Sentences with phrase «species ecological role»

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.

Not exact matches

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.

«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.»

Because large animals play an important role in the ocean food web, «a threat profile focused on the largest species is particularly concerning from an ecological perspective,» said lead author Jonathan Payne, an associate professor in the school of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford.

Even so, he and others warn against dismissing the role of ecology in speciation, because the method here needs refinement and there are counterexamples in which ecological differences have driven populations apart into species.

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.

Here in the Daintree, keystone species play a critical role in maintaining ecological balance.

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.

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.

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.

«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.

«The work clearly shows that, despite their size, small rodents play a much larger role in seed dispersal for some tree species than previously recognized,» says Joshua Plotkin, a population biologist at the University of Pennsylvania who mathematically models evolutionary and ecological questions.

Riparian forests — the ribbons of trees that grow along river channels — play an important ecological role as refuges for endangered species in dry areas.

The passenger pigeon's ecological role in the environment has long been subject to speculation and debate, and the disagreement in published research launched our project's own investigation into the species» natural history.

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.

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 a keystone species, meaning they play an extremely important role in maintaining the biodiversity in the ecological systems in which they live.

Galapagos in Danger Due to its incredible biological, cultural, and ecological importance, (and of course to its starring role in the Origin of Species) Galapagos was among the first locales to be deemed a World Heritage Site.