Endangered Species
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Rising sea levels are erasing familiar boundaries. In fact, conservationists may find themselves fighting for lands that will soon be under water. With little room to maneuver between encroaching development and rising waters, it may be time to consider proposals that run headlong into conventional environmental wisdom.
Story by Jim Robbins
Illustration [...]
A womb of one’s own
Artificial uterus designed to increase shark populations
You’d think one womb would be enough. Not for female gray nurse sharks, which house dozens of embryos in two wombs and then sit idly by as the baby sharks eat each other in utero. The two strongest (or at least hungriest) sharks, one from each uterus, are born [...]
Under Siege
War zones and biodiversity hotspots overlap
Hanson, T. et al. 2009. Warfare in biodiversity hotspots. Conservation Biology DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01166.x
Not even conservation areas are safe from war. Eighty percent of the 146 armed conflicts occurring between 1950 and 2000 took place within the world’s biodiversity hotspots, according to a study in Conservation Biology.
To reach this conclusion, researchers [...]
Not So Silent Spring
As humans drown out nature’s precisely partitioned symphony of cries, clicks, and calls, researchers may be witnessing the first steps in an evolutionary shakeup
Who Killed Dolly?
DNA evidence clears wolves, nails dogs
Empty Nests
Alarming chimp population declines in Côte d’Ivoire
Foreclosure Fish
By Debora MacKenzie
Here’s a good one: what links the U.S. mortgage crisis and West Nile disease? Answer: one of the world’s most invasive alien species.
As we all know, unwise dealing by U.S. financial institutions has caused a lot of people to default on mortgages. A lot of this has been happening in the parts of [...]
Word of Mouth
Birds choose nest sites based on what they hear from other birds
Betts, M.G. et al. 2008. Social information trumps vegetation structure in breeding-site selection by a migrant songbird. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275(1648):2257–2263.
Much like people, birds looking to raise children like to settle down in neighborhoods that already have plenty of families. For [...]
Don’t Tread on Me
Egg-eating predators could be good for turtle conservation
Barton, B.T. and J.D. Roth. 2008. Implications of intraguild predation for sea turtle nest protection. Biological Conservation 141:2139–2145.
Raccoons (Procyon lotor) love loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) eggs, as do ghost crabs (Ocypode quadrata). Unfortunately, the often-used conservation measure of controlling raccoons at turtle nesting beaches lets the ghost crabs [...]
Down to the Bone
The market for tiger products remains strong—even among people who support tiger conservation
Gratwicke, B. et al. 2008. Attitudes toward consumption and conservation of tigers in China. PLoS ONE 3(7):e2544.
When it comes to endangered tigers, consumers’ buying habits clash with their conservation values, according to a recent study led by Brian Gratwicke of the National Fish [...]