Life

Hawksbill turtles in funny places
Tracking imperiled hawksbill turtles in the eastern Pacific with satellite tags has left turtle biologists startled by locations in completely unexpected places. In the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific regions, hawksbills cruise reefs and waters near shore that face open ocean. Yet tag data revealed most of the 12 female turtles followed along the Pacific coast of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador were hanging out in shallower waters such as inshore estuaries and seemed to especially like mangrove forests. Turtle conservation strategies need rethinking, an international research team reports online August 31 in Biology Letters. —Susan Milius

Urban noise ruined my marriage
Traffic rumbling and other urban noise that prompt males of a European bird species called the great tit to cut back on sexy, low-pitched morning serenades may lead to more philandering by their female partners. In the latest twist in studies on how human noise affects city-dwelling animals, researchers at Leiden University and Groningen University in the Netherlands experimented with sound and song at tit nest boxes. Female birds preferred deeper voices, and males that didn’t croon low as much were more likely to be cuckolded than those that did, Wouter Halfwerk and his colleagues report Aug. 30 in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. —Susan Milius

Tadpole-on-tadpole WMD
A new avenue for research on chemicals to control the massive, poisonous cane toads that are spreading across Australia has come from the tadpoles of the species. Chemical cues that the tadpoles release into the water can suppress the development of cane toad embryos still in eggs such that they hatch into punier tadpoles that don’t survive or grow well, report researchers from the University of Sydney online August 31 in Biology Letters. The toads, introduced in a regrettable attempt to control another pest, are disrupting the native ecosystems. —Susan Milius