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A Wolf’s Place – Annie White (2013)

May 29, 2017 at 5:26 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Ecological theory predicts that by keeping herbivore populations under check predators can indirectly enhance growth of vegetation and can even alter local climate. The influential ecologist Robert Paine has demonstrated this phenomenon of keystone species on predatory starfishes and sea otters maintaining species diversity in coastal rocky communities in Washington. Directed and produced by Annie White, “A Wolf’s Place” tells the story of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone national park in 1995. Wolves became locally extinct in much of the United […]

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Otters vs. Climate Change – KQED/QUEST (2014)

May 29, 2017 at 4:35 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video

Presence and absence of keystone species in a biological community have significant effects. To cite a few examples: Tropical fig trees form abundant food resources for many animals in times of scarcity. Bluechub fish in Eastern North American rivers construct rock nests which form a critical spawning area for many other fish in the same habitat. Beaver activity slows down hydrology and enhances water retention capacity of the ecosystems. Increased water table invigorates vegetation. At the same time reduced sun […]

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Leave It to Beavers – PBS (2014)

May 22, 2017 at 1:14 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, PBS Nature, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

There are two species of beavers in the temperate zones of the world. North American (Castor canadensis) and Eurasian (Castor fiber) beavers were almost exterminated to extinction. These rodents are the largest after the tropical capybara that lives in wetlands of the South American tropics. Now bouncing back from extinction beaver populations are recovering under protection. Beavers are being recognized as keystone species by ecologists and conservation biologists. As habitat constructors and brilliant hydro-engineers, beavers can recharge water tables and […]

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Genesis: Final Point – Fernando Gonzalez-I. Sitges (2000)

May 16, 2017 at 7:23 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Galapagos archipelago occupies a special place in our quest to understand nature. It sits right on the junction of the Pacific ocean current where warm and cold water shifts. The nutrient levels reaching the islands by cold Humboldt current show a drastic decline when warm surface waters engulf the archipelago. The Galapagos lies at the southeast trade winds. When the current shifts the rainfall pattern changes drastically. The

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Bald-faced Hornet Worker Collecting Nest Material

May 9, 2017 at 3:21 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

A female bald-faced hornet worker (Dolichovespula maculata) was stripping the surface of a wooden fence post to collect nest building material. While stripping with mandibles the cellulosic material gets rolled up under her thorax. She strips a piece as long as her body and then climbs up again to strip another. Two consequtive strips must have been the optimal load size to carry into the nest. Leaf-cutter ants of the neotropics also use their bodies as yard sticks. The motivation […]

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Six Ways to Prepare a Coelacanth – Shelf Life – AMNH (2015)

April 27, 2017 at 4:11 pm / Evolution, Natural history

The Coelecanth was thought to be extinct. Its presence as a living species was discovered in 1938 by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. It is an immensely important species for evolutionary biology, especially in understanding tetrapod evolution. The story of the discovery of Coelecanth has been covered by many high profile magazines. Since its discovery from fossil remains the Coelecanth has been considered as the closest example for what could be as our last fish ancestor. This means that, it may have been […]

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A Ghost In The Making: Searching for the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee – Neil Losen & Nate Dappen (2016)

April 22, 2017 at 2:43 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Honeybees are fragile animals that have lost most of the traits that provide survival advantage in their wild counterparts. Public attention was particularly grappled when an experiment in the 1950s aiming to regain lost genes by hybridizing domesticated European honeybees with the wild African ones failed miserably. The experiment that started with good intentions lead to invasion of Africanized honeybees from Brazil to north all the way up to Texas. There’s clearly a disproportionately large emphasis on honeybees while neglecting […]

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A Spawning Aggregation in a Bluehead Chub Nest – Brandon Peoples (2014)

