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(Header image: Juvenile hellbender salamander. Photo by Bita Honarvar for WABE)
In the deep woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a cold, clear stream flows. Below a canopy of twisted rhododendrons, seven people in black wetsuits creep upstream through the water. They look like Gollum, sleek in their neoprene, crouching in the water, feeling under rocks.
They’re looking for a kind of giant salamander known as ...
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27
NOV
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NOV
Diseases have repeatedly spilled over from wildlife to humans, causing local to global epidemics, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and Nipah.
A new study by researchers of disease transmission in bats has broad implications for understanding hidden or “cryptic” connections that can spread diseases between species and lead to large-scale outbreaks.
By dusting bats with a fluorescent powder that glows under ultraviolet ...
26
NOV
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NOV
Significance
Biodiversity is more than the number of species on Earth. It is also the amount of unique evolutionary history in the tree of life. We find that losses of this phylogenetic diversity (PD) are disproportionally large in mammals compared with ...
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NOV
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NOV
BY SARAH GIBBENS
Humans are rapidly taming the world’s wild places.
In the past century, nearly 80 percent of all land has been modified or impacted by human development. As a result, other species have rapidly declined. One study estimates animals are going extinct 1,000 times faster than they would have without human influence.
To ...
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NOV
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NOV
Virginia Tech researchers receive NSF grant to study parental care in eastern hellbender salamanders
Although eastern hellbender salamanders are known by many unflattering nicknames — mud puppy, snot otter, grampus, and Allegheny alligator — about 70 percent of adult male hellbenders should more accurately be known as doting fathers.
Unlike most wildlife species, male hellbenders provide exclusive care for their young for an extended period of seven months.
William Hopkins, professor of wildlife in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, is the principal ...
12
OCT
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OCT
September 18, 2018
In 1909, John B. Laing purchased a large property on Big Mountain in Giles County. Even at that time, he recognized the area was special. He wrote, “There is not any place that I know of that I would get more pleasure in protecting for the future than I would in Little Stony Creek watershed. Mountain streams like that are very scarce and in the future will be more so.”
His great-grandchildren made ...
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The 12th annual Sustainability Week, an interactive partnership among Virginia Tech Office of Sustainability, the Town of Blacksburg, and Sustainable Blacksburg that highlights sustainability efforts in the community and on campus, will launch on Saturday, Sept. 15.
More than 20 events are scheduled throughout the week of Sept. 15-23. On Wednesday, Sept. ...
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Songbirds and coffee farms in Central America. Ladybugs and soybean fields in the Midwest.
These are well-known, win-win stories that demonstrate how conserving natural habitat can benefit farmers.
But an international team of authors, including Megan O’Rourke, assistant professor in the Virginia Tech School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, found that natural habitat surrounding farm fields is not always an effective pest-control tool for farmers worldwide. The team’s analysis was published Aug. 2 in the journal Read More →
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AUG
