Tag Archives: reptile

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

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Image Credit: Goutham89, CC BY-SA 4.0

The evolution of crocodilian nesting ecology and behavior (2020) Murray et al., Ecology and Evolution, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5859

The Crux

One goal of evolutionary ecology is to understand the links between microevolution and macroevolution, meaning evolution in the short term (multiple generations) and how that scales up to the long term (millions of years). In macroevolution, a group of organisms is thought to be successful if it not only exists for a long period of time, but if it also boasts a large number of species. With those criteria in mind, crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles, gharials, and caimans) are one of the most successful lineages to have ever existed on the planet. Though they may not be the most diverse group of organisms with only 25 species, they have been around for about 100 million years. To put that into perspective, dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago, meaning that the crocodilians not only lived with dinosaurs, but they survived the mass extinction that the dinosaurs didn’t.

This longevity as a lineage raises some questions as to what it is about the crocodilians that made them so successful, when their cousins the dinosaurs died out. An interesting aspect of crocodilians is that there is very little variation among these organisms, as they are all generalist carnivores, live aquatic lives, exhibit mating vocalizations, their sex is determined by the temperature of their eggs (see Did You Know?), and they care for their eggs and young. Despite these similarities, there are some notable differences in the reproductive ecology and behavior of the different species, specifically how they build and care for their nests. Because of these differences, the authors of today’s study asked if variation in how crocodilians reproduce may have been the cause of their success.

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A Guide to Improving Data Coverage Using Australian Reptiles

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Location biases in ecological research on Australian terrestrial reptiles (2020) Piccolo et al., Scientific Reports, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66719-x

The Crux

Constant improvements in data integration technology have meant that its now possible to bring together large numbers of separate datasets into enormous datasets spanning many species and regions. This sounds great in practice – that means we can look at important trends at large scales with plenty of data, right?

The problem is that there are often biases within these data. Some areas are more accessible and will have higher densities of observations or studies. Some species are of less interest and may be more poorly covered. Today’s researchers wanted to take such a dataset and see if they could identify patterns in the biases present.

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Mermaid Sex, Evil Spirit Birds and More Weird Ecology Search Terms

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Image Credit: Ray Bilcliff, Pexels licence, Image Cropped

We get a lot of fun and strange search terms which lead people to Ecology for the Masses. So inspired by Captain Awkward’s segment ‘It Came From the Search Terms‘, let’s have a look at some of the weirder questions that led people to this site and see if we can provide some answers. Spelling mistakes have been corrected.

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Birds are Reptiles

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When one looks at birds like this puffin, it can be hard to reconcile its cute appearance with its place in the animal kingdom. The thing is, this adorable puffin has something in common with a rattlesnake, in that it’s a reptile (Image credit: Ray Hennessy, Unsplash licence, Image Cropped).

You read that correctly, birds are reptiles. Now, I can hear you saying “but we learned that they are a different group of organisms, and that reptiles are just those scaly animals that have cold blood?” While reptiles don’t have cold blood per se, some of them DO have feathers. And can fly. In this post I hope to convince you of the fact that the puffin pictured above, and all of its avian relatives, belong with the snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles in the reptile group.

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