After years of legal wrangling, the U.S. government says it will designate critical habitat for the jaguar

Jaguars, the third-largest cats after lions and tigers and the biggest in the Western Hemisphere, used to live here. In the 1700s and 1800s people spotted them in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas. Sometimes the cats roamed as far east as North Carolina and as far north as Colorado.

As humans have encroached on their territory, the endangered cats’ range has shifted south. Today it stretches from northern Argentina into Mexico’s Sonoran Desert. But they cross into the American Southwest frequently enough for some conservationists to argue that they deserve critical habitat protection. Now, after years of legal wrangling, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has agreed. “We do plan on proposing to designate some critical habitat,” says Steve Spangle, field supervisor for FWS in Phoenix. “But we don’t know yet where or how much.” The agency plans to announce its decision in July.

The question of whether or not jaguars deserve critical habitat reflects a broader debate in conservation circles. How does one prioritize spending among the many species that are slowly disappearing from the planet? Many experts believe the best way to help the species is to increase resources south of the border, where jaguars live and breed. But Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued FWS to designate critical habitat, says the goal should be to help jaguars repopulate parts of the U.S. where they have gone extinct, especially since dozens were killed under a federal predator-extermination program that continued into the 1960s. It is important to look at a species’ historical range and not just at “a snapshot in time,” Robinson contends.

Whatever critical habitat the government grants most likely will be small. In April an outline prepared by an advisory group to FWS focused on an area that includes the southeastern corner of Arizona and a tiny slice of New Mexico’s southwestern corner, neglecting New Mexico’s Gila National Forest and Arizona’s Mogollon Rim, which Robinson says are prime jaguar habitat.

The subject “can be debated for a couple of more generations while the species goes extinct,” says Howard Quigley, a co-leader of the advisory group convened by FWS and executive director of the jaguar program at the wild cat conservation group Panthera. “But we need an area in which to focus now and get recovery actions under way.” At least it’s a start. Source: Scientific American

A house mouse nesting in a can. Photograph by David & Hayes Norris/Science Photo Library

The results revealed that the males’ songs are more complex than mere squeaks, and that each male has a different singing “voice.”

Scientists already knew that these melodious males sing when they smell a female, and that females are in turn attracted to their tunes. But the new research suggests it may be more complicated than that.

For instance, when slowed down, the males’ sounds sound strikingly like those of birds. In some bird species, the males with the most complex sounds are most alluring—which means it’s possible male mice also use these so-called “sexy syllables” to snag mates, according to a statement.

The research also showed that brothers’ sounds are similar to each other when compared with songs of unrelated males—possibly a strategy for females to discern males and avoid inbreeding, according to the study, published recently in the journals Physiology & Behavior and the Journal of Ethology.

“It seems as though house mice might provide a new model organism for the study of song in animals,” study author Dustin Penn, of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, said in a statement. ”Who would have thought that?”

Sadly for us, mice songs aren’t music to our ears—their sounds are ultrasonic and out of range of human hearing. But there are plenty of critters that are loud enough to make up for it.

In July National Geographic News published a gallery of the world’s loudest animals, including the howler monkey, the loudest land animal; the blue whale, the loudest mammal; and the snapping shrimp, possibly the loudest noise by anything alive. Of course, my favorite is a water insect whose musical instrument of choice is its penis.

Writes Rachel Kaufman:

“Although not the loudest animal in terms of sheer decibels, the 0.07-inch (2-millimeter) water boatman species Micronecta scholtzi, … does make the loudest sounds relative to its body size. …

Remarkably, the boatman creates his songs by rubbing his penis against his belly, in a process similar to how crickets chirp. Sound-producing genitalia are relatively rare within the animal kingdom, but animals have evolved hundreds of other ways to boost their hoots, howls, and snaps.”

Author: Christine Dell’Amore | Source: newswatch.nationalgeographic [January 23, 2012]

An expert said the snake was a non-venomous species which resembles a viper, above Photo: ALAMY

“I started to scream. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she told AFP. “I nearly died of fright.”

