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Categories: Anthropology: Cultures, Ecology: General

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Soil is the Earth's second-biggest carbon storage locker after the ocean, and a research collaboration has shown that it's moisture, not temperature or mineral content, that's the key to how well the soil carbon warehouse works.

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Scientists found that some reefs in the tropical Pacific Ocean could maintain high coral cover into the second half of this century by shuffling the symbiotic algae they host. The findings offer a ray of hope in an often-dire picture of the future of coral reefs worldwide.

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Traditionally, it has been assumed that cultivating food leads to a loss of biodiversity and negative impacts on an ecosystem. A new study defies this assumption, showing that community gardens and urban farms positively affect biodiversity, local ecosystems and the well-being of humans that work in them.

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Along the shores of Africa's Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research. The study presents what are likely to be the oldest examples of a hugely important stone-age innovation known to scientists as the Oldowan toolkit, as well as the oldest evidence of hominins consuming very large animals. Excavations at the site, named Nyayanga and located on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya, also produced a pair of massive molars belonging to the human species' close evolutionary relative Paranthropus. The teeth are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains yet found, and their presence at a site loaded with stone tools raises intriguing questions about which human ancestor made those tools.

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In certain Lake Tanganyika cichlids breeding in empty snail shells, there are two extreme sizes of males: giants and dwarfs. Researchers have analyzed the genomes of these fish and found out how the peculiar sizes of males and females evolved in conjunction with the genetic sex determination mechanism.

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The endangered Bahama Warbler may be surviving on just one island following Hurricane Dorian's devastation in 2019, according to researchers. A new study shows the bird's distribution and ecology on Grand Bahama before the hurricane struck. But the team says that the warbler may now only survive on neighboring Abaco island, after hurricane Dorian destroyed the bird's forest habitat on Grand Bahama. The research comes from the same team that found what is thought to have been the last living Bahama Nuthatch, previously thought to have been extinct.

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Protected marine areas are one of the essential tools for the conservation of natural resources affected by human impact -- mainly fishing --, but, are they enough to recover the functioning of these systems? A study now highlights the limitations of marine reserves in restoring food webs to their pristine state prior to the impact of intensive fishing.

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New research shows that degraded savanna ecosystems can reap lasting benefits from a single seeding of native understory plants. Once a diverse understory of savanna plants became established, its long-term persistence was relatively unaffected by environmental factors -- with one exception. Higher temperatures during the height of the growing season were associated with poorer long-term survival among some species, indicating one threat posed by a warming climate.

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A new examination of ancient and current species of reptiles conducted by paleobiologists reveals the serious impact of the disappearance of even a few species of reptiles in some island areas. The study has startling conclusions about how, on smaller islands in the Caribbean where human impact was greatest, extinctions have led to the loss of up to two-thirds of the supports for the ecosystem that native reptile species once provided there.

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An interdisciplinary team of scientistshas found that rapid sea-level rise drove early settlers in Southeast Asia to migrate during the prehistoric period, increasing the genetic diversity of the region today.

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New research has revealed that the process of 'peopling' the entire continent of Sahul -- the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were much lower than today -- took 10,000 years. Sophisticated models show the scale of the challenges faced by the ancestors of Indigenous people making their mass migration across the supercontinent more than 60,000 years ago. This pattern led to a rapid expansion both southward toward the Great Australian Bight, and northward from the Kimberley region to settle all parts of New Guinea and, later, the southwest and southeast of Australia.

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In a new study, a research team discovered evidence that browsing by white-tailed deer had relatively little long-term impact on two tree species in a northern forest.

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A new study has for the first time predicted which invasive species could pose a future threat to the UK's ecologically unique Overseas Territories.

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A new species of microalgae was found in water from a home aquarium. While analyzing DNA samples taken from the algae, researchers discovered Medakamo hakoo, whose DNA sequence didn't match any on record. This new species is the smallest known freshwater green algae, with inherent qualities which enable it to be cultured stably at high density, meaning it could be effectively used to produce useful products for food and industry.

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The speed of environmental change is very challenging for wild organisms. When exposed to a new environment individual plants and animals can potentially adjust their biology to better cope with new pressures they are exposed to -- this is known as phenotypic plasticity. New research shows that early plasticity can influence the ability to subsequently evolve genetic adaptations to conquer new habitats.

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Evolution has occurred more rapidly than previously thought in the Chesapeake Bay wetlands, which may decrease the chance that coastal marshes can withstand future sea level rise, researchers at the University of Notre Dame and collaborators demonstrated in a recent publication in Science.

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Nutrients from salmon carcasses can substantively alter the growth and reproduction of plant species in the surrounding habitat, and even cause some flowers to grow bigger and more plentiful, researchers have found.

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Rapid economic growth has pushed rare species of big carnivores to the brink of extinction, but ecologists have suggested our appetite to once again live alongside big cats is increasing.

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A new study finds that microorganisms live in richly diverse and interdependent communities in high-temperature geothermal environments in the deep sea. By constructing genomes of 3,635 Bacteria and Archaea from 40 different rock communities, researchers discovered at least 500 new genera and have evidence for two new phyla. Samples from the deep-sea Brothers volcano were especially enriched with different kinds of microorganisms, many endemic to the volcano. The genomic data from this study also showed that many of these organisms depend on one another for survival. Some microorganisms cannot metabolize all of the nutrients they need to survive so they rely on nutrients created by other species in a process known as a 'metabolic handoff.'

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Researchers report that elephants play a key role in creating forests which store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa. If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would lose between six and nine percent of their ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming.