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When humans began farming crops thousands of years ago, agriculture had already been around for millions of years. In fact, several animal lineages have been growing their own food since long before humans evolved as a species.

The wealth of data hosted in natural history collections can contribute to finding a response to global challenges ranging from climate change to biodiversity loss to pandemics. However, today's practices of working with collected bio- and geodiversity specimens lack some efficiency, which limits what scientists can achieve.

Oysters once formed extensive reefs along much of Europe's coastline—but these complex ecosystems were destroyed over a century ago, new research shows. The paper, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, is titled "Records reveal the vast historical extent of European oyster reef ecosystems."

By studying rare fossils of jaws and other skull parts of a long-extinct Caribbean monkey, a team of researchers that includes a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine professor says it has uncovered new evidence documenting the anatomy and ecology of an extinct primate once found on Hispaniola—the Caribbean island on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located.

Endosymbiosis is a fascinating biological phenomenon in which an organism lives inside another. Such an unusual relationship is often beneficial for both parties. Even in our bodies, we find remnants of such cohabitation: mitochondria evolved from an ancient endosymbiosis. Long ago, bacteria entered other cells and stayed. This coexistence laid the foundation for mitochondria and thus the cells of plants, animals, and fungi.

A research group at the Finnish Museum of Natural History is investigating the adaptive potential of plant species amid a warming climate. Their recent study investigates the Siberian primrose, a plant species that occurs on the coasts of the Bothnian Bay and Arctic Ocean. Climate change is threatening the viability of the species.

In legends and fables, it brings luck, children and prosperity. Today, its appearance is seen as a sign of a healthy environment. Hardly any other bird in Europe has such positive connotations as the white stork Ciconia ciconia. But how old is this close relationship between humans and storks? Where and how was this relationship formed?

Bats are widely known around the world for their role in the spread of a number of zoonotic diseases—illnesses that can spread between humans and animals.

New research suggests that green turtle hatchlings 'swim' to the surface of the sand, rather than 'dig,' in the period between hatching and emergence. The findings have important implications for conserving a declining turtle population globally.

Dolphins are extremely playful, but little is known about how they—and other marine mammals—communicate during playtime. New research published October 2 in the journal iScience shows that bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncates) use the "open mouth" facial expression—analogous to a smile—to communicate during social play.

Long-term smoke exposure from massive wildfires lowers the energy reserves of orchard trees and can cut their nut production by half, researchers at the University of California, Davis, found. The smoke can affect trees for months after a megafire, depressing their bloom and the next season's harvest. This finding reveals a new danger from wildfires that could affect plant health in both agricultural and...

A new analysis of a decade-long collection of wildlife rescue records in NSW has delivered new insights into how humans and reptiles interact in urban environments.

An ambitious project led by scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, along with global partners, seeks to shed light on the planet's "plant diversity darkspots"—regions teeming with biodiversity but where geographic and taxonomic data remain incomplete, leaving scientists in the dark about the wealth of plant diversity they contain.

Most flowering plants depend on animals for pollination. In warm wet tropical regions, more than 90% of plant species are pollinated by animals. In Dominica, a Caribbean island country, researchers have identified a mutualistic relationship between two species of heliconia plant (Heliconia bihai and H. caribaea) and their hummingbird pollinator, the Purple-throated carib (Eulampis jugularis). The association is so specific that it has often...

Every year, plants move 3.58 gigatons of carbon to mycorrhizal fungi, their underground partners—enough, in fact, that if it were ice, it would cover 112 million NHL hockey rinks. However, a dominant scientific theory explaining that huge transfer as an economic market of sorts is likely incorrect, according to a new paper by a group of experts including a University of Alberta researcher.

"Tropical rainforest" might conjure images of close-packed trees, dense humidity, and the din of animal calls. But rainforests host landscapes beyond that archetypal one, including vast, treeless clearings that seemingly appear out of nowhere.

The tagging of wildlife provides important insights into their movements, physiology, and behavior amid globally changing ecosystems. However, the stress caused by capture, handling, and tagging can have an effect on the locomotion and activity of the animals and thus also affect the validity of the collected data. Therefore, Potsdam researchers led by Jonas Stiegler and Niels Blaum, in collaboration with over 100 other...

A study led by researchers from the University of Barcelona and the Marine and Coastal Research Institute (INVEMAR) in Colombia warns of the presence of potentially pathogenic bacteria in microplastics extracted from water, sediments and the digestive tract of fish in the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta, the largest and most productive coastal lagoon system in the Colombian Caribbean.

A new study by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks's Institute of Arctic Biology provides compelling evidence that Canada lynx populations in Interior Alaska experience a "traveling population wave" affecting their reproduction, movement and survival.

New DNA technology promises to improve efforts to monitor marine life in the Southern Ocean, and detect the presence of non-native marine species close to Antarctica.

In a recent study, researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz IPHT) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena have shown how they can non-invasively and non-destructively investigate the growth and interactions of the green alga Ulva and its bacterial community using Raman spectroscopy.

They were said to come from outer space, and there were even claims that they were actually bacteria and that they undermined the very definition of viruses. Giant viruses, nicknamed "giruses," contain enormous quantities of genetic material—up to 100 times more than other viruses—and some are larger than certain bacteria.

Mountains are home to 85% of the world's amphibian, bird, and mammalian species, despite covering only 25% of the Earth's surface. This makes them a highly diverse ecosystem and a key focus for conservation efforts.

A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution lifts the veil on what happens when octopuses and fish hunt together. As it turns out, this cross-species relationship is more complex than anyone expected.