News by Subject Biology

A variety of sea animals can take up virus particles while filtering seawater for oxygen and food. Sponges are particularly efficient. That was written by marine ecologist Jennifer Welsh from NIOZ this week, in a publication in Nature Scientific Reports. This Monday, Welsh will defend her thesis at the Free University of Amsterdam, through an online connection.

Since pre-industrial times, the world's oceans have warmed by an average of one degree Celsius (1°C). Now researchers report in Current Biology on March 26th that those rising temperatures have led to widespread changes in the population sizes of marine species. The researchers found a general pattern of species having increasing numbers on their poleward sides and losses toward the equator.

Common noctules -- one of the largest bat species native to Germany -- are searching for their fellows during their hunt for insects above farmland. Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) show in a paper published in the journal Oikos that bats forage on their own in insect-rich forests, but hunt collectively in groups over insect-poor farmland.

Longer lives are not only for female humans: Mammalian female's average lifespan is 18.6% longer than that of males. In humans the female advantage is on average 7.8%.

Having bigger brains isn't the only strategy for success for birds adapting to urban habitats. Smaller-brained birds, like pigeons, thrive by reproducing more often. This prioritizes their future reproductive success over their present survival. These two distinct strategies represent ways of thriving within urban environments, and unsurprisingly, both strategies are less common in natural environments. Understanding which birds do well in cities, and which cannot tolerate these environments, is important for conservation efforts.