BioScience articles from April 2005

BioScience archives from April 2005

A database for the ESA.(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... The Forum article that begins on page 360, "The Effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act: A Quantitative Analysis," by Martin Taylor and colleagues, is particularly timely, given the number of bills before Congress to amend the Endangered...

Attitudes threaten DOI biology.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... In January, Jeffrey Cohn wrote about the divorce between Department of the Interior (DOI) resource agencies, such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and their research capabilities. Cohn concluded that there is still too much flux in...

Dollars without sense: the bait for big-money tuna ranching around the world.(Viewpoint)
April 1, 2005... The technical achievements of the green revolution--the industrialization of agriculture in the 1950s and 1960s, which allowed exponential population growth--have been exhausted. Physical and economic access to safe, nutritious, and culturally...

Rekindling native fires.
April 1, 2005... Just up the hill from the old Lyons homestead, in what is now Redwood National Park, stand a group of majestic tan oak trees, their broad bases hollowed and blackened by fire. Amelia Lyons tended these trees by burning out the undergrowth...

Creating a community of educators to improve undergraduate biology student learning.(Eye on Education)
April 1, 2005... Biology faculty at research institutions belong to a community of scientists. They communicate regularly with others in their discipline, sharing research problems, methods, and conclusions. But what happens when they have a teaching problem?...

The biodefense buildup: fallout for other research areas?(Washington Watch)
April 1, 2005... Massive expansion of the US biodefense program since 2001 has yielded flesh career opportunities for thousands of American scientists handling infectious disease work. With the Bush administration determined to develop better countermeasures...

Trophic interaction cycles in tundra ecosystems and the impact of climate change.
April 1, 2005... While population cycles are geographically widespread, it is on arctic tundra that such cycle's appear to be most influential for the functioning of the whole ecosystem. We give an overview of tundra species that exhibit population cycles and...

The behavioral ecology of insect vibrational communication.
April 1, 2005... Vibrational communication is widespread in insect social and ecological interactions. Of the insect species that communicate using sound, water surface ripples, or substrate vibrations, we estimate that 92% use substrate vibrations alone or...

Science priorities for reducing the threat of invasive species to sustainable forestry.
April 1, 2005... Invasive species pose a major, yet poorly addressed, threat to sustainable forestry. Here we set forth an interdisciplinary science strategy of research, development, and applications to reduce this threat. To spur action by public and private...

University K-12 science outreach programs: how can we reach a broad audience?(Education)
April 1, 2005... Scientists conducting kindergarten through twelfth-grade (K-12) outreach often use an expert-driven innovation-adoption model for the dissemination of ideas, similar to the model used in agricultural extension programs. However, social-learning...

The effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act: a quantitative analysis.(Forum)
April 1, 2005... Population trends for 1095 species listed as threatened and endangered under the Endangered Species Act were correlated with the length of time the species were listed and the presence or absence of critical habitat and recovery plans. Species...

The beauty of Kettlewell's classic experimental demonstration of natural selection.(Biology in History)
April 1, 2005... H. B. D. Kettlewell's work on the phenomenon of industrial melanism is widely regarded as the classic demonstration of natural selection and one of the most beautiful experiments in evolutionary biology. The following essay discusses the...

Genes for ecologists.
April 1, 2005... An Introduction to Molecular Ecology. Trevor J. C. Beebee and Graham Rowe. Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. 370 pp., illus. $49.50 (ISBN 0199248575 paper). An Introduction to Molecular Ecology, by Trevor Beebee and Graham Rowe, is...

Lessons from the Maya.
April 1, 2005... The Lowland Maya Area: Three Millennia at the Human-Wildland Interface. Arturo Gomez-Pompa, Michael F. Allen, Scott L. Feddick, and Juan J. Jimenez-Osornio, eds. 2003. Food Products Press (an imprint of Haworth Press), Binghamton, NY. 659 pp....

Merging new technology with long-term data sets.
April 1, 2005... Soay Sheep: Dynamics and Selection in an Island Population. Tim Clutton-Brock and Josephine Pemberton, eds. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2004. 383 pp. $120.00 (ISBN 0521823005 cloth), $50.00 (ISBN 0521529905 paper)....

New titles.
April 1, 2005... Bacterial Protein Toxins: Role in the Interference with Cell Growth Regulation. Alistair J. Lax, ed. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2005. 239 pp., illus. $95.00 (ISBN 052182091X cloth). Caddisflies: The Underwater Architect. Glenn B....

Entomological Society of America debuts new Web site.(AIBS news)
April 1, 2005... The Web site of the Entomological Society of America (ESA), an AIBS member society, has undergone a major overhaul (see www.entsoc.org). Among the new features are drop-down screens with supporting navigation bars, as well as full capability to...

AIBS donates books.(AIBS news)
April 1, 2005... In March, AIBS donated over 300 science- and technology-related books to Bridge to Asia (BTA), a nonprofit charity that supplies educational materials to universities in developing Pacific Rim nations. In 16 years, BTA has sent over 6 million...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
April 1, 2005... April 6-8 Joint Spring Meeting, Helminthological Society of Washington, Blacksburg, VA; Web site: www.gettysburg.edu/~ shendrix/helmsoc.html 10-14 97th Annual Meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association, Philadelphia, PA; Web...

Using parasite inventories to predict emerging diseases.(BioBriefs)
April 1, 2005... More than half of all species on Earth are parasites and pathogens, yet most remain unknown. Parasites often emerge from obscurity, however, when humans destroy or encroach on wildlife habitat, move animals to new regions, or drive changes in...