24 posts · 11,187 views
I'm a freelance science and nature writer. My blog is Wild Muse, and my professional writing site is: http://www.delene.us.
Wild Muse
24 posts
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- March 26, 2010
- 01:25 PM
- 719 views
Begging meerkat pups
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Learning about animal behavior never fails to fascinate me, and so it was with great interest that I read a recent paper on how meerkat pups alter their food-begging behavior depending upon the adult meerkat that they are nearest to. {1} Not all adults are created equal, it seems, in the world of a [...]... Read more »
Madden, J., Kunc, H., English, S., Manser, M., & Clutton-Brock, T. (2009) Do meerkat (Suricata suricatta) pups exhibit strategic begging behaviour and so exploit adults that feed at relatively high rates?. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 63(9), 1259-1268. DOI: 10.1007/s00265-009-0777-7
- February 28, 2011
- 01:56 PM
- 640 views
Anti-carnivore alliances as community symbols
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
When wolves and livestock, or pets, come into conflict with each other, people’s tolerance for wolves on the landscape tends to decrease. Part of the problem is the economic loss to the livestock producer, so some predator conservation organizations offer compensation payments for wolf-killed livestock as a tool to increase tolerance for wolves. Additional reasons [...]... Read more »
Skogen, K., & Krange, O. (2003) A Wolf at the Gate: The Anti-Carnivore Alliance and the Symbolic Construction of Community. Sociologia Ruralis, 43(3), 309-325. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9523.00247
- April 5, 2011
- 08:03 PM
- 635 views
Electrifying deterrents: wolves and fladry
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Fladry has proved to be an interesting and rather low-tech tool to ward wolves away from domestic livestock in certain conditions. It consists of red flags or pennants attached to a piece of twine or thin rope at regular intervals (about 18 inches or so) and strung around a livestock corral or pen. Like all [...]... Read more »
N. J. Lance, S. W. Breck, C. Sime, P. Callahan and J. A. Shivik. (2010) Biological, technical, and social aspects of applying electrified fladry for livestock protection from wolves (Canis lupus). Wildlife Research, 708-714. info:/
- March 25, 2010
- 05:44 PM
- 568 views
Adaptive radiation of “coywolves”
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Lately, “coywolves” have been making headlines and raising eyebrows. They are a wild canid that is a hybrid between a coyote and a wolf. It may sound like an urban legend, but coywolves are real.* I first learned about this quirky common name via a news article from The Star in Canada, Meet the Coywolf [...]... Read more »
Kays R, Curtis A, & Kirchman JJ. (2010) Rapid adaptive evolution of northeastern coyotes via hybridization with wolves. Biology letters, 6(1), 89-93. PMID: 19776058
- March 18, 2010
- 02:12 PM
- 553 views
“Skunk bear” snowfall ecology (a.k.a what wolverines want)
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Recently, the only known wolverine in Michigan passed away. Unlike the life and death of most wild animals, which unfold without human fanfare, her life and death were noticed. Scrutinized even. Rare species catch our attention. Rare species persisting outside their normal range even more so. Wolverines are often characterized as solitary creatures, thinly distributed [...]... Read more »
Copeland, J., McKelvey, K., Aubry, K., Landa, A., Persson, J., Inman, R., Krebs, J., Lofroth, E., Golden, H., Squires, J.... (2010) The bioclimatic envelope of the wolverine (Gulo gulo): do climatic constraints limit its geographic distribution?. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 88(3), 233-246. DOI: 10.1139/Z09-136
- March 20, 2010
- 02:00 PM
- 521 views
Wolf recovery vs. ecosystem health
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
The idea may be exotic to many wolf conservation advocates, but a group of researchers are floating a proposal to introduce very small groups of wolves to small pieces of habitat as a management tool. The goal has little, if nothing, to do with wolf recovery and everything to do with managing ecosystem health and [...]... Read more »
Licht, D., Millspaugh, J., Kunkel, K., Kochanny, C., & Peterson, R. (2010) Using Small Populations of Wolves for Ecosystem Restoration and Stewardship. BioScience, 60(2), 147-153. DOI: 10.1525/bio.2010.60.2.9
- June 10, 2010
- 08:51 AM
- 502 views
Givin’ props to hybrids
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Why does the lay public tend to view hybridization in wild nature as a bastardization of the way things ought to be? Why do we favor “pure” species while rejecting hybrid crosses, or treating them like side-show freaks á la pizzlies, ligers and tiglons? I’ve been thinking a lot about hybridization lately, trying to wrap my head around [...]... Read more »
Mallet, J. (2005) Hybridization as an invasion of the genome. Trends in Ecology , 20(5), 229-237. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2005.02.010
- March 12, 2010
- 05:07 PM
- 500 views
Anatomy of a tuna’s internal compass
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
