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The evolutionary relationships among grasses—including important crop plants like wheat, rice, corn, and sugarcane—have been clarified in a new molecular study of the grass family tree.
Health, welfare, safety and sustainability are crucial elements for ensuring the future of livestock production. Biosecurity aims to prevent the introduction and spread of pathogens within and between farms and, consequently, results in better welfare, increased food safety and better sustainabi ...
The history of life on Earth has often been likened to a four-billion-year-old torch relay. One flame, lit at the beginning of the chain, continues to pass on life in the same form all the way down. But what if life is better understood on the analogy of the eye, a convergent organ that evolved ...
According to the Paris Agreement, the world needs to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to strive toward a 1.5°C increase above pre-industrial levels. How can we meet this goal at the lowest cost?
A study published this week in Scientific Reports by researchers from Macquarie University Applied BioSciences reveals that Queensland Fruit Fly (Q-fly) can detect the presence of potential predators by smell. Incredibly, the study also found that Q-fly modify their behavior based upon this dete ...
In a paper recently published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, researchers in the Conservation Forensics Lab at The University of Hong Kong have outlined a powerful new tool for monitoring trade of rare and endangered fish species in Hong Kong wet markets.
Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland and the Zoological Museum of the University of Turku have published in the journal ZooKeys an official description for Scenopinus jerei, a new fly species from Finland.
When it comes to watering walnuts, most California growers believe you need to start early to keep trees healthy and productive throughout the long, hot summer. But according to striking results from a long-term experiment in a walnut orchard in Red Bluff, California, growers can improve crop pr ...
Interested in the genomes of algae? You now have one place where you can browse the genetic blueprints of these photosynthetic organisms. PhycoCosm is one of the largest data repositories of its kind, with an interactive browser that allows algal scientists and enthusiasts to look deep into more ...
A quartet of researchers, three with the University of Reading, the other with the University of Oxford, reports evidence that sending an electric charge into a rain-free cloud could result in the formation of raindrops.
A team of researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), working with colleagues from the Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH and North Carolina State University has conducted a review of the research done on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS)-containing products a ...
Following a recent storm surge in Wellington, some media coverage expressed surprise that 30cm of sea-level rise—an unavoidable amount projected to happen by the middle of this century—would turn a one-in-100-year coastal flood into an annual event.
Researchers have explained how visual cortexes develop uniquely across the brains of different mammalian species. A KAIST research team led by Professor Se-Bum Paik from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering has identified a single biological factor, the retino-cortical mapping ratio, that ...
A small change in the genetic makeup of the South African Cape bee turns the socially organised animal into a fighting parasite. This change ensures that infertile worker bees begin to lay their own eggs and fight other colonies.
A research team from the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden and the Zoological State Collection in Munich has studied the occurrence of the Italian barred grass snake in Bavaria. Based on over 1000 samples, they show that the snake, which was only recently discovered in Germany, ...
Related individuals of a soil bacterial species live in cooperative groups and exhibit astonishing genetic and behavioural diversity. ETH researchers recently published these findings in Science .
Were dinosaurs unfeeling scaly brutes or caring, well behaved and intelligent? This debate has continued since dinosaurs were first discovered 200 years ago, and has spilled over into the movies and popular consciousness.
A team of researchers at Charles Darwin University, in Australia, has found that male fish that mouth-brood are not always guaranteeing that the eggs they carry were fertilized by them.
An international study with the participation of the Natural History Museum (UV) has made the first record of a cave-dwelling Kinnaridae from the Old World. It is Valenciolenda fadaforesta, a species found in Valencian caves and a remnant of an ancient extinct fauna.
In the Eocene, some of the world's most important mountain ranges emerged and large climate changes took place that affected the future of the planet. In this era, about 50 million years ago, large groups of mammals and other animals also arrived, as did the Daniellia clade, an array of legume p ...
A study published in the journal Scientific Reports reveals the genetic structure of the land snail Xerocrassa montserratensis and it provides new scientific tools for the improvement of the conservation of this endemic and threatened species in Catalonia.
As climate change accelerates, recording shifts in plant flowering times is critical to understanding how changes in climate will impact ecosystem interactions. Currently, when researchers reconstruct historical flowering times using dried herbarium specimens, they estimate first or peak floweri ...
The glacial relict amphipod Gammaracanthus lacustris only occurs in deep and cold waters. A collaborative study by University of Jyväskylä and University of Eastern Finland produced new information on the life cycle and ecology of this rare amphipod.
Scientists have recently confirmed that the world's lakes are rapidly losing oxygen. With a seven-year, whole-ecosystem study, a team of freshwater scientists at Virginia Tech has been one of the first to take the next step in asking: What does it mean for water quality that oxygen is declining ...
