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A team of marine and avian biologists from the University of Auckland, the Karolinska Institute, the Nature Conservancy and the University of California has conducted a large-scale survey of birds nesting on Indo-Pacific atolls.

Genetic diversity, a key pillar of biodiversity, is crucial for conservation. But can snapshot estimates of genetic diversity reliably indicate population extinction risk? New research shows that genome-wide genetic diversity is a strong predictor of extinction risk, but only when confounding factors are accounted for.

Barely audible to human ears, healthy soils produce a cacophony of sounds in many forms—a bit like an underground rave concert of bubble pops and clicks.

Europe's abandoned farmlands could find new life through rewilding, a movement to restore ravaged landscapes to their wilderness before human intervention. A quarter of the European continent, 117 million hectares, is primed with rewilding opportunities, researchers report August 15 in the journal Current Biology.

In October, world leaders will gather at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia, to put an ambitious plan to halt human-induced species extinction into action. The conference, COP16, will focus on the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which sets 23 targets and four overarching goals to halt human-induced species extinction.

An international team of researchers, led by scientists from the University of Copenhagen and University of Toronto, analyzed beluga whale bones retrieved from archaeological sites in the Mackenzie Delta, Northwest Territories, Canada, to shed light on the sustainability of centuries of Inuvialuit beluga whale subsistence harvests.

Migration is an adaptive phenomenon, typically triggered by a change of season, that is vital to ecosystem health. Animals may journey thousands of miles, in some cases, in search of food, better living conditions, or to find a mate. Conversely, human migration, though less common, is typically triggered by economic, or social reasons. But what if animal migration included a social element, too? Specifically,...

The world's oceans are home to microscopic organisms invisible to the human eye. The tiny creatures, known as "prokaryotes," comprise 30% of life in the world's oceans.

Research led by scientists at the Ineos Oxford Institute for antimicrobial research at Oxford University has found that wild birds such as ducks and crows living close to humans, for example in cities, are likely to carry bacteria with antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This creates an urgent need for policy makers and health services to consider the different ways antibiotic resistant bacteria can spread outside...

The distribution of species around the globe is not a random process but an outcome resulting from several evolutionary mechanisms as well as past and current environmental limitations. As a result, since the mid-19th century, biologists have identified several main regions, called biogeographic realms, that depict these large ensembles of species around the world. These biogeographic realms represent one of the most fundamental descriptions...

For a long time, scientists assumed that jellyfish were a dead-end food source for predatory fish. However, a team from the Alfred Wegener Institute together with the Thünen Institute has now discovered that fish in Greenland waters do indeed feed on jellyfish.

The UK's first large scale offshore mussel farm is allowing shellfish reefs to return to parts of the seabed off England's south coast for the first time in up to 150 years, a new study has revealed.

Scientists from Macquarie University working with Bunuba Indigenous rangers and the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) in Western Australia have trialed a new way to protect freshwater crocodiles from deadly invasive cane toads spreading across northern Australia.

An international team of environmental scientists has found evidence that climate efficiency involving farming has been leveling off in recent years. For their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group studied a half-century's worth of data to estimate greenhouse gas emissions per unit of protein from farming.

In a new study published in Communications Biology, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and the University of Giessen show that the adaptation of antlions to their ecological niche has also changed their venom.

By 2030, global cultivation areas are expected to expand by 3.6%, increasing global agricultural production by 2%. This projection comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus L.) is one of the most widely popular butterfly species in North America. We are accustomed to seeing its beautiful orange wings with black-veined outlines flying in gardens and wildflower fields during the summer season.

A pair of entomologists at the University of Georgia has found that Joro spider heart rates fluctuate less when they are experiencing stress compared to similar spiders. In their study, published in the journal Physiological Entomology, Andrew Davis and Christina Vu captured specimens of several spider species and measured their heart rates while exposing them to a stressful situation in a laboratory setting.

From lobster to haddock and seaweed, seafood plays an important role in the U.S. economy, diet and culture. The nation is one of the top producers of marine and aquatic foods worldwide, but also the second largest seafood importer.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas frequently produced in the sea and in fresh water. Lakes in particular release large quantities of this climate-killer. Fortunately, however, there are microorganisms that counteract this. They are able to utilize methane to grow and generate energy, thus preventing it from being released into the atmosphere. These microorganisms, known as methanotrophs, are therefore regarded as an important biological...

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that the fern Hymenasplenium murakami-hatanakae can become independent gametophytes, i.e., live for long periods without a spore-producing sporophyte. The work is published in the Journal of Plant Research.

Mature forests have a key role to play in the fight against climate change—extracting carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and locking it into new wood, a new study reveals.

Most of us learned about butterfly metamorphosis as a kid—a wriggly caterpillar molts its skin to form a tough chrysalis and emerges as a beautiful butterfly. But how exactly do chrysalises stay anchored as the butterfly brews within?