Sentences with phrase «ecological roles»

Mangrove forests play key ecological roles, including sustaining fish populations and other wildlife, preventing erosion along coastlines, and acting as an overall carbon sink.

Describing new species and their ecological roles, quantifying carbon and energy fluxes in the ecosystem, documenting the annual cycle of ecological processes, identifying hotspots of biological production, and contrasting the ecology of the different arctic seas are the objectives shared by several international and multidisciplinary research efforts that contributed to the Canadian IPY program.

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

I don't like the concept either, but it is far better than them not existing at all — because at least they have the chance of someday returning to their ecological roles (i.e., if some of the disease mitigation efforts discussed by Woodhams et al can work).

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

More than 1,300 species of bats roam the planet playing ecological roles that are vital to natural ecosystems and human economies — from pollinating plants and keeping insect populations in check, to making valuable fertilizer (guano) and dispersing seeds.

But appreciation of the ecological roles of street dogs & coyotes, exposing dog - eating and puppy mills, opposition to indiscriminate lethal animal control, introduction of high - volume low - cost spay / neuter and anti-rabies vaccination, introduction of online adoption promotion, encouraging the formation of thousands of new humane societies worldwide, etc., are not to be confused with pit bull advocacy.

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

This result agrees with the different habitats and ecological roles of each strain, being F113 a rhizospheric bacterium with biocontrol activities (32), similar to UM270; while UK4 is a biofilm former with no attributed plant - associated activity (15).

Scrutinizing the biological and ecological roles of small molecules in oral biofilm communities.

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.

Although the study is interesting, says Eric Dinerstein, a biologist with the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., he argues that information about the ecological roles of subspecies may be an even more important criterion than genetic makeup in designing conservation strategies.

«Although sharks are charismatic predators that capture the interest of many, we still only have a very basic understanding of their ecological roles in nature,» said Doug Rasher, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory and lead author of the new paper.

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

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

Key outstanding questions regarding CRISPR - Cas biology include the ecological roles of microbial adaptive immunity, the high rates of CRISPR - Cas horizontal transfer, and the coevolution of CRISPR - Cas and phage - encoded anti-CRISPR proteins.

Thus, rather than a multiplication of ecological roles, the new results point to external factors, such as increasing environmental heterogeneity, as the main evolutionary force.

However, in the ice - free greenhouse of the Mesozoic, reptiles cruised the oceans from pole to pole, occupying the ecological roles now largely filled by whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and even sharks.

But flies play important ecological roles, as pollinators for example, points out Chris Nagano, an entomologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

For unknown reasons ichthyosaurs and large pliosaurs had died out by 90 million years ago, but it didn't take long for their ecological roles to be refilled.

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.

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

«Since we held species richness constant, we know that each species» ecological roles — the jobs in the food web — are the key factors influencing big - picture stability.

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.

The researchers note, for example, that the modern ocean is full of ecological «ghosts» — species that are now so rare that they no longer fill the ecological roles they did previously, when they were more abundant.

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.

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.

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

«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.»

«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.»

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

«It is all about getting a much deeper understanding of sharks» ecological role in the ocean, which is important to the health of the ocean and, by extension, to our own well - being.»

UNSW's Associate Professor Suzanne Hand, who is a specialist in extinct bats and their ecological role in Riversleigh's ancient environments, says the bats could have played a role in the extraordinary preservation of the ostracod sperm cells.

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.

«I was particularly curious of the ecological role of this root adaptation,» explained Frida Piper, a terrestrial ecosystem ecologist at the remote research center Centro de Investigación en Ecosistemas de la Patagonia (CIEP) in Coyhaique, Chile.

Weta, giant flightless grasshoppers native to New Zealand, ingest and disperse seeds --- an ecological role played by small mammals in other parts of the world.

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.

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.

The commission has also asked a technical committee to devise a strategy to preserve the ecological role of menhaden.

The decision to lower the allowable catch by 37 % is being driven by recent overfishing and recognition of the ecological role of menhaden.

The scientists said they are currently working on analyses to model the ecological role that nonhuman primates play in maintaining the diversity of astroviruses, particularly in places where they share the environment with humans and other animals.