http://www.physorg.com/biology-news/plants-animals/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on plants and animals Scientists have shown for the first time that insects, like mammals, use vision rather than touch to find footholds. They made the discovery thanks to high-speed video cameras - technology the BBC uses to capture its stunning wildlife footage - that they used to film desert locusts stepping along the rungs of a miniature ladder. http://www.physorg.com/news180791439.html Biology - Plants & Animals Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:00:03 EST news180791439 (PhysOrg.com) -- It is not only people who feel the effects of short winter days - new research by the University of Edinburgh and the University of Warwick has shed light on how plants calculate their own winter solstice. http://www.physorg.com/news180810791.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:20:02 EST news180810791 (PhysOrg.com) -- Honey bees undergo a sudden transition from speeding aircraft to hovering helicopter as they perform the delicate art of landing on a flower. http://www.physorg.com/news180728592.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:00:02 EST news180728592 Female ducks have evolved an intriguing way to avoid becoming impregnated by undesirable but aggressive males endowed with large corkscrew-shaped penises: vaginas with clockwise spirals that thwart oppositely spiraled males. http://www.physorg.com/news180769252.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:41:17 EST news180769252 (PhysOrg.com) -- Microscopic ridges contouring the surface of flower petals might play a role in flashing that come-hither look pollinating insects can't resist. Michigan State University scientists and colleagues now have figured out how those form. http://www.physorg.com/news180720809.html Biology - Plants & Animals Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:18:18 EST news180720809 (PhysOrg.com) -- Stopping male mosquitoes from sealing their sperm inside females with a 'mating plug' could prevent mosquitoes from reproducing, and offer a potential new way to combat malaria, say scientists publishing new results in PLoS Biology on 22 December. http://www.physorg.com/news180684435.html Biology - Plants & Animals Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:08:08 EST news180684435 Mold and mildew may be doomed. Researchers are closer to understanding how these and other fungi grow. "Fungi have a big impact on our dinner plate," said Dr. Brian Shaw, Texas AgriLife Research plant pathologist. "We tend to think that getting food on the table is easy. But fungi are major disease-causing organisms for both plants and animals. With more research, we can find new ways to compete with them." Commonly known fungi are molds, mildews, mushrooms and yeast. http://www.physorg.com/news180681595.html Biology - Plants & Animals Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:22:35 EST news180681595 (PhysOrg.com) -- It's commonly known that plants interact with each other on an everyday basis: they shade each other out or take up nutrients from the soil before neighboring plants can get them. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned that plants also respond to the past. http://www.physorg.com/news180640961.html Biology - Plants & Animals Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:50:01 EST news180640961 (PhysOrg.com) -- Their brains are tiny - about the size of sesame seeds - and yet the behaviour of the humble honey bee is so advanced it has scientists scratching their heads in disbelief. http://www.physorg.com/news180632123.html Biology - Plants & Animals Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:36:19 EST news180632123 Dark spots on flower petals are common across many angiosperm plant families and occur on flowers such as some lilies, orchids, and daisies. Much research has been done on the physiological and behavioral mechanisms for how these spots attract pollinators. But have you ever wondered what these spots are composed of, how they develop, or how they only appear on some but not all of the ray florets? http://www.physorg.com/news180376920.html Biology - Plants & Animals Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:43:21 EST news180376920 Using a microscope the size of a football field, researchers from The University of Western Ontario are studying why some insects can survive freezing, while others cannot. http://www.physorg.com/news180350816.html Biology - Plants & Animals Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:27:47 EST news180350816 A new study reveals the reason why orchids use sexual trickery to lure insect pollinators. The study, published in the January issue of The American Naturalist, finds that sexual deception in orchids leads to a more efficient pollinating system. http://www.physorg.com/news180289024.html Biology - Plants & Animals Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:10:03 EST news180289024 (PhysOrg.com) -- The use and control of fire are behavioral characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals. Now, a new study by Iowa State University anthropologist Jill Pruetz reports that savanna chimpanzees in Senegal have a near human understanding of wildfires and change their behavior in anticipation of the fire's movement. http://www.physorg.com/news180285365.html Biology - Plants & Animals Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:16:50 EST news180285365 (PhysOrg.com) -- The teeth of some apes are formed primarily to handle the most stressful times when food is scarce, according to new research performed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The findings imply that if humanity is serious about protecting its close evolutionary cousins, the food apes eat during these tough periods -and where they find it -must be included in conservation efforts. http://www.physorg.com/news180206837.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:28:02 EST news180206837 (PhysOrg.com) -- The American coot is a drab, seemingly unremarkable marsh bird common throughout North America. But its reproductive life is full of deception and violence. http://www.physorg.com/news180193135.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:10:04 EST news180193135 (PhysOrg.com) -- With its flamboyantly decorated plumage, the peacock is a classic example of how males among many bird species are more visually eye-catching than their female partners. But new research, led by Columbia biologist Dustin Rubenstein, shows that, in some cases, females living in family groups are just as showy as males. The findings, which appear in the Dec. 10 issue of the journal Nature, shed new light on Darwin`s theory of sexual selection. http://www.physorg.com/news180104802.html Biology - Plants & Animals Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:17:51 EST news180104802 Scientists once thought of tool use as a defining feature of humans. That's until examples of tool use came in from other primates, along with birds and an array of other mammals. Now, a report in the December 14th issue of Current Biology adds an octopus to the growing list of tool users. http://www.physorg.com/news180017100.html Biology - Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:00:01 EST news180017100 There are approximately 1,200 species of bats worldwide. Of that total, only six are known to roost with their heads pointed upward. Investigators did not know why, because they knew next to nothing about one key group. http://www.physorg.com/news180015500.html Biology - Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:19:47 EST news180015500 (PhysOrg.com) -- If you are spending the holidays with big Uncle Frank or bossy Aunt Minnie and wondering whether you would be better off with another family, spare a thought for the humble cichlid fish. http://www.physorg.com/news180012160.html Biology - Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:40:05 EST news180012160 (PhysOrg.com) -- Name all the venomous animals you can think of and you probably come up with snakes, spiders, bees, wasps and perhaps poisonous frogs. But catfish? http://www.physorg.com/news179688441.html Biology - Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:27:50 EST news179688441 Shrink a human being down to the size of an insect, and you would no longer be able to sip lemonade from a straw. The forces that hold liquid together would simply be too great to overcome at that tiny scale. http://www.physorg.com/news179688348.html Biology - Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:26:33 EST news179688348 Despite their ability to fly, tropical birds waited until the formation of the land bridge between North and South America to move northward, according to a University of British Columbia study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. http://www.physorg.com/news179591830.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:45:31 EST news179591830 (PhysOrg.com) -- Female birds in species that breed in groups can find themselves under pressure to sexually show off and evolve the same kinds of embellishments - like fanciful tail feathers or chest-puffing courtship dances - as males, according to new research in the latest issue of Nature (Dec. 10, 2009). http://www.physorg.com/news179586770.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:13:22 EST news179586770 (PhysOrg.com) -- UConn ornithologist Chris Elphick and his colleagues carried out DNA tests to discover the paternity of Saltmarsh Sparrow nestlings. http://www.physorg.com/news179575597.html Biology - Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:07:46 EST news179575597 Females can be too attractive to the opposite sex -- too attractive for their own good -- say biologists at UC Santa Barbara. They found that, among fruit flies, too much male attention directed toward attractive females leads to smaller families and, ultimately, to a reduced rate of population-wide adaptive evolution. http://www.physorg.com/news179502397.html Biology - Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:20:01 EST news179502397 In the pipefish, the male cares for the offspring. Apart from the ones he sucks the life out of. The discovery of filial cannibalism in the pipefish is now creating a stir in the research world. http://www.physorg.com/news179499885.html Biology - Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:06:59 EST news179499885 (PhysOrg.com) -- Blue whales, the largest animals on earth, are singing with deeper voices every year, but scientists are unsure of the reason. http://www.physorg.com/news179478332.html Biology - Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:40:03 EST news179478332 Have you ever found yourself struggling to get your order taken at a crowded bar or lunch counter, only to walk away in disgust as more aggressive customers elbow their way to the front? It turns out that flies do much the same thing, according to biologists from the California Institute of Technology. http://www.physorg.com/news179328346.html Biology - Plants & Animals Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:27:08 EST news179328346 Scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Natural History Museum believe that carnivorous behaviour in plants is far more widespread than previously thought, with many commonly grown plants - such as petunias - at least part way to being "meat eaters". A review paper, Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory, is published today (4 December 2009) in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. http://www.physorg.com/news179151654.html Biology - Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:30:01 EST news179151654 (PhysOrg.com) -- Birds' alarm calls serve both to alert other birds to danger and to warn off predators. And some birds can pull a ventriloquist's trick, singing from the side of their mouths, according to a UC Davis study. http://www.physorg.com/news179082717.html Biology - Plants & Animals Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:12:29 EST news179082717