✌ oikos

“About a year ago, we reported on new KittyCam technology that uncovered just how much wildlife our house cats kill. Turns out they’re murderous little buggers. It was revealing to find out that 30% of outdoor cats capture and kill prey, with an average of 2.1 kills a week — and that owners see less than one-quarter of the kills their cats make. It was eye-opening to see just how deadly house cats are to wildlife and what kinds of problems that may cause. But would knowing where cats go and how they move also be enlightening? One time of scientists thinks, Absolutely!

Alan Wilson, a professor specializing in animal movement at the Structure & Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC), studies how animals move and, importantly, why. Though tracking wild animals is a common focus, Wilson says that no one has ever really applied the technology to house cats.

“In fact, we know less about some aspects of their behaviour than we do about many wild cats. So the Horizon programme and the study in our chosen village - Shamley Green in Surrey - was a fantastic opportunity to find out some of this missing information,” Wilson writes in a recent BBC article.

So, he and his team fitted 50 house cats living in the village with GPS collars. They watched the cats’ movements, and then visualized the data. And what a new visual it provided.”

[Read article: Where do house cats go all day? GPS maps reveal their secret lives]

“These teeny-tiny infant lobsters may be small, but their commercial value is anything but. Spiny-lobster (Panulirus argus) hauls in the Caribbean bring in $1 billion a year, which is why researchers are taking a closer look at these lobster babies.

A new computer simulation, published June 7 in the journal PLOS ONE, reveals how lobster larvae travel in their first five months to a year of life, before they mature into adults. The study reveals that the Caribbean current, once thought to be a spiny-lobster superhighway, is actually a problem for little lobsters: If the larvae spend lots of time among the sea’s strong currents, they’re likely to be “flushed out of the system,” study researcher Mark Butler, of Old Dominion University in Virginia, said in a statement.”

[Full Story: Tiny, Transparent Lobsters Stick Close to Home]

 Drill, Baby Drill! The Ins and Outs of Ichneumon Wasps (Photos by Cheryl Osgood)

“Ichneumon means “tracker” in Greek, and it’s an apt description for these predatory wasps, which use their long antennae to locate the larva of another wasp, the horntail wasp, Tremex Columba, several inches deep in the tissue of dead trees like the maple  next to us. The female ichneumon wasp constantly taps the surface of the tree bark with its attennae, until it detects some combination of odor and/or sound that signals the presence of a horntail wasp grub in a cavity deep in the wood of the tree. Then the wasp inserts the tip of its prodigious ovipositor precisely at right angles to the tree surface and begins to drill a hole down into the tree. The membranes of her lower abdomen twist into a disc and a special fluid is secreted that helps to dissolve the woody material as the ovipositor works its way down in the tree tissue, honing in on the horntail wasp larva. The ovipositor actually consists of three tubes, two of which serve as a sheath that houses the drilling tube and helps to guide it and and protect it when not in use.”

^Really fascinating.  Click link to read more about the interesting biology of these wasps and their role in forest ecosystems.

Ladybug tracks on a moist window

“The reemergence of the endangered Huemul deer (Hippocamelus bisulcus) marks a momentous achievement by local governments and conservationists worldwide. From the brink of extinction—with populations decimated to one percent of what they previously were—the Huemul populations have not only stabilized but are steadily increasing, according to a new study in Oryx. A naturally docile and peaceful animal, the Huemul made for easy prey to European colonists and poachers. Coupled with the mass production of cattle in their ecosystem, this endemic animal’s populations plummeted so severely the species was nearly lost forever. In the 1990s scientists estimated the deer’s population had fallen by 99 percent while its range had been cut in half. The most recent estimate of global population put the deer’s numbers at 2,500.”

Read more: Vanishing species makes astounding comeback under combined action of local government and conservationists

Flame Skimmer (Libellula saturata)

by charles25001

This koala looks rather sad. But who can blame him?

According to Australia’s Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service (WIRES), the sub-adult male koala was recently discovered sitting atop the remnants of what was once his home in Vittoria State Forest, New South Wales. Although the logging operation was approved by the forestry service, judging by the koala’s confused expression, not everyone got the memo.

“Koalas would have been moved out of their homes in preparation for planned logging activities,” says WIRES general manager, Leanne Taylor.

“It is common for koalas to roam back to their home range afterwards and become confused to find nothing there. A worker noticed a koala had been sitting stationary in broad daylight on top of wood piles for over an hour.”

The perplexed marsupial, found to have an injury on its eye, was transfered to a local vet before being relocated once again back into a different patch of forest. Forestry workers found three other koalas at the clearcut site and they were transfered as well.

(via Confused koala discovers his home has been cutdown)

Three new species from the genus Perrottetia were described from north and northeastern Thailand. The species show extraordinary endemism, with each of these colourful snails occurring as “One Hill One Species.” This is a very peculiar phenomenon where each one of these highly endemic snails is specific and the only one inhabiting a certain mountain range. They live in rock crevices, feeding on tinier snails, insect larvae and some earthworms species. These beautiful animals are now at risk from extinction with the destruction of limestone ecosystems. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Read more: Tiny colorful snails are in danger of extinction with vanishing limestone ecosystems

It was already bad enough that a Chinese boat crashed into the Tubbataha reef, a protected coral reef off the coast of the Philippines, but what the coast guard found inside increased massively the size of the environmental disaster: 400 boxes containing around 10,000 kg of frozen Pangolin meat, an endangered scaly anteater. Pangolins are already extinct in China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, because many people there consider its meat a delicacy and think its scales have beneficial properties. Poachers are now threatening it pretty much everywhere it still can be found… Too bad we can’t seem to catch them unless they’re so incompetent that they crash their ships.

Read more: Chinese boat crashes in protected coral reef… with thousands of illegally killed pangolins on board