Animal Cognition

In the June 23 issue of Science, Elizabeth Pennisi address the issue of animal cognition in two articles (see below). Science, 23 June 2006: 312 (5781).

Social Animals Prove Their Smarts (p. 1734)
A new generation of experiments reveals that group-living animals
have a surprising degree of intelligence. What was once
considered a sharp line separating humans from all other animals is
becoming a blurry gray area, with various animals possessing
certain parts of the skill set considered to be advanced cognition.

Full story:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5781/1734?etoc


Man's Best Friend(s) Reveal the Possible Roots of Social
Intelligence (p. 1737)
Recent controlled experiments show that some social animals have
evolved the flexibility and intelligence to deceive and benefit from
others and even predict what their peers may do (see main text).
But why did these and related abilities evolve?

Full story:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5781/1737?etoc

NatureServe Explorer

"NatureServe represents an international network of biological inventories -- known as natural heritage programs or conservation data centers -- operating in all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. Together we not only collect and manage detailed local information on plants, animals, and ecosystems, but develop information products, data management tools, and conservation services to help meet local, national, and global conservation needs. The objective scientific information about species and ecosystems developed by NatureServe is used by all sectors of society -- conservation groups, government agencies, corporations, academia, and the public -- to make informed decisions about managing our natural resources."

www.natureserve.org

"Search the database for species or ecological communities & systems." The customized search forms make it simple, with a variety of check boxes, radio buttons, drop down menus... And on both search forms, you’ll find tabs at the top that take you to pages where you can specify geographic location and/or status (e.g., extinct, imperiled, secure, etc.). Note that these options are also available as live links as you scroll down the search page.

At the far right side of the screen, for each result, you can choose summary (report), distribution (map), status, image (if available), or a comprehensive report which includes everything. You can also retrieve a comprehensive report by clicking on the name of the species in the list of results. A drop-down menu allows you to move around to different sections of the report.

If you’re looking for information "on the birds, mammals and amphibians of Latin America and the Caribbean," a link on the home page will take you to InfoNatura, a similar site that is also available in Spanish and Portugese.

Besides Explorer and InfoNatura, there are other databases available from the NatureServe site:

+ Local Program Data from "natural heritage programs and conservation
data centers" in the U.S. and Canada

+ Global Amphibian Assessment, which is the "first-ever comprehensive
assessment of the conservation status of the world’s 5,918 known
species of frogs, toads, salamanders, and caecilians"

+ Ecology Data, including Ecological Systems of the United States,
Ecological Systems of Latin America and the Caribbean,
Geographically Isolated Wetlands in the U.S., Coastal and Marine
Classification, and Ecological Integrity Assessments of Wetlands

+ Animal Data, including digital distribution maps of birds, mammals
and amphibians; and Distribution of Native U.S. Fishes by Watershed

+ Plant Data, including invasive species distribution

Bird Rehab

In this month's Conscious Choice, Susan DeGrane writes about Chicago's Bird Rehabilitation Center which opened April 1 in a Chicago Park District building at 1400 S. Lynn White Drive on Northerly Island. Located east of the Chicago skyline, the 91-acre peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan contains lush open prairie and parkland once occupied by the Meigs Field airstrip.

The center started with six volunteers and plans call for adding another or so before summer's end, said Dawn Kelly, director of Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc. Flink Creek, a not-for-profit with a primary location in Barrington, has an agreement with the Park District to operate the facility.

If you find an injured or abandoned bird in Chicago, call the Flint Creek number: 847.602.0628. Animals are accepted by appointment only.

"Many people jump the gun when it comes to taking in injured, fallen, or seemingly abandoned birds. In many cases, the mother birds are nearby. It's much better to allow them to come to the rescue, " Kelly explained.

"If a bird is not in any immediate danger, it's best to leave it alone, but certainly if a bird is on the sidewalk and there's the threat of it [being in greater danger], it's good to put it in a box and keep it in a dark, quiet place," she said.

DeGrane writes that of the 80 or so birds taken in during those first two weeks, most suffered head trama. Only a few had broken wings or legs. Some were well enough to be on their way in just a couple of days.

"We released at least one bird a day, sometimes as many as a dozen in one day, depending on how quickly they recovered," Kelly said. "One morning I was releasing a brown creeper. I had just released several brown creepers earlier. He made this beautiful brown creeper sound, and brown creepers started calling out to him all around the peninsula. So he got to be with his buddies."

June brings the stragglers from most migrating species and several warblers, including Tennessee warblers, common yellow-throated warblers and others known for their brilliant plumage and beautiful songs. "As we progress through the migratory season, the composition of those we treat will change," Kelly said. "It's kind of nice that they grace us with their presence for a while," she said.

For more information, visit www.flintcreekwildlife.org.

Photo of Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) credit: JA Spendelow, US Geological Survey

Library Phone Answerers Survive the Internet

One of the responsibilities of the Brookfield Zoo Library is to answer calls from the public. Calls are answered by two very resourceful docents on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The docents field phone calls, emails, and letters with inquiries ranging from general animal information to how-to-handle wounded or abandoned animals to historical infomation about Brookfield Zoo. To leave a message on our docent hotline, please call: 708.485.0263, x. 580. We receive hundreds of inquires a year!

A recent New York Times article ("Library Phone Answerers Survive the Internet") highlights a similar service performed by New York Public Library staff. Anyone, of any age, from anywhere can telephone (212) 340-0849 and ask New York Public Library researchers almost any question.

This service, provided by Brookfield Zoo, New York Public and many other libraries, is a testament to the fact that we need such resourceful detectives to suss out the good information when Google just won't do. A BIG THANK YOU to our docent detectives!

Brookfield Zoo's Trumpeter Swans

In March 2006, two zookeepers from Brookfield Zoo took a trip to Clinton, Iowa, to assist in releasing one of the zoo’s trumpeter swans to the wild as part of the state’s Trumpeter Swan Restoration Program. The bird hatched at the zoo in June 2005 and has spent the winter months at a holding facility managed by Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The swan from Brookfield Zoo along with one from Lincoln Park Zoo was released at Gomer’s Slough, a backwater wetland along the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

On Wednesday, June 14, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the first pair of nesting trumpeter swans in Illinois in more than 150 years was successful. Steve Bailey, ornithologist for the Illinois Natural History Survey, reported the Carroll County pair had at least one young hatched by last week. The nesters come from the reintroduced swans in Iowa, which Brookfield Zoo assisted.

Brookfield Zoo has been a long-time partner and leader in swan breeding and reintroduction programs with neighboring states. As a participant in Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources Trumpeter Swan Restoration Project, the zoo had provided 10 eggs and 28 cygnets between 1984 and 1992. The zoo has been a participant in Iowa’s swan restoration since 2001 and has released four birds as part of that program. A cygnet that hatched at the zoo in 2004 and was released in Iowa last spring has been sighted numerous times with another bird also released last spring along the Mississippi River in and near Clinton.

The parent swans at Brookfield Zoo were introduced to each other last April. The male swan was brought to Brookfield after the female lost her previous mate the year before. He is from Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, a rehabilitation center in Michigan. His left wing is slightly curled with feathers sticking out at an unusual angle caused by a fused fracture he sustained prior to coming to the zoo. The injury prevents him from flying, which would be critical for his survival in the wild.

Trumpeter swans are the largest North American waterfowl, weighting up to 30-35 pounds with up to an 8-foot wingspan. The distinctive trumpet-like call that gives them their name at one time resonated throughout the upper Midwest and central Canada.

The recovery of wild swan populations throughout North America is one of the outstanding conservation success stories of the 20th century. Trumpeter swans were driven to the brink of extinction in the early 1900s due to a combination of indiscriminate hunting and loss of breeding habitat as the human population expanded. As recently as 1932, there were fewer than 70 swans in the lower 48 states.

Through coordinated captive breeding and reintroduction programs overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and managed at the state level, wild swan populations in the region have now grown to an estimated 4,000.

Discovery: Eight Anthropod Species

A unique and isolated ecosystem has been discovered in a subterranean lake in a cave 100 metres (328 ft.) below a limestone quarry in central Israel.

Hanan Dimentman, a zoologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, collected specimens of eight previously unknown anthropod species, including four kinds of crustacean, a springtail and a scorpion. DNA tests are being done to determine when the animals might have diverged from their marine and freshwater relatives.

The lake was discovered by a geography masters student, Israel Naaman, as he explored the groundwater beneath the quarry. [Nature magazine, 8 June 2006]

For more information, click on Science Daily.

Photo credit: Hebrew University, Sasson Tiram.

