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Scientists from the University of Copenhagen have revealed how a specific hormone regulates ant caste differentiation by phenotypic measurements of organ-level developmental changes and matching transcriptome analyses. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study titled "Juvenile hormone as a key regulator for asymmetric caste differentiation in ants" significantly enhances the understanding of caste development and evolution.

The Irish philosopher George Berkely, best known for his theory of immaterialism, once famously mused, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" What about AI-generated trees? They probably wouldn't make a sound, but they will be critical nonetheless for applications such as adaptation of urban flora to climate change.

In recent decades, scientists have clearly demonstrated that chimpanzees, like humans, pass on complex cultures such as tool use from generation to generation. But human culture has become vastly more sophisticated, from the Stone Age to the Space Age, as new advances have been incorporated. Chimpanzee cultures haven't changed in the same way, which suggests that only humans have the remarkable ability to build...

A new study on aging in the animal kingdom has highlighted how urgently Earth's oldest and wisest creatures must be protected, with knowledge and environmental stability lost due to human intervention.

According to the fossil record, cetaceans—whales, dolphins and their relatives—evolved from four-legged land mammals that returned to the oceans beginning some 50 million years ago. Today, their descendants are threatened by a different land-based mammal that has also returned to the sea: humans.

Mysterious, repeating sounds from the depths of the ocean can be terrifying to some, but in the 1980s, they presented a unique look at an underwater soundscape.

The Delta, a regional powerhouse for Arkansas agriculture built by river flows, is showing a trend of increasing droughts. Using satellite imagery, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers comprehensively analyzed drought dynamics over five years to reveal this and other short and long-term climate trends in Arkansas.

Compared to children, adults don't play as much, but social play into adulthood is considered a universal human trait. Play has a role in building tolerance, cohesion, bonding, and cooperation. By comparison, play in adults of other species has been considered rare, and yet a new study reported in Current Biology shows that some chimpanzees, like people, continue to play often throughout their entire...

New research shows that increased levels of plastic pollution in the Southern Ocean could reduce the ability of Antarctic krill, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean, to help take CO2 from the atmosphere. The results are published this month in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Morning glory plants that can resist the effects of glyphosate also resist damage from herbivorous insects, according to a University of Michigan study.

Researchers in Canada are using artificial intelligence to monitor the ongoing mass extinction of insects, hoping to collect data that can help reverse species collapse and avert catastrophe for the planet.

Scientists from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences found forty new freshwater viruses infecting aquatic microorganisms this year. The first one, which they isolated and described in detail, was named Budvirus after the South Bohemian capital České Budějovice. It belongs to "Giant Viruses" and it infects unicellular algae called cryptophytes.

The patches of lichen you've probably seen growing on tree trunks and park benches might be easy to overlook, but they're actually some of the world's strangest living things. While they're sometimes mistaken for moss, lichens are miniature ecosystems made up of a fungus and algae or bacteria that can make energy from sunlight, living together in one body.

A team of marine biologists, ecologists and evolutionary specialists from the University of Chicago, Stanford University and Duke University has found that heart cockles have windows in their shells to allow in light needed by the algae that live inside the shells.

New research suggests that while manatees are an indelible part of Florida's seascape, they might also be relatively new residents in the Sunshine State.

Chimpanzees are more likely to engage in play or groom each other if they see others performing these social behaviors first, Georgia Sandars and colleagues at Durham University, U.K. report in a study published November 20, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Over the typical two-year rotation of corn and soybeans most Iowa farmers use, 40% of nitrous oxide emissions are in the soybean year, according to a new study by an Iowa State University research team.

New findings, published in the journal Ecology, describe a newly documented behavior of Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis).

A study found that invasive zebra mussels significantly alter aquatic ecosystems, and are associated with elevated mercury concentrations in fish. Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, poses a serious threat to both aquatic life and human health.

Rivers and streams serve as critical connectors across vast geographical landscapes, trickling out of tucked-away headwaters and snaking thousands of miles toward oceans and deep seas. These waterways directly impact human and environmental health, agriculture and energy production, and supply the United States with two-thirds of its drinking water. And yet, compared with other larger waterbodies, the microbiology of rivers is relatively understudied.

Along Colombia's Pacific coast, a small shellfish called piangua has been a crucial part of local communities for generations. This humble mollusk is a vital source of income and nutrition for many coastal residents. As a regional resource that can be sustainably utilized, it represents a bioeconomic opportunity and is an example for other regions. But now, scientists are raising the alarm about its...

In order to use remote locations to record and assess the behavior of wildlife and environmental conditions, the GAIA Initiative developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that reliably and automatically classifies behaviors of white-backed vultures using animal tag data.

Climate change is a persistent and growing challenge to plant life on our planet. Changes to the environment that plants are unaccustomed to affect how they grow, putting them much at risk. Increasingly, plant scientists are trying to determine how these environmental changes will impact plant life and whether plants will be able to acclimate to a new status quo.

A team of environmental management specialists, dendrologists and Indigenous studies researchers found evidence showing that Indigenous people living in British Columbia cultivated hazelnut trees long before colonists from Europe arrived.

Wearing a bright outfit covered in shiny sequins is a sure-fire way to attract attention. Just think of stars on stage—Beyonce, Taylor Swift or Harry Styles—their bedazzled outfits catch the lights, flashing and sparkling as they dance in concert. Many animals also have brilliant and dazzling appearances. Jewel beetles look like, well, jewels and there's even a fly so fabulous it was named after...

