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Today we have a batch of lovely photos about acorn woodpeckers (and a few of their relatives) courtesy of UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison. Susan’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Acorn Woodpeckers:   One to three brides for up to seven brothers

Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) have a rare social system called polygynandry in which multiple parents of both sexes rear offspring collectively. These co-breeders also cooperate to defend a group territory and the all-important granary in which they store acorns for the winter.  An early ornithologist dubbed them “communists,” and long-term field and genetic studies more recently discovered the structure of their social groups.  Up to seven males, often brothers, breed with one to three females that are often sisters and unrelated to the males. Offspring hang around and help at the nest, but when a breeding individual dies in a nearby territory, the erstwhile helpers form single-sex coalitions and initiate dramatic battles to fill the vacancy.

Recently I observed a battle or skirmish among about 15 Acorn Woodpeckers.  The main tactics were chasing, swooping, and making a continual racket.  While it may have been a territorial dispute, it had a slightly laid-back quality that made me wonder if it was simply the sorting out of who would mate with whom.

Acorn Woodpeckers chasing, swooping and yelling:

They also did a behavior called the “waka display” in which the bird perches vertically and spreads its wings while calling waka-waka-waka. This can be a greeting, assembly call, or display of dominance.

Doing the waka display:

Those studying Acorn Woodpeckers, led for many decades by Dr. Walter Koenig, have concluded that the granary is the key to the bird’s remarkable social adaptations.  Trees with thousands of laboriously drilled acorn-shaped holes, which allow the birds to survive winters well fed, are a precious resource that takes a close-knit group to build and defend.

Eating the last of the acorn hoard in spring:

Here are some other birds of the woodpecker tribe that I saw in recent weeks.

Red-breasted Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber), appearing to eat scale insects from the bark of a Madrone (Arbutus menziesii):

Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), the crow-sized king of the forest:

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider found evidence of an unprecedentedly heavy and exotic form of antimatter in the aftermath of a collision between extremely fast lead ions

On any clear, moonless night, the light from the billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy can be seen arching across the sky. A large spiral galaxy, the Milky Way we see today is the result of billions of years of galactic evolution. A team of astronomers have announced the discovery of a galaxy very similar to our own but this one is less than a billion years old! Typically galaxies like the Milky Way with a developed central bulge and spiral arms are only seen in nearby galaxies suggesting it’s a process that takes time. This latest discovery challenges that theory!

A roundup of the world's riskiest volcanoes and fault zones — and they're not necessarily the most hazardous.

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The planets in our Solar System orbit the Sun along a plane extending from the solar equator. That’s typically the case for exoplanets too but just recently, a team of astronomers have found a system where a planet is in a perpendicular orbit around a binary pair! The brown dwarf system with its strange planetary companion is likely the result of three-body interactions between the stars and planet, tweaking it into the crazy orbital configuration we see today.

The US and other nations are eager to exploit the Arctic’s mineral wealth, but despite the thawing of ice and permafrost, accessing buried treasure in the region remains extremely challenging

Imagine if the fate of Tweets and YouTube vidoes was the sole concern of scientists today.

The post Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: You Work for an Administration That Runs a Vast Censorship Regime to Suppress Scientific Discussion. Most Authoritarian Policy I’ve Seen From an American Government. You Should be Ashamed of Yourself. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft made a successful flyby of the second asteroid on its must-see list over the weekend, and sent back imagery documenting the elongated object’s bizarre double-lobed shape. It turns out that asteroid Donaldjohanson — which was named after the anthropologist who discovered the fossils of a human ancestor called Lucy — is what’s known as a contact binary, with a couple of ridges in its narrow neck.

After spending 220 days on board the International Space Station, astronaut Don Pettit is back on Earth. He returned to Earth on Sunday, April 20th, which coincides with his 70th birthday.

A daily pill developed by the US pharmaceutical company Lilly may become a convenient alternative to injectable drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. In phase III trials it significantly lowered blood sugar and body weight in people with type 2 diabetes

Working memory is like a mental chalkboard we use to store temporary information while executing other tasks. Scientists worked with more than 200 elementary students to test their working memory, assess its role in word-problem solving and if interventions could boost it and thereby improve their word problem solving skills. Results showed that improving working memory helped both students with and without math difficulties and can help educators more effectively by helping teach the science of math, study authors argue.

Geologists weigh in on a long-running debate about Mars: Billions of years ago, was the Red Planet warm and wet or cold and dry?

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that kills more than a million people worldwide every year. The pathogen that causes the disease, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is deadly in part because of its complex outer envelope, which helps it evade immune responses of infected hosts. Researchers have now developed a chemical probe to study a key component of this envelope. Their results provide a step toward finding new ways of inactivating the bacterium.

Researchers observe over a dozen never-before-seen quantum states in a unique quantum material.

Researchers observe over a dozen never-before-seen quantum states in a unique quantum material.

Despite advances in wastewater treatment, tiny plastic particles called microplastics are still slipping through, posing potential health and environmental hazards, according to new research.

Based on fundamental research, a new startup is upending decades-old approaches for the way the world extracts lithium and other materials.

Saying one thing while feeling another is part of being human, but bottling up emotions can have serious psychological consequences like anxiety or panic attacks. To help health care providers tell the difference, a team has created a stretchable, rechargeable sticker that can detect real emotions -- by measuring things like skin temperature and heart rate -- even when users put on a brave face.

Saying one thing while feeling another is part of being human, but bottling up emotions can have serious psychological consequences like anxiety or panic attacks. To help health care providers tell the difference, a team has created a stretchable, rechargeable sticker that can detect real emotions -- by measuring things like skin temperature and heart rate -- even when users put on a brave face.

As farmers debate whether fields should be used for agriculture or solar panels, new research says the answer could be both. Scientists analyzed remote sensing and aerial imagery to study how fields have been used in California for the last 25 years. Using databases to estimate revenues and costs, they found that farmers who used a small percentage of their land for solar arrays were more financially secure per acre than those who didn't.