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| Your plasticine eggs could look like this. |
Researchers at the Virginia Museum of Natural History needed a thousand eggs for a study. They decided to make them out of plasticine clay, because the plasticine eggs would show predators’ tooth and claw marks, plus, they wouldn’t rot. It took them 30 hours and they spent $250 on materials.
They published their exact method for making the eggs in The Southwestern Naturalist. You can find an open access version of the paper on this site.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been reported in Maryland. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reported last week that a white-tailed deer killed by a hunter last November in Green Ridge State Forest has tested positive for CWD. (Google Maps reveals that this state forest is in the Maryland panhandle, that little strip of Maryland between West Virginia and Pennsylvania.)
The Maryland DNR press release includes a link to the state’s 10-page long CWD response plan. (Actually, it’s two clicks away.)
The Baltimore Sun covered the story. Since the news broke, it also reported stories that the state’s deer harvest dropped below 100,000 for the first time in three years. And that a privately-funded research project is exploring the surgical sterilization of suburban deer.
Lack of photo: Sorry, but there are only so many pictures of CWD-stricken deer I can post in a week. This is Maryland’s state flag.
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| Photo: NC Wildlife Commission |
Endangered Carolina northern flying squirrels can now safely cross the Cherohala Skyway in western North Carolina thanks to telephone-pole-like crossing structures. Before the poles were installed, in 2008, the squirrels did not cross the Skyway because the distance between the trees on either side of the road exceeded their gliding ability. The northern flying squirrel populations on each side of the roadway did not interbreed.
The squirrels’ use of the poles has been documented with video cameras mounted on the pole tops.
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission hopes to allow trees to grow closer to the Skyway, which will allow them to eventually remove the poles.
More details, and a video, are available from the Commission’s press release.
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| Photo: NC Wildlife Commission |
Endangered Carolina northern flying squirrels can now safely cross the Cherohala Skyway in western North Carolina thanks to telephone-pole-like crossing structures. Before the poles were installed, in 2008, the squirrels did not cross the Skyway because the distance between the trees on either side of the road exceeded their gliding ability. The northern flying squirrel populations on each side of the roadway did not interbreed.
The squirrels’ use of the poles has been documented with video cameras mounted on the pole tops.
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission hopes to allow trees to grow closer to the Skyway, which will allow them to eventually remove the poles.
More details, and a video, are available from the Commission’s press release.
German and Swiss researchers have found that the social dynamics of bats are only revealed after analyzing large data sets. The researchers examined 20,500 individual observations collected over five years and found that female Bechstein’s bats have social networks as complex and long-lived as those in dolphins, elephants and some primate species.
Bechstein’s bats are a Myotis species (Myotis bechsteinii). They roost in trees and only rarely hibernate in caves. It is an uncommon bat with a patchy distribution throughout Europe, including the United Kingdom.
There’s a brief write-up in the AAAS ScienceShots. And here’s the paper, in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy B.
While the findings lean toward the academic, they offer insight for the study of White Nose Syndrome, and into just what you might discover after collecting 20,500 observations of an animal’s behavior.
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| US Fish and Wildlife Service map |
Six bats have tested positive for white nose syndrome in North Carolina, according to that state’s Wildlife Resources Commission. Many bats appeared to have the syndrome when researchers surveyed the closed Avery County mine on Feb. 1. Five bats there were collected for testing. One dead bat was found in a cave at Grandfather Mountain State Park, also during a bat inventory, this one in late January.
Read the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission press release here.
Go here for a link to the US Fish and Wildlife Service map of White Nose Syndrome occurrences. (Map is on the bottom of page, right-hand side.)
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| Raccoon: US Fish & Wildlife |
Just four of the 26 wild-caught, captive raccoons that were fed an oral rabies vaccine on bait developed an immune response to the disease, a Canadian study has found. The raccoons that that received the vaccine by intramuscular injection were more likely to develop an immunity response (18 out of 27). When infected with rabies over a year after vaccination all the raccoons that developed an immune response after the vaccine survived, whether the vaccine was delivered orally or by injection.
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| Raccoon: US Fish & Wildlife |
Just four of the 26 wild-caught, captive raccoons that were fed an oral rabies vaccine on bait developed an immune response to the disease, a Canadian study has found. The raccoons that that received the vaccine by intramuscular injection were more likely to develop an immunity response (18 out of 27). When infected with rabies over a year after vaccination all the raccoons that developed an immune response after the vaccine survived, whether the vaccine was delivered orally or by injection.
The American Society of Mammalogists has issued new guidelines for protection from rodent-borne hantavirus for research wildlife biologists handling rodents in the field. These guidelines are less stringent than those issued by the Centers for Disease Control.
The complete guidelines were published in the Journal of Mammalogy.
The American Society of Mammalogists has issued new guidelines for protection from rodent-borne hantavirus for research wildlife biologists handling rodents in the field. These guidelines are less stringent than those issued by the Centers for Disease Control.
The complete guidelines were published in the Journal of Mammalogy.