WashU Expert: Proposed changes will stamp out ‘countless species’
The Trump Administration’s proposed overhaul of the landmark Endangered Species Act will “hasten the extinction of countless species,” says Jonathan Losos, director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis and an international biodiversity expert.
Frog fungus hammering biodiversity of communities
Everyone knows that frogs are in trouble. But a recent analysis by Washington University in St. Louis researchers of data on Central American frogs collected by a University of Maryland colleague shows the situation is worse than had been thought.
Book’s plea: Save the bonobos
Image courtesy of Marian BricknerA biologist at Washington University in St. Louis is the mastermind behind a project that has led to an informative book, aimed at children but appealing to all ages, on an endangered species of ape. Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, is the driving force behind I’m Lucy, A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo, written by Mathea Levine, Goodenough’s daughter, and featuring the photographs of St. Louisan Marian Brickner. The book includes a convincing, impassioned Afterward by the famed primatologist Jane Goodall.
Researchers discover carriers of astronomical 2175 Å extinction line in presolar grains
Christine Floss, Ph.D., and Frank Stadermann, Ph.D., examine data on the NanoSIMS in Compton Hall.A collaborative team of researchers including two from WUSTL have discovered what turns the lights out from space. They have discovered that organic carbon and amorphous silicates in interstellar grains embedded within interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) are the carriers of the astronomical 2175 Å extinction line, which occurs at a wavelength of 2175 Angstroms and blocks starlight from reaching the Earth.
New book urges ecologists to think “outside the helmet”
Image courtesy of the Cellar Store, San Bernardino, CA.A new book is persuading ecologists to think “outside the helmet”.An ecologist at Washington University in St. Louis has co-authored a new book that is forcing the pith helmet set to “think outside the helmet.” Jonathan M. Chase, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in Arts& Sciences at Washington University and Mathew A. Leibold, Ph.D.,associate professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, take on one of the tenets of ecology, niche theory, which holds that species evolve and thrive because of their particular environment and what activities they do to shape that environment, providing them their niche, if you will.