What happens when a wasp lays its eggs but fails to pollinate the fig? The trees get even by dropping those figs to the ground, killing the baby wasps inside. (Cornell University and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute study, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Researchers from NIST and the College of Charleston are at work trying to identify the clues that will finger specific, yet elusive, environmental threats to the Atlantic blue crab.
Wellesley's Heather Mattila studies honey bee hives to find out how colonies work together to find food. Her research, recently featured in Discover Magazine, has gained importance as honey bee populations have declined dramatically — and mysteriously — in recent years.
During the Paleozoic era, the evolution of complex land plants forced the evolution of rivers from nothing but vast braided streams to the variety of different forms and sizes we see today according to researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Shark pups born to virgin mothers can survive over the long-term, according to new research published Jan. 25 in the Journal of Heredity. The study shows for the first time that some virgin births can result in viable offspring.
How do you scare a 300-pound black bear? This is not a riddle; it is what is in the best interest of the bear—and any nearby people. To keep bears at a safe distance from humans and sources of human food, national park personnel use various methods of aversive conditioning to scare these animals away. Pepper spray, chasing, and projectiles—shooting with rubber slugs, using slingshots, and throwing rocks—were the methods evaluated during a four-year study in Sequoia National Park, California.
A microbe commonly found in the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways emits a poison not just to protect itself but to stun and immobilize the prey it plans to eat.
To the casual observer in the Gulf of Mexico, the seemingly sluggish red grouper is more of a couch potato than a busy beaver. But a new study led by researchers at The Florida State University reveals the fish to be both architect and ecosystem engineer.
Bald eagles are one of the most recognizable birds in the United States, and they are seen in nearly every state. National Wildlife Federation presents a list—divided alphabetically by every state!—of where you and your family can spot the wintering birds of prey.
Researchers have shown insect colonies follow some of the same biological “rules” as individuals, a finding that suggests insect societies operate like a single “superorganism.”
Researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society have discovered for the first time the breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler—dubbed in 2007 as “the world’s least known bird species”—in the remote and rugged Wakhan Corridor of the Pamir Mountains of north-eastern Afghanistan.
A new and previously unknown species of spider has been discovered in the dune of the Sands of Samar in the southern Arava region by a team of scientists from the Department of Biology in the University of Haifa-Oranim. Unfortunately, however, its habitat is endangered.
New findings cast uncertainty on previous population size assessments for the severely overfished white marlin and call for reassessment of international recovery efforts.
Imagine fruit-salad for the eyes: Alstroemeria Tangerine Tango, a new, winter-hardy Inca lily with vivid orange petals, intense lemon yellow highlights, little flecks of nut brown and a hint of lime tint. The plants begin to flower in June, enjoy kissing the summer sun and shoot new stems for months until the first freeze of fall.
University of Utah biologists found that finches – the birds Darwin studied – develop antibodies against two parasites that moved to the Galapagos Islands, suggesting the birds can fight the alien invaders.
Scientists have presented a theory of acoustic communication that shows diversity in animal vocal signals can be explained based on the energetic constraints of sound production.
Scientists at the University of Idaho have discovered not only that different species sometimes use the same gene to produce the same adaptation, but also that how they use it can lead to different outcomes.
University of Delaware researchers have uncovered a novel means of conquest employed by the common reed, Phragmites australis, which ranks as one of the world's most invasive plants.
From Scotland’s Midland Valley to Wyoming’s Beartooth Butte to Grahamstown, South Africa, Michael Coates scours sediments hundreds of millions of years old for the deepest branches of vertebrate evolution in the tree of life’s shadowy recesses.
By making the 2010 Be Out There Resolution to spend more time outside in 2010, Americans will be making a resolution that’s both good for their families and fun to keep. Everyone who makes the 2010 Be Out There Resolution will receive the Know, Go and Grow Be Out There Toolkit with important facts, fun tips and interactive tools to help them keep the resolution.
It's commonly known that plants interact with each other on an everyday basis: they shade each other out or take up nutrients from the soil before neighboring plants can get them. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned that plants also respond to the past.
A diminutive, colorful bird living in the rocky forests of Laos and Vietnam has been discovered by a team of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Lao PDR Department of Forestry, and other groups.
A Baylor University researcher who has studied the Eastern Screech Owl for more than 40 years says an increase in the number of the owls that are red – known as “rufus” – is another sign of global warming.
A new study provides credence to the understanding that asexual reproduction allows for the ongoing accumulation and replication of harmful mutations, leaving less room for adaptation to rapidly changing environments.
