News by Subject Agriculture

As humans, we know that some of our activities can cause cancer to develop in our bodies. Smoking, poor diets, pollution, chemicals used as additives in food and personal hygiene products, and even too much sun can contribute to an increased risk of cancer. But, are human activities also causing cancer in wild animals? Researchers from ASU's School of Life Sciences think so and are urgently calling for research into this topic.

Scientific research, led by Dr Richard Unsworth at Swansea University, has provided the first quantitative global evidence of the significant role that seagrass meadows play in supporting world fisheries productivity.

For decades, scientists have conducted research centered around the five major mass extinctions that have shaped the world we live in. The extinctions date back more than 450 million years with the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction to the deadliest extinction, the Late Permian extinction 250 million years ago that wiped out over 90 percent of species.

A study of two closely related frog species reveals a population of neurons that give rise to the unique mating calls of each species. Published in JNeurosci, the findings suggest that changes in the properties of these cells over the course of evolution may have shaped vocal patterns in vertebrates including bats and primates.

With individuals weighing in at more than 140 pounds, the critically endangered Chinese giant salamander is well known as the world's largest amphibian. But researchers reporting in Current Biology now find that those giant salamanders aren't one species, but five, and possibly as many as eight. The bad news is that all of the salamanders now face the imminent threat of extinction in the wild, due to demand for the amphibians as luxury food.

A new species of microcrustacean was collected from a submarine hot spring (hydrothermal vent) of a marine volcano (Myojin-sho caldera) in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan. This crustacean group is found only in deep-sea hydrothermal vents and is the first of its kind found in Japanese waters.

In a general context of climate change, researchers at the Centre d'écologie fonctionnelle et évolutive (CNRS/Université de Montpellier/Université Paul Valery/EPHE-PSL) and their international partners revealed the impact of ocean cycles, such as the Pacific decadal oscillation and El Niño, on the survival of the Nazca booby. Their research, which shows for the first time that long cycles directly affect the survival of adult populations, appears in the May edition of Ecology.

A group of blue whales that frequent the South Taranaki Bight (STB) between the North and South islands of New Zealand appears to be part of a local population that is genetically distinct from other blue whales in the Pacific Ocean and Southern Ocean, a new study has found.