~ecology-news-biolog | Bookmarks (484)

Maybe you've seen the meme. Classic film characters up to their necks in muck, with text reading, "As a kid, I thought quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem in my life." Quicksand was an uncannily common plot point in the 70s and 80s, but murky wetland depictions in film haven't gone away.

New Australian research using satellite imagery to monitor the location of emperor penguin colonies in East Antarctica, shows the birds are struggling to adapt to rapid changes in their environment.

Seven of the most common forest trees in Europe have been shown to be able to shelter their genetic diversity from major shifts in environmental conditions. This is despite their ranges having shrunk and the number of trees having fallen sharply during ice age cycles. These are the findings of a study by a European consortium including Uppsala University, published in Nature Communications.

A new study has shown that selective breeding can lead to a modest rise in coral heat tolerance.

Female crested gibbons display jerky, almost geometric patterns of movement. Researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), Oslo in Norway and Paris have studied these conspicuous movements, which are comparable to human dances.

The moon's impact on our planet, culture, and society goes beyond just affecting tides. Recent research by Texas A&M University, published in the journal Transportation Research Part D, indicates a 45.8% increase in wildlife vehicle collisions during a full moon.

Utilizing advanced artificial intelligence and citizen science data from the iNaturalist app, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed some of the most detailed maps yet showcasing the distribution of California plant species.

Snails on a tiny rocky islet evolved before scientists' eyes. The marine snails were reintroduced after a toxic algal bloom wiped them out from the skerry. While the researchers intentionally brought in a distinct population of the same snail species, these evolved to strikingly resemble the population lost over 30 years prior.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) recently published a paper detailing their observations of a major coral bleaching and mortality event that occurred on the deep reefs of the Clipperton Atoll, a remote coral island in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. This bleaching, which was highly unexpected, is driven by the upwards displacement of cold water to shallower depths than normal.

In 1898, two male lions terrorized an encampment of bridge builders on the Tsavo River in Kenya. The lions, which were massive and maneless, crept into the camp at night, raided the tents and dragged off their victims. The infamous Tsavo "man-eaters" killed at least 28 people before Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson, the civil engineer on the project, shot them dead. Patterson sold...

A team of wildlife managers at the U.S. Geological Survey in San Diego, California, working with a colleague from the San Diego Natural History Museum, have uncovered the areas in San Diego County that need the most scrutiny if bat populations in the area are to be saved.

A team of ecologists at the University of Coimbra, Aarhus University and the University of Bristol has found that approximately one-third of plant species in Europe are under threat of population reduction as the number of seed dispersals declines.

Some of the wild plants that grow across the Australian landscape may not be so wild, according to new research led by Penn State scientists.

They say that hindsight is 20/20, and though the theory of ecological speciation—which holds that new species emerge in response to ecological changes—seems to hold in retrospect, it has been difficult to demonstrate experimentally, until now.

New research reveals nitrogen pollution, and to a lesser extent climate change, unexpectedly as the key driver behind surprising westward shifts in the distribution of plants.

A study carried out at the University of Helsinki demonstrates that boosting plant diversity in agriculture can increase plant biomass and improve plant–microbe interactions, both of which promote the storage of carbon in the soil.

Neonicotinoids are widely used insecticides in agriculture and horticulture. However, neonicotinoids usage is highly contentious because of their unintended harmful effects on various types of organisms.

The social behaviors of the Rattus norvegicus, commonly known as the Norway rat, are far more complex than previously thought, according to a team of researchers from ELTE Eötvös Loránd University.

A study published in the journal Science Advances by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea shows that the patchwork of different ecosystems found in mountainous regions played a key role in the evolution of humans.

Schiedea waiahuluensis, a newly discovered species from Hawaii in the carnation family, is likely the first plant to be identified and collected using drone technology.

Light pollution is more serious than expected: Moths not only lose their orientation directly under street lamps. Their flight behavior is also disturbed outside the cone of light.

A team of researchers including Department of Marine Sciences Professor Senjie Lin have for the first time sequenced the genome of Halimeda opuntia, and they found several surprising details about this strange, not-so-little algae. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Each year, millions of Pacific salmon make a grand journey from the ocean to their freshwater spawning grounds at the end of their life cycles. This migration has rippling effects through food webs and ecosystems along the way.

Stressed bees are much more likely to make pessimistic choices and lack a buzz in life, new research has revealed.