News by Subject Agriculture

Researchers have discovered a previously unknown virus infecting nearly a third of America's bald eagle population. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USGS and the Wisconsin DNR found the virus while searching for the cause of Wisconsin River Eagle Syndrome, an enigmatic disease endemic to bald eagles near the Lower Wisconsin River. The newly identified bald eagle hepacivirus, or BeHV, may contribute to the fatal disease, which causes eagles to stumble and have seizures.

A new study led by researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway found that European glass eels use their magnetic sense to 'imprint' a memory of the direction of water currents in the estuary where they become juveniles.

Scientists at the Morgridge Institute for Research have characterized a natural chemical that paralyzes the parasite that causes schistosomiasis, offering a potential new pathway to fight the neglected tropical disease.

Scientists have found a new species of choanoflagellate. This close relative of animals forms sheets of cells that 'flip' inside-out in response to light, alternating between a cup-shaped feeding form and a ball-like swimming form. The organism could offer clues about animals' early evolution.

University of Michigan biologists have documented, for the first time, the widespread presence of the notorious chytrid fungus in 80 species of frogs from lowland rain forest sites in the Peruvian Amazon.

Arapaima gigas is a big fish in a bigger river full of piranhas, but that doesn't mean it's an easy meal. It's evolved armor-like scales that deform, but don't tear or crack, when a piranha -- which has one of the animal kingdom's most powerful bites -- attacks. Researchers from UC San Diego and UC Berkeley describe the unique properties of the Amazonian Arapaima skin and its potential for man-made materials Oct. 16 in the journal Matter.

Two new symbiotic porcelain crab species have been described. One of them, from the South China Sea of Vietnam, inhabits the compact tube-like shelters built by the polychaete worm with other organisms. The other inhabits the intertidal vermetid snail formations in the Colombian Caribbean.