Ticks travel light, but they carry pathogens with them. When they parasitize migrating birds, these journeys can take them thousands of miles away from their usual geographic range. Historically, they haven't been able to establish themselves due to unsuitable climate conditions at the other end of their long journeys. But now, thanks to the climate crisis, it's getting easier for ticks to survive and...

Phosphorus, a nutrient in soil essential for sustaining most forms of life, is increasingly disappearing from land as it is washed into waterways throughout the United States, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.

A new species of tarantula, Trichopelma grande, has been discovered in western Cuba by researchers David Ortiz of Masaryk University, Czechia, and Elier Fonseca of the Cuban Zoological Society, Cuba. The charismatic addition to the Trichopelma genus is remarkable for its size and unique features, making it the largest and hairiest of its kind.

Southeast Asia's tropical forests are renowned for their biodiversity, but at the same time face significant threats from the expansion of oil palm plantations. With global demand for palm oil rising, the urgency for effective restoration strategies in these landscapes has become critical.

A new study reveals alarming risks that pesticides pose to ground-nesting bees, which are crucial for pollination and food production. As agriculture increasingly relies on pesticides to protect crops, the unintended consequences for these essential pollinators are becoming clearer.

For many researchers in biology and other natural sciences, dissecting specimens may not be desirable, though it is often necessary. This is because dissection means killing the animal a researcher is trying to study—a big issue, especially if the species is experiencing a population decline.

A small team of marine scientists from the University of the Ryukyus, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Kuroshio Biological Research Foundation, has found that a worm species thought to be missing since 1957 has been appearing in photographs taken by citizen scientists for several years.

Animals and plants also live and thrive on public squares. This creates opportunities for greater biodiversity and well-being for the human population. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have studied at 103 locations in Munich how various factors affect flora and fauna.

It's a common sight—ants marching in an orderly line over and around obstacles from their nest to a food source, guided by scent trails left by scouts marking the find. But what happens when those scouts find a comestible motherlode?

Hunted nearly to extinction during 20th century whaling, the Antarctic blue whale, the world's largest animal, went from a population size of roughly 200,000 to little more than 300. The most recent estimate in 2004 put Antarctic blue whales at less than 1% of their pre-whaling levels.

Mountain lions in greater Los Angeles are proactively shifting their activity to avoid interacting with cyclists, hikers, joggers and other recreationists, finds a study from the University of California, Davis, Cal Poly Pomona and the National Park Service.

Scientists have found a trigger for social learning in wild animals. An experiment on great tits has pinpointed a single factor—immigration—that can cause birds to pay close attention to others, leading them to rapidly adopt useful behaviors.

The megafires that tore through Australia's forests in 2019–20 burnt more than 10 million hectares. The tragedy prompted a massive research effort to understand how plants and animals were affected.

"Cool" white lights—such as those in modern car headlights—endanger moths by causing them to fly erratically, new research shows. The findings are published in the journal Biology Letters.

In the tropical Atlantic, stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) is particularly severe because the disease is transmitted quickly, spreads to many hosts, and results in high mortality rates. Treatment methods to stop the spread of SCTLD are available; the most common is the use of antibiotics. This, however, comes with side effects like increased antibiotic resistance.

A remote lakeshore deep inside Yosemite National Park teems with life: coyotes, snakes, birds, tadpoles, frogs. The frogs are at the heart of this scene, which a decade ago was much different. It was quiet—and not in a good way. The frogs that are so central to this ecosystem were absent, extirpated by a deadly fungal disease known as amphibian chytrid fungus.

According to a recent study published in Nature, many planktonic foraminifera species may face unprecedented environmental conditions by the end of this century, potentially surpassing their survival thresholds. Planktonic foraminifera are single-celled organisms living in seawater, many of which carry a calcium carbonate shell. In tropical regions, the changing environmental conditions could trigger further extinctions, impacting marine ecosystems and the ocean's carbon storage capacity.

Animal habitats are currently changing extremely rapidly and extensively due to urbanization and climate change. As a result, animals are increasingly exposed to stressors. However, until now, little research has been conducted on how individual stress levels affect the group and the behavior of other group members that may not have experienced a stressor themselves.

A new study highlights how some marine life could face extinction over the next century, if human-induced global warming worsens.

Migratory birds are known for their ability to traverse thousands of kilometers to reach their breeding or wintering grounds. Research by Bangor University found that these birds, in this case, Eurasian reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) use only the Earth's magnetic inclination and declination to determine their position and direction.

FIU scientists have discovered two major problems after analyzing small shark fins from Hong Kong markets—small coastal species are much more common in the international fin trade than previously thought and there is a burgeoning market for juveniles of large species.

Coral larvae reduce their metabolism and increase nitrogen uptake to resist bleaching at high temperatures, according to a study published November 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Ariana S. Huffmyer of the University of Washington, US, and colleagues.

The story of Arctic greening has overlooked some main characters. At center stage are climate change and warming temperatures. Meanwhile, large grazing wildlife, such as caribou and muskoxen, also play a key role in the timing and abundance of Arctic plants, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

MBARI researchers have discovered a remarkable new species of sea slug that lives in the deep sea. Bathydevius caudactylus swims through the ocean's midnight zone with a large gelatinous hood and paddle-like tail, and lights up with brilliant bioluminescence. The team published a description of the animal, nicknamed the "mystery mollusk," in the journal Deep-Sea Research Part I.

In an emerging red flag for the digital era, sleep experts have warned us to avoid screen time in bed, sounding the alarm that light emitted from phones and other electronic devices can disrupt our sleep patterns. That's one way that science is waking up to the broad range of health and disease implications related to circadian biology and our daily sleep-wake cycles.