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Mesophotic coral ecosystems have some of the highest diversity of stony corals (Scleractinia) in the world, making them particularly important for researchers. These ecosystems are also unique because they host more native species compared to shallow-water coral ecosystems. However, they are difficult to monitor because they are often located at deeper depths of 30 to 150 meters.

A small team of ichthyologists at the California Academy of Sciences has discovered a new species of damselfish living off the shores of the Maldives. In their paper published in the journal ZooKeys, the group describes how they found multiple examples of the fish while on an expedition that involved exploring deep-sea coral reefs off the coast of the Maldives—an island chain in the...

A team of faculty and student researchers at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC), in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Precision Toxicological Consultancy, have detected traces of human pharmaceuticals in the blubber of live, free-swimming common bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico. Dolphins, like humans, consume fish and shrimp, suggesting potential human health impacts.

Similar social personalities strongly influence friendships in humans, yet we know relatively little about how animals choose their friends. But a new study by researchers at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) investigating a unique free-ranging feral population of water buffalo on Lantau Island in Hong Kong has discovered that close spatial proximity serves as an indicator of friendship based on the predictive patterns...

Traditional models for analyzing microbial communities often rely on average microbial abundance over time. While these models can predict temporal changes effectively, they often fail to capture the actual interactions between microbes.

A team of wildlife ecologists at Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuenca Amazónica, in Peru, working with a colleague from the Osa Conservation, in the U.S., has recorded four months of previously undocumented natural behaviors of Andean bears. In their study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the group attached a camera to a bear they named Chris.

Armed with a net and trident, fisherman gladiators were a staple of Rome's gladiatorial games. Their best chance of survival was to quickly entangle a heavily armed opponent with their weighted net. Remarkably, some spiders use much the same strategy.

In the dark and moist understories of the subtropical forests of Shimoshima Island in Japan grow parasitic plants that feed on the roots of other plants. They are called Balanophora, and for over a century, the mechanism of their seed dispersal has remained a mystery.

An international team of polar researchers has found several types of microbiota living in the water below the frozen surface of Antarctica's Lake Enigma. In their study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, group members ventured to the lake. Using ground-penetrating radar, they found that there was water deep below its frozen surface, and drilled into the lake to obtain water samples...

Coconut palms are king throughout the tropics, serving as the foundation for human lives and cultures across the Pacific Ocean for centuries. However, 200 years of planting by colonial interests transformed the palm from the revered "Tree of Life" to a cash crop monoculture grown on Pacific atolls for a singular purpose—production of coconut oil (copra) for export around the world.

Male African elephants have distinct personality traits, but also adapt their behavior to suit the social context, according to a study published December 4, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell at Stanford University and Harvard University Center for the Environment, Jodie L. Berezin of Utopia Scientific, U.S., and colleagues.

Millions of purple marsh crabs are churning through salt marshes along the East Coast, significantly disrupting the storage of carbon within these ecosystems.

A team of marine biologists from the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Natural History, also in Japan, and the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, has found via genetic and physical study that two groups of longtooth groupers that live off the coasts of Vietnam, China and southern Taiwan, are separate species of fish.

In the upper reaches of a Minnesota watershed, the water is so full of dissolved nitrous oxide that University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign hydrologist Zhongjie Yu likens it to a soda can.

Australia's forest ecosystems, renowned for their extraordinary diversity of rare plants and animals, also play a vital role in mitigating climate change by absorbing and storing carbon. However, fossils from these ancient forests are reshaping the understanding of modern forest management practices.

You can know a lot of things about birds just by the shape of their wings. A seafaring albatross, stretching out its sail-like airfoils, lives a very different life from a ground-dwelling antpitta with its long legs and short, stubby wings that it uses in rare, short bursts of flight.

A new species of tusk shell, a burrowing marine mollusk, has been discovered in deep, North Atlantic waters by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research. The newly discovered mollusk lives in the abyss—below 3,300m—with an anemone on its shell, an arrangement that has not been seen before in this region. The study is published in the journal...

Lion numbers in Uganda are at a critical low while hyenas are faring well across four major protected areas in the country, according to survey findings co-led by Griffith University, Southern University of Science and Technology (China) and Northern Arizona University.

Plant species can fulfill different functions within an ecosystem, even if they are closely related to each other. This surprising conclusion was reached by a global analysis of around 1.7 million datasets on plant communities.

Communities of microbes (microbiomes), particularly in soils, can be startlingly diverse, with as many as 10,000 species in just a cup of material. Scientists are working to understand how microbiomes and their members respond to their environments. These processes can profoundly shape the properties and composition of soils.

Could the fungal apocalypse of The Last of Us have roots in reality? A new UBC study published in the journal PLOS Biology shows that climate warming can potentially make bacterial and fungal infections deadlier for cold-blooded animals like corals, insects, and fish, raising questions about the broader risks warming temperatures pose to ecosystems and biodiversity—and potentially humans.

Before heading out to do their fieldwork, Dr. Stephanie Collins, Jing Lu and their team would scan the horizon, get tips from local residents and check a whiteboard at the research station in Churchill, Manitoba, where they had settled in to do their research.

The idea of trees "talking" to one another through underground fungal networks—the so-called "wood wide web"—has captured the imagination of the public. This concept, where trees supposedly share nutrients with each other via these networks, has been popularized by books and documentaries.

It is the world's rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.