NOTE: This post was originally published in August of 2009, it was one of the first few research papers that I wrote about on this site; it’s been receiving a spike in hits due to the recent announcement of a proposed ban on bluefin tuna fishing. This post does not talk about the conservation issues, [...]... Read more »
Willis, J., Phillips, J., Muheim, R., Diego-Rasilla, F., & Hobday, A. (2009) Spike dives of juvenile southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii): a navigational role?. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 64(1), 57-68. DOI: 10.1007/s00265-009-0818-2
- March 23, 2010
- 09:17 AM
- 481 views
Shocking control: wild gray wolves and shock collars
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
The first time I heard someone discuss using shock collars as a control technique for wild wolves, I thought it must be a really bad joke. Only, it wasn’t. It fell squarely under the heading of “aversive conditioning” a school of thought aimed at devising ways to keep wolves where we humans want them to [...]... Read more »
Hawley, J., Gehring, T., Schultz, R., Rossler, S., & Wydeven, A. (2009) Assessment of Shock Collars as Nonlethal Management for Wolves in Wisconsin. Journal of Wildlife Management, 73(4), 518-525. DOI: 10.2193/2007-066
- July 10, 2010
- 11:42 PM
- 468 views
More hybrid lovin’: coywolves, wolves and coyotes…
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Is it a wolf? No. A coyote? No. A mixture of the two? Oh, yes. Northeastern wild canids have been leading biologists on a wild goose chase recently, as science scrambles to catch up with just what, exactly, Mother Nature has been cooking up in Massachusetts. Reports of extra large eastern coyotes have been rolling [...]... Read more »
Jon Way, Linda Rutledge, Tyler Wheeldon, & Bradley N. White. (2010) Genetic characterization of eastern coyotes in eastern Massachussets. Northeastern Naturalist. info:/
- April 19, 2010
- 06:01 PM
- 458 views
Biodiversity, globalization and shifting disease ecologies
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
As I was researching a story for the Observer, I had to go poking through the December 2009 issue of BioScience, and I stumbled across an interesting article reviewing biodiversity declines and global disease ecology. The authors assert that multiple factors working synergistically are leaving humans more at risk of contracting infectious diseases — [...]... Read more »
Pongsiri, M., Roman, J., Ezenwa, V., Goldberg, T., Koren, H., Newbold, S., Ostfeld, R., Pattanayak, S., & Salkeld, D. (2009) Biodiversity Loss Affects Global Disease Ecology. BioScience, 59(11), 945-954. DOI: 10.1525/bio.2009.59.11.6
- May 15, 2010
- 09:12 AM
- 457 views
Mesopredators gone wild
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Are we headed toward a world full of foxes, skunks and raccoons — but empty of lions, tigers and bears? Maybe. It’s a fact that many of the planet’s large carnivores are in dire straits. Where I live in the eastern U.S., we no longer have cougars or eastern wolves, top predators that used to [...]... Read more »
Prugh, L., Stoner, C., Epps, C., Bean, W., Ripple, W., Laliberte, A., & Brashares, J. (2009) The Rise of the Mesopredator. BioScience, 59(9), 779-791. DOI: 10.1525/bio.2009.59.9.9
- August 21, 2010
- 12:28 PM
- 441 views
Putting a number on it: Maned wolf survival rates
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
How can you conserve a large carnivore when you don’t know how many of them exist? It’s a difficult task, and so a few scientists at the Jaguar Conservation Fund opted to put a number on their target population… only it’s not jaguars they were trying to pinpoint, it was the lesser known maned wolf. [...]... Read more »
Sollmann, R., Furtado, M., Jácomo, A., Tôrres, N., & Silveira, L. (2010) Maned wolf survival rate in central Brazil. Journal of Zoology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2010.00727.x
- November 11, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 427 views
Coastal northwest American marten conservation
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Just how many sub-species of American martens are living in California and Oregon? Well, there may be one less than experts thought, according to a 2009 study published in Conservation Genetics. American martens (Martes americana) are slightly larger than a house cat and are carnivorous members of the Mustelid family. They live in boreal forests [...]... Read more »
Slauson, K., Zielinski, W., & Stone, K. (2008) Characterizing the molecular variation among American marten (Martes americana) subspecies from Oregon and California. Conservation Genetics, 10(5), 1337-1341. DOI: 10.1007/s10592-008-9626-x
- August 2, 2010
- 06:00 AM
- 422 views
How much for that tiger skin?: Modeling illegal wildlife trade markets
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
While a lot of attention is paid to reporting on human warfare across the globe, the illegal war on wildlife that is carried out through trafficking, poaching, and bush meat trades is often given comparatively less coverage. (At least in U.S. mainstream media, to which I refer here.) I’ve been starting to pay more attention [...]... Read more »
BARBER-MEYER, S. (2010) Dealing with the Clandestine Nature of Wildlife-Trade Market Surveys. Conservation Biology, 24(4), 918-923. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01500.x
- August 18, 2010
- 07:37 AM
- 412 views
Warming caves: A stop-gap prevention to thwart white-nose syndrome?
