Monthly Archives: December 2019

Where’s my nest? Multimodal cues facilitate nest recognition in carpenter bee aggregations

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Social organisms experience a trade-off between the benefits of group living and the potential fitness costs generated by spatial crowding. The advantages of group living are partially offset by the cognitive challenges present in maintaining social boundaries. Group-living organisms typically … Continue reading

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Frog and Toad (and Mockingbird) Are Friends: Mockingbirds Mimic Frogs and Toads in North America

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Mockingbirds have the extraordinary ability of imitating non-mockingbird and even non-bird animals. A great deal of research has been done on birds’ mimicry of other birds, but examples of birds imitating non-bird models are very limited; included among this small … Continue reading

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Do bats confuse traffic with the weather?

Animals rely on their sensory systems to gather information about their environments and use that information to help them behave in ways that will be beneficial to their ability to survive and reproduce. However, anthropogenic noise in the environment can … Continue reading

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Jumping to Their Own Beat – Jumping Spiders Shortcut Recognition

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Wherever you’re reading this from, whether it be your home, the library, wherever, you had to navigate to your current location. We don’t typically think of this as navigation as it usually requires minimal effort when following known routes. But … Continue reading

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The eye of the dragon: retina differences in dragon lizards

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Vision is incredibly important for spotting predators and prey, especially for animals that live in open and flat environments. Dragon lizards, a genus of 29 different lizard species endemic to Australia, are one such group. Despite a lot of similarities … Continue reading

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Why is that monkey making that weird noise? The function of boom calls in blue monkeys.

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Communication is a key part of life. It is what allows us, and many other species, to function successfully as social animals. A world without communication is a world of quiet isolation. This is why it is so important to … Continue reading

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The secret to some insect behaviors? It might be smelly bacteria

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The sense of smell is an incredibly complex and important sense across the animal kingdom. Insects rely heavily on olfaction for everything from finding mates, shelter, and food to locating oviposition sites. While a lot of research has been done … Continue reading

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Please Don’t Eat Me – I’m Just a Cleaner Shrimp

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We hate ticks in the summer. Those greedy eight-legged bloodsuckers bury their heads into our skin and get all the free food they want. They are also dangerous transmitters of diseases and can possibly leave you ill for a long … Continue reading

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