24 August 2010
Professor Receives Prestigious Young Investigator Award
Stephanie M. Carlson, assistant professor of environmental science, policy, and management, is among this year’s recipients of the American Society of Naturalists’ Young Investigator Award, which is awarded by the Society to recognize outstanding and promising work by early career researchers.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:18
09 June 2010
Desperate Female Spiders Fight By Different Rules
If you thought women's pro wrestling was a cutthroat business, jumping spiders may have them beat.
In most animals the bigger, better fighter usually wins. But a new study of the jumping spider Phidippus clarus suggests that size and skill aren't everything – what matters for Phidippus females is how badly they want to win.
Found in fields throughout North America, nickel-sized Phidippus clarus is a feisty spider prone to picking fights. In battles between males, the bigger, heavier spider usually wins. Males perform an elaborate dance before doing battle to size up the competition. "They push each other back and forth like sumo wrestlers," said lead author Damian Elias of the University of California at Berkeley.
This fancy footwork allows males to gauge how closely matched they are before escalating into a full-blown fight. "Males rarely get to the point where they solve things by fighting," said co-author Carlos Botero of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC. "Before the actual fight there's a lot of displaying. This allows them to resolve things without injuring themselves."
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Posted by Pinar Aybar at 0:02
03 June 2010
Berkeley Butterfly Walk
by Steven Finacom
About a dozen people joined eminent UC entomologist Jerry Powell on Saturday, May 29, 2010 for a leisurely butterfly-watching walk along trails at the top of Berkeley’s Panoramic Hill.
Views from the higher southeast elevations of Panoramic Hill were stupendous. The Bay spread out, visible from Santa Clara County to San Pablo Bay, sunny skies prevailed, and light breezes made for a pleasant ramble through meadows along the crest, then back along one of the fire trails on the shady north-facing slope of Strawberry Canyon.
A coyote, hawks and songbirds completed the wildlife cameos along the walk.The late rains meant that much of the seasonal landscape is still green.
More than a dozen butterfly species were spotted and identified by Powell and others on the walk.They included the California Ringlet, Lorquin’s Admiral, Umber Skipper, Sara Orangetip, Field Crescent, Mournful Duskywing, Red Admiral, Chalcedon Checkerspot, Anise Swallowtail, Pipevine Swallowtail, Pale Swallowtail, and Western Tiger Swallowtail.
Powell said that there were fewer species than he expected of this time of year, possibly due to the cooler weather earlier this spring.
Powell is a Professor in the Graduate School at UC Berkeley and Director Emeritus of the Essing Museum of Entomology, where he started working in 1961.His primary research interest is certain types of small moths.
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Posted by Pinar Aybar at 0:00
21 April 2010
Howler Monkey Census Reveals Population Holding Steady
Long before dawn on March 19 and 20, Katie Milton and a group of stalwart volunteers, each armed with flashlight and compass, spread out into the jungle to find 35 predetermined listening stations marked on their maps of the island.
Just before sunrise, howler monkeys launch into a chorus of howls, roars and barks. From 5:15 am until 6:30 am, each volunteer recorded the time and direction of these vocalizations and estimated the distance to each group that they could hear from their stations. As they walked back to the lab in the early morning light they noted locations of any monkey groups they saw.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:58
16 February 2010
Professor Honored for Outstanding Contributions to Bird Conservation Biology
The American Orinthologists' Union has awarded Professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Steven R. Beissinger the 2009 William Brewster Memorial Award for his innovative contributions, outstanding research productivity, and long-standing dedication to conservation biology of birds in the Western Hemisphere.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:00
18 September 2003
Save the Dirt: UC Berkeley Researchers Find Pristine Soils Losing out to Farming and Development
by Sarah Yang
Berkeley - A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, may lead some people to rethink the phrase, "common as dirt." A new paper published in the journal Ecosystems finds that certain soils - like certain plants and animals - are becoming increasingly rare, with some at risk of becoming extinct.
In agricultural regions, such as in the Midwest, up to 80 percent of soils considered rare have been reduced to less than half of their original extent. That is, more than half of the soil has been converted to agriculture or urban uses.
"Over the past two centuries, we have reconfigured part of a continent to the point where today's landscape is almost unrecognizable from its natural state," said Ronald Amundson, professor of ecosystem sciences at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and lead author of the paper. "The Great Plains used to be characterized by tall grasses and prairies. They have now been replaced by crops and housing tracts.
