~ecology-news-biolog | Bookmarks (459)

The dingo was completely isolated from other canines on the Australian mainland for more than 5,000 years, until domestic dogs arrived on the scene. Subsequent concerns about livestock loss formed the basis of Australia's "wild dog" (dingo) pest control programs, which continue today. Stretching 5,614km across Australia, the "dingo fence" or "dog fence" was built in the 1880s to keep dingoes away from livestock...

A study by the German Primate Center—Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen and Leipzig Zoo shows the remarkable adaptability of the critically endangered Cat Ba langurs. Despite low genetic diversity, the langurs have retained key genetic traits that help them survive in their isolated environment on Cat Ba Island in Vietnam. One of these remarkable adaptations is the ability to drink salt water.

Climate change presents an unprecedented challenge for European vintners, particularly for the more than 1,000 protected designations of origin. In Italy, these include the production of DOC and DOCG wines, which account for 35% of the EU total, with France at 31%.

The clearing of forests, grasslands, and other natural ecosystems to grow more crops is one of the most widespread threats to terrestrial biodiversity and continues to degrade ecosystems across the globe. However, changes in agricultural land use are not unidirectional: Substantial areas of cropland have also been abandoned in recent decades, especially as the agricultural labor supply continues to shrink from rural outmigration, urbanization,...

More than one in three species of trees are at risk of extinction worldwide, threatening life as we know it on Earth, according to a report published Monday.

Insects such as bees are crucial pollinators responsible for maintaining biodiversity and food security and have long been a challenge for both existing large-scale tracking methods and high-resolution imaging systems.

For the first time, scientists have used data from weather radar not to track storms, but to count birds as they travel across Australian skies.

Like people, birds have fewer friends as they age, but the reasons why are unclear. New research published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences suggests they may just have no drive to. This is a special issue of the journal on understanding age and society using natural populations.

New research from the University of Oxford has revealed that species that are more social live longer and produce offspring for a greater timespan. This is the first study on this topic which spans the animal kingdom, from jellyfish to humans.

Invasive silver carp have been spreading throughout the Mississippi River Basin since their introduction a half-century ago. Yet, try as they might, the fish have not advanced beyond a particular stretch of the Illinois River north of Kankakee. Research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shows the fish are likely avoiding contaminants from the Chicago Area Waterway, which flows south before petering out around...

Burmese pythons can consume prey even larger than scientists realized, according to a new study published in the journal Reptiles & Amphibians.

Why do animals actually hunt in groups when they have to share the prey afterwards? Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence (SCIoI), in which Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) and the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) are involved, have shown in a field study in the ocean off Mexico that the faster the prey school moves, the...

Few people are fans of stink bugs, mosquitoes, or boll weevils, but insects play a key role in the circle of life that makes up the planet's environment. In fact, world-renowned biologist E. O. Wilson famously declared that if insects vanished, our environment would collapse.

Male birds help their parents less than females because they're too busy scouting for new places to live and breed, a remarkable new study shows.

Camera-trap monitoring detected only 11 individual Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and no cubs between 2020 and 2022 in the Ulu Masen Ecosystem, Sumatra Island, Indonesia, reports a paper published in Scientific Reports. The high proportion of male tigers observed suggests severe levels of poaching are taking place, highlighting the urgent need for greater monitoring and targeted protection of this critically endangered species.

The native banksias, with their colorful flowering spikes, were long thought to have been pollinated by honeyeater birds and marsupials, which are rewarded with large quantities of nectar.

For the first time ever, a team including several UC Santa Cruz scientists have directly measured the behavioral responses of some of the most common marine mammals to military sonar. And the finding that surprised them most was that these animals were sensitive to the sounds at much lower levels than previously predicted.

When research scientist Gary Longo first saw the results of his genomic analysis of sardines, he thought he must have mixed up his samples.

Fossils from more than 600,000 years ago reveal how Southern Europe's animal community shifted between warm and cold climate fluctuations, according to a study published October 23, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Beniamino Mecozzi from the Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy and colleagues.

Insects and spiders are important elements in the food webs of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. With declines in their biodiversity, the food supply for birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals is not only becoming scarcer, but also poorer in important fatty acids, as an international research team led by scientists from Eawag and WSL has recently demonstrated.

Coral reefs worldwide are in trouble. These ecosystems support a billion people and more than a quarter of marine species. Still, many have been damaged by unsustainable fishing and tourism, coastal construction, nutrient runoff, and climate change. Now, researchers have shown that broadcasting the sounds of healthy reefs is a way to encourage larval corals to repopulate degraded sites and help revitalize them.

Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates measuring between 0.2 mm and 1.1 mm in length. They are close relatives of arthropods (spiders, insects, crustaceans), and can live in a wide variety of environments. Yet little is known about them.

As the Arctic warms, polar bears now face a greater risk of contracting several pathogens than bears three decades ago. Karyn Rode and Caroline Van Hemert of the U.S. Geological Survey report these findings in a new study published October 23, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.