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For the first time, scientists have assembled a quantitative assessment for agriculture sustainability for countries around the world based not only on environmental impacts, but economic and social impacts, as well. The Sustainable Agriculture Matrix, or SAM, provides independent and transparent measurements of agricultural sustainability at a national level that can help governments and organizations to evaluate progress, encourage accountability, identify priorities for improvement,...

Coral reefs around the world are under threat because of climate change, overfishing, pollution, and more. Now, researchers reporting in the journal One Earth on September 17 offer the first comprehensive global look at what these impacts on coral reefs mean for ecosystem services, the ability of the reef to provide essential benefits and services to humans. Overall, the findings show that the significant...

In a Pearls article publishing September 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens, Patrick Keeling and colleagues at the University of British Columbia in Canada describe investigations into an enigmatic group of coral-infecting microbes.

In Greek mythology, Hydra was a monstrous water serpent that lived in a swamp and terrorized nearby residents. When intrepid Hercules sliced off one of Hydra's multiple heads, two more heads grew back in its place.

Fish can drown. While it may not seem like it, fish do require oxygen to breathe; it's just that they get what they need from the oxygen dissolved in water rather than in the air. Too little oxygen spells trouble for our finned friends, which have to move or else suffer ill effects.

An international team, which includes researchers from IRD and CNRS, published a novel Marine Protected Areas (MPA) guide in the journal Science on 9 September 2021. The aim is to advance the global community's understanding of ocean protection and achieve global goals to halt marine biodiversity loss.

A new landmark study of over 300 sharks found that some species are extremely resilient to the stress of being caught and released in commercial longline fisheries while other species are much more likely to die.

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a method for forecasting up to three weeks in advance the locations where a distinct population of New Zealand blue whales is most likely to occur.

Thousands of seabirds that wash up on Atlantic coasts every year could have been starved to death by cyclones that whip up "washing machine" waves, a new study says, with experts warning the phenomenon could worsen with climate change.

Predicting where anthropogenic debris accumulates in aquatic ecosystems is necessary for its control and environmental remediation, but plastic and fiber pollution in lakes is not well studied. A study published in PLOS Biology by Andrew Tanentzap at University of Cambridge, United Kingdom and colleagues suggests that microparticle concentrations in lakes are higher than previously reported, and that human activity and surrounding land use may...

The green crab, Carcinus maenas, is considered a globally distributed invasive species, an organism introduced by humans that eventually becomes overpopulated, with increased potential to negatively alter its new environment. Traditionally, it's been assumed that successful populations contain high genetic diversity, or a variety of characteristics allowing them to adapt and thrive. On the contrary, the green crab—like many successful invasive populations—has low genetic...

Egyptian scientists say the fossil of a four-legged prehistoric whale, unearthed over a decade ago in the country's Western Desert, is that of a previously unknown species. The creature, an ancestor of the modern-day whale, is believed to have lived 43 million years ago.

New research led by the University of Oxford, published in Conservation Letters, has examined the conflict between small-scale fisheries and marine mammals, using the experience of fisheries on the west coast of South America to highlight a worldwide issue.

Climate change in this century will allow one of the world's costliest agricultural pests, the diamondback moth, to both thrive year-round and rapidly evolve resistance to pesticides in large parts of the United States, Europe and China where it previously died each winter, according to a study by U.S. and Chinese researchers.

On a farm where cows freely relieve themselves as they graze, the accumulation and spread of waste often contaminates local soil and waterways. This can be controlled by confining the cows in barns, but in these close quarters their urine and feces combine to create ammonia, an indirect greenhouse gas. In an article published on September 13 in the journal Current Biology, researchers show...

Usually, the individuals of a population of marine species that have the potential to disperse over long distances all share a similar genetic composition. Yet every now and then, at small, localized sites, small groups of genetically different individuals suddenly appear within populations for a short period of time. A new study explains how this chaotic formation of genetic islands can occur in marine...

Pre-COVID-19 pandemic, University of Ottawa biology student Megan Reich enjoyed the road trip of a lifetime, crisscrossing the east coast of the United States in search of a specific thrill: Milkweed.

The tall and attractive stranger has showy plumes and can make itself at home at the coast, in the city or even in your garden.

A decades-long study of voles on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is offering insights into a longstanding puzzle of Arctic ecology—effectively, what drives the well-established population cycles of small Arctic mammals, such as voles and lemmings.

Hunter-gatherer populations with a strong seasonal dependence on meat in their diets had fewer people per square kilometer than those that had abundant plant foods throughout the year.

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) petroleum drilling rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana, resulting in the world's worst oil spill in history with more than 4 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico. Though the short-term impact of the oil spill on local wildlife was widely researched among scientists and discussed in the media, there has been...

Wingtips of certain species of silkmoth are structured to reflect sound and throw off attackers, according to a new study.

Citizen scientist volunteers known as the "storm squad" collected seagrass fragments to successfully rehabilitate populations of NSW's endangered Posidonia australis.

