http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Susanne Sterbing-D'Angelo, has shown, along with her colleagues from the University of Maryland, that bats use tiny hairs on their wings to feel the air around them as they fly, which allows them to adjust to conditions almost instantly and that this feature of their anatomy helps them to perform the intricate acrobatic feats that they are known for. Their findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news227868534.html Biology Tue, 21 Jun 2011 09:49:08 EST news227868534 (PhysOrg.com) -- Forest fragmentation driven by demand for palm oil is having a catastrophic effect on multiple levels of biodiversity, scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have discovered. http://phys.org/news225099500.html Biology Fri, 20 May 2011 08:38:43 EST news225099500 (PhysOrg.com) -- For bats any smooth, horizontal surface is water. Even so if vision, olfaction or touch tells them it is actually a metal, plastic or wooden plate. Bats therefore rely more on their ears than on any other sensory system. This is due to how smooth surfaces reflect the echolocation calls of bats: they act just like mirrors. In nature there are no other extended, smooth surfaces, so these mirror properties prove to be a reliable feature for recognition of water surfaces. http://phys.org/news207926915.html Biology Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:29:10 EST news207926915 While wind energy has shown strong potential as a large-scale, emission-free energy source, bat and bird collisions at wind turbines result in thousands of fatalities annually. Migratory bats, such as the hoary bat, are especially at risk for collision with wind turbines as they fly their routes in the forested ridges of the eastern U.S. This loss not only impacts the immediate area, but is also detrimental to ecosystem health nationwide -- that is, bats help with pest management, pollination and the dispersal of numerous plant seeds. http://phys.org/news207828459.html Biology Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:08:00 EST news207828459 (PhysOrg.com) -- Just in time for Halloween, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health physicians have begun testing an experimental blood thinner that mimics a chemical in vampire-bat saliva. http://phys.org/news207579199.html Medicine & Health Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:10:01 EST news207579199 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bats have long played a spooky role during this time of year. However, now more than ever is a scary time for bats in the Northeast. http://phys.org/news207413032.html Biology Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:44:00 EST news207413032 (PhysOrg.com) -- Throughout Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, Common vampire bats transmit infectious diseases such as rabies to animals and humans. Factors that influence the spread of disease within bat populations and transmission to other species are not well understood, making it difficult to predict rabies outbreaks in humans and livestock. Now, a team of researchers, led by associate professor Sonia Altizer of the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology, hopes to close these knowledge gaps with a $580,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a three-year study of rabies in vampire bats in Peru. http://phys.org/news204302459.html Biology Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:20:02 EST news204302459 (AP) -- Scientists may have found some ways to help the nation's bats, which are being wiped out by a novel fungal disease, an unprecedented wildlife crisis. http://phys.org/news203532979.html Biology Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:56:50 EST news203532979 Like a stealth fighter plane, the barbastelle bat uses a sneaky hunting strategy to catch its prey. A team of researchers from the University of Bristol combined three cutting-edge techniques to uncover the secret of this rare bat's success. http://phys.org/news201425185.html Biology Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:00:04 EST news201425185 A new infectious disease spreading rapidly across the northeastern United States has killed millions of bats and is predicted to cause regional extinction of a once-common bat species, according to the findings of a University of California, Santa Cruz researcher. http://phys.org/news200225176.html Biology Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:00:09 EST news200225176 Like most infectious diseases, rabies can attack several species. However, which species are going to be infected and why turns out to be a difficult problem that represents a major gap in our knowledge of how diseases emerge. A paper just published in the journal Science by a team of researchers led by Daniel G. Streicker, a PhD student at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology, has begun to close that knowledge gap. http://phys.org/news200225101.html Biology Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:00:02 EST news200225101 Modern marsupials may be popular animals at the zoo and in children's books, but new findings by University at Buffalo biologists reveal that they harbor a "fossil" copy of a gene that codes for filoviruses, which cause Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers and are the most lethal viruses known to humans. http://phys.org/news197298768.html Biology Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:50:01 EST news197298768 This is surprising as with large naked wings and the energy they expend in flight, bats are expected to have high rates of water loss by evaporation, say the scientists from the Ben-Gurion University in Israel. http://phys.org/news197041340.html Biology Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:00:07 EST news197041340 A disease killing more than 1 million with a mortality rate close to 100 percent continues to sweep across the country. First detected in New York in 2006, it is now found in 14 states in the East and South, leaving starvation and death in its wake, and is working its way westward. http://phys.org/news196445774.html Biology Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:10:01 EST news196445774 An experimental drug so far only tested on animals has been given to an Australian woman and child in an effort to prevent an outbreak of a potentially deadly virus, health officials said Tuesday. http://phys.org/news194588271.html Medicine & Health Tue, 01 Jun 2010 05:40:02 EST news194588271 (PhysOrg.com) -- Sometime in the last 30,000 years or so, two separate bat species colonized the Caribbean and converged on islands in the southern Lesser Antilles. One came from Mexico while the other traveled from northern South America. http://phys.org/news194541053.html Biology Mon, 31 May 2010 16:11:21 EST news194541053 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bats can distinguish between the calls of their own and different species with their echolocation calls, report German scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen. This applies even for species closely related and ecologically similar with overlap of call frequency bands (The American Naturalist online, May 11th 2010). http://phys.org/news193417393.html Biology Tue, 18 May 2010 16:40:01 EST news193417393 Bats' remarkable ability to 'see' in the dark uses the echoes from their own calls to decipher the shape of their dark surroundings. This process, known as echolocation, allows bats to perceive their surroundings in great detail, detecting insect prey or identifying threatening predators, and is a skill that engineers are hoping to replicate. http://phys.org/news192785399.html Biology Tue, 11 May 2010 08:30:38 EST news192785399 A leading bat expert with the USDA Forest Service's Southern Research Station today identified nine bat species in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee that she believes are most threatened by white-nose syndrome (WNS), a fungus that kills bats and appears to be rapidly spreading south from the northeastern United States. Station Research Ecologist Susan Loeb, Ph.D. says WNS has been confirmed in Tennessee, and she says it is just a matter of time before the fungus is detected in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina. http://phys.org/news189863996.html Biology Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:00:23 EST news189863996 Lions, tigers and bears top the ecological pyramid -- the diagram of the food chain that every school child knows. They eat smaller animals, feeding on energy that flows up from the base where plants convert sunlight into carbohydrates. http://phys.org/news189697220.html Biology Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:00:12 EST news189697220 Despite the fact that bats are active after sunset, they rely on the sun as their most trusted source of navigation. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found that the greater mouse-eared bat orients itself with the help of the Earth's magnetic field at night and calibrates this compass to the sun's position at sunset. http://phys.org/news189084503.html Biology Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:00:11 EST news189084503 For years, Brown University neuroscientist James Simmons has filmed bats as they flew in packs or individually chased prey in thick foliage. All the while, he asked himself why the bats never collided with objects in their paths or with each other. http://phys.org/news189085304.html Biology Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:00:08 EST news189085304 (PhysOrg.com) -- New World Leaf-nosed bats (Chiroptera Phyllostomidae) are thriving in the tropical forests of Central and South America, even though their diets consist of more fruits and nectars than their counterparts in the Old World. Strange thing is the phyllostomide bats are drawn to fruits and nectars even after they have fermented. http://phys.org/news185709823.html Biology Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:04:10 EST news185709823 In order to regulate their body temperature as efficiently as possible, wild female bats switch between two strategies depending on both the ambient temperature and their reproductive status. During pregnancy and lactation, they profit energetically from clustering when temperatures drop. Once they have finished lactating, they use torpor - temporary hibernation - to a greater extent, to slow their metabolic rate and drop their body temperature right down so that they expend as little energy as possible. http://phys.org/news185022976.html Biology Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:50:01 EST news185022976 New research conducted at the University of Maryland's bat lab shows Egyptian fruit bats find a target by NOT aiming their guiding sonar directly at it. Instead, they alternately point the sound beam to either side of the target. The new findings by researchers from Maryland and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel suggest that this strategy optimizes the bats' ability to pinpoint the location of a target, but also makes it harder for them to detect a target in the first place. http://phys.org/news184513706.html Biology Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:00:06 EST news184513706 Deep in a cave in Mifflin County, Pa., surrounded by icicles and tilted slabs of rock, DeeAnn Reeder shone her headlamp on a tiny bat. http://phys.org/news184233858.html Biology Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:40:01 EST news184233858 (PhysOrg.com) -- With high-pitched squeaks, clicks and chirps and ultra-sensitive hearing, toothed whales and some bats zero in on prey by emitting pulses of sound and interpreting the echoes that bounce back. http://phys.org/news183645455.html Biology Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:37:58 EST news183645455 Researchers at The University of Western Ontario led an international and multi-disciplinary study that sheds new light on the way that bats echolocate. With echolocation, animals emit sounds and then listen to the reflected echoes of those sounds to form images of their surroundings in their brains. http://phys.org/news183546150.html Biology Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:00:08 EST news183546150 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://phys.org/news180015500.html Biology Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:19:47 EST news180015500 (PhysOrg.com) -- Not just birds, but also a few species of bats face a long journey every year. Researchers at Princeton University in the U.S. and at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany studied the migratory behaviour of the largest extant family of bats, the so-called "Vespertilionidae" with the help of mathematical models. They discovered that the migration over short as well as long distances of various kinds of bats evolved independently within the family. http://phys.org/news177948336.html Biology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:06:17 EST news177948336