An international team of researchers has studied individual differences in the behaviour of red deer. They found that several observed behaviours form a personality component, which they labelled “Confidence/Aggressiveness”.
DNP, a weight loss agent withdrawn from the market in the late 1930s due to acute toxicity, has become increasingly popular in recent years through online illegal sales. A new study using a lifelong DNP treatment in an avian model found that while no obvious toxic effects were detected on the short to medium-term, DNP reduces lifespan by 20% on the long run.
The environment we experience in early-life is known to have major consequences on later-life health and lifespan. A new study led from the University of Turku using an avian model suggests that increased prenatal exposure to maternal thyroid hormones could have beneficial effects on the ‘biological age’ at birth.
Climate change pushes species distribution areas northward. However, the expansion of species ranges is not self-evident due to e.g. habitat degradation and unsustainable harvesting caused by human activities. A new study led from the University of Turku suggests that protected areas can facilitate wintering waterbird adaptation to climate warming by advancing their range shifts towards north.
Women who have experienced childhood trauma become mothers earlier than those with a more stable childhood environment shows a new study conducted in collaboration between the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki. The trauma children experience form living in war zones, natural disasters or perhaps even epidemics can have unexpected effects that resurface later in their lives.
In two new studies, scientists from the University of Turku, Finland, have investigated how to measure stress in semi-captive working elephants. The studies suggest that both physiological and behavioural approaches can be used to reliably assess the wellbeing of semi-captive Asian elephants.
Researchers from the University of Turku (UTU) in Finland, and veterinarians from the Myanma Timber Enterprise (MTE) in Myanmar have investigated the trends behind Asian elephant calf mortality during the taming period. They found that calves that were younger at the onset of taming and those with less experienced mothers were more likely to die during taming. Calf mortality in taming age was notably higher than that of wild elephants of the same age. The results of the study were published in the esteemed Scientific Reports journal.
New study by the University of Turku and Cornell University shows that long-term elimination of herbivorous insects from plants changes the way they communicate with each other. The study focused on Solidago altissima, i.e. tall goldenrod, and indicated that communicating about threats also benefits the plant sharing the information. Different communication strategies between plants can be explained with the differences in the volatile organic compounds the plants release.
Researchers at the University of Turku found that the presence of a maternal sister was positively and significantly associated with annual female reproduction in a population of working elephants in Myanmar. In addition, an age-specific effect was found: young females were more sensitive to the presence of sisters and even more likely to reproduce when living near a sister.
Understanding the ecology and distributions of species in Amazonia is hampered by lack of information about environmental conditions, such as soils. Plant occurrence data are typically more abundant than soil samples in poorly known areas, and researchers from Finland and Brazil have now developed a method that uses both plant and soil data to produce a map of soil properties.