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Cannibalising offspring A study reveals that male fish are more likely to eat their offspring when they have been cuckolded during spawning. Moreover, the more males that are present during spawning, the more likely it is that a male will try to eat the eggs when they are laid. "The most drastic decision a father can make is to cannibalise his own offspring,' say the scientists. "These results support and extend previous findings suggesting that confidence of paternity is a key factor in determining a male's behaviour toward his offspring, including whether or not to eat them.' This leads to the study of how behaviours contribute to the diversity within and between species.
Splash erosion When billions of raindrops fall onto bare soil they dislodge tonnes of soil per acre, which is carried away by surface runoff. This process, called splash erosion, is of critical importance to agriculture.In a study, researchers have produced a theoretical model for the way in which the momentum carried by raindrops is transferred to the sand grains that are blasted away from the impact site. When the model is used with new sources of information like Doppler radar, which can provide data on average raindrop size and velocity in actual rainstorms, it could provide more reliable estimates of the amount of splash erosion taking place in different environments.
Not wasted yet Litter bags filled with decomposing organic matter have led scientists to produce a set of equations to calculate the nitrogen released into the soil during decomposition, which in turn could significantly improve the accuracy of global climate change models. The researchers found that the dominant drivers of nitrogen release were the initial concentration of nitrogen and the remaining mass of the leaf and root litter. They point out that the findings could improve predictions for the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from decomposing litter. But arid grasslands don't fit the model because the release may be controlled by exposure to UV radiation.
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