Like their plant and animal counterparts, soils have their own taxonomy. In the United States, there are 11 soil orders that are ultimately divided into 13,129 series. A soil series is comparable to a plant or animal species. Soils that comprise less than 25,000 acres are considered rare. What the report calls "rare-unique" soils exist only in one state and comprise less than 25,000 acres. The researchers considered a rare or rare-unique soil endangered if more than half of its area was tilled, excavated or otherwise disturbed.
The researchers found 508 endangered soil series in the United States. Six states have more than half of their rare soil series in an endangered state, with Indiana leading the group at 82 percent, followed closely by Iowa at 81 percent. Most of the soil danger hotspots reside in the country's agricultural heartland.
The researchers also found that 31 soils are effectively extinct because they have been nearly completely converted to agricultural or land use.
Why the concern over undisturbed, virgin soil? As the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems, soils form an intimate bond with the plants and animals they support, said Amundson. Rare plants have evolved to inhabit rare soils, such as those that are highly acidic or low in nutrients. An area of very ancient and nutrient-poor soils near the town of Ione, Calif., for example, provides the habitat for four species of endemic plants, including the Amador Rock Rose and the Irish Hill buckwheat. The plants are listed in the "Inventory of Rare and Endangered Vascular Plants of California," and are not found naturally anywhere else in the country.
In essence, soil diversity is tied to biological diversity, said Amundson.
But tilling the soil changes its biogeochemistry by stimulating microorganisms to quickly metabolize the soil's organic matter for food. The disturbance of the soil impacts the plants and animals that depend upon it, the researchers said.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:14
02 October 2003
New Treatment for Sudden Oak Death Approved
by Sarah Yang
BERKELEY – State regulators yesterday (Wednesday. Oct, 1) opened the door for a treatment for Sudden Oak Death to be legally applied by licensed professionals to oaks and tanoaks. A University of California, Berkeley, researcher has proven the treatment effective in preventing or slowing down infection, and he developed an innovative technique to make it significantly easier to administer.
The Department of Pesticide Regulation approved a special registration for this treatment on a fast-tracked, special needs basis. It is the first and only treatment approved by the state for use against a pathogen that has killed tens of thousands of coastal oak trees from California's Big Sur to the border of Oregon.
"The likely areas where the treatment would be used include mostly private-owned land, but trees around high-use facilities in public parks may also be potential candidates," said the UC Berkeley researcher, Matteo Garbelotto, who is an adjunct assistant professor of ecosystem sciences and cooperative extension specialist at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources. "It's really meant for individual oaks or tanoaks that are at high risk for infection, such as those in the vicinity of infected California bay laurel trees."
Garbelotto explained that in the wild, California bay laurel trees are considered the most important vector for spreading Sudden Oak Death. Spores congregate on the leaves of those trees, where they can easily become airborne.
Garbelotto and David Rizzo, associate professor of plant pathology at UC Davis, first identified Phytophthora ramorum three years ago as the fungus-like pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death. Since the disease was first observed in Marin County in 1994, it has spread to 12 California counties, including Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and it has been confirmed in at least 25 different plant species, including California bay laurels and rhododendrons. It has also been found in nurseries in Washington state and British Columbia, Canada.
"It hasn't been long since the pathogen was first isolated," said Garbelotto, who presented results of his research at a recent meeting of the American Phytopathological Society. "The development of a treatment has been incredibly rapid."
The approved treatment is a phosphite compound sold under the brand name Agri-Fos, and its effectiveness has been proven for oaks and tanoaks. Agri-Fos is a fungicide that has been effective for other Phytophthora species, but Garbelotto was the first to test it on P. ramorum. Agrichem, the Australian based company that sells Agri-Fos, will make the treatment available to trained professionals licensed by the state to apply pesticides.
arbelotto emphasized that the treatment is not a cure-all, and said there is no evidence to show that it would be recommended on a widespread basis. The treatment has not been tested on other plant and tree species susceptible to Sudden Oak Death.
The confirmation last year that redwood and Douglas fir - two of the state's most highly prized trees - were susceptible to the pathogen sparked concerns of the pathogen's ability to do more damage. But it is the state's oak trees that have suffered the pathogen's most dramatic impact, exhibiting oozing lesions and cankers as they die.
