On a remote Florida island crawling with venomous snakes, a scientist believes he has discovered an unusual truce between predator and prey.
The tiny island of Seahorse Key on the central Gulf Coast is renowned among researchers for its teeming numbers of poisonous cottonmouth snakes.
"The population of cottonmouths on Seahorse Key is large and dense - I mean a lot of snakes," said Harvey Lillywhite, a University of Florida biologist who has been studying the island.
About 600 vipers slither around the 165-acre (67-hectare) island, Lillywhite estimates-in some areas with an average of 22 cottonmouths on every palm tree-covered acre.
Death in the rainforest: fragile creatures give the world a new climate warning
Amphibian and reptile numbers fall by 75% in reserve meant to save them
A protected rainforest in one of the world's richest biodiversity hotspots has suffered an alarming collapse in amphibians and reptiles, suggesting such havens may fail to slow the creatures' slide towards global extinction.
"It would be a real shame if we lost it."
Comment: Yep, this is serious. If you have been following the signs you would know that normal bees are also drastically disappearing.
Humans are reducing numbers of pollinators like bees and butterflies by destroying habitats, spraying pesticides and emitting pollution. Now, a University of Kansas researcher and a world-famous crop artist are behind a nationwide campaign to publicize the peril faced by species that transfer pollen between flowers.
"This is serious," said Orley "Chip" Taylor, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at KU. "We're losing six thousand acres of habitat a day to development, 365 days a year. One out of every three bites you eat is traceable to pollinators' activity. But if you start losing pollinators, you start losing plants."
Taylor works with the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC). That group has successfully worked with the United States Department of Agriculture and U.S. Senate to designate June 24 through June 30, 2007, as "National Pollinator Week." The NAPPC also has convinced the United States Postal Service to issue a block of four "Pollination" stamps this summer depicting a Morrison's bumble bee, a calliope hummingbird, a lesser long-nosed bat and a Southern dogface butterfly.
PAUL LAUENER and MARIE-LAURE COMBES
Physorg / APSun, 15 Apr 2007 13:20 UTC
Ambushing locals as they return home from work, foreign invaders are dismembering French natives and feeding them to their young.
This horror scenario is playing out in France's beehives, where an ultra-aggressive species of Asian hornets - who likely migrated in pottery shipped from China - may be threatening French honey production.
The hornets are thought to have reached France in 2004 after stowing away on a cargo boat, said Claire Villemant, a lecturer at Paris' Natural History Museum.
Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
The IndependentSun, 15 Apr 2007 08:25 UTC
Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees
It is everywhere you look around West Michigan. The snow is an inconvenience, it is a mess. But it is also a threat to the farmers who put fruits and vegetables on your family's table. Growers say there is definitely going to be some damage to the fruit crops, but they don't know how much. The good news is that it won't be as bad as some other states. Down south, some of the fruit crops like peaches and apples are wiped out.
In Kent City, Nels Nyblad grows apples, peaches, plums, apricots and cherries. As far as the weather goes, he says, "I've never seen anything like it." Nyblad is trying to stay positive, but admits that the weird weather is a concern. He's been pulling branches from his trees every day to see if they've been damaged. Some of them are already budding. "They thought it was spring and it turned winter on us again", says Nyblad.
It's that warm spell a few weeks ago and the recent freeze that caused the problems. When the trees got buds and opened up, they were exposed to the cold. Nyblad says "The earliest flowering fruits have been damaged-apricots, plums." Nyblad also expects a smaller crop of peaches. "We may not be able to send semi loads full of them. Suppliers may be limited, but they should be good."
Hordes of giant mice are devouring endangered seabird chicks on a remote South Atlantic island and may be pushing some of the birds to extinction, scientists report.
The carnage has harmed the breeding success of endangered Tristan albatrosses and threatened Atlantic petrels on Gough Island, a British territory a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) off the coast of South Africa.
The birds' sole breeding ground is home to 22 bird species - 10 million birds in total - and is considered the world's most important seabird colony.
Common house mice were introduced to the island more than a century ago. Now three times larger than normal mice, the invasive rodents likely number more than a million.
SCIENTISTS on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion have discovered hundreds of fish of unknown species, floating belly-up in the sea, following a spectacular volcanic eruption over the past week.
"It's crazy. We've never seen this with previous eruptions," said Alain Barrere, a scientific adviser to the island's Volcano Observatory.
A total of 303 seals have died for unknown reasons on the Caspian sea shore in Kazakhstan, a spokesman for the local emergencies ministry said Monday.
From March 31 through April 8 266 dead seals were washed up along the sea shore from the Kalamkas oil field to the Karazhanbas field in western Kazakhstan, with more than half of them being baby seals.
Kazakh Environmental Protection Minister Nurlan Iskakov said if oil companies were found guilty, they would be brought to justice.
Iskakov said, "[They could face] fines, penalties and the suspension of oil production until the reasons [for the large number of deaths] have been established."
He said a special commission was investigating the causes of animals' death, which could take another two weeks.
Comment: Yep, this is serious. If you have been following the signs you would know that normal bees are also drastically disappearing.