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While human activity has had a massive effect on the natural world, a new study from North Carolina State University finds that climate is still the most influential factor in determining where mammals can thrive. The work sheds light on how climate change will affect wildlife populations.

A new study sheds light on the unexplored diversity of galeommatoidean bivalves, a little-known group of marine mollusks, from the western coast of South Africa.

New research has found that 4,642 species of vertebrates are threatened by mineral extraction around the world through mining and quarrying, and drilling for oil and gas.

The color palette of the birds you see out your window depends on where you live. If you're far from the Equator, most birds tend to have drab colors, but the closer you are to the tropics, you'll probably see more and more colorful feathers.

Vestimentiferan tubeworms, unique deep-sea dwellers lacking a digestive system, rely on a symbiotic partnership with sulfide-oxidizing endosymbiotic bacteria (endosymbionts) for nutrients. Living in chemosynthetic ecosystems like hydrothermal vents and cold-seeps, these worms house the endosymbionts in a specialized organ, facilitating gas exchange to fuel the microbes' organic matter production, leading to the tubeworms' remarkable growth and dense communities.

Researchers have found New Zealand's endangered flightless birds are seeking refuge in the locations where six species of moa last lived before going extinct.

A team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island and Nova Southeastern University in Florida have been tracking a 26-foot endangered whale shark—named "Rio Lady"—with a satellite transmitter for more than four years—a record for whale sharks and one of the longest tracking endeavors for any species of shark.

Baby oysters rely on natural acoustic cues to settle in specific environments, but new research from the University of Adelaide reveals that noise from human activity is interfering with this critical process.

New research from scientists at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography finds a tiny freshwater parasite known to cause health problems in humans defends its colonies with a class of soldiers that cannot reproduce.

Hours after tagging an endangered basking shark off the coast of Ireland in April, researchers captured what they believe is the first ever video of a shark or any large marine animal being struck by a boat.

Butterflies and moths collect so much static electricity while in flight, that pollen grains from flowers can be pulled by static electricity across air gaps of several millimeters or centimeters.

For decades, insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor insecticide spraying regimens have been important—and widely successful—treatments against mosquitoes that transmit malaria, a dangerous global disease. Yet for a time, these treatments also suppressed undesirable household insects like bed bugs, cockroaches and flies.

How many dung beetles are there in East Africa? That question inspired a research project more than 20 years ago when Frank Krell was a research entomologist with the Natural History Museum London. Throughout a three-year-long project along with his wife, ecologist Sylvia Krell-Westerwalbesloh, they looked deep into the ecology of dung beetles in West and East African savannas.

Drylands cover about 42% of the Earth's land surface and are increasingly threatened by human land-use pressures like agriculture, alternative energy sources, overgrazing and climate change. Up to a third of the global human population living in drylands might be affected by the loss of native drylands, arable land, and reduced water resources.

Two scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a way to calculate the approximate speed of disease spread between distant places via ocean travel hundreds of years ago.

Ignacio A. Lazagabaster, a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), is part of the international team that has published a study of the biogeographic context of human evolution in the East African Rift System in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Trees in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest are migrating in search of more favorable temperatures, with species in mountain forests moving uphill to escape rising heat caused by climate change, a new study reveals.

A team of marine biologists and ecotoxicologists affiliated with several institutions in Brazil has found cocaine in muscle and liver samples collected from Brazilian Sharpnose sharks harvested off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Their study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, highlights the potential impact of the presence of illicit drugs in marine environments.

When people are having a conversation, they rapidly take turns speaking and sometimes even interrupt. Now, researchers who have collected the largest ever dataset of chimpanzee "conversations" have found that they communicate back and forth using gestures following the same rapid-fire pattern. The findings are reported on July 22 in the journal Current Biology.

Raising squid in aquaculture has been a challenge that researchers have tried to address for many decades without meaningful success. Squid are highly sensitive to changes in water flow, are vulnerable to disease, have complex life cycles and hard-to-meet food preferences, and can become aggressive towards each other, all of which make them difficult to rear.

Bull elephants gather in the evening coolness to drink. After a spell, a senior male lifts his head and turns from the waterhole. With ears flapping gently, he lets out a deep, resonant rumble.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are having a positive spillover effect, producing more "trophy-size" fish just outside of the fully protected areas, and the effect is growing stronger over time. That's according to research led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa scientists at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) published in Science Advances.

Some species of fish can change their egg-laying habits in response to predators in the area in order to survive, according to new research from The University of Texas at Arlington.

When a new species is discovered in the depths of the rainforest or on top of a mountain, it can be years before the creature is cataloged again. Separated from science by elevation, water or tangled branches, the species lives undisturbed, its populations existing in an almost-separate world.

Native trees adapt to the climate and environmental conditions of their area to survive. Researchers in the College of Natural Resources and Environment in collaboration with the American Chestnut Foundation confirmed this by examining the genome of American chestnut trees sampled throughout the Appalachian Mountain range and grouping the samples according to their specific environmental region.

