Water flea can smell fish and dive into the dark for protection

Water fleas, or Daphnia, ensure their survival by reacting to a signal substance of their predators (fish) with flight. The zoologist Meike Anika Hahn from Professor Dr. Eric von Elert's research group at the University of ...

Salamanders chew with their palate

The Italian Crested Newt – Triturus carnifex – eats anything and everything it can overpower. Earthworms, mosquito larvae and water fleas are on its menu, but also snails, small fish and even its own offspring. A research ...

A method for predicting the impact of global warming on disease

Scientists have devised a method for predicting how rising global temperatures are likely to affect the severity of diseases mediated by parasites. Their method can be applied widely to different host-pathogen combinations ...

These rapidly reproducing critters offer evolutionary insights

It may not be obvious on casual glance, but bugs – flies, beetles, roaches – are constantly changing. In fact, they are masters of adaptation, always modifying their genes to adapt to the changes that occur to the environments ...

Invasive waterflea can change ecosystems in the Bothnian Bay

The highly bioinvasive water flea, Cercopagis pengoi, has spread from the Caspian Sea to greater parts of the Baltic Sea. In the Bothnian Bay, it seems to meet a barrier in the area between the Bothnian Sea and the Bothnian ...

Water fleas genetically adapt to climate change

The water flea has genetically adapted to climate change. Biologists from KU Leuven, Belgium, compared 'resurrected' water fleas—hatched from 40-year-old eggs—with more recent specimens. The project was coordinated by ...

Changes in water chemistry leave lake critters defenseless

Imagine that the players on your favourite football team were smaller than their opponents, and had to play without helmets or pads. Left defenseless, they would become easy prey for other teams. Similarly, changes in Canadian ...

page 3 from 4