The world at large knows koalas as cute, cuddly, lovable iconic animals. The evolutionary biologist, on the other hand, will know them as extremely specialized, endangered animals, the evolutionary history of which is extremely poorly understood.
An endangered turtle named Anita made history when she became one of the only live marine turtles to ever fly in the passenger cabin of an airplane, thanks to a one-time exemption by American Airlines and the dedication of University of North Carolina Wilmington marine biology professor Alina Szmant.
The world’s rarest—and most camera shy—great ape has finally been captured on professional video on a forested mountain in Cameroon, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and Germany’s NDR Naturfilm.
Marty Crump’s new book, 'Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers,' takes readers on a voyage of discovery into the world of extraordinary interactions involving animals, plants, fungi and bacteria.
Name all the venomous animals you can think of and you probably come up with snakes, spiders, bees, wasps and perhaps poisonous frogs. But catfish?
Researchers’ theory: An increase in population size may mean sounds used in mate competition need not travel as far as before; acoustic information extracted from songs could be useful population monitoring tool
A good-news global warming story about a pine tree with a storied past promises that a back-to-the-future approach will provide economic opportunities and help prepare the southeastern U.S. for a changing climate.
Ancient DNA retrieved from extinct horse species from around the world has challenged one of the textbook examples of evolution – the fossil record of the horse family Equidae over the past 55 million years.
Female birds in species that breed in groups can find themselves under pressure to sexually show off and evolve the same kinds of embellishments – like fanciful tail feathers or chest-puffing courtship dances - as males, according to new research in the latest issue of Nature (Dec. 10, 2009).
With growing concerns about the effects of global warming on polar bears, it's increasingly important to understand how other environmental threats, such as mercury pollution, are affecting these magnificent Arctic animals.
The Wildlife Conservation Society today released a list of animals facing new impacts by climate change, some in strange and unexpected ways.
Looking for larks? Searching for surfbirds? Checking for chickadees? There’s an app for that. BirdsEye, a new application for the iPhone and the iPod touch, is now available.
“Taja,” a two-year-old white Bengal tiger, is back to her old self, bounding around her enclosure, and recovering well following a minimally invasive spaying procedure at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.
Millions of shark fins are sold annually to satisfy the demand for shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy. Now, scientists using DNA tools have traced sharks’ fins from the Hong Kong market back to the sharks’ homes, and find that endangered populations are still being exploited. CITES will consider better protecting sharks from international trade, at its March meeting in Qatar.
The tranquility of gardens is no coincidence; careful planning is required to create that sense of escape from the daily grind. According to one Ryerson researcher, achieving that contemplative atmosphere depends on a garden being designed not as disparate elements, but as a sum total of its parts—and her proof is in the picture.
In the essay, “Where the Wild Things Were,” currently appearing in Foreign Affairs, Dr. Steven Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, asserts the world’s political institutions have failed the planet but “realism cannot turn into defeatism.”
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today a report revealing that the last remaining population of Siberian tigers has likely declined significantly due to the rising tide of poaching and habitat loss.
Recent theories suggesting that half of fishes' food comes from from land-based ecosystems may not hold water. Experiments show that algae, not land-based matter, builds healthy and fertile aquatic organisms.
A new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society says that western lowland gorillas living in a large swamp in the Republic of Congo—part of the “mother lode” of more than 125,000 gorillas discovered last year—are becoming increasingly threatened by growing human activity in the region.
Understanding mixing in the ocean is of fundamental importance to modeling climate change or predicting the effects of an El Niño on our weather. Modern ocean models primarily incorporate the effects of winds and tides. However, they do not generally take into account the mixing generated by swimming animals.
Leaf-cutter ants, which cultivate fungus for food, have many remarkable qualities.
Roughly 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, North America’s vast assemblage of large animals — including such iconic creatures as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, ground sloths and giant beavers — began their precipitous slide to extinction.
A series of studies carried out at the University of Haifa have found that rodent, reptile and ant lion species behave differently on either side of the Israel-Jordan border.
DNA recovered from fossilised bones of the moa, a giant extinct bird, has revealed a new geological history of New Zealand, reports a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that honeybees can discriminate between food at different temperatures, an ability that may assist bees in locating the warm, sugar-rich nectar or high-protein pollen produced by many flowers.
Recording hundreds of thousands of individual uplinks from satellite transmitters fitted on penguins, albatrosses, sea lions, and other marine animals, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and BirdLife International have released the first-ever atlas of the Patagonian Sea – a globally important but poorly understood South American marine ecosystem.
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