Garbelotto has conducted more than 30 independent trials of treatment protocols. Steven Tjosvold, a cooperative extension specialist with Santa Cruz County, helped Garbelotto with field experiments.
To test whether the treatment worked on diseased trees, Garbelotto infected potted oaks and tanoaks with P. ramorum and then waited several days to several weeks before injecting the phosphite compound. The injections slowed down the growth of cankers on trees that were treated.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:11
31 October 2003
Microbial Infection Can Significantly Shorten Shelf Life of Eggs
by Sarah Yang
Berkeley - Research led by University of California, Berkeley, biologists has implicated microbial infection as a culprit for why some birds start incubating eggs in a nest before the clutch is complete, resulting in eggs hatching at different times and putting younger chicks at a significant disadvantage that often leads to death.
Incubation seems to protect eggs from bacterial and fungal infection, according to the study, to be published in the Nov. 22 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"We found that freshly laid eggs that aren't incubated have a shorter shelf life," said Steven Beissinger, principal investigator of the study and professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources. "Without incubation, eggs are more vulnerable to infection from micro-organisms. This paper is the first to present evidence that microbes may be connected to egg viability and incubation patterns in wild birds."
Beissinger explained that birds generally produce no more than one egg per day, so there may be a one-to-two-week lag between the laying of the first and last eggs in a nest. Ornithologists have puzzled over why many birds start to incubate their eggs before all are laid, which causes them to hatch at different times. The pattern leads to a high mortality rate for the clutch's younger hatchlings because they cannot compete with their bigger siblings that got a head start in life.
"The dominant theory is that birds intentionally do this because they would not be able to adequately feed all the young if they hatched at once," said Beissinger. "By staggering the hatching order, they can control the food demand from the number of young they have to care for at any one time."
However, a number of recent studies, including one conducted by Beissinger, have caused some to question that theory. By moving eggs that were laid around the same time into one clutch - a procedure they nicknamed "egg bingo" - researchers found that bird parents were able to successfully raise more young if they hatched together rather than weeks apart.
So, the hunt began for an alternate explanation of birds' hatching patterns. Beissinger worked with Mark Cook, a UC Berkeley post-doctoral researcher in ecosystem sciences and lead author of the paper; Gary Toranzos and Roberto Rodriguez from the University of Puerto Rico's Department of Biology; and Wayne Arendt from the USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry.
The researchers conducted the study at two research sites in Puerto Rico. One site was at the top of the Luquillo Experimental Forest, a cool, very humid cloud forest with an average daily temperature of about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The other site was a drier lowland forest at the base of the mountain with daily temperatures averaging 81 degrees.
The researchers used freshly laid, free range chicken eggs provided by a local supplier. They sampled the shell surface of 164 eggs for baseline bacteria levels, then randomly assigned the eggs to one of the two sites and exposed them for periods of one, three, five or seven days. After the exposure time, the eggs' yolk and albumen, or egg white, were separately tested for the presence of microbes.
They found that microbes were rapidly able to enter the egg through its pores and overwhelm the embryo within three to five days. The longer the exposure time, the greater the rate of infection for eggs at both sites. Microbes appeared on the inner membrane after just one day of exposure. Microbes reached the egg white after three days, and the yolk after five days.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 5:54
04 November 2003
Scavengers Benefit by Dining with the Wolves
by Sarah Yang
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:50
16 January 2004
New Study Finds Evolutionary Diversification in Hawaiian Spiders
by Sarah Yang
In a new paper published in the Jan. 16 issue of Science, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Rosemary Gillespie uses genetic detective work to describe how these spiders, otherwise common streamside inhabitants throughout the world, diversified to fill an entire spectrum of habitats in the Hawaiian Islands. Along the way, she challenges the assumption that the formation of communities through evolutionary processes in the remote Hawaiian archipelago is different from the way communities are assembled through immigration on a large continent.
"The Hawaiian Islands are often considered to be so unusual and remote that what happens there cannot be applied to other places," said Gillespie, College of Natural Resources professor of insect biology, director of the Essig Museum of Entomology at UC Berkeley and author of the paper. "What I'm showing is that the same kinds of things happen on these islands as elsewhere; it's just that evolution plays more of a role."
Because Hawaii consists of a chain of islands that formed chronologically, Gillespie was able to study the spiders' adaptive radiations over time in what she calls a "natural time-series laboratory" of evolution. The oldest island, Kauai, was formed 5 million years ago, followed in age by Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Maui and finally the big island of Hawaii, the youngest island at less than 1 million years old.
