Invasive Mussel Not Harmed by Toxins, Invades Freshwaters of Europe, North America

           While most freshwater mussels react stressfully and weaken when exposed to the toxins in blue-green algae in their water environment, the little zebra mussel is rather indifferent. It is not affected by the toxins, and this helps it outmatch stressed and weakened mussels, report researchers from the University of Southern Denmark. This is bad for the biodiversity, and in some countries the superior zebra mussels imposes great costs to the industry.

At first glance it looks like good news: Researchers have discovered that the freshwater zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) is not damaged from exposure to toxins from blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) and other toxic substances that could
constitute a problem for freshwater mussels. On the contrary, they seem completely unaffected and thus they manage significantly better in a water environment than other freshwater mussels and this is what worries the scientists: Many places in Europe the zebra mussels have already outmatched other mussel species and in the U.S.
they are so widespread that they pose a threat.

"Zebra mussels live in large colonies in the Great Lakes in the United States,
and they are a huge problem. They need something hard to attach themselves to and often
they find a suitable surface on the inside of the pipes carrying water from the Great
Lakes into factories and other industries along the lake. Often they sit so close
that they block the water intake," explains associate professor Claudia Wiegand,
who studies environmental stress physiology and aquatic toxicology at the Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark.

Efforts to prevent the zebra mussels from attaching themselves to the pipes and remove those attached have already cost several million dollars.

Hanuman

Hanuman, a prominent divine entity in Hinduism, is a Human-like monkey god. He bestows courage, strength and longevity to the person who thinks about him or the god Rama.In Buddhism, the monkey is an early incarnation of Buddha but may also represent trickery and ugliness.

The Chinese Buddhist "mind monkey" metaphor refers to the unsettled,
restless state of human mind. Monkey is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing greed, with the tiger representing anger and the deer lovesickness.

The Mizaru, or three wise monkeys, are revered in Japanese folklore,
together they embody the proverbial principle to
"see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped nature.

They placed emphasis on animals and often depicted monkeys in their art.Monkey brains are eaten as a delicacy in parts of South Asia, Africa and China. In traditional Islamic dietary laws, the eating of monkeys is forbidden.

However, monkeys are sometimes eaten in parts of Africa, where they can be sold as "bushmeat

Domestic cats

           ( Domestic cats) Especially young kittens, are known for their love of play.
This behavior mimics hunting and is important in helping kittens learn to stalk,
capture, and kill prey. Cats will also engage in play fighting, with each other and with humans.
This behavior may be a way for cats to practice the skills needed for real combat,
and might also reduce any fear they associate with launching attacks on other animals
Like their wild relatives, domestic cats are natural hunters able to stalk prey and pounce with sharp claws and teeth.
 
They are particularly effective at night, when their light-reflecting eyes allow them to see better than much of their prey.
Cats also enjoy acute hearing. All cats are nimble and agile, and their long tails aid their outstanding balance.

Cats communicate by marking trees, fence posts, or furniture with their claws or their waste.
These scent posts are meant to inform others of a cat's home range.
House cats employ a vocal repertoire that extends from a purr to a screech.

Domestic cats remain largely carnivorous, and have evolved a simple gut appropriate for raw meat.
They also retain the rough tongue that can help them clean every last morsel from an animal bone .
Their diets vary with the whims of humans, however, and can be supplemented by the cat's own hunting successes.

Dove

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

HI...Friends
Activity Dove Bird

Feeding:

Spotted Doves feed on grains, seeds and scraps. The birds are seen alone or in small flocks, feeding mostly on the ground. Some seeds may be taken in trees and bushes, and birds often enter animal houses, such as chicken coops, to feed on the commercial food.

Breeding:

Spotted Doves breed at any time of the year, but most activity is from September to December. The male performs a display flight, which consists of a steep rising flight with loud wing-clapping. Once the bird reaches a height of about 30 or 40 m above the ground, he then spreads his tail and wings and glides down to a perch. Males also court by walking in front of the female with the black and white neck patch fluffed up while bowing the head up and down.

The nest is a loose platform of sticks, which may be placed in a variety of locations. Both sexes share the incubation of the eggs and the rearing of the chicks.

(Indian Dove Bird - Tamil Nadu).