For the first time, milkweed butterflies have been sighted feeding on live caterpillars—their own species' young. Researchers suggest they do this to increase their supply of mating pheromones.

Holden Forests & Gardens (HF&G) Scientist Na Wei, Ph.D., and her collaborators from the University of Pittsburgh and East Tennessee State University discovered how pollinators may contribute to the maintenance of flowering plant diversity. This study that accelerates our understanding of biodiversity conservation is now published in the journal Nature.

Researchers have completed a comprehensive online map of the world's coral reefs by using more than 2 million satellite images from across the globe.

Scientists have long believed that temperature—especially freezing cold—limits diversity of plant species as they proliferate out from the tropics and adapt to colder regions nearer the poles. The idea that temperature alone is behind the pattern of decreasing diversity is dubbed the tropical conservatism hypothesis.

Flash-frozen sperm collected from corals in Florida and Puerto Rico was used to fertilize coral eggs from hundreds of miles away in Curaçao. The juvenile corals raised from this trans-Caribbean coupling demonstrate the reproductive compatibility of coral colonies that would otherwise be too far apart to produce offspring in the wild and they represent the largest wildlife population ever raised from cryopreserved material.

Some coral communities are becoming more heat tolerant as ocean temperatures rise, offering hope for corals in a changing climate.

A series of recent research papers from a McGill-led team has found that the herbicide glyphosate—commonly sold under the label Roundup—can alter the structure of natural freshwater bacterial and zooplankton communities. Notably, the researchers found that for zooplankton, aquatic concentrations of 0.1 mg/L glyphosate were sufficient to cause diversity loss.

In their search for pink river dolphins, researchers in the Peruvian Amazon scooped up river water sloshing with genetic material that they hoped could trace the elusive creatures.

Climate change is not only a human problem; animals have to adapt to it as well. Some "warm-blooded" animals are shapeshifting and getting larger beaks, legs, and ears to better regulate their body temperatures as the planet gets hotter. Bird researcher Sara Ryding of Deakin University in Australia describes these changes in a review published September 7th in the journal Trends in Ecology and...

A deadly koala virus that can cause immune depletion and cancer, known as koala retrovirus, is being transferred to joeys from their mothers, according to University of Queensland scientists.

Global grasslands are a source of biodiversity and provide a host of benefits to humans, including food production, water supply, and carbon storage. But their future looks bleak without action to halt their degradation and promote their restoration, according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.

A trio of researchers, two from Universidade de Lisboa, the other from the American Museum of Natural History, has found possible evidence of paternal care in a cephalopod. In their paper published in the journal Ecology, Eduardo Sampaio, Samantha Cheng and Rui Rosa describe recording bigfin reef squid mating behavior in two vastly different areas.

Research led by the University of Nottingham has discovered two new species and a new genus of freshwater mussel in Borneo for the first time in almost 100 years.

Just off the northern coast of Iceland, scientists are collecting data from whales' breath to find out if they get stressed by whale-watching boats, an industry that has boomed in recent years.

Trapped on island habitats made smaller by rising seas, Indonesia's Komodo dragons were listed as "endangered" on Saturday, in an update of the wildlife Red List that also warned overfishing threatens nearly two-in-five sharks with extinction.

Bird dispersal movements are thought to depend on complex demographic and genetic factors. Dr. Santiago Claramunt, Associate Curator of Birds at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Toronto, shows that there may be a simpler explanation: bird dispersal distances depend on the morphology and flight efficiency of the wings. The...

The Indian wolf could be far more endangered than previously recognized, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and the scientists who sequenced the Indian wolf's genome for the first time.

The rise and fall of Earth's land surface over the last three million years shaped the evolution of birds and mammals, a new study has found, with new species evolving at higher rates where the land has risen most.

Trickling down over rocks, surrounded by wildflowers and ferns, Appalachian mountain streams are chock-full of life. They hold some of the world's greatest diversity of freshwater animals, including many species that can't be found anywhere else in the world.

Sites favored by illegal cannabis farmers on the West Coast of the United States overlap with the habitat ranges of three threatened predators, potentially exposing them to toxic pesticides, according to a study by Greta Wengert at the Integral Ecology Research Center in California and colleagues, publishing September 1 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Around a third of all the world's tree species are threatened with extinction, according to a global index published Wednesday, warning that climate change could tip some forests into ecosystem collapse.

Unchecked climate change may leave some Arctic predators surviving off of marine "junk food," according to a new UBC study.

Warming oceans have driven the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale population from its traditional and protected habitat, exposing the animals to more lethal ship strikes, disastrous commercial fishing entanglements and greatly reduced calving rates.

A new study from the University of Surrey has revealed that biotechnology could be the missing ingredient in helping cocoa farmers get a better deal for their beans.

Despite a few high-profile conservation success stories—like the dramatic comeback of bald eagle populations in North America—birds of prey are in decline worldwide.