(Press-News.org) DURHAM, N.H.-- Bears are known for being devoted and protective of their baby cubs, but research from the University of New Hampshire shows that they may also play a significant role in shielding gray fox from predators like coyotes, who compete with the fox for food and space. The research is one of the first studies to show how black bears provide a buffer to allow other, smaller carnivores to safely co-exist.
"Even though black bears and coyotes are the two most common carnivores in North America, we're still learning how they affect the ecosystems around them," said Rem Moll, assistant professor of wildlife ecology and lead author of the study. "What's unique about bears is that they hibernate, so they literally disappear for half a year, which we now know can shift animal habits in the ecosystem."
In the study, published in the journal Oecologia, researchers took a closer look at the hierarchy of carnivores to see if a major life trait, like hibernation, had a significant effect. In the western part of Nevada, near Lake Tahoe, the researchers tracked and monitored the top species of carnivores which included black bears, which are the largest and most dominant species, followed by coyotes, bobcats, and finally gray fox, which are the smallest (a bit larger than a cat) and most subordinate species. They found that in summer the gray fox stayed close to areas populated by black bears which appeared to provide a top-down buffering effect helping to protect the gray fox from the coyotes. But in the winter, when bears were hibernating, this pattern reversed and coyotes were three times more likely to move into the now vacant bear territories and the gray fox, no longer secure by the presence of the black bear, moved out. This pattern suggests that the top carnivore - black bears - provided a shield for the gray fox from competition with coyotes. But this "bear shield" was only seasonal, disappearing when the bears hibernated.
"In our field of research, there is something called the "landscape of fear" - the idea that there is a pecking order and that both predators and prey will change their behavior to avoid getting killed," said Moll. "For decades this was overlooked, so there aren't a lot of studies showing the connection between black bears and coyotes - two of the most common carnivores in the U.S. - but this work suggests that fear is important in defining the species roles in the ecosystem."
The researchers say even though this study was done near Lake Tahoe, where black bears were nearly extinct a few decades ago, they believe these instinctual actions could be a very common dynamic in any area where black bears, gray fox and coyotes co-exist.
INFORMATION:
Funding for this study was supported by the Nevada Department of Wildlife $3 Predator Fee Program and statewide game management support. Co-authors are Patrick J. Johnson and Carl W. Lackey, Nevada Department of Wildlife; Brian F. Wakeling, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks; Jon P. Beckmann, Wildlife Conservation Society; Joshua J. Millspaugh, University of Montana; and Robert A. Montgomery, Michigan State University.
The University of New Hampshire inspires innovation and transforms lives in our state, nation, and world. More than 16,000 students from all 50 states and 71 countries engage with an award-winning faculty in top-ranked programs in business, engineering, law, health and human services, liberal arts and the sciences across more than 200 programs of study. As one of the nation's highest-performing research universities, UNH partners with NASA, NOAA, NSF and NIH, and receives more than $110 million in competitive external funding every year to further explore and define the frontiers of land, sea and space.
The fabrication device for the battery revolution looks quite unconspicuous: It is a modified, commercially available 3D printer, located in a room in the Empa laboratory building. But the real innovation lies within the recipe for the gelatinous inks this printer can dispense onto a surface. The mixture in question consists of cellulose nanofibers and cellulose nanocrystallites, plus carbon in the form of carbon black, graphite and activated carbon. To liquefy all this, the researchers use glycerin, water and two different types of alcohol. Plus a pinch of table salt for ionic conductivity.
A sandwich of four layers
To build a functioning supercapacitor from these ingredients, four layers are needed, all flowing out of the 3D printer one after the ...
Left- or right-handedness is a symmetry property that many macroscopic objects also exhibit and which is of immense importance, particularly for the bioactivity of organic molecules. Chirality is also relevant for physical or chemical properties such as optical activity or enantioselectivity of crystalline solids or their surfaces. In the case of chiral metallic phases, unconventional superconductivity and unusual magnetic ordered states are linked to the chirality of the underly-ing crystal structure. Despite this connection between chirality and the properties of a material, detection is often difficult because left-handed and righthanded ...
The expansion of wind energy in the German Bight and the Baltic Sea has accelerated enormously in recent years. The first systems went into operation in 2008. Today, wind turbines with an output of around 8,000 megawatts rotate in German waters, which corresponds to around eight nuclear power plants. But space is limited. For this reason, wind farms are sometimes built very close to one another. A team led by Dr. Naveed Akhtar from Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon has found that wind speeds at the downstream windfarm are significantly slowed down. As the researchers now write in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, this braking effect results in astonishingly large-scale low wind pattern noticeable in mean ...
Neurodegenerative disorders that cause dementia increase the risk of contracting severe COVID-19 and dying from the disease. For people with Alzheimer's the risk is three times greater. It can be six times greater if they are over 80, according to a study conducted in Brazil by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) and Butantan Institute in partnership with colleagues at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
An article on the study, which was supported by FAPESP, is published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.
"We found that all causes of dementia are risk factors for severity and death in COVID-19 and that these ...
ITHACA, N.Y. - Water regulation in leaves is vital to a plant's health, affecting its growth and yield, disease susceptibility and drought resistance.
A breakthrough technology developed by Cornell University researchers uses nanoscale sensors and fiber optics to measure water status just inside a leaf's surface, where water in plants is most actively managed.
The engineering feat provides a minimally invasive research tool that will greatly advance the understanding of basic plant biology, and opens the door for breeding more drought-resistant crops. The technology could eventually be adapted for use as an agronomic tool for measuring water status in crops in real time.
The study in maize plants, "A Minimally Disruptive Method for Measuring Water Potential In-Planta ...
Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a genetically inherited group of red blood cell disorders. END ...
DURHAM, N.C. - A group of researchers have discovered the detailed inner workings of the molecular motor that packages genetic material into double-stranded DNA viruses. The advance provides insight into a critical step in the reproduction cycle of viruses such as pox- herpes- and adeno-viruses. It could also give inspiration to researchers creating microscopic machines based on naturally occurring biomotors.
The research was conducted by scientists from Duke University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Massachusetts and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). The results appear online in a trilogy of papers published in Science Advances, ...
WHO: JoAnn Manson, MD, DrPH, Physician and Epidemiologist, Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital; co-author of a new Perspective piece published in The New England Journal of Medicine (pdf attached)
WHAT: Less than 50 years ago, a U.S. Supreme Court decision paved the way for women's use of contraception irrespective of marital status, and a year later, in 1973, the Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women have a right to legalized abortion. In recent decades, clinical researchers and policymakers alike have made important strides ...
You would not be surprised to see an elephant in the savanna or a plate in your kitchen. Based on your prior experiences and knowledge, you know that is where elephants and plates are often to be found. If you saw a mysterious object in your kitchen, how would you figure out what it was? You would rely on your expectations or prior knowledge. Should a computer approach the problem in the same way? The answer may surprise you. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Partha Mitra described how he views problems like these in a "Perspective" in Nature Machine Intelligence. He hopes his insights will help researchers teach computers how to analyze complex systems more effectively.
Mitra thinks it helps to understand the nature of knowledge. Mathematically speaking, many data scientists ...
The surface of the sun churns with energy and frequently ejects masses of highly-magnetized plasma towards Earth. Sometimes these ejections are strong enough to crash through the magnetosphere -- the natural magnetic shield that protects the Earth -- damaging satellites or electrical grids. Such space weather events can be catastrophic.
Astronomers have studied the sun's activity for centuries with greater and greater understanding. Today, computers are central to the quest to understand the sun's behavior and its role in space weather events.
The ...