Lovebirds(home)

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

"love birds "  i have shoot the image in villupuram(tamil nadu).
that birds  pet of  MR.Saran raj S.
Owner of birds talk to me birds maintenance details .

Lovebirds are pint-sized bundles of joy. They have the full personality of parrots while being easy to house because of their size. Lovebirds are little clowns, playing for hours at a time. They love to hang from toys, spin them around, and dance on your shoulder. Watch out for your buttons! They love to pull them off your shirts! They love to snuggle and preen. Many people believe lovebirds must be kept in pairs. This is simply not true. A single lovebird makes a better pet because it bonds to you rather than to another lovebird.

Watch these young lovebirds play “The Mirror Game” – They fly up to their reflections in the mirror to watch themselves fly, then land, then the other one goes. They never hit the mirror and can play this game forever without getting tired.

Lovebirds are quite aggressive chewers, which must be kept in mind when choosing toys. Make sure there are no small parts that can be chewed off and ingested, and no clips, loose strings, or other parts in which your bird could get its beak, feet, or head trapped. Safe toys include wood, sisal, leather, acrylic, and rawhide toys (including hanging toys as long as they are not long enough to strangle your bird), bells, and ladders.

Cage-Free in Calcutta On the agenda

     
       The event opened with four short films on battery cages and the reasons to switch to cage-free eggs. The master of ceremonies, local celebrity Oindrilla Dutt, gave thoughtful commentary in between.

Next came a panel: HSI’s N. Jayasimha spoke about HSI and animal welfare. Dr. Naisargi Dave from the University of Toronto cited research showing that even the smallest increase in consumer knowledge about the conditions of hens leads to increases in demand for cage-free eggs. Finally, Chef Sharad Dewan of Park Hotels said that he had committed to cage-free eggs and was confident that profitability would naturally follow. It is obvious to him, he said, that the trend is toward humane food, health, and wellness, and that consumers understand that hens produce better products when they’re living healthier lives.

A second panel comprised of Chef Wafab from the Hyatt in Kolkata, Ms. Jhilam from the Hyatt, Mr. Sanjay Mitra from Keggs Farms, and Mr. Dibeyendu Banerjee, a local smaller-scale cage-free farmer, answered questions. Topics included how to increase consumer knowledge, how to help smaller-scale suppliers link up directly with consumers, how cage-free farming actually increases rural food security, and whether chefs detected any difference in the quality of cage-free eggs (to which they answered yes, the taste is superior).

Cat evolution

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

            The domesticated cat and its closest wild ancestor are both diploid organisms that possess 38 chromosomes and roughly 20,000 genes. About 250 heritable genetic disorders have been identified in cats, many similar to human inborn errors. The high level of similarity among the metabolisms of mammals allows many of these feline diseases to be diagnosed using genetic tests that were originally developed for use in humans, as well as the use of cats as animal models in the study of the human diseases.

"Cat evolution"
       
        The felids are a rapidly evolving family of mammals that share a common ancestor only 10–15 million years ago, and include, in addition to the domestic cat, lions, tigers, cougars, and many others. Within this family, domestic cats (Felis catus) are part of the genus Felis, which is a group of small cats containing approximately seven species (depending upon classification scheme). Members of the genus are found worldwide and include the jungle cat (Felis chaus) of southeast Asia, European wildcat (F. silvestris silvestris), African wildcat (F. s. lybica), the Chinese mountain cat , and the Arabian sand cat (F. margarita), among others.

All the cats in this genus share a common ancestor that probably lived around 6–7 million years ago in Asia. The exact relationships within the Felidae are close but still uncertain,e.g. the Chinese mountain cat is sometimes classified (under the name Felis silvestris bieti) as a subspecies of the wildcat, like the North African variety F. s. lybica. As domestic cats are little altered from wildcats, they can readily interbreed. This hybridization poses a danger to the genetic distinctiveness of wildcat populations, particularly in Scotland and Hungary

Pest-Eating Birds

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

hi friends,,,,,,,Sep-11,.

This is the first time scientists have assigned a monetary value to the pest-control benefits rainforest birds can provide to agriculture. Their study could provide the framework for pest management that helps both farmers and biodiversity.

The latest finding from these researchers suggests that the birds are returning the favor to farmers by eating an aggressive coffee bean pest, the borer beetle, thereby improving coffee bean yields by hundreds of dollars per hectare.