Gillespie found 16 species of Tetragnatha spiders, all of which have abandoned web building, actively hunt their prey and have long spines along their legs. By examining the spiders' DNA, she determined that the 16 species descended from one common ancestor that began life on the oldest island of Kauai 5 million years ago, early in the island's history. She studied the ecological roles of different spiders, recording their behavior patterns and noting which insects they fed upon. She also used the DNA of the spiders to create a family tree charting the evolutionary history of the Tetragnatha species in Hawaii.
The spiders can be grouped into four distinct ecological types, or ecomorphs: the "green" type, which dwells on leaves; "maroon," which lives mostly on moss; "small brown," which lives among twigs; and "large brown," which dwells on tree bark.
Gillespie found that spiders can evolve and differentiate from a single species on the same island. So, spider types on any one island were often more closely related to very different looking spiders of another ecomorph on the same island than to spiders that looked the same on other islands. For instance, a maroon type spider on Oahu is a closer relative to the green type spider on the same island than it is to a maroon type spider on Maui.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:37
10 February 2004
Bighorn Sheep Threatened by Climate Change
by Sarah Yang
BERKELEY – A study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has linked population declines of California's desert bighorn sheep with the effects of climate change. What's more, many of the state's remaining bighorn populations could face extinction if certain global warming forecasts for the next 60 years come true.
In the study, which is published in the current issue of Conservation Biology, the authors found that of the 80 groups of desert bighorn sheep known to have roamed California's mountains over the past century, 30 are now extinct.
In their investigation of the population decline, the researchers evaluated impacts ranging from contact with domestic livestock, which can lead to the spread of disease and competition for food, to poaching, mining, human disturbance and other factors. They also analyzed climatic variables such as temperature and precipitation that affect the availability of vegetation and dependable sources of spring water for the sheep.
"Climate was consistently correlated with extinction in a way the other factors weren't," said Clinton W. Epps, a doctoral student in environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and lead author of the paper. "The harsh environment inhabited by desert bighorn sheep already has them walking on a knife's edge. It doesn't take too much to push them off. The bottom line is that more than one-third of the populations that were once known are now gone," said Epps.
From 1901 to 1987, the mean annual temperature in the deserts of the southwestern United States increased by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, which is considered significant by climatologists. In addition, annual precipitation dropped about 20 percent in southeastern California over the last century. According to the study, groups of bighorn sheep were more likely to be lost in lower elevation mountains where there were higher average temperatures and less precipitation.
The authors examined population data on the state's desert bighorn sheep, or Ovis canadensis nelsoni, collected since 1940 by biologists and California Department of Fish and Game researchers. They also used historical records from local areas where the sheep were known to have lived, but had since disappeared.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:29
19 February 2004
Scientists Move Closer to Identifying World's Oldest Asexual Organism
by Kathryn Stelljes
BERKELEY - New findings about ancient fungi provide a key to resolving a basic mystery of evolution and may lead to improved agricultural production, according to University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
Biologists believe that sexual reproduction is essential to long-term survival of species, and only a very few species are thought to have survived for long periods without sex. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which colonize roots of most land plants and improve both their ability to obtain nutrients and to tolerate disease, may be the group of organisms that has done so. No one has found any sex organs in these fungi, and their 460-million-year-old fossils, from the Ordovician period, look just like modern species.
If these fungi truly are asexual, the age of the oldest known asexual organism would be pushed back by a factor to 10. A group of rotifers currently is the oldest known asexual organism.
Until now, however, tests for asexuality could not be applied to AM fungi because it was thought that they contained many different nuclei in each cell.
In this week's issue of the journal Nature, new evidence by UC Berkeley biologists Teresa Pawlowska and John Taylor shows that the nuclei in AM fungi are identical - information that will allow the tests of asexuality to proceed.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:27
08 April 2004
Watch Where You Sit - Ticks Carrying Lyme Disease May Be on Logs
by Sarah Yang
Berkeley - After a long hike through some of California's forests, it may be tempting to rest on a log or lean against a tree. Wrong move, say researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who found that such activities may increase the risk of acquiring ticks harboring the Lyme disease bacterium.
