Cinereous vultures have been declining throughout Europe and Asia, and conservation plans are hampered by a lack of knowledge about their ecology. Earthwatch-supported researchers in Mongolia tagged several young vultures in 2006, which were recently sighted in various parts of South Korea, providing vital evidence of their migratory patterns.
Most of us would know our mother's voice on the phone from the first syllable uttered. A recent Cornell study suggests that crows also can recognize the voices of their relatives.
An international team of scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society working in Iran has successfully fitted two Asiatic cheetahs with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars, marking the first time this highly endangered population of big cats can be tracked by conservationists.
Using a variety of new approaches, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego are forging a new understanding of the largest mammals on Earth.
New research shows African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a rate unprecedented since an international convention banning ivory trade took effect in 1989.
A team of biologists with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have recorded for the first time the call of the extremely rare Sumatran ground cuckoo, found only on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.
The beaver, the state mammal of New York, and whose image adorns the official seal of New York City, has returned to the Big Apple after an absence that dates to colonial times, when the animal was hunted to local extinction.
WDCS is launching its 100 Days to Save the Whale campaign highlighting the urgent need to protect whales from an industry which is increasingly aggressive in its approach to international conventions in pursuit of both the numbers and different species it kills.
Cornell is partnering on a wildlife conservation project in Zambia that saves animals' lives by addressing a powerful threat: Poverty and hunger that force families to poach or clear-cut forests to create temporary farm fields.
There's no such thing as picky grizzly bears"”they'll eat almost anything they can find. A new University of Alberta study that tracked food habits of the Alberta grizzly bear living in the foothills sheds some light on the animal's varied diet and their activity pattern.
Shark attacks edged up slightly in 2006 but continued an overall long-term decline as overfishing and more cautious swimmers helped take a bite out of the aggressive encounters, new University of Florida research finds.
People from all ages and places can participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count, Feb. 16-19, 2007. It is a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. Now in its 10th year, this fun, free event helps create a long-term record scientists can use to learn how environmental changes "“ such as urbanization and global climate change "“ are affecting birds.
On the 10th anniversary of their capture, people are asked to remember the 10 orcas (killer whales) trapped and removed from the wild near the coastal town of Taiji, Japan, and to ask the Japanese authorities to refuse permission for further orca captures in Japanese waters.
Working in the remote forests of Cambodia, conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have just discovered Southeast Asia's only known breeding colony of slender-billed vultures, one of the world's most threatened bird species.
Returning from a recent 1,000-mile expedition across Tibet's remote Chang Tang region, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) biologist George Schaller reports that the Tibetan antelope "“ once the target of rampant poaching "“ may be increasing in numbers due to a combination of better enforcement and a growing conservation ethic in local communities.
Scientists have long struggled to figure out how the brain guides the complex movement of our limbs, from the graceful leaps of ballerinas to the simple everyday act of picking up a cup of coffee. Using tools from robotics and neuroscience, researchers have found some tantalizing clues in an unlikely mode of motion: the undulations of tropical fish.
For the first time, a fish identified as endangered has been shown to have recovered -- and in the Hudson River near New York City, report Cornell's Mark Bain and colleagues in the online publication PLoS ONE.
Human preferences probably will play a major role in determining which other species survive in a changing world, and new research shows those preferences could be governed by subtle factors.
An ichthyologist from the Wildlife Conservation Society's New York Aquarium received the ultimate honor recently, when a freshwater fish discovered on the African island nation of Madagascar was named after him.
All bumblebees always aren't as busy as, well, a bee. It all depends on what their job is, according to new research.
Earthwatch-supported scientists working at Lake Bogoria, Kenya, find that thousands of lesser flamingos are suffering from malnutrition. Dr. David Harper of the University of Leicester reports that food stress, following heavy rains, may contribute to recent massive die-offs of the lesser flamingo population.
One of the few hundred remaining North Atlantic right whales was killed by a ship strike off the coast of Georgia, emphasizing the need for rule changes regarding shipping lanes in the whales' habitat.
A hormone implicated in the onset of human puberty also appears to control reproductive activity in seasonally breeding rodents, report Indiana University Bloomington and University of California at Berkeley scientists in the March 2007 issue of Endocrinology. The paper is now accessible online via the journal's rapid electronic publication service.
Recognized as a new species in 1937, the kouprey, an ox, has been an icon of Southeast Asian conservation and is feared extinct. Now, Northwestern University biologists and a Cambodian conservationist present compelling genetic evidence that the kouprey may never have existed as a wild, natural species.
The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that a camera-trap study in the mountains of Southern Tanzania has now recorded Africa's least-known and probably rarest carnivore: Jackson's mongoose, known only from a few observations and museum specimens.
In an evolutionary game of tug-of-war, red squirrels have gained the upper hand over the cunning spruce trees, says new University of Alberta research that suggests the clever animals are staying one step ahead of its food source.