Call for Writers

If you know a thing or two about animal behavior, remote sensing, pollution, or related topics, you might want to contribute a chapter to the nascent Encyclopedia of Earth. Bucking the trend toward user-written-but sometimes inaccurate- content, the environmental reference will feature some 1000 peer-reviewed articles penned by experts. Sponsored by the nonprofit National Council for Science and the Environment, the project seeks writers and editors.
www.earthportal.net/about/steward

Okapi

Seventeen distinctive tracks in eastern Congo's Virunga National Park have heralded the reemergence of the shy okapi, a kissing cousin of the giraffe that hasn't been seen in the park in nearly 50 years. The rare species, which has an elongated neck and the striped legs of zebra, has gone unnoticed because rough terrain and civil war have made the area hard to patrol, according to World Wildlife Fund conservationists, who announced the find on 9 June 2006. To ensure the okapi's long-term protection, conservationists advocate environmental education and more clearly marking the park's boundaries.

Brookfield Zoo has a long and successful history with okapi. The first okapi - and the first in any U.S. zoo - arrived at Brookfield Zoo in 1955. And, in 1959, Brookfield Zoo was the first zoo in the U.S. to have a baby okapi born.

Visit the okapi at Brookfield Zoo, Habitat Africa! The Forest. For more information, please visit the Brookfield Zoo Library.

(Photo: Peter J. Stephenson/WWF-Canon/Reuters)

MarineBio.org

Anyone intrigued by ocean life can hook plenty of information at
MarineBio.org. Founded by geoscientist David Campbell of Houston,
Texas, the site holds a multimedia encyclopedia that describes more
than 200 species, with accounts on another 800 in the works.

Visitors can cue up audio snippets of blue whale songs or read
about the dining habits of the bearded fireworm (Hermodice
carunculata) a bristly relative of earthworms that slurps
up reef-building coral animals.

Galleries let you tag along on expeditions to havens such as Bonaire in the Caribbean and the coast of Honduras. At the Plankton Forums, browse the latest marine science headlines or discuss newly discovered deep-sea critters with scientists and other ocean fans.

The site also features backgrounders on conservation issues such as sustainable fishing and invasive species.
www.marinebio.org

[SCIENCE 312(5779)]

Recommendation: New Titles

Recent titles added to our collection:

Edens Lost & Found: How Ordinary Citizens are Restoring Our Great American Cities by Harry Wiland and Dave Bell/ HT175.E34 2005

Edens Lost & Found highlights practical solutions to improve the environment and quality of life in cities, for ourselves and future generations. From gardens blooming on Chicago's rooftops to river restoration in Los Angeles, from farms and murals in Philadelphia to citizen empowerment in Seattle, this book highlights the many small acts of heroism, activism, and leadership that bring citizens together to restore their communities and create sustatinable urban ecosystems. For more information, see the previous blog post: Recommendation: Chicago: The City of Big Shoulders.

Groundswell: Stories of Saving Places, Finding Community by Alix W. Hopkins/ HD205.H67 2005

Groundswell: Stories of Saving Places, Finding Community, celebrates the role of land conservation in preserving community character and connecting people to the land and to each other. The author tells six stories: creating a community forest in Bellingham, WA; restoring a river in the Bronx in New York City; collaborating witih ranchers along the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana; building community-supported agriculture in Wisconsin and Minnesota; undertaking meaningful economic development in rural, coastal North Carolina; and the author's own experience in growing Portland Trails, a vibrant urban land trust in Maine. The book is co-sponsored by the National Park Service Rivers & Trails Program, The Conservation Fund, and The Nature Conservancy, all of which employ collaborative conservation as part of their missions.

Hormones and Animal Social Behavior by Elizabeth Adkins-Regan/ QL775.A4 2005

Research into the lives of animals in their natural environments has revealed a rich tapestry of complex social relationships and previously unsuspected social and mating systems. The evolution of this behavior is increasingly well understood. At the same time, laboratory scientists have made significant discoveries about how steroid and peptide hormones act on the nervous system to shape behavior. An exciting and rapidly progressing hybrid zone has developed in which these two fields are integrated, providing a fuller understanding of social behavior and the adaptive functions of hormones.

Hormones and Animal Social Behavior is a guide to these fascinating connections between animal social behavior and steroid and peptide hormones--a synthesis designed to make it easier for graduate students and researchers to appreciate the excitement, engage in such integrative thinking, and understand the primary literature. Throughout, Elizabeth Adkins-Regan emphasizes concepts and principles, hypothesis testing, and critical thinking. She raises unanswered questions, providing an unparalleled source of ideas for future research. The chapter sequence is by levels of biological organization, beginning with the behavior and hormones of individuals, proceeding to social relationships and systems, and from there to development, behavioral evolution over relatively short time scales, life histories and their evolution, and finally evolution over longer time scales. The book features studies of a wide variety of wild and domestic vertebrates along with some of the most important invertebrate discoveries.

Visit Brookfield Zoo Library's online catalogue: http://swan.sls.lib.il.us