The study is the first to put a monetary value on the pest-control benefits rainforest can provide to agriculture, which the researchers hope can inform both farmers and conservationists.

"The benefits that we might get are huge," said Daniel Karp, a graduate student in biology and lead author of the study. "There's lots of unrealized value in these small patches of rainforest. This looks like a sustainable, win-win opportunity for pest management."

The researchers hope that the work will improve conservation efforts in heavily farmed areas by illustrating to farmers the financial benefits of leaving some land in its natural state, while also guiding governments toward the best conservation methods

Pufferfish Meditate Magnesium

http://animalzoon.blogspot.com/

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology collaborate colleagues at Japan's Shimonoseki Academy of Marine Science and Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Minnasota, USA, to uncovered the molecular mechanisms behind Mg2+ secretion in fresh and seawater Takifugu pufferfish species.
The bodily functions of creatures that live in aquatic environments are affected by the presence of ions of different elements in the water. Bodies naturally absorb and retain ions as essential nutrients, but an excess of any one ion in the body can be damaging.
The magnesium ion Mg2+ is the second most abundant cation in seawater. Both freshwater and seawater fish maintain a certain level of Mg2+ in the plasma in their bodies, and it has long been known that seawater fish secrete Mg2+ into their urine in order to avoid an excess of absorbed Mg2+ from their surroundings. However, certain species of fish are capable of living in both salt and freshwater conditions, and how they alter Mg2+ secretion in their bodies accordingly is not well understood.
Now, Akira Kato and co-workers at Tokyo Institute of Technology, together with researchers from Japan's Shimonoseki Academy of Marine Science and Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Minnasota, USA, have uncovered the molecular mechanisms behind Mg2+ secretion in fresh and seawater Takifugu pufferfish species.
"For freshwater fish, Mg2+ is an important nutrient which should be retained if excess Mg2+ is not absorbed from food," explains Kato. "Seawater contains around 30 times more Mg2+ than the blood of seawater fish. If seawater fish cannot excrete excess Mg2+, they face hypermagnesemia which causes failure of normal tissue functions in the nerves, muscles, and heart."

Safe' Levels of Environmental Pollution May Have Long-Term Health Consequences

This study adds evidences for rethinking the way of addressing risk assessment especially when considering that the human population is widely exposed to low levels of thousands of chemicals, and that the health impact of realistic mixtures of pollutants will have to be tested as well," said Brigitte Le Magueresse-Battistoni, a researcher involved in the work from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). "Indeed, one pollutant could have a different effect when in mixture with other pollutants. Thus, our study may have strong implications in terms of recommendations for food security. Our data also bring new light to the understanding of the impact of environmental food contaminants in the development of metabolic diseases."

To make this discovery, scientists used two groups of obese mice. Both were fed a high-fat, high-sucrose enriched diet, with one group receiving a cocktail of pollutants added to its diet at a very low dosage. These pollutants were given to the mice throughout -- from pre-conception to adulthood. Although the researchers did not observe toxicity or excess of weight gain in the group having received the cocktail of pollutants, they did see a deterioration of glucose tolerance in females, suggesting a defect in insulin signaling. Study results suggest that the mixture of pollutants reduced estrogen activity in the liver through enhancing an enzyme in charge of estrogen elimination. In contrast to females, glucose tolerance was not impacted in males exposed to the cocktail of pollutants. However, males did show some changes in liver related to cholesterol synthesis and transport. This study fuels the concept that pollutants may contribute to the current prevalence of chronic diseases including metabolic diseases and diabetes.

Kerala Elephants

       Elephants fun:The Elephant Festival Kerala or the Kerala Elephant festival is celebrated
every year in the month of Medam (Mid April -Mid-May) as per the Malayalam Calendar at
Thrissur in the Indian coastal state of Kerala . This annual festival is referred to as
Thrissur Pooram in Thrissur and is regarded as the festival of all festivals in Kerala.

