Sexploits of Diego the Tortoise save Galapagos species
He's over 100 years old, but his sex life is the stuff of legend. Diego the Tortoise is quite the ladies' man, and his exploits have helped save his species from extinction.
He's over 100 years old, but his sex life is the stuff of legend. Diego the Tortoise is quite the ladies' man, and his exploits have helped save his species from extinction.
Ecology
Sep 14, 2016
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2135
(PhysOrg.com) -- Deep within the waters of Antarctica's Organic Lake an Australian research team, led by microbiologist Ricardo Cavicchioli from the University of New South Wales, have discovered a new virophage, or virus ...
The hotspots that created volcanic islands such as those of Hawaii, Iceland and the Galapagos Islands may often prove surprisingly cool, a new study finds.
Earth Sciences
Jan 7, 2022
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276
A total of 123 baby giant turtles have been stolen from a breeding facility in the Galapagos islands, a lawmaker from Ecuador's prized archipelago in the Pacific told AFP.
Ecology
Oct 5, 2018
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1207
It's the biggest shark—and the biggest fish—in the sea, often found roaming in warm waters around the globe with its huge mouth agape in search of dinner.
Ecology
Feb 28, 2018
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50
Job done, prolific Galapagos giant tortoise Diego is being released back into the wild after being credited by authorities with almost single-handedly saving his species from extinction.
Ecology
Jan 11, 2020
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259
As described in an article published this week in an advance, online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the work demonstrates some of the classic principles of evolution. For instance, ...
Evolution
Apr 29, 2009
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When naturalist Charles Darwin stepped onto the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he encountered a bird that sparked a revolutionary theory on how new species originate. From island to island, finches had wildly varied beak designs ...
Evolution
Mar 5, 2019
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A team of researchers from several institutions in the U.K. and one in the U.S. has found that human culture evolves just as slowly as biological evolution. In their paper published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the ...
Imagine what it must have been like for those early ocean explorers setting foot on new islands full of interesting animals that they had never seen before.
Ecology
Oct 8, 2018
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495
The Galápagos Islands (official name: Archipiélago de Colón; other Spanish names: Islas de Colón or Islas Galápagos) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 972 km west of continental Ecuador. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site: wildlife is its most notable feature.
The Galápagos Islands form the Galápagos Province of Ecuador and are part of the country's national park system. The principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of around 40,000, which is a 40-fold expansion in 50 years.
The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.
The first crude navigation chart of the islands was done by the buccaneer Ambrose Cowley in 1684. He named the individual islands after some of his fellow pirates or after the English noblemen who helped the privateer's cause. More recently, the Ecuadorian government gave most of the islands Spanish names. While the Spanish names are official, many users (especially ecological researchers) continue to use the older English names, particularly as those were the names used when Charles Darwin visited.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA