Sentences with phrase «ecological role»

A new study found that whales play an important ecological role in the discharge of their urine and feces, through which they release nitrogen and iron into the ocean ecosystem.

If they continue to disappear, she said, the remaining mammals would prove poor stand - ins for important ecological roles.

Those marine worms play a key ecological role as an important source of food for other animals.

The human relationship with caffeine is relatively recent, however, and thus its impact on our brains is likely a by - product of its true ecological role.

They should be able to take up their old ecological role in their old habitat.

Now that the unique ecological role of the passenger pigeon compels us to pursue de-extinction, we need to figure out how best to reintroduce a new generation of pigeons and restore that ecology.

«We need to know what insects eat when doing ecosystem restoration, and we shouldn't assume that species with generalist feeding habits will necessarily fill the same ecological roles as more specialized species.»

This puts them at the top of the food chain, where they play an important ecological role by regulating prey populations and structuring animal communities.

That unique ecological role for the wasps» venom could explain why these animals rely so heavily on a different mechanism for gene evolution than other venomous species.

Bay mussels play a key ecological role in the natural world, said Brian Gaylord, a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, Bodega Marine Laboratory.

As extreme weather cycles and land development damage our environment, landscaping with indigenous plants could ultimately assume a critical ecological role in addition to an aesthetic one, much as beautiful architecture does.

Large primates and large ungulates, which are depleted by hunting, play vital ecological roles such as seed dispersal and are crucial to the health of the forest.

This species ecological role has been restored on a small satellite islands to Mauritius — Île aux Aigrettes and Round Island — using Aldabran and Madagascan tortoises.

«Among their many ecological roles, whales recycle nutrients and enhance primary productivity in areas where they feed.»

Ecosystems are delicately balanced, and losing ecological roles throws a system out of whack: Think of a forest damaged when the deer population explodes because the wolves that prey on them are removed.

The researchers specifically examined the role of grey reef sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos), a predatory species commonly associated with coral environments but whose wider ecological role has long been debated.

Dense «dog - hair» stands (so - called because of the large number of short trees growing closely together, like the fur of a dog) are not usually valued, but they may play an important ecological role not previously recognized, Turner adds.

Queen and worker ants develop from the same sets of genes, but perform completely different ecological roles.

The research illustrates the context - dependent ecological role of sheephead in Southern California kelp forests.

«This raises new questions about how tritylodontids and their mammalian neighbors shared or separated ecological roles,» says Matsuoka.

Hence, street gutters and the microscopic life they host appear to constitute a unique ecosystem with ecological roles still to be discovered.

42 Great Basin springsnails: Living in isolated springs of the Great Basin and Mojave deserts, springsnails play important ecological roles cycling nutrients, filtering water and providing food to other animals.

Fires play an essential ecological role in flammable ecosystems: some are managed to clear forests, promote grazing and establish plants6, while others are suppressed to protect human lives and property, regardless of how they ignite.

Earlier in August, the Briggs Lab published a paper in Biology Letters titled «All the better to see you with «reporting on the visual system of the eurypterids and the divergent ecological roles between a number of these species.

De-extinction of the Heath Hen will not only galvanize public interest in the conservation of the sandplain grasslands, but the revived Heath Hen would also fill a needed ecological role in this unique ecosystem.

Turtles are a very big aspect of our research because of their economic and ecological roles on the islands.

These mostly ground - nesting bees «play a crucial ecological role by pollinating wild plants and provide more than $ 3 billion in fruit - pollination services each year in the United States,» explains a new report by the Center for Biological Diversity.

We are «waste products» that long ago «ceased to play a useful ecological role.»

Further studies are needed in order to confirm the true ecological role of this fascinating hermit crab.

The idea is that the new grizzly bears would fill the same ecological role as their vanished relatives, as omnivores that spread seeds, break up soil and keep prey populations in check.

Turtles and tortoises are group of reptiles that can play key ecological roles, serving as both predators and prey, contributing to the cycling of nutrients, and acting as seed dispersers.

Elephants are iconic, awe - inspiring animals and perform critical ecological roles in the forests and savannahs they inhabit.

This understanding of passenger pigeon genomics will also a play a key role in Revive & Restore's efforts to build a successful program to revive the species» vital ecological role.

That's especially mysterious because Enantiornithines were exceptionally abundant (they apparently outnumbered the ancestors of modern birds before the asteroid struck) and had presumably played the same ecological roles as the ancestors of modern birds, which survived the mass extinctions.

We can't bring the passenger pigeon back as a exact clone from a historical genome, but we can bring back unique passenger pigeon genes in order to restore its unique ecological role.

Lichens play a variety of important ecological roles and are often a dominant biological component in extreme environments.

Monitors play an important ecological role in many island ecosystems in the southwest Pacific.

Weeds like Umbelliferae, Leguminosae and Compositae play an especially important ecological role as they provide food and thus improve reproduction of many arthropod species34.

They also call for more research comparing the ecological role of top predators on the edge of their geographic range, especially in human - modified environments.

«Australians can learn a lot from how wolves are managed in North America, and Americans can learn from the ecological role of the dingo,» Newsome said.

Although different species came and went, the same ecological roles were filled over the 1.5 million year span of the Dinosaur Park Formation.

Whether the newcomer will fill the dorado's ecological role or prey on different fish and thus skew species assemblages is unclear, says Carlos Cañas, a river ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society here, who plans to monitor the migration of large catfish in the watershed.

«Our work suggests that there's an ecological role that wolves play that won't be played by other animals,» he said.

«All scavengers play an important ecological role — helping to recycle nutrients and to remove carrion and disease vectors from the ecosystem,» Frehner says.

«It's easy to sympathize with the prey,» Laidre says, «but at the same time, there's a lot of ecological roles that that sort of action has.»

They are places where tourists can see lions really being lions in all the amazing facets of their behavior, and where lions properly fulfill their ecological role.»

«We have no idea what they do there, what they feed on, who feeds on them, or what their ecological roles are,» says Brandt.

That's what happened when a much later extinction killed off the dinosaurs and allowed mammals to take over those reptiles» ecological roles.

Like Charles Darwin's famous finches, which evolved a wide range of beak shapes and sizes to exploit the different foods available in the Galápagos Islands, these cichlids represent a textbook example of what biologists term an adaptive radiation — the phenomenon whereby one lineage spawns numerous species that evolve specializations to an array of ecological roles.