 But He fires the enthusiasm among the elephant lovers by the elegant beauty and
the majestic look. The most popular elephant of Kerala owned by Guruvayoor Devaswom.
He has the privilege to carry the 'golden thidambu' of Lord Guruvayoorappa during
'Ekadasi Vilakku'and 'Arattu Ezhunnallippu' since 1962.
People had a strong belief that he had the blessings of Lord Guruvayoorappa.
He has been considered as the rebirth of 'Eiravatha' the elephant of King Indra.
So his presence attracts the elephant lovers and devotees. He has all the auspicious signs of the elephant explained in 'Mathangaleela' -a book about the elephants.
He is also known for the calm and obedient behavior and has never run amok during a festival.

Almost all temples in Kerala own one or more elephant which are donated by devotees.
These Temple elephants are very well looked after and carry the resident temple deity during
the annual festivities & processions.
These temple elephants are decorated with gold plated Forehead ornament called Nettipattom,
and are further adorned with bells and necklaces. The Mahouts and Priests mounted on the elephants hold silk
parasols called Muthukuda and sway large white Yak tail whisks called Venchamaram and Large peacock feather fans
called Aalavattom to the rhythm of the Panchavadyam.(http://youtu.be/04I1TTV1Nx4).

COCK FIGHT IN INDIA (TAMIL NADU)

Hi it's your friend......!
today hot news for "cock fight" in india,

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

Cock fighting,. is a favourite sport of people living in the coastal region of Andhra Pradesh,
Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Tulu Nadu region of Karnataka,
and the state of Tamil nadu India. In Tamil Nadu, the winner is decided after three or four rounds.
People watch with intense interest surrounding the cocks. The sport has gradually become a gambling sport.

In Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Tanjore, Trichy and Salem Districts,
only naked heel sport is performed. In Erode, Thiruppur, Karur
and Coimbatore districts only bloody blade fights are conducted.
During festival seasons, this is the major game for men.
Women normally don't participate.

It is referred to as the favourite pastime for Maravars or the warriors of Tamil Country.
It is acknowledged as one of the 64 "arts" widely spoken
by the scholars and mastered by the ancestors/scholars of this part of the world.
In earlier days they were fighting with the jungle fowl and its variants later,
due to the naval expeditions to Java and Malay by the Pandian Rulers
the local poultry of that land might have found its way to Tamil Nadu and a new strain/breed
started its development in here which later spread to many places such as India.
The newer breeds which are known now are The "Reja"
(There are many rare breeds preserved by these cock fighters)
The sport has gradually become a gambling sport.

Gait Analysis of Horses

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

Gait and movement pattern are essential to the horse, whether it's a question of the horse's well-being, competition riding or breeding. For the first time, new research made in collaboration between University of Copenhagen and The Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom makes it possible to use sensors to accurately measure a horse's movements and to quantify limb movement outside the traditional gait laboratory. This provides veterinarians as well as breeders and trainers with a number of new possibilities. The new results have just been published in the Journal of Biomechanics.


Horses who develop a limp are one of the major sources of frustration for horse owners as well as vets. The same applies for Wobblers disease (ataxia) where growth abnormalities or articular process joint osteoarthritis put pressure on the spinal cord causing ataxic gait. At least one in a hundred horses develop Wobblers disease, which often leads to the horse having to be euthanased. Both lameness and Wobblers disease have an effect on a horses gait, and so far veterinarians have only been able to study horse movement in a gait-laboratory, which commonly only allows study of a few steps at a time on a straight line.

Using inertial sensors; small sensors containing technology like what you find in a cellphone, i.e. gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers, veterinarian and PhD from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at University of Copenhagen, Dr. Emil Olsen and his collaborators from Dr. Thilo Pfau's research group at Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom have managed to measure horse movement (displacement) as well as the timing of the hoof's contact with the ground very accurately.

"Our previous research shows that inertial sensors placed right above the horse's fetlock joint can be used to reliably determine the timing of the hoof's contact with the ground. Furthermore, we're a big step closer to being able to measure movement during training of a horse under real-life conditions, because we have also managed to validate the method against the reference standard motion capture, and this provides us with tools to evaluate the development and change in coordination and symmetry simultaneously," Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and PhD Emil Olsen explains.

Isolated Tigers

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

The tiger Shere Khan was lord in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, but his modern-day descendants are king no more: The big cats have seen their central Indian forests dwindle and fracture.

The remaining tigers are only surviving by moving through critical—but unprotected—corridors of land that link distant populations, a new study says.

Using hair and fecal samples, Sandeep Sharma, of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, and team studied genes from 273 individual tigers that live in four distinct locations within India's 17,375-square-mile (45,000-square-kilometer) Satpura-Maikal region.