Ants are famous for their regimented and complex social behaviors. In the tropics, they are also famous for forming mutualisms with plants. Certain species of trees have conspicuous hollow swellings that house ants, often feeding the ants with specialized ant food. In return, the ants are pugnacious bodyguards, swarming out to aggressively defend the plant against enemies. Scientists have observed these mutualisms for centuries,...

Brown University biologists who set out to better understand the effects of climate change on plant species in tropical mountain regions found that even small variations in temperature and moisture can have massive impacts, threatening not only plants that live there, but also the ecosystems they support.

Households caught and consumed a far more diverse array of fish than they sold at market, which has important implications for how loss of biodiversity might affect people's nutrition, especially for those with lower incomes. A Cornell study is one of the first to examine the relationship between diet and biodiversity in a wild food system.

Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and James Cook University (JCU) have designed special cradles for baby corals that help prevent fish from eating them alive.

The most threatened reef fish are also the most overlooked by scientists and the general public. That is the startling finding of a team of scientists led by a CNRS researcher.

Researchers have uncovered an under-the-sea phenomenon where coral-destroying crown-of-thorns starfish larvae have been feasting on blue-green algae bacteria known as "sea sawdust."

Lice have been found feeding on the skin and blood of free-range chickens, which are infected at much higher rates than caged flocks. This finding could have implications for states like California, where all egg production is cage-free.

When trying to understand the present, it's helpful to look to history. New research from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln examined the fossil record going back 66 million years and tracked changes to mammalian ecosystems and species diversity on the North American continent.

Researchers have analyzed data from 127 studies to reveal 'thresholds' for when logged rainforests lose the ability to sustain themselves. The results could widen the scope of which forests are considered 'worth' conserving, but also show how much logging degrades forests beyond the point of no return.

A trio of environmental specialists at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, in Japan, has found that Japanese honeybees sometimes resort to slapping ants with their wings to prevent their entry into their nest.

Although there is a large body of research on pests evolving tolerances for the pesticides meant to destroy them, there have been considerably fewer studies on how non-target animals in these ecosystems may do the same.

A collaborative team of researchers led by Ben Weinstein of the University of Florida, Oregon, US, used machine learning to generate highly detailed maps of over 100 million individual trees from 24 sites across the U.S., and published their findings July 16 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. These maps provide information about individual tree species and conditions, which can greatly aid conservation efforts...

A fiery orange bat, its wings folded and tiny teeth forever bared on its fuzzy face, is mounted inside a 6-inch, black coffin. Its retail price: $59. Or, for $140, you can get one framed with its black and orange wings spread, deliverable in two days.

In a study published in Nature Plants, scientists have identified the Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene boundaries as turning points for the transition of survival strategies in the grape family (Vitaceae).

Spade-toothed whales are the world's rarest, with no live sightings ever recorded. No one knows how many there are, what they eat, or even where they live in the vast expanse of the southern Pacific Ocean. However, scientists in New Zealand may have finally caught a break.

A new UBC study published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science has unveiled insights into how microscopic organisms such as marine plankton move through water with different density layers.

Studying polar bears just became a lot easier with new "burr on fur" trackers which confirmed scientists' belief that subadult and adult males spend most of their time on land lazing around, conserving energy until the ice returns.

Researchers from the Complexity Science Hub and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna have dissected the complex interactions involved in zoonoses, which annually affect over two billion people worldwide. They introduce the concept of a "zoonotic web," a detailed network representation of the relationships between zoonotic agents, their hosts, vectors, food sources, and the environment.

The ability of salmon hatcheries to increase wild salmon abundance may come at the cost of reduced diversity among wild salmon, according to a new University of Alaska Fairbanks–led study.

Humans have been an important driver of vegetation change over thousands of years, and, in some places, had positive impacts on biodiversity, according to a new study.

In the world of social creatures, from humans to ants, the spread of behaviors through a group—known as social contagion—is a well-documented phenomenon. This process, driven by social imitation and pressure, causes individuals to adopt behaviors observed in their peers, often resulting in synchronized mass actions: Think of stampedes, or standing ovations.

A pair of biologists, one with West Liberty University, the other with Arizona State University, both in the U.S., has found evidence that challenges theories surrounding bright coloration always functioning as an adapted phenotype.

An invasive fungus that colonizes the skin of hibernating bats with deadly consequences is a stealthy invader that uses multiple strategies to slip into the small mammals' skin cells and quietly manipulate them to aid its own survival. The fungus, which causes the disease white-nose syndrome, has devastated several North American species over the last 18 years.

Cooperative hunting, resource sharing, and using the same signals to communicate the same information—these are all examples of cultural sharing that have been observed between distinct animal species. In an opinion piece published June 19 in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, researchers introduce the term "co-culture" to describe cultural sharing between animal species. These relationships are mutual and go beyond one species...

Scientists at the University of Malaga have shown, in an unprecedented way, how the so-called "elephant graveyard" of the Early Pleistocene archaeological site of Orce—a name given due to the amount of remains of the extinct elephant species Mammuthus meridionalis that it contained—hid a natural trap in quicksand.