October 2007
Ant societies are very ageist: young ants tend to look after the brood, while older ants go out and forage. How do they know when they should do what? An elegant study in Animal Behaviour (open access) suggests that they have a measure of how old they are – and it isn’t a biological clock! There’s a summary in The Independent.
Filed under Biological rhythms
April 2007
You may have heard birds singing their hearts out in the night and, like me, blamed light pollution for keeping them awake. Not at all, it appears. They are in fact singing because of noise pollution in the day…
BBC summary here, original Biology Letters article here (open access).
Filed under Biological rhythms, Birds
Open access article in Journal of Experimental Biology, showing that bees can be trained to perform behaviours at specific times, demonstrating the interaction between learning and circadian rhythms. Go here.
Filed under Biological rhythms
October 2006
Filed under Behaviour, Biological rhythms, Insects
