Conservation specialists at the Phoenix Zoo say they are flying high over the arrival of four big-eyed baby pygmy owls.
Plants & Animals
Jun 7, 2019
0
5
Beware the jumping cholla, Cylindropuntia fulgida. This shrubby, branching cactus will—if provoked by touching—anchor its splayed spines in the flesh of the offender. The barbed spines grip so tightly that a segment of ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 20, 2018
1
161
This past spring break, Associate Professor of Biology Stephanie Rollmann and her lab travelled to the picturesque Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, an International Biosphere Reserve in Ajo, AZ. They were in search of ...
Evolution
Jun 26, 2018
0
3
During rare desert rainfalls, cacti waste no time sopping up and storing a storm's precious precipitation. Inspired by this natural phenomenon, scientists report in a study appearing ACS Macro Letters that they have developed ...
Materials Science
Apr 11, 2018
0
27
The prickly pear cactus, considered an essential food in Mexico, could be the answer to much of the world's food security woes, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Thursday.
Biotechnology
Nov 30, 2017
0
11
Farm-grown fish are an important source of food with significant and worldwide societal and economic benefits, but the fish that come from these recirculating systems can have unpleasant tastes and odors. To clean contaminated ...
Materials Science
Mar 13, 2016
1
4519
Organisms such as cacti and desert beetles can survive in arid environments because they've evolved mechanisms to collect water from thin air. The Namib desert beetle, for example, collects water droplets on the bumps of ...
Materials Science
Feb 24, 2016
2
445
Thirty-one percent of cactus species are threatened with extinction, according to the first comprehensive, global assessment of the species group by IUCN and partners, published today in the journal Nature Plants. This places ...
Ecology
Oct 5, 2015
0
60
Isolation of DNA from some organisms is a routine procedure. For example, you can buy a kit at your local pharmacy or grocery store that allows you to swab the inside of your cheek and send the sample for DNA sequencing. ...
Biotechnology
Mar 5, 2013
0
0
(Phys.org)—Researchers studying Drosophila pachea, a species of fruit fly that lives only in the Sonoran desert, have discovered why it is that the fly is wholly dependent on a single cactus species. It's due, they write ...
