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It might not be a pleasant image, but recycling all the human and livestock feces and urine on the planet would contribute substantially to meeting the nutrient supply for all crops worldwide, thereby reducing the need to mine fertilizers such as phosphorus and dramatically reducing the dependency on fossil fuels, according to a global analysis of nutrient recycling published in Nature Sustainability.

Grizzly bears are doing more than building fat reserves as they feast on huckleberries each summer in the Canadian Rocky Mountains—they're playing a vital role in plant ecology.

All living organisms host microbiomes composed of both beneficial and harmful microbes that influence health. Microbiome diversity affects host fitness: low diversity can lead to immune issues and poor nutrient absorption, while high diversity can boost resilience to stress and pathogens.

Fast-growing and small-seeded tree species are dominating Brazilian forests in regions with high levels of deforestation and degradation, a study shows. This has potential implications for the ecosystem services these forests provide, including the ability of these "disturbed" forests to absorb and store carbon. This is because these "winning" species grow fast but die young, as their stems and branches are far less dense...

New research has revealed less than a quarter of the remaining tropical rainforests around the globe can safeguard thousands of threatened species from extinction.

Freshwater fish populations that dwell nearer the poles are outperforming their equatorial counterparts, researchers have found. Large-bodied migratory species such as Atlantic salmon are thriving as warming temperatures open up new habitats at the poleward edge of their ranges.

From silverback gorillas beating their chests to executives battling it out in the boardroom, the reputation for testosterone-fueled aggression and dominance has typically belonged to macho males.

In 2021, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, reported an astonishing new form of symbiosis: They found a unique bacterium that lives inside a ciliate—a unicellular eukaryote—and provides it with energy. The symbiont's role is thus strongly reminiscent of mitochondria, with the key difference that the endosymbiont derives energy from the respiration of nitrate, not oxygen.

Characterized by darkness and intense pressure, the ocean's hadal zone seems uninhabitable, yet dozens of unique organisms call it home. Each species discovered there adds a crucial piece to the puzzle of how life has evolved and even thrives in one of Earth's most extreme environments.

Non-native species introduced by humans are among the main causes of global species decline—they were partly responsible for 60% of the species that have become extinct worldwide in recent decades. Non-native mammals in Central Europe include species such as the brown rat, the mouflon and the mink.

The ocean naturally absorbs a quarter to a third of man-made CO2 emissions, but this process also leads to the acidification of seawater. By increasing the alkalinity of seawater through the addition of certain minerals (e.g., carbonates and silicates), the ocean can chemically bind more CO2 without further acidification.

Forest ecosystems of the future will have to cope with very different conditions to those of today. For this reason, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) state that a strategic approach to forest management is crucial. To this end, the research team has developed iLand: a simulation model that can compute long-term developments of large forest landscapes, right down to the individual...

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.