Extinctions Due to Habitat Loss are Proportional to the Area Destroyed
While studying extinction threat due to habitat loss, scientists found that the relationship between geographic area and richness of species primarily depends on the mean…
Ecology
Preserving Biodiversity When Agricultural Production Increases
A new study from researchers at Stanford University looks at how to preserve biodiversity while increases in agricultural production to feed people continue. To keep…
Rediscovery Sheds New Light on the Behavior of the Proboscis Anole
A team of scientists, encouraged by a handful of sightings, traveled to Mindo looking for a lizard once thought to be close to extinction –…
Fear of Predators in Grasshoppers Slows Plant Decay in Ecosystem
The fear of predators in an ecosystem can have a vast impact on soil ecology, simply due to the stress they put upon their prey….
First Direct Observation of an Under-Ice Algal Bloom in the Arctic
During a NASA-sponsored ICESCAPE expedition, scientists found a massive algal bloom under the Arctic sea ice. Once thought impossible, this marks the first direct observation…
Recreational Fishing is Causing the Collapse of Cape Cod’s Salt Marsh Ecosystems
According to a new study, ecologists at Brown University have discovered that recreational fishing has reduced predators in many of Cape Cod’s salt marsh ecosystems,…
Evidence Suggests that Earth May Be Headed Toward an Irreversible Change in the Biosphere
A new paper by 22 international scientists describes the need for better predictive models based on detailed understandings of how the biosphere reacted in the…
Insight on the Evolution of Cocaine Biosynthesis
With little known about how plants produce cocaine, biochemists at the Max Planck institute set out to better understand the process, finding that an enzyme…
Experimental Validation on How Populations Collapse
Working with populations of yeast growing in test tubes, researchers at MIT published the first experimental validation of the theory that populations suffering a decline…
Earth Recovered 10 Million Years After Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction
The greatest mass extinction pulse was the Permian-Triassic extinction event, and it happened about 250 million years ago, nearly wiping out life on Earth. It…
Evolution Shapes Ecology of Dammed Connecticut Lakes
In a newly published study, Yale biologists describe how dams built 300 years ago in Colonial times fundamentally changed the structure of the alewife, the…
Leaf Vein Architecture Allows Predictions of Past Climate
A newly published report describes the mathematical linkages between leaf vein systems and leaf size from around the globe, improving scientists’ ability to predict and…
Oxygen Depletion and Acidification Accelerate Coral Death
To better understand how to protect coral reefs, a team of microbiologists are investigating how environmental changes, such as oxygen depletion and ocean acidification, create…
Study Finds ‘Rare’ Genetic Variants Aren’t So Rare
While studying base pairs of human genomes from over 14,000 people, researchers discovered a dramatically higher rate than they expected of rare genetic variants, finding…
Ecologists Document Changes in Fragile Land-Sea Ecological Chain
A newly published study from Stanford scientists describes one of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented and sheds light on how human disturbance of…
“Map of Life” to Illustrate All Living Things Geographically
Now open to the public, a demonstration version of the “Map of Life” is set to illustrate how all living things on the planet are…
Marine Worm Thrives on Steady Diet of Deadly Poisons
If you thought living on fast-food, candy, soda and red meat was dangerous, try a diet of carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide. That’s what researchers…
Desert Ants Need Very Few Landmarks for Orientation
While studying desert ants, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology discovered that ants were able to use magnetism and vibrational signals in…
