Sixty-six million years ago, the Cretaceous period ended. Dinosaurs disappeared, along with around 90% of all species on Earth. The patterns and causes of this extinction have been debated since paleontology began. Was it ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 26, 2023
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75
Monsters slither throughout the crooked mangroves and serrated sawgrass of Florida's Everglades, 20 feet long and up to 200 pounds of sinewy muscle built by devouring everything in their path.
Plants & Animals
Sep 18, 2023
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129
Ground-nesting birds called lapwings use the shape of their nests and surroundings to hide from predators, new research shows.
Plants & Animals
Sep 14, 2023
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1
South Africa is renowned for having one of the world's biggest populations of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). Substantial declines have been observed, however, in places where the sharks normally gather on the ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 10, 2023
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186
New research recently published in Oikos shows that predators play a unique and important role in ecosystems by creating "ecological hotspots"—localized areas important for plants and animals.
Plants & Animals
Aug 28, 2023
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19
Scientists from Skoltech and research centers in Sweden and Switzerland have presented results that explain the mechanism of interaction between bacteria and phages—viruses that infect bacterial cells. The discovery is ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 18, 2023
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32
The apex predators that roamed the earth 230 million years ago had a much weaker bite than previously thought, and likely couldn't crunch through bone to consume the entirety of their kills.
Paleontology & Fossils
Aug 17, 2023
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361
Introduced foxes, dogs, cats, rats, and other predators kill millions of native animals every year, but what if they were conditioned to associate this prey with food that made them ill?
Plants & Animals
Aug 17, 2023
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10
In the shallow waters of the Scardovari lagoon, fishermen catch clams for Italy's beloved spaghetti alle vongole, alongside mussels and oysters. But an invader risks putting them out of business.
Ecology
Aug 15, 2023
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4
Humans have trained domestic animals for thousands of years, to help with farming, transport, or hunting.
Plants & Animals
Aug 2, 2023
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19
In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator (an organism that is hunting) feeds on its prey, (the organism that is attacked). Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of the prey. The other main category of consumption is detritivory, the consumption of dead organic material (detritus). It can at times be difficult to separate the two feeding behaviors, for example where parasitic species prey on a host organism and then lay their eggs on it for their offspring to feed on its decaying corpse. The key characteristic of predation however is the predator's direct impact on the prey population. On the other hand, detritivores simply eat what is available and have no direct impact on the "donor" organism(s).
Selective pressures imposed on one another has led to an evolutionary arms race between prey and predator, resulting in various antipredator adaptations.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
