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Among the vast number of native species damaged by the recent bushfire crisis, we must not forget native pollinators. These animals, mainly insects such as native bees, help sustain ecosystems by pollinating native plants.
A multidisciplinary team is jointly investigating mammal evolution and subduction dynamics to unravel how flightless land mammals migrated to the Greater Antilles and other Caribbean islands.
The Breakthrough Agenda agreed at COP26 could help trigger positive tipping points to tackle the climate crisis, researchers say.
In December, Antarctica lost its status as the last continent free of COVID-19 when 36 people at the Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins research station tested positive. The station's isolation from other bases and fewer researchers in the continent means the outbreak is now likely contained.
Fringed by vibrant coral reefs, Fiji is a popular destination for international tourists and marine scientists. But when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived last year, forcing lockdowns and travel restrictions around the world, many (though not all) international field research projects ground to a halt.
Research on the suspected connection between the unprecedented rise of the redfish population in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and climate change is being delayed by COVID-19. Experiments were supposed to begin last month at the Maurice-Lamontagne Institute in Mont-Joli, Que.
With lockdowns ordered to contain the COVID-19 pandemic—that has reached 183 countries, infected over 1.7 million people and caused over 100,000 deaths—there are fears of food shortages caused by panic buying and supply chain disruptions.
A new study analyzing bean production and food security across 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, found COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions to significantly impact bean production. Border controls and high transport costs have led to drops in production of the key food security crop, threate ...
A SARS-CoV-2 test for bats using fecal samples could boost understanding of how wild animals transmit viruses to other animals and humans.
The BioRescue research project, a program aiming at saving the northern white rhinoceros from extinction, exemplifies the challenges to overcome when conducting research and conservation in an international consortium in times of a global pandemic.
Humans, when faced with a life-threatening situation they are unprepared for, often resort to a blame-game. Nations faced with a prospect of a fall from power do the same. We have thus been seeing this “deny-deflect-blame” game as well as decoupling among nations in the wake of the COVID-19 pand ...
The spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has triggered the need to understand zoonotic diseases more than before. A new study has shed light on the need for coordination efforts among experts to find out how diseases related to wild, feral and domestic animals — that have the poten ...
The CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system can help scientists understand, and possibly improve, how corals respond to the environmental stresses of climate change. New work details how the revolutionary, Nobel Prize-winning technology can be deployed to guide conservation efforts for fragile reef ec ...
Researchers have developed a CRISPR-Cas9 approach to enable gene editing in cockroaches, according to a study published by Cell Press on May 16th in the journal Cell Reports Methods.
The caffeine in the morning coffee that primes many humans for the day appears to inject bumblebees with a similar dose of purpose, helping them pollinate more effectively, a study has found.
It may seem as if California is always either flooding or on fire. This climatic whiplash is not imagined: New University of Arizona research, published in the International Journal of Climatology, shows that while dry events are not getting drier, extreme wet events have been steadily increasin ...
New Curtin University-led research has found climate change will have a substantial impact on global food production and health if no action is taken by consumers, food industries, government, and international bodies.
University of Saskatchewan (USask) researcher Doug Clark is launching a first-of-its-kind research project that will engage citizen volunteers to help advance knowledge about polar bear behavior by analyzing a decade's worth of images captured by trail cameras at Wapusk National Park in northern ...
Effective conservation strategies are required to address accelerating extinction rates across the globe. In order to be effective, these strategies need to rely on scientific knowledge about ecology, distribution and population status of threatened species.
A new study in the Journal of Mammalogy shows recently developed camera-trapping methods could be a viable alternative to live-trapping for determining the density of snowshoe hares and potentially other small mammals that play a critical role in any forest ecosystem.
Fungi are a vital part of nature's recycling system of decay and decomposition. Filamentous fungi spread over and penetrate surfaces by extending fine threads known as hyphae.
Fin-to-limb transition is an icon of key evolutionary transformations. Many studies focus on understanding the evolution of the simple fin into a complicated limb skeleton by examining the fossil record. In a paper published February 4 in Cell, researchers at Harvard and Boston Children's Hospit ...
The ocean is a vast, quiet place, right? Vast, yes; quiet, not so much.As a researcher who studies coral reefs, I've floated above many and, when I listen closely, my ears are invariably filled with sounds.
A new paper from the University of Melbourne reveals how animals use beautiful but unreliable iridescent colors as communication signals. Special adaptations enable animals to control how these shifting colors appear so that they can convey reliable information. The new work now published in Tre ...
As part of the Journal of Experimental Biology's Special Issue dedicated to climate change, Anthony Pagano (San Diego Zoo Global, USA) and Terrie Williams (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA), discuss the impact of environmental change on two iconic polar species; the polar bear and narwh ...
Warm waters are a threat to cold water fish like salmon and trout. But a study led by researchers at University of California, Davis suggests that habitats with abundant food sources may help buffer the effects of increasing water temperature.