April 6, 2017 at 10:52 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

This short observation shows a spawning aggregation containing seven species of fish in a Bluehead chub (Nocomis leptocephalus) nest in Toms Creek, New River Drainage in Blacksburg, Virginia. These species are Mountain redbelly dace (Chrosomus oreas), White shiner (Luxilus albeolus), Rosefin shiner (Lythrurus ardens), Rosyside dace (Clinostomus funduloides), Central stoneroller (Campostoma anomalum) and Crescent shiner (Luxilus cerasinus). Bluehead chub with it’s impressive nesting behavior provides a rich natural history for ecologists. Brandon Peoples who recorded this short observation is a […]

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Chimpanzee – Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield (2012)

February 27, 2017 at 3:09 pm / Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The Chimpanzee is a heavily anthropomorphosized docu-feature movie targeting young audiences. It was filmed on multiple locations including Taï National Park in southwestern Ivory Coast, Ngogo and Kibale national parks in Uganda and Gabon by two British nature filmmakers Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. Martyn Colbeck was the person behind the camera. Tim Allen did the narration. Filmmakers stitched the footage recorded in these locations and consolidated into a single story creating a drama around an orphaned baby Chimpanzee they […]

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A Day in the Life of an Elite Male Greater Sage-Grouse on the Lek – Marc Dantzker – Cornell Lab of Ornithology (2015)

February 16, 2017 at 2:10 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Here’s another fascinating piece of natural history from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In this series of short observations staff producer and biologist Marc Dantzker breaks down the mating behavior and social interaction of the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in five sections. Lekking or lek mating is a breeding behavior where males come together in a place and perform competitive displays to impress visiting females. While males do their “hello check me out” dances, females asses their qualities and choose […]

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A Leafcutter Ant Colony in Barro Colorado Island

February 13, 2017 at 6:10 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

Filmed on Jan 28th 2017 during the dry season. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institue (STRI) Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama. Leafcutter ants are an impressive group with more than 40 different species. All evolved and diversified in the New World at around 12 million years ago. Phylogenetic evidence suggests their evolution could go back as far as 50 million years ago when America separated from Africa. A mature colony can have more than 8 million workers collectively farming a subterranean fungus. […]

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Cornell University Sapsucker Woods Pond Camera (Live)

October 14, 2016 at 1:37 pm / Natural history, Video, webcams

This live camera was initially established to monitor nest activities of a heron pair. The nest collapsed during spring 2014. The mating of a female and ‘Dad’ heron in the tree shortly after gave everybody the impression that herons may build a new nest. Unfortunately it looks like the male heron ‘Dad’ who has nested on the pond since 2009 may not have found a suitable mate this year. Volunteer camera operators have been watching the heron activity on the […]

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Planet Earth – Jungles – BBC (2006)

October 13, 2016 at 5:15 pm / BBC documentaries, Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Jungles is the 8th episode of the BBC TV series Planet Earth. It makes a rapid tour around the tropical belt and highlights a few key phenomena and spectacular behavior including mating dance of bird of paradise, forest regeneration after a treefall, plant-animal interactions in the forest canopy, fig trees as a keystone species, primate territoriality, forest sounds, mating leaf frogs, water cycle through evapotranspiration, nutrient cycle through decomposition, food webs, parental care in insects, fungal parasitism, gliding calugos, carnivorous […]

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Plight of the North Atlantic Right Whale – Jeffrey Mittelstadt (2013)

October 3, 2016 at 11:38 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Directed, edited and produced by Jeffrey Mittelstadt of WildSides the short documentary was made for Whale and Dolphin Conservation. North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) are highly endangered. Less than 500 North Atlantic right whales live in the wild. Close to 350 of them live in the East Coast of North America. The whale continues to be endangered but thanks to conservation measures like the acoustic stations its population more than tripled in a century. Apart from indirect negative Human […]

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A Jaguar and Her Cubs from Belize – Bart Harmsen (2016)

August 30, 2016 at 8:44 pm / Natural history, Short Observations, Video

In this short observation we see a rare sequence of footage recorded by the researchers working for the conservation program Jaguar Corridor Initiative. These particular observations were captured in Belize but the conservation program covers much of the jaguar range in 14 states including Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela. Jaguar is an elusive top predator of the neotropical forests. Observations of reproductive females and offspring numbers are very valuable in […]

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