditions. In response to cha...

Material that shields beetle from being burned by its own weapons, holds promise

Mar 04, 2019 (SPX)

The family Carabidae represents an extremely diverse line of insects, with almost 40,000 species. One of the traits that allows them to thrive is a unique gland...

Alien species are the largest driver of recent extinctions

Mar 04, 2019 (UPI)

Scientists at the University College London analyzed data related to 953 global extinctions listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Their ...