Residents of eastern Québec probably remember the exceptional weather conditions and the very high tide of Dec. 6, 2010. The combination caused flooding along the shores of the St. Lawrence River and millions of dollars in damage to public and private infrastructure.
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan have completed a feasibility study indicating that electric rays and sting rays equipped with pingers will be able to map the seabed through natural exploration
Like many of its predecessors, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland concluded with bold promises on international climate action aimed at keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, but few concrete plans to ensure that those promises will be kept.
On Aug. 9, the U.N. released a dire climate report, the first since 2018, that warned of accelerated warming of the planet and splashed code red alert headlines across the world. To bring the Earth back from the brink will demand powerful collective action, the authors of the report wrote.
In the race to avoid runaway climate change, two renewable energy technologies are being pushed as the solution to powering human societies: wind and solar. But for many years, wind turbines have been on a collision course with wildlife conservation.
The climate is changing before our eyes. News articles about imminent species extinctions have become the norm. Images of oceans full of plastic are littering social media. These issues are made even more daunting by the fact that they are literally global in scale.
Cane toads are picking up some shady habits, according to a new study co-authored by a Macquarie University researcher. Toads in Western Australia have been spotted awake and active during the day in deeply shaded habitats, despite the species usually being nocturnal in Australia and other parts ...
When UC Santa Cruz postdoctoral scholar Merly Escalona assembled the first-ever reference genome for the Stephen Colbert Trapdoor Spider, she was shocked by the dataset's unexpectedly large size.
Two scientific studies of the number of insects splattered by cars have revealed a huge decline in abundance at European sites in two decades.
Inland waters such as rivers, lakes and reservoirs play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Calculations that scale up the carbon dioxide emissions from land and water surface areas do not take account of inland waters that dry out intermittently.
In a pair of recently published papers, Michael Rawlins, a professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst's geosciences department and associate director of the Climate System Research Center, has made significant gains in filling out our understanding of the Arctic's carbon cycle—or the w ...
If greenhouse gas emissions continue as they are, scientists warn that the climate shift will destroy one-third of food production regions on Earth.
A team of researchers from the National Oceanography Centre, Sorbonne Université and CNRS Villefranche-sur-Mer, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and the National Centre for Earth Observations, has found evidence of fragmentation of large organic particles into smaller ones, accounting for roughly hal ...
In an age of unprecedented high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the question of whether or not plants and trees can utilize excess carbon through photosynthesis is one of paramount importance. Researchers have observed what has been called the CO2 fertilization effect, whereby plants' rates o ...
Researchers from UC Davis worked for 15 years to understand how rare plant species manage to survive in the harsh conditions of the rapidly warming Arctic. The study, which was conducted at a site in Greenland, revealed that caribou and other large herbivores help protect rare plants, lichens, a ...
Lenore Fahrig, Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Biology is one of the most cited researchers in the field of ecology. Her 2003 Effects of Habitat Fragmentation on Biodiversity paper is the most cited paper on habitat fragmentation in the world, with over 7500 citations noted on Google ...
Every year, billions of tons of valuable soil are lost worldwide through erosion, much of it deposited in bodies of water that fill with sand or silt as a result. Soil losses measured in Germany range from 1.4 to 3.2 tons per hectare per year; in extreme weather, the figure can be as high as fif ...
Case Reports on the Cyclical Measures (such as Biomass Utilization) Contributing to Biodiversity by External Environmental Experts (NGOs, Researchers, etc.).
Coastal nations are rightly worried about sea level rise, but in the countries around the Caspian Sea, over 100 million people are facing the opposite problem: an enormous drop in sea level. Technically, this sea is a land-locked lake, but it is the largest on the planet (371.000 km2), and quite ...
Carbon dioxide fuels photosynthesis, the process by which plants generate their food in the form of carbohydrates. The atmosphere's carbon dioxide levels are rapidly increasing, but there is uncertainty about whether plants can turn these extra resources into higher yields while retaining nutrit ...
Fishery collapses can be difficult to forecast and prevent due to hyperstability, a phenomenon where catch rates remain high even as fish abundance declines. In a recent Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences study, researchers conducted a whole-lake experiment to reveal the causes o ...
Flies, mosquitoes, dust and even microplastics—spider webs capture whatever travels through the air. Researchers at the university have now for the first time tested if they can get an overview of plastic particles in the air by examining the eight-legged creatures' catch.
Using a 22-year dataset of plant-caterpillar-parasitoid interactions collected within a patch of protected Costa Rican lowland Caribbean forest, scientists report declines in caterpillar and parasitoid diversity and density that are paralleled by losses in an important ecosystem service: biocont ...
Leaf-eating caterpillars greatly enrich their intestinal flora by eating soil. Even effects of plants that previously grew in that soil can be found back in bacteria and fungi in caterpillars. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Leiden University write about thi ...