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Categories: Ecology: Animals, Paleontology: Dinosaurs

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Fish species respond to temperature increases by going after more readily available prey. Models suggest this behavior could lead to more extinctions.

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Researchers have shown that inedible species of butterfly that mimic each others' color patterns have also evolved similar flight behaviors to warn predators and avoid being eaten.

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Up to only a few inches in length, with a lemon-hued belly, the foothill yellow-legged frog may seem unassuming. But its range once stretched from central Oregon to Baja California. In 2023, it was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Its rapidly decreasing range is due in part to a fungal pathogen called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, that has devastated amphibians around the world.

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Eight new Pacific bee species and new insights into Fijian bird behaviour on Viti Levu Island have been described in new scientific studies. The research highlights the potential for species discovery, ecological and conservation knowledge and cultural engagement from Asia-Pacific research collaborations.

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Striped marlin are some of the fastest animals on the planet and one of the ocean's top predators. When hunting in groups, individual marlin will take turns attacking schools of prey fish one at a time. Now a new study helps to explain how they might coordinate this turn-taking style of attack on their prey to avoid injuring each other. The key, according to the new work, is rapid color changes.

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An often-overlooked water plant that can double its biomass in two days, capture nitrogen from the air -- making it a valuable green fertilizer -- and be fed to poultry and livestock could serve as life-saving food for humans in the event of a catastrophe or disaster, a new study suggests.

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The evolutionary success of the first large predators on land was driven by their need to improve as killers, researchers suggest.

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Australia can lay claim to two new species of native rodent thanks to a new study. The aptly named delicate mouse was previously thought to be a single species spanning a massive stretch of the country from the Pilbara in Western Australia, across parts of the Northern Territory and through Queensland down to the New South Wales border. We now know there are three distinct species.

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The effects of a phenomenon called tree masting on ecosystems and food webs can be better understood thanks to new theoretical models validated by real world observations.

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Weedy rice is an agricultural pest with a global economic impact. It is an aggressive weed that outcompetes cultivated rice and causes billions of dollars in yield losses worldwide. A study offers new insights into genetic changes that give weedy rice its edge over cultivated rice in tropical regions of the world.

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Tuna is one of the most popular seafoods worldwide. But this protein-rich fish can build up high levels of methylmercury from feeding on contaminated prey, like smaller fish or crustaceans. Despite efforts to reduce mercury emissions into the environment, researchers report that levels in tuna appear to be unchanged since 1971. They warn that more aggressive emission reduction targets are needed to start nudging down tuna mercury levels.

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Researchers evaluated the prevalence, concentration and tissue distribution of essential and non-essential trace elements, including heavy metal toxicants in tissue (blubber, kidney, liver, skeletal muscle, skin) and fecal samples collected from 90 whales and dolphins stranded in Georgia and Florida from 2007 to 2021.

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Researchers questioned if coordinated group movements by animals moving through a fluid could reduce the energy cost of locomotion. By combining biomechanics and bioenergetics the researchers found not only a significant amount of energy conservation, but also identified the reduced energy use per tail beat.

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Fish exposed to some pesticides at extremely low concentrations for a brief period of time can demonstrate lasting behavioral changes, with the impact extending to offspring that were never exposed firsthand, a recent study found.

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In a new study, paleontologists describe the oldest-known leaf-nosed bat fossils, which were found along the banks of the Panama Canal. They're also the oldest bat fossils from Central America, preserved 20-million years ago when Panama and the rest of North America were separated from southern landmass by a seaway at least 120 miles wide.

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Researchers are studying how bats can carry deadly viruses, but not develop symptoms. They found that what happens during swarming behavior -- like social gatherings for bats -- may hold the key to understanding their viral tolerance and translate to human health in fighting off diseases like Ebola and COVID-19.

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Researchers propose a framework for integrating online digital data into biodiversity monitoring.

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A new study explores the weight great fossil sites have on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and quantified the power these sites have on our understanding of evolutionary history. Surprisingly, the authors discovered that the wind-swept sand deposits of the Late Cretaceous Gobi Desert's extraordinarily diverse and well-preserved fossil lizard record shapes our understanding of their evolutionary history more than any other site on the planet.

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The Arctic is changing rapidly due to climate change. It is not only affected by increasing surface temperatures, but also by warm water from the Atlantic, which is flowing in more and more -- changing the structures and functions of the ecosystem as it also leads to species from warmer regions, such as sea jellies (also known as jellyfish) arriving in the Arctic. Using DNA metabarcoding, researchers have now been able to demonstrate that these jellyfish serve as food for amphipods on Svalbard during the polar night and thus play a greater role in Arctic food webs than previously assumed.

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A recent genetic discovery has revealed that the pale grey plumage of the tawny owl is linked to crucial functions that aid the bird's survival in cold environments. As global temperatures rise, dark brown plumage is likely to become more common in tawny owls living in colder areas.