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A hawk-eyed photographer has thrilled scientists by snapping a threatened bird of prey in Papua New Guinea, more than five decades since it was last officially documented, the World Wildlife Fund said Friday.

Sea otters are famed for their luscious pelts, but the fur almost led to their extinction. By 1938, only a tiny population of ~50 remained clinging to the central California coast. Since then, the mammals have battled back. However, the charismatic creatures are still at risk from crude oil spilled by offshore rigs.

Antarctica's rapidly receding sea ice could have a negative impact on the food supply of seabirds that breed hundreds of miles away from the continent. Most of the world's albatrosses, and their close relatives, petrels, breed on islands in the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica.

A descendant of Sicilian progenitors, this daisy-family plant appeared in the UK, escaped from a botanical garden, and began its conquest of the region during the Industrial Revolution.

A small team of biologists at Mississippi State University and the University of Wyoming has found a species of parasitoid wasp that lays its eggs inside of living adult fruit flies. In their study, published in the journal Nature, the group accidentally discovered the new wasp species while conducting research on fruit flies.

A genome study of more than 700 European red deer has identified four distribution areas on the continent (Norway, Scotland, Spain and Central Europe), each with their own genetic characteristics that need to be preserved

The Amazon rainforest is home to a remarkable variety of plants and animals not found anywhere else on Earth, with some species only located in certain areas, but the reason for this has perplexed and divided scientists for decades.

Scientists may have found an antidote to pesticides that are directly and indirectly killing bees, according to a new paper published in Nature Sustainability showing promising early results in common eastern bumblebees.

What do deep-sea crustaceans munch on? A new study titled "A deep-sea isopod that consumes Sargassum sinking from the ocean's surface," published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, sheds light on a remarkable isopod species named Bathyopsurus nybelini, a deep-sea isopod that consumes Sargassum sinking from the ocean's surface.

An Osaka Metropolitan University-led team has demonstrated that bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) check their body size in a mirror before choosing whether to attack fish that are slightly larger or smaller than themselves.

The Salish Sea—the inland coastal waters of Washington and British Columbia—is home to two unique populations of fish-eating orcas, the northern resident and the southern resident orcas. Human activity over much of the 20th century, including reducing salmon runs and capturing orcas for entertainment purposes, decimated their numbers. This century, the northern resident population has steadily grown to more than 300 individuals, but the...

As Europe grapples with the growing threat of tropical diseases brought by the Asian tiger mosquito, a research breakthrough led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) is enabling scientists to accurately predict towns across the continent where there is a high risk of dengue fever.

Aquatic plants in lakes and rivers are important refuges for animals, bring oxygen into the water and remove nutrients. However, they are not universally popular: some people find them a nuisance when swimming or doing water sports, and they also change the hydrology of aquatic systems. When aquatic plants grow in large numbers, they are often removed.

Many marine organisms, like sea anemones, struggle to spread across the ocean, especially if they lack long, mobile larval stages. Unlike their jellyfish relatives, sea anemones do not have a medusa stage, making their dispersal challenging. Their only mobile stage is a tiny larva called a planula.

In 2003, a team of primatologists led by the University of Colorado Boulder trapped, tagged and released a male ring-tailed lemur in the Bezà Mahafaly Special Reserve in Madagascar. The researchers captured him one more time in 2004, but after that, the lemur disappeared, never to be seen again.

A team of climate, health and atmospheric specialists in Spain and Japan has found abundant live fungi, bacteria and viruses high in the Earth's atmosphere. In their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group collected air samples from altitudes of 1,000–3,000 meters.

Researchers from the University of Kansas have published findings in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology describing a new species of fanged frog, named Limnonectes cassiopeia, from the Philippine island of Luzon.

Bilal Butt knows how it sounds. The associate professor of sustainability and development at the University of Michigan understands that arguing to let cattle graze in a national park offends the sensibilities.

Honeybees are social insects. Their colony only survives as a community, and healthy new generations are very important. It is therefore not surprising that honeybees invest significant care and resources into their offspring: nurse bees feed the young larvae with a food juice made from nectar and pollen which they produce in a gland in their head.

Digitally cataloging the more than 300 million plant specimens preserved in museums worldwide could yield crucial insights into how to preserve biodiversity amid climate change, a study by McGill University researchers has found.

Many prey species have defensive tactics to escape being eaten by their would-be predators. But a study published in Current Biology on September 9, 2024 has taken it to another level by offering the first video evidence of juvenile Japanese eels escaping after being swallowed into the stomachs of their fish predators.

Gray reef sharks are having to abandon the coral reefs they call home in the face of warming oceans, new research finds.

It is hard to protect something if you don't know where it is. Yet many people who study and want to safeguard native plants are faced with this exact problem.

Microplastics have raised concerns among scientists and the public in recent years due to their widespread presence and associated health risks. They have been found in every corner of the planet, from mountain peaks to the deep sea, and in the diets of many organisms, including humans.