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Categories: Ecology: Trees, Offbeat: Plants and Animals

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Researchers have identified significant differences between the diversity of gut bacteria in grey squirrels compared to red squirrels which could hold the key to further understanding the ability of grey squirrels to outcompete red squirrels in the UK.

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Some people from an ancient community in what is now northern Italy were interred with animals and animal parts from species such as dogs, horses and pigs. The reasons remain mysterious, but might indicate an enduring companion relationship between these humans and animals, or religious sacrificial practices, according to a new study.

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From lab-grown chicken to cricket-derived protein, these innovative alternatives offer hope for a planet struggling with the environmental and ethical impacts of industrial agriculture. Now, scientists add a new recipe to the list -- cultured beef rice -- by growing animal muscle and fat cells inside rice grains. The method results in a nutritious and flavorful hybrid food that, once commercialized, could offer a more affordable protein alternative with a smaller carbon footprint.

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Global warming may be interacting with regional rainfall and deforestation to accelerate forest loss in the Amazon, pushing it towards partial or total collapse. New research has identified the potential thresholds of these stressors, showing where their combined effects could produce a 'tipping point' -- in which the forest is so fragile that just a small disturbance could cause an abrupt shift in the state of the ecosystem.

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Babies playfully tease others as young as eight months of age. Since language is not required for this behavior, similar kinds of playful teasing might be present in non-human animals. Now cognitive biologists and primatologists have documented playful teasing in four species of great apes. Like joking behavior in humans, ape teasing is provocative, persistent, and includes elements of surprise and play. Because all four great ape species used playful teasing, it is likely that the prerequisites for humor evolved in the human lineage at least 13 million years ago.

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Desert ants find their way during an early learning phase with the help of the Earth's magnetic field. The associated learning process leaves clear traces in their nervous system.

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The bead found at the La Prele Mammoth site in Wyoming's Converse County is about 12,940 years old and made of bone from a hare.

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Fossils of a marine animal that lived 500 million years ago, combined with computer simulations, informed the design of a new soft robot.

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Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the dinosaur ancestors of modern birds first evolved the ability to fly, and which dinosaurs were capable of flight.

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Scientists have discovered five dazzling new species of eyelash vipers in the jungles and cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador.

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Snail shells are often colorful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on the other hand, are usually pale and inconspicuous because the pigments are very sensitive and have already decomposed. Residues of ancient color patterns are therefore very rare. This makes a new discovery all the more astonishing: researchers found pigments in twelve-million-year-old fossilized snail shells.

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Beaked whales are among the least studied mammals in the world. Now, a new study reveals surprising information about the Baird's beaked whale species.

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The Greenland ice sheet lies thousands of miles from North America yet holds clues to the distant continent's environmental history. Nearly two miles thick in places, the ice sheet grows as snow drifts from the sky and builds up over time. But snow isn't the only thing carried in by air currents that swirl around the atmosphere, with microscopic pollen grains and pieces of ash mixing with snowfall and preserving records of the past in the ice. A new study examined these pollen grains and identified how eastern Canada's forests grew, retreated, and changed through time.

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A new study explores whether the plentiful, fibrous byproduct of CBD production holds potential promise as a nutritious, efficiency-boosting feed ingredient for the dairy sector

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Extreme events wipe out entire forests, dramatically eliminating complex ecosystems as well as local communities. Researchers have become quite familiar with such attention-grabbing events over the years. They know less, however, about the more common moderate-severity disturbances, such as relatively small fires, ice storms, and outbreaks of pests or pathogens.

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The rivers of Australia, which once flowed across its now dry interior, used to host a range of bizarre animals -- including a sleek predatory lobe-finned fish with large fangs and bony scales. The newly described fossil fish discovered in remote fossil fields west of Alice Springs has been named Harajicadectes zhumini by palaeontologists.

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The workings of the ultrasonic warning sounds produced by the wings of a species of moth have been revealed.

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Experts have discovered how to create different colors of blue cheese. After discovering how the classic blue-green veining is created, a team of experts were able to create a variety of different fungal strains that could be used to make cheese with colors ranging from white to yellow-green to red-brown-pink and light and dark blues.

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Fake news works for wallabies and elephants. Herbivores can cause substantial damage to crops or endangered or protected plants, with traditional methods to deter foraging lethal, expensive or ineffective. Biologists are now using aromas from plants naturally repellent with remarkable success to deter the animals.

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In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new study, researchers describe fossilized trees from New Brunswick, Canada with a surprising and unique three-dimensional crown shape.