Feature Channels: Nature

• share
• favorite_border

For more than two hundred years, the question of why there are more species in the tropics has been a biological enigma.

• share
• favorite_border

Rotational grazing of cattle in native pasturelands in Brazil’s Pantanal and Cerrado regions can benefit both cattle and wildlife, according to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Maryland, Columbia University and the Smithsonian Institution have pooled their expertise to create the world’s first plant identification mobile app using visual search – Leafsnap. This electronic field guide allows users to identify tree species simply by taking a photograph of the tree’s leaves. In addition to the species name, Leafsnap provides high-resolution photographs and information about the tree’s flowers, fruit, seeds and bark—giving the user a comprehensive understanding of the species.

• share
• favorite_border

Endangered fin whales are singing near the Verrazano Narrows, while further offshore blue, humpback and the highly endangered right whales resound. Cornell University bioacoustics researchers will talk May 4 in NYC about what must be done to understand and safeguard these whales.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers eavesdropping on complex signals emanating from a remote Wisconsin lake have detected what they say is an unmistakable warning — a death knell — of the impending collapse of the lake’s aquatic ecosystem.

• share
• favorite_border

In a paper to be published today [April 29, 2011] in the journal “Science,” a team of Boston University researchers under the direction of Michael Hasselmo, professor of psychology and director of Boston University’s Computational Neurophysiology Laboratory, and Mark Brandon, a recent graduate of the Graduate Program for Neuroscience at Boston University, present findings that support the hypothesis that spatial coding by grid cells requires theta rhythm oscillations, and dissociates the mechanisms underlying the generation of entorhinal grid cell periodicity and head-direction selectivity.

• share
• favorite_border

In modern ecology, the removal or addition of a predator to an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago.

• share
• favorite_border

The earstones of fish record their presence in "dead zones" in oceans and coastal waters and could be a tool in understanding fishes' interactions with their environment.

• share
• favorite_border

In a pair of studies, researchers at the Hollings Marine Laboratory report that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are consistently showing up in the blood and eggs of loggerhead sea turtles, that the turtles accumulate more of the contaminant chemicals the farther they travel up the Atlantic coast, and that the pollutants may pose a threat to the survival of this endangered species.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of scientists, led by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, has used DNA to determine that groups of dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and copper sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) living in different coastal regions across the globe are separate populations of each species.

• share
• favorite_border

Georgia Tech researchers have solved the mystery of how fire ants self-assemble into a waterproof raft.

• share
• favorite_border

Mosquitoes make proteins to help them handle the stressful spike in body temperature that’s prompted by their hot blood meals, a new study has found.

• share
• favorite_border

Can sustainable aquaculture be the key in saving the blue fin tuna and keeping the fish a culinary treat worldwide.

• share
• favorite_border

A new VIMS study shows that turbulence from boat propellers can and does kill large numbers of copepods—tiny crustaceans that are an important part of marine food webs.

• share
• favorite_border

An Iowa State University researcher is one of a team of scientists who have recently researched the fly family tree -- one of the most complicated in the animal world. It turns out that houseflies have more than 152,000 cousins. And those are just the ones we know about.

• share
• favorite_border

A census team led by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Insitut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) in Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo today announced some encouraging news from a region plagued by warfare and insecurity: a small population of Grauer’s gorillas has not only survived, but also increased since the last census.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study led by a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is painting a more complete picture of an extraordinary sea worm that makes its living in the depths of the ocean on the bones of dead animals.

• share
• favorite_border

In a study appearing in the May issue of the journal American Naturalist, researchers show that just three ecological factors – rainfall, predator diversity, and island size and shape – can account for nearly all of the differences in infection rates among the eight Channel Islands off the California coast.

• share
• favorite_border

The ongoing spread of non-native mussels in the Great Lakes has caused "massive, ecosystem-wide changes" throughout lakes Michigan and Huron, two of the planet's largest freshwater lakes, according to a new University of Michigan-led study.

• share
• favorite_border

Birds are known more for their senses of vision and hearing than smell, but new research suggests that millions of years ago, the winged critters also boasted a better sense for scents.