"We sat on logs for only five minutes at a time, and in 30 percent of the cases, it resulted in exposure to ticks," said Robert Lane, professor in the Division of Insect Biology at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and lead investigator of the study. "It didn't matter if we sat on moss or the bare surface; the ticks were all over the log surface. The next riskiest behavior was gathering wood, followed by sitting against trees, which resulted in tick exposure 23 and 17 percent of the time, respectively."
The study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology, is the first quantitative analysis of human behaviors that may increase the risk of tick exposure in California's hardwood forests. The paper has come just weeks before the start of northwestern California's nymphal tick season, which begins in early spring and continues into summer.
The western black-legged tick, found primarily in the far western United States as well as in British Columbia, is the primary carrier of the corkscrew-shaped spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterium named after its discoverer, Dr. Willy Burgdorfer. B. burgdorferi is responsible for Lyme disease, which can lead to debilitating symptoms in humans. Most human cases of Lyme disease in northwestern California appears to be transmitted by young nymphal ticks, which are notoriously difficult to detect because they are as small as poppy seeds.
Lane and study co-author Denise Steinlein, a UC Berkeley graduate student in insect biology, trekked through a hardwood forest at the UC Hopland Research and Extension Center in southeastern Mendocino County to conduct the field trials. The area, dominated by California black oak, is endemic for Lyme disease.
Jeomhee Mun, a UC Berkeley research specialist in insect biology, is another co-author of the paper.
Lane and Steinlein conducted the experiments on two back-to-back days in three consecutive weeks in 2002 between late May and mid-June. Decked out in white clothing from top to bottom, with pant legs tucked into white socks and seams sealed with duct tape, the researchers set out to learn how people might acquire nymphal ticks.
"If we're going to develop effective strategies and educational programs for the prevention of Lyme disease, it is critical that we understand how people are exposed to the ticks that transmit the bacteria in the first place," said Lane. "We intentionally looked at behaviors that people would typically engage in while spending time in the woods."
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:16
08 April 2004
College Hosts California Condor Exhibit
by Geralyn Unterberg
The Ventana Wildnerness Society has generously loaned the College of Natural Resources their exhibit on the California Condor. It is housed in Room 260 Mulford Hall, the CNR Student Resource Center, and is open to the public between 9:00am and 4:00pm Monday and Friday. The exhibit will be on the UC Berkeley campus through June 18, 2004.
The exhibit consists of several photographic and text panels that describe the biology of the condor, the recovery program and environmental issues hindering its success, and an interactive “Grandmother Condor†chair explaining the lessons young condors need to learn to survive in the wild.
At the turn of the century, the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) population began to plummet after decades of wanton shooting and poisoning. In 1987, the last wild condor was taken into captivity to join 26 others. Successful captive breeding has dramatically increased the population of this endangered species. As of October 2002, the total population of California condors was 202 birds; 73 of those were in the wild.
Ventana Wilderness Society is the first private non-profit in California to release condors. Beginning in January 1997, the Ventana Wilderness Society began conducting releases of condors in Big Sur. In September 2003, Ventana Wilderness Society completed construction of a new condor release site, in collaboration with Pinnacles National Monument and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Condors historically used this region in the 1970s and evidence of nesting exists for Pinnacles National Monument dating back to 1898. The Ventana Wilderness Society plans to release 20 to 30 condors.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:14
17 December 2004
The Trees of Berkeley
by Originally posted January, 2004
Take a virtual tour of some of the landmark specimens on the University of California, Berkeley campus.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 8:38
11 November 2009
Insect Museum Launches “Essig Brunch†on Fridays
[the stick insect Epidares nolimetangere from the rainforests of northwest Borneo, taken by Yu Zeng, a student in IB]
Instead of a big fuzzy panda bear beckoning as the symbol of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), how about the giant flower-loving fly, or better yet, the California night-stalking tiger beetle? Images of iconic creatures such as the panda are commonplace in our society, and like many of our most venerated animals (think dinosaurs, puppies, and birds), they are vertebrates. But when’s the last time you heard of a “Save the Bugs†campaign, or a movie about a cartoon millipede? Why this bias against the spineless? It could be because it’s a lot easier to cuddle with a cat or dog than a hairy pine borer (it’s a beetle), or because we ourselves are vertebrates, and, well, we like us and things similar to us. Whatever the reason, Berkeley’s entomology students are on a mission to gain a little respect for the insects and other arthropods that dominate the earth, and their first salvo is the creation of a no-spines-allowed seminar series.