An unusually warm winter in 2019/20 in central China and Japan was followed by a summer that saw record-breaking rainfall in the region, triggering severe flooding and landslides.
This month we've seen some crazy, devastating weather. Perth recorded its wettest July in decades, with 18 straight days of relentless rain. Overseas, parts of Europe and China have endured extensive flooding, with hundreds of lives lost and hundreds of thousands of people evacuated.
An abundance of copper played an equally crucial role to oxygen in helping the rise and spread of the earliest animals 700 million years ago.
A team of scientists is being sent to the South Atlantic to study the giant iceberg A68a. The 3,900-sq-km behemoth is currently drifting offshore of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia where it threatens to run aground.
Iceberg A68a has been imaged at high resolution for the first time in months - and it's in a ragged condition. The world's biggest berg is riven with cracks. Battered by waves and under constant attack from warm waters, it's now shedding countless small blocks. A68a, which broke away from Antarc ...
Animals have evolved several strategies in prey-predator interactions due to selective pressures, such as mimicry and camouflage. Both mimicry and camouflage enable animals to effectively reduce the probability of detection by prey and predators.
One of the most promising applications of artificial intelligence technologies is the identification of tumors from high-resolution medical imagery. Can the same techniques be used to help paleontologists more quickly analyze similar scans of dinosaur fossils? Researchers reported some of the ea ...
In glaciers, well above sea level, algae thrive. Normally invisible to the naked eye, they are often spotted by hikers trekking through the mountains in late spring as strikingly colored stretches of snow, in shades of ochre, orange and red. Known as "glacier blood," this coloring is the result ...
If you've ever sat in the cool shade of a tree on a hot summer day, you already know that shaded areas are cooler than open fields. But is that kind of cooling enough to make a difference in the hotter world of the future?
Termites are considered to be ecosystem engineers. Fungus-growing termites could play an important role in soil nutrient availability and dynamics in humid and subhumid tropical ecosystems, by building numerous mounds with differing properties compared to adjacent soils.
For the last three decades, up to 25 percent of all bee species are said to have fallen off international global data, despite a major rise in the number of such records that exist.
Here are two quiz questions for you. How many species of animals, plants, fungi, fish, insects and other organisms live in Australia? And how many of these have been discovered and named?
Since Charles Darwin, biologists have been using the so-called "biotic interactions" hypothesis to explain, at least in part, why the tropics around the equator are so species rich. The hypothesis focuses on the importance of interactions between species for biodiversity.
Scientists have harnessed bees’ acute sense of smell to detect coronavirus in a method that could be applied in developing countries lacking the necessary diagnostic tools, researchers at Wageningen University say.
Permafrost thaw could emit substantial carbon (C) into the atmosphere, and possibly trigger a positive feedback to climate warming. As the engine of biogeochemical cycling, soil microorganisms exert a critical role in mediating the direction and strength of permafrost C-climate feedback.
Researchers from the University of Plymouth are among the authors of a major new report detailing how nature can be a powerful ally in responding to the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
This past year, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added 213 plant and animal species to the tree of life, providing deeper insight into the rich biodiversity of our planet and helping to inform global conservation strategies.
An unusual technique for catching scallops that was stumbled upon accidentally by scientists could potentially reduce some of the damage caused to our seabeds by fishing.
A faint pop punctuated the sound of crashing waves—the first hint something was amiss. Sitting on board the R.V. Falkor in December 2014, David Barclay heard the sound through headphones plugged into an underwater microphone on the ship's hull.
Shelled pteropods, microscopic free-swimming sea snails, are widely regarded as indicators for ocean acidification because research has shown that their fragile shells are vulnerable to increasing ocean acidity.
A remote-sensing technique that can detect real-time changes in subsurface environments has undergone successful testing in the desert just outside the KAUST campus in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.
A sign hanging above the door of a giant open-top glass chamber in a remote part of Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest explains why so many scientists from around the world have worked hard to get a piece of this boreal woodland.
Active management of forests, including timber harvesting to meet silvicultural objectives, can influence the transmission dynamics of tick-borne diseases such as Lyme, anaplasmosis and babesiosis, according to a new study by a team of University of Maine researchers.
Nature has many values. A forest can be a cool and quiet place to retreat to when you need relaxation on a hot summer day. It is a habitat for many species. Trees also sequester and store carbon, reducing future impacts of climate change. But of course, the trees also have a monetary value if th ...
Even kids who are nearly grown still need a parental figure to help them navigate the long path to adulthood—and our closest animal relatives are no exception.
At first glance, Gabby appears to be a perfectly normal adolescent dog—a healthy, happy and rambunctious mixed-breed puppy soon to be a year old. She is only one of an avalanche of approximately 3 million new U.S. pets purchased or adopted to brighten their owners' lives during the height of the ...