Tigers once roamed across Asia from Turkey to the Russian Far East, but have vanished from over 93 percent of that range. (See tiger pictures.)

The 20th century was especially tough on the now-endangered beasts, when three subspecies became extinct, leaving six—all of which are at risk. (See a National Geographic magazine interactive of big cats in danger.)

At a glance the region's tigers seem to live in four populations, each occupying its own territory in what's called a designated tiger conservation landscape, or TCL. Those are Kanha-Phen, Pachmari-Satpura-Bori, Melghat, and Pench.

But the genetic study suggests otherwise: Corridors of woods and undeveloped land up to 125 miles (200 kilometers) long actually link Kanha and Pench into a single genetic unit, and Satpura-Melghat into a second.

That means the four populations of tigers are breeding as two much larger populations—and keeping their genetic diversity alive in the process.

Corridors also aid tiger survival on the ground, Sharma said, making the cats more likely to withstand many types of threats. (Related:"Tigers Making a Comeback in Parts of Asia.")

Americans Diagnosed With Lyme Disease

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

The preliminary estimates were presented Sunday night in Boston at the 2013 International Conference on Lyme Borreliosis and Other Tick-Borne Diseases.

This early estimate is based on findings from three ongoing CDC studies that use different methods, but all aim to define the approximate number of people diagnosed with Lyme disease each year. The first project analyzes medical claims information for approximately 22 million insured people annually for six years, the second project is based on a survey of clinical laboratories and the third project analyzes self-reported Lyme disease cases from a survey of the general public.

Each year, more than 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported to CDC, making it the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States. The new estimate suggests that the total number of people diagnosed with Lyme disease is roughly 10 times higher than the yearly reported number. This new estimate supports studies published in the 1990s indicating that the true number of cases is between 3- and 12-fold higher than the number of reported cases.

"We know that routine surveillance only gives us part of the picture, and that the true number of illnesses is much greater," said Paul Mead, M.D., M.P.H, chief of epidemiology and surveillance for CDC's Lyme disease program. "This new preliminary estimate confirms that Lyme disease is a tremendous public health problem in the United States, and clearly highlights the urgent need for prevention."

CDC continues to analyze the data in the three studies to refine the estimates and better understand the overall burden of Lyme disease in the United States and will publish finalized estimates when the studies are complete. Efforts are also underway at CDC and by other researchers to identify novel methods to kill ticks and prevent illness in people.

Enypniastes Sea Cucumber

animal images

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

                                                                                 This see-through sea cucumber, dubbed Enypniastes (pictured), was spotted at depths of about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) during a 2009 expedition in the northern Gulf of Mexico, scientists say. (See pictures of a deep-sea fish with a transparent head.)

                                                                                 The strange invertebrate creeps forward on its many tentacles while sweeping sediments filled with tiny critters into its mouth. When it's ready to find another feeding ground, the sea cucumber "blooms into a startling curved shape and swims away," CoML team members said in a statement.

Imagining a World Without Lions

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

There will never be a time that we will be able to forget lions. Walk ten blocks in most of the world's cities and you'll see a dozen lion statues, small or large, icons of the most symbolic animal on Earth. (See an interactive experience on the Serengeti lion.)

Some of the more famous ones reside in front of the New York Public Library and in Trafalgar Square. On a recent walk around the four-block radius of National Geographic's Washington headquarters, I counted 26.

But will real lions survive in the wild beyond our generation? As someone who has studied the animals for 30 years, I'm not sure. (Read "The Short Happy Life of a Serengeti Lion" in National Geographic magazine.)

In the 1950s, when I was born, the best estimate of the world's lion population was 450,000. Today, studies point to 20,000 to 30,000 lions remaining. We've lost 95 percent of lions in the last 50 years.

The slaughter has a variety of causes: trophy hunting, habitat loss, communities killing lions in retaliation for cattle losses, and poaching, which fuels a bone market in the East built around bogus medicines and special-occasion wine.

The Power of Lions Up Close

Recently, I was kneeling outside my vehicle here—a battered, doorless Land Cruiser—with my camera on the ground, filming a low-angle shot for a National Geographic Channel film about young nomadic male lions. I miscalculated.

