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Categories: Ecology: Animals, Mathematics: Statistics

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Island-dwelling mammal species often expand or contract in size, becoming giant or dwarf versions of their mainland counterparts. A new Science study from a global team shows that those giants and dwarfs have faced extreme risk of extinction -- an existential threat exacerbated by the arrival of humans.

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Researchers have uncovered new evidence of western pygmy possums interacting with native flowers, providing an eDNA study to simultaneously detect mammal, insect and bird DNA on flowers.

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It's not just humans who enjoy eating shellfish, so do marine rays. They like to 'crunch' on clams, which can sometimes take a big bite out of clammers' profits. Using aerial and underwater videos, researchers assessed the ability of the whitespotted eagle ray to interact with clams housed within a variety anti-predator materials. Whitespotted eagle rays have strong jaws, plate-like teeth and nimble pectoral fins, which make them formidable and highly maneuverable predators of clams.

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The DNA sequence of a gene in wheat responsible for resisting a devastating virus has been discovered, providing vital clues for managing more resistant crops and maintaining a healthy food supply.

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Researchers have mapped the sparse life hidden away in salt domes, rocks and crystals at Salar de Pajonales at the boundary of the Chilean Atacama Desert and Altiplano. Then they trained a machine learning model to recognize the patterns and rules associated with their distributions so it could learn to predict and find those same distributions in data on which it was not trained. In this case, by combining statistical ecology with AI/ML, the scientists could locate and detect biosignatures up to 87.5 percent of the time and decrease the area needed for search by up to 97 percent.

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Toothed whales, such as dolphins, killer whales and sperm whales communicate and catch food exclusively with sound. Now researchers have for the first time found they evolved a new sound source in their nose that is functionally the same as the human larynx.

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Social animals should limit individuality to conform with the behavior of the group, a study suggests.

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Though wildlife trafficking has been effectively disrupted since the first World Wildlife Day -- established 50 years ago today via the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora -- a newly published case study on one of the world's rarest tortoise species, the ploughshare tortoise, highlights how much room for improvement still exists.

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Bald eagles are often touted as a massive conservation success story due to their rebound from near extinction in the 1960s. But now a highly infectious virus may put that hard-fought comeback in jeopardy. New research showed highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as H5N1, is killing off unprecedented numbers of mating pairs of bald eagles.

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Flamingos form cliques of like-minded individuals within their flocks, new research shows.

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Glacier National Park is home to around 50 Canada lynx, more than expected, surprising scientists who recently conducted the first parkwide occupancy survey for the North American cat. The survey reveals the iconic predator resides across most of Glacier's 1,600 square-mile landscape, although at lower densities than in the core of its range further north.

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In 2011, scientists recorded a previously unknown feeding strategy in whales around the world. Now, researchers in Australia think they may have found evidence of this behaviour being described in ancient accounts of sea creatures, recorded more than 2,000 years ago. They believe that misunderstandings of these descriptions contributed to myths about medieval sea monsters. Whales are known lunge at their prey when feeding, but recently whales have been spotted at the surface of the water with their jaws open at right angles, waiting for shoals of fish to swim into their mouths. A clip of this strategy was captured in 2021 and went viral on Instagram. This strategy seems to work for the whales because the fish think they have found a place to shelter from predators, not realising they are swimming into danger. It's not known why this strategy has only recently been identified, but scientists speculate that it's a result of changing environmental conditions -- or that whales are being more closely monitored than ever before by drones and other modern technologies.

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Ants play a key role in forest regeneration, according to a new article.

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Australia's rarest bird of prey -- the red goshawk -- is facing extinction, with Cape York Peninsula now the only place in Queensland known to support breeding populations.

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What is the origin of the ancestors of present-day fish? What species evolved from them? A 50-year-old scientific controversy revolved around the question of which group, the 'bony-tongues' or the 'eels', was the oldest. A study has just put an end to the debate by showing through genomic analysis that these fishes are in fact one and the same group, given the rather peculiar name of 'Eloposteoglossocephala'. These results shed new light on the evolutionary history of fish.

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Scientists reveal that a warming world is increasing human-wildlife conflicts globally. They show that climate shifts can drive conflicts by altering animal habitats, the timing of events, wildlife behaviors and resource availability. It also showed that people are changing their behaviors and locations in response to climate change in ways that increase conflicts.

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A team of researchers has highlighted human-wildlife conflict as one of the globe's most pressing human development and conservation dilemmas. New research looked at 133 countries where 18 large carnivores ranged, and found that a person farming with cattle in developing countries such as Kenya, Uganda or India were up to eight times more economically vulnerable than those living in developed economies such as Sweden, Norway or the U.S.

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A three-year effort to conserve bee populations by introducing pollinator habitat in North Carolina agricultural areas showed some positive effects, as bee abundance and diversity increased in the studied areas. But results of a study examining the program's effectiveness also showed that the quality of the habitat played a key role in these positive effects, and that habitat quality could be impacted by the way the areas are maintained over time.

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Scientists conducted a study that reveals the first evidence of harm caused by malaria infection among wild African apes. They discovered that bonobo populations differ in a key immune trait depending on the presence of malaria infection. Infected populations have a higher frequency of an immune variant that protects against developing severe disease, a pattern that mirrors what is observed among human populations.

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Scientists summarize the methods used to explore how the Earth's magnetic field influences the behavior of a wide variety of animal species. This review is an ideal starting point for scientists who wish to enter this fascinating but still poorly-understood topic in modern sensory biology.