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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.