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In the heart of Canada's Rocky Mountains, an unassuming yet remarkable butterfly has been quietly flying under our scientific radar for years. With a wingspan of an inch to an inch and a half, and wings that are brown on top and grayish brown with black spots below, this population was long thought to belong to the Half-moon Hairstreak (Satyrium semiluna). However, the isolated...

Honeybees are essential pollinators for agriculture and natural ecosystems. Stressors like climate change, habitat loss and pesticide exposure threaten their ability to forage for pollen, a critical resource for colony survival. Researchers in Environmental Science & Technology demonstrate that an artificial intelligence (AI)-based monitoring system combined with a computer model can link the exposure of neonicotinoid pesticides on individual honeybees to the health of...

UC Davis Professor Hugh Safford was hiking for pleasure in California's High Sierra when he stumbled upon a new elevation record for the Jeffrey pine, which may now be the state's highest-altitude tree. His serendipitous finding is published in the journal Madroño.

Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz have discovered that honey bees from the same colony have different preferences in terms of defensive behavior. While some are still hesitating, others are already attacking.

A recently published paper reveals that soil scratching by gorillas in Congo's Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park is a foraging strategy to access a species of deer truffle, identified as Elaphomyces labyrinthinus, and not insects, as long assumed.

An international team of scientists and crew on board Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor (too) was the first to film the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) in its natural environment. The 30-centimeter juvenile squid (nearly one foot long) was captured on video at a depth of 600 meters (1968 feet) by the Institute's remotely operated vehicle (ROV) SuBastian. The sighting occurred on March 9...

The power of a rattlesnake's venom to incapacitate its prey may depend on more than just its potency, or even the prey animal's tolerance for the poison. According to a new study published April 16 in Biology Letters, it also depends a bit on the weather.

Scientists have unveiled a new food source designed to sustain honey bee colonies indefinitely without natural pollen.

A spat between birds at a backyard birdfeeder highlights the sometimes fierce competition for resources that animals face in the natural world, but some ecologically similar species appear to coexist peacefully. A classic study in songbirds by Robert MacArthur, one of the founders of modern ecology, suggested that similar wood warblers—insect-eating, colorful forest songbirds—can live in the same trees because they actually occupy slightly...

A study of bumble bees has uncovered a potential reason for the insects' decline. By studying bumble bee exposure to particulate air pollutants, scientists at the University of Leicester have determined that the diversity and behavior of the bee gut microbial community is altered when exposed to black carbon found in air pollution, disrupting the beneficial bacteria that live there.

Newly published research from UNC Greensboro biology professor Dr. Bryan McLean and colleagues shows that the masked shrew, a small, mole-like mammal found in the Appalachian Mountains, shrinks its body and braincase to conserve energy during winter months.

If you think doomscrolling leads to sleepless nights, imagine waking up in bed with a blood-sucking monster the size of a basset hound. That's the waking nightmare one species of Australian fruit fly must contend with each night as hungry mites stalk and attach themselves like a tick while the fly is sleeping in the fruit orchards and rainforests of Queensland.

A new DNA probes allow for efficient surveying of the hidden lives of squids and octopuses in the deep sea. This development by Kobe University provides an effective tool for marine ecological research and conservation efforts.

If you like watching, reading, or learning about pretty, colorful birds, you're not alone. But it turns out that love for the bright and beautiful is impacting scientific study and limiting what we know about how their drab counterparts impact our ecology, which could ultimately affect conservation efforts for less striking birds.

A novel paper led by Dr. Ulrich Brose of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena is widening the understanding of how species interact within ecosystems via the so-called "Internet of Nature."

The four billion tons of marine organisms that global fisheries extracted from the ocean between 1960 and 2018 resulted in the depletion of over 560 million tons of essential nutrients vital to ecosystem health, new research has found.

Hantavirus recently made news headlines as the cause of death for Betsy Arakawa, the wife of actor Gene Hackman, but little is commonly known about it other than its connection to rodents.

Local climate can be used to predict the venom characteristics of a deadly snake that is widespread in India, helping clinicians to provide targeted therapies for snake bite victims, according to a study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases by Kartik Sunagar and colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science.

In the largest study of its kind to date, a team of international researchers has investigated how pharmaceutical pollution affects the behavior and migration of Atlantic salmon. The study, "Pharmaceutical pollution influences river-to-sea migration in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)," has been published in Science.

A study published in Frontiers in Bee Science has shown that physical distance plays a leading role in protecting bumblebees against a flying insect parasite, the bumblebee wax moth Aphomia sociella. The researchers discovered that the source of a potentially lethal infection came from the nearby hives of domestic honeybees.

Researchers from the Physics and Biology Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have discovered two species of tapeworms, or cestodes, in the guts and stomachs of wild-caught oval squid (Sepiotheutis lessoniana).

Marine food webs are highly complex. Until now, researchers have been unable to understand exactly how they are affected by climate change, overfishing and other threats. Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in Geesthacht have now achieved a breakthrough. They have developed a new computer model that can be used to simulate food webs more accurately than ever before. The work, which has been published...

Bacteria play key roles in degrading organic matter, both in the soil and in aquatic ecosystems. While most bacteria digest large molecules externally, allowing other community members to share and scavenge, some bacteria selfishly take up entire molecules before digesting them internally.

A team of oceanographers and marine biologists at the Hakai Institute, working with a colleague from the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance, and another from the Institute of Ocean Sciences, all in Canada, has found that the highly endangered sunflower star, a type of sea star, has found some degree of refuge in Canadian fjords (spelled fiord in Canada).