Posts Tagged ‘biodiversity’

Caterpillars Beware: Parasitic Wasps Come in a Wide Variety

poor wormWe knew parasitic wasps were menacing; DISCOVER covered some of them in our gallery of zombie animals controlled by parasites, including a caterpillar that becomes the bodyguard of wasp larvae after they take over its mind. But we didn’t know just how many kinds of these treacherous insects exist.

Now, after completing a decades-long study with other researchers, James Whitfield of the University of Illinois says that there are almost twice as many species of these wasps as researchers had previously believed.

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September 2nd, 2008 Tags: ,
by Andrew Moseman in The Wide (& Strange) World of Animals | 0 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

Climate Change Can’t Budge Hardy English Plants

HillsideSome plants simply can’t handle their climate changing, and an increased temperature kills them off. Others, as DISCOVER recently covered, manage to migrate to a cooler climate when nature turns up the heat. But a grass found on a rocky hillside in Northern England has chosen a third option: Stay and tough it out.

Researchers from Syracuse and Sheffield universities had been toying with this particular ecosystem for 13 years. Herbs and shrubs abound in the rocky region; more than 50 species of plants per square meter can be found, and researchers decided to put them all to the test. They divided the area into smaller plots, and varied the climate of those plots wildly. One section was given 20 percent more water than its average yearly amount; another area had shelter built over it to simulate drought. The scientists even planted heating cables underneath one plot to simulate a warmer-than-average winter.

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July 10th, 2008 Tags: ,
by Andrew Moseman in Pollution Solutions (& Disasters) | 1 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >