Predators

Bacterial predators

Who would be at your ideal conference? I’d love to be marooned on a desert island (with whiteboards, or at least a smooth sandy beach to scribble on) with Michael Lynch, Ralph Greenspan, Norbert Perrimon, John Mattick, Michael Wade, Thomas Whitham, Sara Via and Allen Moore. Perrimon, Mattick and Greenspan each have their own unique perspectives on how complex gene networks might work, while Whi...

Learning associations involving predators and non-predators in infancy

Fear is one of the most universal human emotions and many common fears, such as aversions toward predatory animals, has been observed cross-culturally. Previous research has indicated that humans have an evolved predator detection mechanism (Mineka & Ohman, 2002). The present research explored this innate predator detection mechanism in infants by testing whether they are able to learn associat...

Predators and cranks.

Hunted predators: Charisma confounds.

IN THEIR PERSPECTIVE “When the hunter becomes the hunted” (19 June, p. 1312), R. Woodroffe and S. M. Redpath rightly pointed out that a social consensus, in addition to scientific evidence, is critical to effectively control species deemed overabundant, such as some predators, because social conflicts over the need for control undermine management decisions. We stress here that social acceptabi...

No Place for Predators?

Braced for savagery and sacrifice, European settlers in the New World came to the Pacific Northwest to tame the final frontier, the last refuge of “dismal wilderness.” While colonists in the East were poisoning, shooting, and trapping cougars to extinction during the 1880s, hundreds of thousands of pioneers flooded into what would soon become the new state of Washington. Following the well-worn...