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News tagged with herbivores

Deterring signals: Tobacco plants advertise their defensive readiness to attacking leafhoppers

Following herbivory, plants produce jasmonic acid, a hormone which activates several plant defense reactions. Scientists found that leafhoppers can evaluate whether tobacco plants are ready for defense when attacked. If jasmonate-signaling ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Africa's last rhinos threatened by poaching

Decades of conservation efforts to save rhinos are coming undone, as surging demand for their horns in Asian traditional medicine has spawned a vast criminal trade powered by poaching.

Biology / Ecology

created May 07, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 5

Hunters, not climate change, killed giant beasts 40,000 years ago

The first Australians hunted giant kangaroos, rhinoceros-sized marsupials, huge goannas and other megafauna to extinction shortly after arriving in the country more than 40,000 years ago, new research claims.

Biology / Ecology

created Mar 22, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (12) | comments 25 | with audio podcast

Scientists name two new species of horned dinosaur

Two new horned dinosaurs have been named based on fossils collected from Alberta, Canada. The new species, Unescopceratops koppelhusae and Gryphoceratops morrisoni, are from the Leptoceratopsidae family of hor ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Mar 12, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Australia -- land of the koala, kangaroo... and elephant

Elephants and maybe rhinoceroses could be introduced to Australia to chomp on an invasive African grass that also causes wildfires, according to an idea reported in a scientific journal on Wednesday.

Biology / Ecology

created Feb 01, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 16

Plant-eating dinosaur discovered in Antarctica

For the first time, the presence of large bodied herbivorous dinosaurs in Antarctica has been recorded. Until now, remains of sauropoda - one of the most diverse and geographically widespread species of herbivorous dinosaurs ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Dec 19, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (5) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

Invasive false brome grass is spreading, but Oregon's insects are biting

After hiking in Oregon, a University of Oregon plant biologist suggests, people may want to brush off their shoes and comb through their dogs in an effort to curb the spread of an invasive grass that is expanding ...

Biology / Ecology

created Nov 15, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Plant defences - the mystery deepens

New research has brought us a step closer to untangling the complex reasons why certain plant species triumph over others.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Oct 21, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (6) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

New bacteria toxins against resistant insect pests

Toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria (Bt toxins) are used in organic and conventional farming to manage pest insects. Sprayed as pesticides or produced in genetically modified plants, Bt toxins, us ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Oct 19, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Herbivorous fish like eating meat

The grass carp, thought to be a strict vegetarian, seems to have a preference for amphipoda. NWO researcher Liesbeth Bakker made this discovery during her research into the food preferences of fish. The discovery ...

Biology / Ecology

created Oct 19, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 1

Herbivore populations will go down as temperatures go up, study says

As climate change causes temperatures to rise, the number of herbivores will decrease, affecting the human food supply, according to new research from the University of Toronto.

Biology / Ecology

created Oct 04, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Insect gut microbe with a molecular iron reservoir

Microbes are omnipresent on earth. They are found as free-living microorganisms as well as in communities with other higher organisms. Thanks to modern biological techniques we are now able to address the ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Sep 01, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Seeing the wood for the trees: New study shows sheep in tree-ring records

Nibbling by herbivores can have a greater impact on the width of tree rings than climate, new research has found. The study, published this week in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology, could ...

Biology / Ecology

created Jul 27, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Loss of large predators has caused widespread disruption of ecosystems

(PhysOrg.com) -- The decline of large predators and other "apex consumers" at the top of the food chain has disrupted ecosystems all over the planet, according to a review of recent findings conducted by an ...

Biology / Ecology

created Jul 19, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Where have all the dodos gone?

Biology professor Beth Shapiro is one part laboratory scientist and one part Indiana Jones style adventurer, traveling to remote locations to find fossilized bones and eggshells of ancient animals and extract ...

Biology / Other

created Jun 16, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Herbivore

Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs[page needed] such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in general are known as primary consumers. Comes from the Greek suffix "vora" (Greek -βόρα) meaning "which eat".[citation needed]

Herbivory usually refers to animals eating plants; fungi, bacteria and protists that feed on living plants are usually termed plant pathogens (plant diseases),and microbes that feed on dead plants are saprotrophs. Flowering plants that obtain nutrition from other living plants are usually termed parasitic plants.

A herbivore is not the same as a vegetarian, a human who voluntarily undertakes a primarily herbivorous diet.

For more information about Herbivore, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.