Posts tagged as:

ecology

Crocodile eggs measure river health

12 November 2012

A new land management tool using Aboriginal knowledge Ngan’gi speakers know it’s time to look for freshwater crocodile eggs when the red kapok trees near the Northern Territory’s Daly River burst into flower. This can occur at a different time each year, but the environmental link is solid. A Darwin-based scientist has converted this link [...]

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Fire, carbon capture and the NT

20 June 2011

Soil has the answer to burning climate questions Decreasing the frequency of wild fires in northern Australia would lead to an increase in the amount of carbon stored in the soil, significantly lowering greenhouse gas emissions, according to CSIRO ecologist, Dr Anna Richards.

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Samurai of the sea

9 June 2011

What sawfish really do with their saw Scientists thought that sawfish used their saw to probe the sea bottom for food.  But a Cairns researcher has found that these large (5 metres or more) and endangered fish actually use the saw to locate and dismember free-swimming fish – using a sixth sense that detects electric [...]

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Add fertiliser to fight weeds

14 June 2010

Feeding weeds fertiliser sounds like exactly the wrong thing, if you want to get rid of them, but Jennifer Firn of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems has been doing just that—to control African lovegrass, an invasive species of rangelands in every Australian state.

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Life beneath the sheets: 9000 years in the dark

27 July 2009

Researchers at Geoscience Australia have unravelled the development of a unique seafloor community thriving in complete darkness below the giant ice sheets of Antarctica. The community beneath the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica is 100 km from open water and hidden from view by ice half a kilometre thick. This ecosystem has developed very slowly [...]

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Dinner for tuna: tracking tuna dining habits across the Indian Ocean

8 June 2009

Southern bluefin tuna can’t even have a quiet snack without CSIRO researchers knowing. They’ve developed a way of tracking when the tuna feed and also where, at what depth, and the temperature of the surrounding water.

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Owl CSI – feathers and DNA reveal night secrets

4 June 2009

…more than 2,000 feathers have been collected, some from highly threatened species, such as the elusive Rufous owl …

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Bilbies bring new life to desert dunes

2 June 2009

Bilbies and bettongs-the desert forms of bandicoots and rat-kangaroos-can bring degraded desert landscape back to life, a new study at the University of New South Wales has found.

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Tuna research in 350-tonne waterbed

16 August 2007

 Bluefin tuna use three times as much oxygen as other fish their size, making them more difficult to culture. That’s just part of the valuable information uncovered by University of Adelaide PhD student, Quinn Fitzgibbon and his colleagues in a study where they monitored live tuna swimming inside a 350-tonne “waterbed”.

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Hunting mice in trees

31 August 2005

There is more than we know in the rainforest canopy A crane-driving young researcher from the Rainforest CRC at James Cook University in North Queensland is using a tower crane to reveal a whole new world of life in the canopy of the Australian rainforest. Already she has found that the native prehensile-tailed mouse, once [...]

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Frog sex in the city

31 August 2004

Tree frogs defy the trend of urban decline Central Melbourne used to be a Mecca for frogs, but now there is only one species left. Southern brown tree frogs can still be heard calling to attract females for mating in parks throughout inner Melbourne, including the Royal Botanic Gardens and Fitzroy Gardens. A survey conducted [...]

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Global climate change: a load of poo?

18 August 2004

Plankton poo could be the key to understanding how much carbon dioxide our oceans can store according to Tasmanian researcher Dr Karin Beaumont. The greenhouse effect is arguably humanity’s greatest environmental threat.   “We need to understand where and how carbon dioxide is stored in the oceans. Part of the answer lies in the poo [...]

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Fire: The new threat to coral reefs

19 August 2003

Smoke from fires raging through tropical forests near coastal reefs can cause an algal bloom capable of killing virtually all coral and fish for hundreds of kilometres, according to new research by Australian National University scientists.

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Plants eavesdrop on bacterial attack plans

19 August 2003

Plants can listen in on bacterial communication and can even mimic this communication, possibly in an attempt to stop any attacks, according to a breakthrough in scientific understanding announced today in Melbourne.

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Seaweed does its bit for conservation

22 August 2002

An Adelaide researcher has used kelp to demonstrate a principle of importance to planners and conservationists-that the best way to maintain rare species when habitats are broken up and destroyed is to ensure neighbouring patches are as close together as possible.

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Healthy ants, healthy country

26 August 2001

Ants have the answers when it comes to assessing the effects of land management on the environment. Up to 20 million ants from 100 species live in any single hectare of the Australian bush, says CSIRO ecologist, Dr Ben Hoffmann.

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