New life for endangered coastal lupine
A rare, coastal flowering plant known as Tidestrom’s lupine — threatened by native deer mice that can munch up to three-quarters of its unripe fruits under cover of an invasive beachgrass — has been given a new life with the large-scale removal of that grass, a long-term study in the journal Restoration Ecology shows.
Baby zebra is latest success in university-zoo research partnership
The recent birth of a female Grevy’s zebra foal at the Saint Louis Zoo marks another milestone in a long-running Washington University in St. Louis research partnership that is making significant contributions to the preservation of Grevy’s zebra and the equally endangered African wild ass.
DNA study reveals clues to human, ape evolution
New research provides one of the most detailed and comprehensive analyses yet of the genetic diversity of endangered great apes living in the wild, revealing new clues to the evolution of apes and humans.
Scat-sniffing dog helps save endangered primates
A scat-sniffing dog by the name of Pinkerton may be
the best friend ever for a small, highly elusive group of endangered
monkey and gibbon species now scrambling for survival in the vanishing
forests of a remote Chinese mountain range. The high-energy Belgian Malinois is a critical player in efforts to preserve the black-crested gibbon and
the Phayre’s leaf monkey.
Washington People: Tiffany Knight
Tiffany Knight, PhD, associate professor of biology and director of the Environmental Studies Program in Arts & Science, is on sabbatical in Hawaii working to pull some of its many endangered plant species back from the brink.
Restoration as science: case of the collared lizard
Biologist Alan R. Templeton fell in love with the eastern collared lizard that lives in the hot, dry Ozark glades when he was 13. By the time he returned from postgraduate work, 75 percent of the lizard populations had vanished. Over the next 30 years, he reintroduced lizards to a few glades and then sought to establish the disturbance regime that had once sustained them by advocating for the highly controversial process of landscape-scale burning. The cover article in the September issue of Ecology celebrates the success of this prolonged effort.