Her screams brought the rest of the family – and the neighbourhood – running.

“We rushed in and found the baby with a snake in his mouth, chewing it. It was really scary, just horrible,” the boy’s aunt, Yasmin Shahin, said.

A neighbour who had rushed to see what was going on yanked the half-dead reptile out of the boys mouth and killed it, she said.

“When he pulled it out, Imad started crying,” she said, describing the snake’s head as “very badly chewed” when it emerged from the boys mouth.

They immediately checked the child for any bite marks but found none, with doctors at Rambam hospital in Haifa confirming he was unharmed.

“Doctors at the hospital told us the snake was really poisonous but that we were very lucky because they release less venom in the winter,” she said.

Dr Boaz Shacham, an expert on amphibians and reptiles, told AFP that from looking at images of the smashed-up serpent online, it appeared to be a coin-marked snake (hemorrhois nummifer), a non-venomous species which resembles a viper.

Such snakes grow up to three feet in length, he said suggesting it was a “very young” specimen.

“It probably didn’t bite the child because of the cold,” said Dr Shacham who is the head of the herpetology collection at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“They are not really active in winter.”

Source: telegraph [January 23, 2012]

The tiny frog sits easily on a US dime, whose diameter is 18mm

At 7mm (0.27 inches) long, Paedophryne amauensis may be the world’s smallest vertebrate – the group that includes mammals, fish, birds and amphibians.

The researchers also found a slightly larger relative, Paedophryne swiftorum.

Presenting the new species in PLoS One journal, they suggest the frogs’ tiny scale is linked to their habitat, in leaf litter on the forest floor.

Finding the frogs was not an easy assignment.

What are amphibians? * First true amphibians evolved about 250 million years ago * Three orders: frogs (inc. toads), salamanders (inc. newts) and the limbless caecilians * Adapted to many aquatic and terrestrial habitats * Present on every continent except Antarctica * Many metamorphose from larvae to adults

The New Guinea forests are incredibly loud at night; and we were trying to record frog calls in the forest, and we were curious as to what these other sounds were," said research leader Chris Austin from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US.

"So we triangulated to where these calls were coming from, and looked through the leaf litter.

"It was night, these things are incredibly small; so what we did after several frustrating attempts was to grab a whole handful of leaf litter and throw it inside a clear plastic bag.

"When we did so, we saw these incredibly tiny frogs hopping around," he told BBC News.

Littering the leaves

The Paedophryne genus was identified only recently, and consists of a number of tiny species found at various points in the eastern forests of Papua New Guinea.

The tiny limbs of amauensis (top) and swiftorum are rendered translucent

“They’re occupying the relatively thick leaf litter of tropical forest in low-lying parts of the island, eating incredibly small insects that typically are much smaller than insects that frogs eat,” said Professor Austin.

“And they’re probably prey for a large number of relatively small invertebrates that don’t usually prey on frogs.”

Predators may well include scorpions.

Intriguingly, other places in the world that also feature dense, moist leaf litter tend to possess such small frog species, indicating that amphibians are well placed to occupy this ecological niche.

Before the Paedophrynes were found, the title of “world’s smallest frog” was bestowed on the Brazilian gold frog (Brachycephalus didactylus) and its slightly larger Cuban relative, the Monte Iberia Eleuth (Eleutherodactylus iberia). They both measure less than 1cm long.

The smallest vertebrates have until now been fish.

Adult Paedocypris progenetica, which dwells in Indonesian swamps and streams, measure 7.9-10.3 mm long.

Male anglerfish of the species Photocorynus spiniceps are just over 6mm long. But they spend their lives fused to the much larger (50mm long) females, so whether they should count in this contest would be disputed.

Paedophryne amauensis adults average 7.7mm, which is why its discoverers believe it how holds the crown.

The remote expanses of Papua New Guinea rank alongside those of Madagascar as places where hitherto undiscovered amphibian species are expected to turn up, as they are largely undeveloped and not well explored.

Author:Richard Black| Source: bbc [January 12, 2012]

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