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
I’ve been trying to tune into developments with white-nose syndrome because it’s one of the worst emerging pathogens to hit North American wildlife in recent history. Ever since the first breakout in a New York cave in February 2006, this white fungus has killed off well more than a million bats from six different species. [...]... Read more »
Boyles, J., & Willis, C. (2010) Could localized warm areas inside cold caves reduce mortality of hibernating bats affected by white-nose syndrome?. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8(2), 92-98. DOI: 10.1890/080187
- July 22, 2010
- 10:37 AM
- 411 views
Bedeviled Tasmanian devils
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Wild Muse just perused the latest issue of Conservation Biology and went foraging for substantive research to post about… Hold on tight because we are going to Tasmania. To the Forestier peninsula in southeastern Tasmania, to be exact – where Tasmanian devils are pinned down by a catastrophic disease. Unfortunately, it will not be all fun [...]... Read more »
Lachish S, McCallum H, Mann D, Pukk CE, & Jones ME. (2010) Evaluation of selective culling of infected individuals to control tasmanian devil facial tumor disease. Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 24(3), 841-51. PMID: 20088958
- November 1, 2010
- 03:12 PM
- 408 views
The BIG picture: Ecological effectiveness
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
In an age when endangered species are often recovered just as much by force of legislation, á la the Endangered Species Act, as they are by scientific principles, I often find myself weighing the Big Picture of ecological effectiveness against the minutae of things like genes and mere numbers. Let me explain. I’m not knocking [...]... Read more »
Soule, M., Estes, J., Berger, J., & Del Rio, C. (2003) Ecological Effectiveness: Conservation Goals for Interactive Species. Conservation Biology, 17(5), 1238-1250. DOI: 10.1046/j.1523-1739.2003.01599.x
- July 8, 2010
- 11:47 AM
- 404 views
The wolves of Ethiopia
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
When most people hear the word “wolf,” they think of the burly gray wolves of the Great White North. But wolves are present all over the world, even in Africa. The Ethiopian wolf, Canis simensisis incredibly endangered. As its name implies, it lives in Ethiopia, but it lives only in seven highland mountain ranges, above [...]... Read more »
Randall, D., Pollinger, J., Argaw, K., Macdonald, D., & Wayne, R. (2009) Fine-scale genetic structure in Ethiopian wolves imposed by sociality, migration, and population bottlenecks. Conservation Genetics, 11(1), 89-101. DOI: 10.1007/s10592-009-0005-z
- January 27, 2011
- 11:58 AM
- 390 views
Africa’s new, old gray wolf
by DeLene Beeland in Wild Muse
Africa has a new, old wolf. An animal that was previously called a subspecies of the golden jackal in Egypt has now been found to be a very rare relict species hiding in plain sight — an ancient gray wolf line still living today. Previously, it was thought that the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) was [...]... Read more »
Eli Knispel Rueness, Maria Gulbrandsen Asmyhr, Claudio Sillero-Zubiri, David W. Macdonald, Afework Bekele, Anagaw Atickem, Nils Chr. Stenseth. (2011) The Cryptic African Wolf: Canis aureus lupaster Is Not a Golden Jackal and Is Not Endemic to Egypt . PLoS ONE, 6(1). info:/10.1371/journal.pone.0016385
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