If popularity was measured in terms of pure diversity, the insects would be prom queen. With 1 million documented species and an estimated 9 million more awaiting discovery and description, insects comprise half of all the known biodiversity on Earth. The University of California’s own Essig Museum of Entomology houses over 5 million of the Berkeley Natural History Museums’ 12 million specimens. One of these museums, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), runs a highly successful seminar series dubbed “MVZ Lunch†on Wednesday afternoons, drawing guest speakers from around the world to discuss their research on ecology and evolution. And while the entomology students enjoy attending these talks, they have decided to answer with a seminar of their own in order to bring a little taxonomic parity to the table.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 2:00
05 July 2005
Kent Daane named grape and raisin liaison
by Jeannette Warnert
Kent Daane, Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Berkeley, has been appointed the University’s research liaison with the California Raisin Marketing Board and the California Table Grape Commission effective July 1.
In this role, Daane consults with the commodities’ research advisory boards, which provide guidance on grant requests that have been submitted by researchers. The California Raisin Marketing Board disburses about $200,000 annually and the California Table Grape Commission disburses about $550,000 annually to fund research in the crops grown by their members. Daane’s work as research liaison will be in addition to his current duties.
Daane has studied pest control strategies for California crops since 1990 at the UC Kearney Research and Extension Center in Fresno County. He and his research staff focus on the development of ecologically based pest management systems. Programs are developed to help farmers achieve economic success while farming using environmentally and socially sustainable practices.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:48
19 December 2005
Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food
by Sarah Yang
The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:21
14 September 2009
Sierra Nevada birds move in response to warmer, wetter climate
If the climate is not quite right, birds will up and move rather than stick around and sweat it out, according to a new study led by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
The findings, to be published the week of Sept. 14 in an online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that 48 out of 53 bird species studied in California's Sierra Nevada mountains have adjusted to climate change over the last century by moving to sites with the temperature and precipitation conditions they favored.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:51
29 June 2009
Non-hominid CSI? Identifying species using tracking tunnels, footprints and computers
ESPM postdoc James Russell and his colleague Reinhard Klette discuss the use of pattern recognition technology to identify the geographical distributions of species, by using tracking cards and tunnels. Their research, just published in the journal Ecology, represents a cheap and non-labour intensive way of assessing the spatial patterns of species in their environments.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:55
06 July 2009
Growing young scientists in Tahiti
A University of California, Berkeley, project to catalog nearly every living thing on the Polynesian island of Moorea is enlisting the help of the island's 5th graders and showing them that science is not for foreigners only.
While conducting research for his thesis and for the Moorea Biocode Project, ESPM graduate student Brad Balukjian has been teaching 5th graders at the Paopao Primary School about biodiversity and introducing them to the scientific study of the plants and animals they see every day.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:22
09 July 2009
Theory provides more precise estimates of large-area biodiversity
Ask biologists how many species live in a pond, a grassland, a mountain range or on the entire planet, and the answers get increasingly vague. Hence the wide range of estimates for the planet's biodiversity, predicted to be between 2 million and 50 million species.
A new way of estimating species richness reported this month in the journal Ecology Letters by ecologist John Harte and colleagues, will make such estimates more precise for habitats of all sizes and types, from deserts to tropical rainforests.
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Posted by Susan Sabry at 5:22
14 July 2009
Singing the Praises of Native Bees
From Bay Nature:
Gordon Frankie is a UC Berkeley professor and a native bee expert. Bees are his unmitigated passion. But before you walk out the door to talk to him, drop anything you think you know about honey-making hive-dwellers. For him, the most important bees are the ones you probably see every day--but have never heard of.
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Posted by Susan Sabry at 3:46
30 October 2008
Indonesian biodiversity grant, CNR toxicologist seeks to discover human health solutions in Indonesian biodiversity
University of California scientists have received a five-year, $4 million grant to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a southeast Asian island threatened by the loss of biodiversity in its tropical forests.
An international team of collaborators will conduct biodiversity surveys, screen microbes and plants for applications to human health and energy needs, recommend strategies to conserve endangered species, and develop and encourage local conservation. The project is organized into six associate programs -- five led by UC Davis scientists while one program, focusing on discovery of human health solutions is being led by Len Bjeldanes, professor of toxicology at CNR.
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Posted by Cyril at 2:01
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