Plant-eating animals in highly seasonal environments, such as the Arctic, are struggling to locate nutritious food as a result of climate change, according to research that will be published in the 21 May 2008 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Led by Penn State Associate Professor of Biology Eric Post, the research, which focused on caribou, suggests that not only are these animals arriving at their breeding grounds too late in the season to enjoy the peak availability of food–the focus of previous research by Post–but they also are suffering from a reduced ability to locate the few high-quality plants that remain before these plants, too, become unavailable.
The results of several scientific studies conducted since 1993 have confirmed a 3.2 cm sea level rise. Although this variation might appear negligible, it has in fact turned out to be twice as high as that recorded over the whole of the previous century. This increase in sea level is a consequence of global warming. When sea temperature rises, the sea expands and therefore occupies a greater volume. This phenomenon is now well known to scientists, but other processes that have received less research attention, such as the tidal cycle, seem to contribute at global scale just as much to changes in sea level.
What will the loss of biodiversity cost us in the long term? How much do national economies need to invest now in order to stop the trend? And what price will we have to pay if we do not act? These are the questions the TEEB – The Economics of Eco-systems and Biodiversity – project is seeking to answer.
Colony Collapse Disorder, diseases, parasitic mites and other stressors continue to take a devastating toll on U.S. honey bee populations, but Pennsylvania beekeepers on average fared better than their counterparts nationally during this past winter, according to apiculture experts in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
When a young gene known as sphinx is inactivated in the common fruit fly, it leads to increased male-male courtship, scientists report in the May 27, 2008, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. High levels of male-male courtship are widespread in many fly species, but not in Drosophila melanogaster, the tiny insect that has been a mainstay of genetic research for more than a century.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has just launched Immune Attack TM, an exciting, fun and fast-moving video game that teaches the critical scientific facts of immunology.