While many of New York's snow birds head south to Puerto Rico for time in the sun, a recent batch of first-time fliers"”born and raised in the city"”are heading down for a different reason: to save their own species. And tadpoles generally do not fly, unless they are part of a reintroduction program to save the Puerto Rican crested toad, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
A Vanderbilt researcher has discovered that some stealthy mammals have been doing something heretofore thought impossible -- using the sense of smell under water.
Love hurts "” really bad, for some unlucky crickets, anyway.
A landmark study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and US Geological Survey says tigers living in one of India's best-run national parks lose nearly a quarter of their population each year from poaching and natural mortality, yet their numbers remain stable due to a combination of high reproductive rates and abundant prey.
A team of teenage volunteers will explore the changing ecology of coral reefs in the Bahamas this summer, part of an Earthwatch-supported research project led by John Rollino of Earth Tech. Inc. This vital research on coral decline is featured in A Year on Earth, a new TV documentary about teens making a difference by participating in scientific research, to air on Animal Planet, Earth Day, April 22, at 6:00 p.m.. (VIDEO EMBEDDED)
Though promiscuity may be risky behavior for humans, it's healthy for honeybees: Queen honeybees who indulge in sexual surfeits with multiple drones produce more disease-resistant colonies than monogamous monarchs, according to a new study.
A 100-million-year-old bee fossil and a DNA study suggest that bees may have originated in the Northern rather than the Southern Hemisphere and from a different family of bees than previously thought.
A team of researchers, including Laurie Godfrey, anthropology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has found that nocturnal lemurs thought to belong to different species because of their strikingly different coat colors are not only genetically alike, but belong to the same species.
In this month's American Naturalist (Dec. 2006) and the Nov. 2006 issue of Evolution, Indiana University Bloomington scientists present an entirely new function for the horns: during their development, Onthophagus horned beetles use their young horns as a sort of can opener, helping them bust out of thick larval shells.
A study led by University of California, San Diego biologists shows that invasive Argentine ants appear to use genetic differences to distinguish friend from foe, a finding that helps to explain why these ants form enormous colonies in California.
In a new paper appearing in the journal Bioscience, the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) examines the current hodgepodge of population target levels (PTLs) being used by wildlife managers, and proposes a simpler, four-tiered system to measure conservation success.
University of Alberta researchers have pinpointed a section in the tiny hummingbird's brain that may be responsible for its unique ability to stay stationary mid-air and hover.
Rising temperatures may disrupt gender balance among reptile populations, says Earthwatch-supported crocodile researcher Dr. Alison Leslie of University of Stellenbosch. Her comments came during the filming of A Year on Earth, premiering this week on Discovery Kids Channel.
A technique used since the 1930s to estimate the abundance of fish has shown for the first time that enforcement patrols are effective at reducing poaching of elephants, African buffaloes and black rhinos in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
With the annual dolphin drive hunts in full swing in the Japanese villages of Taiji and Futo, a consortium of scientists and zoo and aquarium professionals continues its public awareness campaign to end the practices and is now appealing to both the government of Japan and the global community.
For the first time, Lake Oloidien has attracted thousands of lesser flamingos, a near-threatened species hard hit by recent die-offs. Earthwatch-supported scientist Dr. David Harper (University of Leicester) and colleagues, who have been researching the lake ecology of Kenya's Rift Valley for almost two decades, are investigating the die-offs at nearby lake Bogoria. (VIDEO EMBEDDED)
In an effort to protect a large grassland bird from possible extinction, the government of Cambodia has recently moved to set aside more than one hundred square miles of habitat for the Bengal florican, a bird now classified as endangered, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Genetic analysis of an obscure, worm-like creature retrieved from the depths of the North Atlantic has led to the discovery of a new phylum, a rare event in an era when most organisms have already been grouped into major evolutionary categories.
A pig-sized, tusked creature that roamed the earth some 27 million years ago represents a missing link between the oldest known relatives of elephants and the more recent group from which modern elephants descended, an international team that includes University of Michigan paleontologist William J. Sanders has found.
Roads used for natural resource extraction, such as logging or oil and mineral removal, often run through otherwise undisturbed forested areas. A new study led by a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher has found that these forest roads, whether in current use or abandoned years earlier, negatively impact wildlife populations.
Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Vermont have discovered a key molecular mechanism that allows tiny flies and other "no-see-ums" to whirl their wings at a dizzying rate of up to 1,000 times per second. The findings are being reported in the Oct. 30-Nov. 3 online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Dr. Tigga Kingston of Texas Tech University is conducting one of the most intensive studies of bat assemblages in the world, deep in Malaysia's ancient rainforest. Earthwatch volunteers assisting Kingston gain new perspectives on the environment and the crucial role of these flying mammals in tropical ecology.
What makes a bee a he or a she? The new insights could prove useful in designing strategies for breeding honey bees, which are major pollinators of economically important crops---and notoriously tricky to breed.
North American beekeepers love to have pedigreed bees, but the research now shows mixed ancestry. The sequencing indicates bees originated in Africa and spread from there to Europe, the Mideast and Asia Minor.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right