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A team of investigators devised a new methodology to enable predictions of how plant growth and water quality would change in the wake of wildfires. View the full article

Exotic fish are a threat to river ecosystems, but what happens when invasive species are native to a territory and have been introduced into waters that are not their original territory? A new study has analyzed the impact the native fish receive from these species, called translocated species, compared to the effects of exotic invasive species, i.e, those that are not native to any basin in the territory. View the full article

Exotic snakebites recorded in the UK have 'soared' over the course of a decade, as numbers of the exotic pet increase. View the full article

Scientists have created a new tool to fill the large gaps in our understanding of where and how human activities threaten wild species around the world. View the full article

The Prussian carp is considered one of the most successful invasive fish species in Europe. Its ability to reproduce asexually gives it a major advantage over competing fish. An international research team has now managed to describe the complete genome of the Prussian carp for the first time. This also provides a much better understanding of its peculiar reproductive method. View the full article

As intense heatwaves grip the United Kingdom, Spain, France and Portugal, at times exceeding temperatures 40C, as well as parts of North America and Asia, lakes around the world are feeling the heat from climate change, which is creating a cascade of ecological and environmental issues. Northern-most lakes are considered the bellwethers of environmental change, but research shows consequences of climate change can affect any of the more than 100 million lakes in the world. View the full article

The world's governments are presently negotiating a Global Biodiversity Framework, containing goals and targets for saving nature, which is due to be adopted at the end of 2022. Conservation experts explored how the suggested targets in the Framework, could contribute to reducing extinction risk of threatened vertebrates, invertebrates and plants. Their findings show that while targets to expand protected areas or reduce pollution will benefit many species, 57% would still need targeted recovery actions. View the full article

Urbanization is a primary threat to biodiversity. However, scientists know little about how urbanization affects biodiversity and ecosystem services in tropical regions of the Global South. An international research team has investigated the effects of urbanization on bee communities in smallholder farms in and around Bangalore -- a South Indian city with more than 13 million inhabitants. They found that social bees, such as wild honey bees, suffered more than large solitary bees or those that nest in cavities, which contrasts with results from temperate regions. View the full article

Over half a century ago, a group of manatees from Bocas del Toro was flown into the artificial Gatun Lake to control the abundance of aquatic plants and for public health reasons. Where are they now? View the full article

Purple sea urchins are munching their way through California's kelp forests at a speed and scale that have stunned scientists, fishermen and divers alike. But the kelp forests have long been home to red and purple urchins, so it's clear the three species can get along. Researchers sought to determine what factors disrupt this harmony. View the full article

Habitat differences help determine changes in the nervous system of tropical butterflies, scientists have found. View the full article

Fossil research has revealed an exquisite merger of art and science: a long-stemmed flower of a newly described plant species encased in a 30-million-year-old tomb together with a parasitic wasp. View the full article

People are becoming 'disconnected from the botanical world' at a time when plants could help solve global environmental problems, warn a group of research scientists. They say the problem has been exacerbated by schools and universities reducing their teaching of basic plant science, including plant identification and ecology. They describe a self-accelerating cycle which risks '...the extinction of botanical education,' where biology is taught predominantly by people with research interests in animal science. View the full article

Researchers have described seven new fern species from the rainforests of tropical America. Many of the species were uncovered as the by-product of ecological research: the species diversity in tropical forests is still so poorly known that field trips and herbarium work keep discovering previously unknown species. View the full article

Genome engineering using CRISPR offers novel solutions for controlling invasive alien species, but its efficiency for eradicating harmful vertebrates is yet to be tested. In a new study, researchers confirm that genetic biocontrols could rapidly eradicate animals like rats, mice and rabbits. Others -- like cats and foxes -- would, however, take a lot longer. View the full article

Efforts to conserve the carbon stored in tropical forests would be enhanced by linking the work to the charismatic, threatened primates that live there, researchers say in a new paper. View the full article

Volunteers surveying dormice and bats in trees have made the unexpected discovery of over fifty common toads in nest boxes and tree cavities at least 1.5 meters high. View the full article

Using high quality molecular data, researchers have re-investigated a long-standing question about the position of two phyla of small aquatic invertebrates -- Kamptozoa and Bryozoa -- on the evolutionary tree. View the full article

Researchers investigating the exposure of small mammals to plastics in England and Wales have found traces in the feces of more than half of the species examined. The densities of plastic excreted were comparable with those reported in human studies. View the full article

The 2021 Dixie Fire burned over nearly 1 million acres in California and cost $637 million to suppress, making it the largest and most expensive wildfire to contain in state history. Fire history largely determined how severely the wildfire burned, and low-severity fire treatments had the largest impact on reducing the worst effects of the fire, according to a research team. View the full article

An new study shows the number of evening grosbeaks using the campus as a migration stop-over site has gone down an average of 2.6% per year over the last four decades, emblematic of population declines across the charismatic songbird's range. View the full article

Larvae of longhorned beetles develop primarily in woody tissue, which is difficult for most organisms to digest. However, longhorned beetle larvae possess special enzymes to break down the various components of the plant cell wall. Researchers have now taken a closer look at a group of digestive enzymes found only in this beetle family. They resurrected the primordial enzymes, which first appeared in a common ancestor of longhorned beetles. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to the beetle as well as ancient and recent gene duplications promoted the evolution of this family of digestive enzymes and enabled longhorned beetles to degrade the main components of the plant cell wall, which make the bulk of their diet. View the full article

A dramatic outbreak of kelp-eating sea urchins along the Central Coast of California in 2014, leading to a significant reduction in the region's kelp forests, was driven primarily by the emergence of sea urchins from their hiding places rather than an increase in the urchin population. In subsequent years, sea urchin movements enabled kelp forest recovery at sites that had been denuded 'urchin barrens.' Those are among the key findings of a long-term study of sea urchins and kelp forest dynamics in Monterey Bay. View the full article

The endangered southern resident killer whale population isn't getting enough to eat, and hasn't been since 2018, a new study has determined. The animals have been in an energy deficit, averaged across spring, summer and fall, for six of the last 40 years -- meaning the energy they get from food is less than what they expend. Three of those six years came in the most recent years of the study, 2018 to 2020. The average difference in energy is 28,716 calories, or about 17 per cent of the daily required energy for an average adult killer whale, the authors say. View the full article

A new botanical survey of southwest Ohio found that invasive species introduced to the United States over the past century are crowding out many native plants. View the full article