Feral rheas
Audubon magazine has a fascinating story by Sami Emory about how an area of Germany is being overrun by feral rheas: “Inside Germany’s Giant, Hungry, Flightl...
All posts tagged with conservation
Hippos in South America
The Washington Post has an opinion piece by Robert Gebelhoff asking the tough questions about a South American herd of African herbivores: “The great conundr...
Natural areas going to the dogs
Human presence has changed the natural environment in many ways. One of the most important is the spread of species that do well in the presence of humans, m...
Chimpanzees don’t necessarily live where biologists thought they did
Distribution maps of wild species are inaccurate for lots of reasons. When it comes to distribution maps of wild primates in tropical Africa, one of the bigg...
Link: Biologists working for political initiative on anti-extinction
“Making a Mass Anti-Extinction Movement” in Pacific Standard covers some of the concerns that led a group of 49 biologists to pen an open letter calling for ...
Genetic flatlining of island foxes
Carl Zimmer’s article on “Foxes That Endure Despite a Lack of Genetic Diversity” is interesting and useful:
Link: Saiga deaths linked to microbes
Carl Zimmer reports on some of the work being done to understand the extreme die-offs of saiga antelopes in Central Asia: “More Than Half of Entire Species o...
Link: About aye-ayes
The Pacific Standard has a very good story by Jason Bittel about aye-ayes: “The Aye-Aye and the Finger of Death”. The story focuses on the interesting behavi...
Link: Skeletons of the mountain gorillas
The NYCEP blog has a great post by Natalie O’Shea, who has been helping prepare the skeletal remains of gorillas who died natural deaths within the Rwanda Vo...
Mountain gorilla visit
Chimpanzee researcher Maureen McCarthy describes a visit to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda, to see the mountain gorillas: “Uganda’s other great apes”.
The scope of bonobos
National Geographic has an excellent article by David Quammen about the science of bonobo behavior: “The Left Bank Ape: An Exclusive Look at Bonobo Behavior”...
Quote: Craig Stanford on gorilla habitat threats
Primatologist Craig Stanford was interviewed about habitat threats to gorilla populations by a public radio station: “The Human Threat to Great Apes”:
Perverse incentives on wildlife habitat
The New York Times has a long article today about the progressive loss of pheasant habitat in Iowa, and the resulting negative impact on the hunting industry...
Meet Daubentonia madagascarensis
The aye-aye is possibly the world’s strangest primate. The species is native to Madagascar, and falls into the family of all primates from that island, the l...
Scanning the ape fecome
Donald McNeil, Jr., has written up some background detail about last week’s story that falciparum malaria came from gorillas: “A finding on malaria comes fro...
Mailbag: Neandertal backbreeding
In your blog, you have commented on the prospect of re-creating a neandertal from a "completed" genome.....I agree with your views and predictions.
Frozen zoo
The Observer has a nice article describing the “Frozen Zoo” of samples kept by the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research.
Shoe ecology and invasive species
On the topic of invasive species, here’s one about algae spreading worldwide on the soles of hip waders: “Fly Fishers Serving as Transports for Noxious Littl...
Mmmm…geese….
New York is considering a plan “to eliminate 170,000 wild Canada geese”:
Pulling the panda plug
A naturalist bucks the “charismatic species syndrome”:
Orangutans coming out of the woodwork
A reader forwarded this AP story about a new orangutan count for a relatively unexplored corner of Borneo:
Conservation by genomics
This week’s Nature has a news article by Emma Marris about bison conservation and genomics. I’ve been very interested in cattle and bison as an example of in...
Mailbag: Resurrect extinct species?
In today’s mail, this question:
This year's gift: The vanity taxon
Scientific American reports on a taxonomic auction by Purdue University:
Chimpanzee decline in Cote d'Ivoire
In that issue of Current Biology with the report about bonobo hunting, there is also a short correspondence describing the decline of chimpanzee populations ...
Live fat die young, bearwise
This story describes research on the longevity and maturation of wild bears who have invaded urban habitat in Nevada:
Gorillas that persist
Good news for gorilla conservation:
Numbers, Amazon-style
In last week’s Science, Stanislas Dehaene and colleagues describe the relation of cultural invention to “universal intuition” about mathematical logic:
"Don't let invasive biofuel crops invade your country"
That's a quote from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in this Elizabeth Rosenthal article. This spring has seen a backlash against biofuel...
Great apes and human diseases: how primatologists hurt and help
A new paper in Current Biology documents the mortality suffered by Taï Forest chimpanzees as a result of common human respiratory ailments during the l...
Will climate change leave threatened species behind?
A Cornelia Dean article explores a theme that concerns many primatologists, indeed anyone who studies threatened animals: When you confine a small set of an...
What to do with the Laetoli footprints?
Rex Dalton reports on Charles Musiba's efforts to preserve the Laetoli footprints with a new museum:
Lascaux struggling with fungal invasion
Julien Riel-Salvatore has been following the fungus problems at Lascaux. His earlier post discusses a December NY Times article on the problem. That article...
New bonobo reserve set aside in Congo
Good news for bonobos:
Death to the bottle-fed polar bear?
This is just a fascinating story from the international Der Spiegel:
More on bison and introgression
Jim Robbins of the NYT has written a long article about genetic introgression of cattle genes into bison populations. The article is mainly concerned about ...
Fertility drug really delivers for gorilla
Here's a happy AP article:
The gorilla Ebola toll
The title of the one-page paper by Magdalena Bermejo and colleagues tells most of the story: "Ebola oubreak killed 5000 gorillas."
What's ailing hybrid lions?
I ran across this story about unusual disease affecting hybrids of Asiatic and African lions in Indian zoos:
Genetics versus energy costs
Either this continues today's Kansas theme, or this week's genetics theme. In either case, it's nice to see some attention to agricultural genetics and its ...
Why ants don't get IRB boards
In contrast to the terrible white buffalo stories, there is a fairly genetically enlightening story about Argentine ants, by Jeanna Bryner.
The white buffalo
OK, this was local news here, and now it's national news:
Sooty mangabey trouble
There's a nice long AP article about the possible trade-off between conservation and experimentation on sooty mangabeys. The problem is that Yerkes National...
Pandas cost too much
The NY Times has an article about the licensing fees that zoos pay to China to keep giant pandas in the country.
Bushmeat GIS mapping
Science has a NetWatch feature that pointed me to the Bushmeat Mapserver from the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force. </p>
Lion attacks
This Reuters article is just brutal: