Saturday, October 20, 2018

"Working farm, ranch and timberlands are nearly as important to optimizing diversity as our core protected natural habitat"........."Protected areas are extremely important, but we can't rely on those on their own to prevent the pending sixth man-made, mass extinction" ............"Maintaining even small pieces of the original landscape—even a single tree- can help conserve the original diversity of species".............."Clearing oak woodlands and shrublands to establish large vineyards hits many native species hard"..........."Animals that are well adapted to urban and agricultural areas, such as mockingbirds, house finches and free-tail bats, continue to flourish, while animals that are more sensitive to disturbance, like acorn woodpeckers, orange-crowned warblers and big brown bats, begin to drop away".........."If you can leave shrubs, trees and flowering plants, the habitat suitability—not just for sensitive birds but also for other vertebrates—goes way up".........."This is true not only in California's vineyards, but on working lands around the world"

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https://phys.org/news/2018-10-key-role-biodiversity.html Family Winery is a diversified vineyard in Sonoma County. Credit: Corey L...
Friday, October 19, 2018

"Yellowstone’s wolves, though they are all of the gray wolf species, are a largely balanced population of 50-percent black and 50-percent gray"..............."A wolf’s coat color is determined by at least three different genes".........."Following gene theory, in its most basic sense, each gene comes as a pair and in the case of wolf color, can either be a gene for gray or black color"........."The black gene is dominant, meaning that a wolf with both the gray and black genes, known as heterozygous, would look black"........."Genetic tests indicate that the Yellowstone population is about 55 percent homozygous gray, where both coat-color genes express the gray color; 42 percent heterozygous black, where one gene is black and the other is gray, but the wolf looks black; and very few individuals are homozygous black, where both coat-color genes are black".............."These numbers aren’t random"..........“There seems to be strong selection for the heterozygote black and selection against the homozygote black".............“Our homozygous black wolves did very poorly in our population. Their survival rate was low, their recruitment rate was low,” Stahler said. “In contrast, the same colored individual, the same colored wolf [that is heterozygous black], has very strong reproductive success, survival rates and other vital rates that are slightly higher than homozygous gray"............... "Biologists also found that in years following large canine distemper outbreaks, black wolves had a higher survival rate than gray wolves"............ "Conversely, though, by studying years of reproductive history, they learned that gray females had a 25-percent greater litter survival than black females"..............“What we speculate may be going on here, is that there are tradeoffs".............."The beta defensin gene, which is also causing black coat color seems to have some link to the immune system and mounting an immune response that plays into energetics and reproduction versus survival"..............."Another finding by the Research team is that gray wolves are more likely to chase off other wolves than black individuals are".............."Gray wolves have higher cortisol levels which act on aggression and stress response, suggesting that gray wolves are in fact more aggressive than black wolves"

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.explorebigsky.com/research-links-wolf-color-to-survival-and-reproduction&c...
Thursday, October 18, 2018

Puma Downs a Whitetail Deer from a standing jump------one of a kind video for you to view

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CLICK TO WATCH A PUMA DOWN A WHITETAIL DEER FROM A STANDING JUMP https://www.instagram.com/p/BpCnscvh2IP/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igs...
Wednesday, October 17, 2018

"Populations within ecological communities constantly fluctuate due to a multitude of interactions that can be influenced by climate change"................ "Moose populations in northern New Hampshire and western Maine are suspected to be declining due to increasing frequency of winter tick epizootics that cause >50% late winter mortality of 9-12 month-old calves"............... Researchers captured and examined 179 Moose calves at 2 New Hampshire and Maine study sites during the span of January 2014-2016".........."They found that 66% were in normal condition,and 32% were in thin condition".............."All of the calves(both normal and thin ) had high infestations of winter ticks"............... "88% of these calves subsequent mortalities were associated with moderate to severe infestations of winter ticks".............."Emaciation, anemia, and lungworm were also found in most (87%) of these dead calves".............. "To experience three consecutive years (2014-2016) of winter tick epizootics is unprecedented in this New England region, rare in North America, and arguably reflects a host-parasite relationship strongly influenced by abnormally warmer temperatures( fall lingers longer, winters are milder and shorter and spring comes into bloom earlier) at the southern fringe of moose habitat in the northeast"

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https://phys.org/news/2018-10-winter-moose-alarming.html Researchers say  winter ticks  killing moose at  alarming rate...
Tuesday, October 16, 2018

While Hurricanes and Tornadoes wreak awful havoc, there are always sections of land that lie in their paths that somehow do not get eaten up and destroyed in their wake.............Same is true for Forest Wildfires.............."What are labeled Fire Refugia by biologists and Foresters, these unburned random patches of land that the fire does not consume are vital to the long-term well-being of forests.........."These havens shelter species that are vulnerable to fires"..............."Afterward, they can be seedbank starting points for the ecosystem’s regeneration"............"In the Pacific Northwest, fires burn through forests every year, yet some fire refugia remain unharmed for centuries".............."Trees that are vulnerable to fire, such as Western hemlock and Pacific silver fir, thrive in these shady sanctuaries".................."And these trees shelter animals, such as the northern spotted owl, that struggle to survive in fire-prone forests".............. "These untouched islands may be essential even for species that normally live outside them"..................."As the fire burns, animals seek shelter inside refugia"..............."As the forest slowly regenerates, they can return to refugia for food or nesting"

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/science/wildfire-biodiversity.html ‘Lifeboats’ Amid the  World’s Wildfires Islands of green...