Two very large lionesses walked much closer to me than I expected, and at three meters they rippled with power and predatory presence. Massive shoulders moved under tawny skin, ready to grab hold of a passing zebra or buffalo.

Sea Otters Promote Recovery of Seagrass Beds

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

Scientists studying the decline and recovery of seagrass beds in one of California's largest estuaries have found that recolonization of the estuary by sea otters was a crucial factor in the seagrass comeback. Led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the study will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of August 26.
 
Seagrass meadows, which provide coastal protection and important habitat for fish, are declining worldwide, partly because of excessive nutrients entering coastal waters in runoff from farms and urban areas. The nutrients spur the growth of algae on seagrass leaves, which then don't get enough sunlight. In Elkhorn Slough, a major estuary on California's central coast, algal blooms caused by high nutrient levels are a recurring problem. Yet the seagrass beds there have been expanding in recent years.

"When we see seagrass beds recovering, especially in a degraded environment like Elkhorn Slough, people want to know why," said Brent Hughes, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz and first author of the PNAS study. His coauthors include Tim Tinker, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and Kerstin Wasson, research coordinator for the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, who are both adjunct professors of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC.

Hughes and his colleagues documented a remarkable chain reaction that began when sea otters started moving back into Elkhorn Slough in 1984. The sea otters don't directly affect the seagrass, but they do eat enormous amounts of crabs, dramatically reducing the number and size of crabs in the slough. With fewer crabs to prey on them, grazing invertebrates like sea slugs become more abundant and larger. Sea slugs feed on the algae growing on the seagrass leaves, keeping the leaves clean and healthy.

Maulings by Bears: What's Behind the Recent Attacks?

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

The recent bear attacks in North America over the past week are unrelated to one another and are not indicative of a trend, experts say.

At least six people in five states have been mauled by black and brown bears recently. The latest incident occurred on Saturday, when a hunter in the remote Alaskan wilderness was attacked by an alleged brown bear, also known as a grizzly bear, and survived more than 36 hours before being rescued by the state's air national guard.

Last Thursday, hikers in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming were attacked by a female grizzly after they got too close to her cubs. One of the men was clawed and bitten on his backside.

Also on Thursday, 12-year-old Abigail Wetherell was attacked by a black bear while out on an evening jog in northern Michigan.

According to news reports, Wetherell initially tried to run away from the bear, but she was chased and knocked down. After trying to escape a second time and failing, she played dead. A neighbor who heard the girl scream eventually scared the animal away, but not before it slashed Wetherell's thigh.

Over the weekend, conservation officers shot and killed a black bear they believed to be the one that attacked Wetherell.

Bear expert John Beecham said it's unclear from the accounts he's read why the animal might have attacked the girl. "It might have been a female [bear] and she had young, or the girl might have just come up on the bear fairly quickly while running through the woods, and it perceived her as a threat and attacked," he said.

Forest-Interior Birds May Be Benefiting from Harvested Clearings

http://animalzoon.blogspot.in/

Efforts to conserve declining populations of forest-interior birds have largely focused on preserving the mature forests where birds breed, but a U.S. Forest Service study suggests that in the weeks leading up to migration, younger forest habitat may be just as important.
 
In an article published recently in the American Ornithologist Union's publication The Auk, research wildlife biologist Scott Stoleson of the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station suggests that forest regrowth in clearcuts may be vital to birds as they prepare for fall migration.

The study suggests that declines in forest-interior species may be due in part to the increasing maturity and homogenization of forests. Openings created by timber harvesting may increase habitat for some forest interior birds, according to Stoleson. "Humans have really changed the nature of mature forests in the Northeast," Stoleson said. "Natural processes that once created open spaces even within mature forests, such as fire, are largely controlled, diminishing the availability of quality habitat."

On four sites on the Allegheny National Forest and private timber inholdings in northeastern Pennsylvania, Stoleson set out to learn where the birds spend time after breeding season and what kind of condition are they in leading up to migration. "After the breeding season, birds sing less, stop defending territory, and generally wander. Tracking them is challenging at this point in their life cycle," Stoleson said. Between 2005 and 2008, he used constant-effort mist netting to capture songbirds, band them, determine whether they were breeding or postbreeders, and assess their overall condition, including whether they were building fat deposits and the extent of parasites the birds carried