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Categories: Ecology: Endangered Species, Ecology: Extinction

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Over the past few decades, algae have been slowly edging corals out of their native reefs across the globe by blocking sunlight, wearing the corals down physically, and producing harmful chemicals. But in recent years, a new type of algal threat has surfaced in tropical regions like the Caribbean -- one that spreads quickly and forms a crust on top of coral and sponges, suffocating the organisms underneath and preventing them from regrowing. Marine biologists report that peyssonnelioid alga crusts, or PACs, are expanding quickly across reefs worldwide, killing off corals and transforming entire ecosystems.

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Re-establishing plantings of trees, grasses and other vegetation is essential for restoring degraded ecosystems, but a new survey of almost 2,600 restoration projects from nearly every type of ecosystem on Earth finds that most projects fail to recognize and control one of the new plants' chief threats: hungry critters that eat plants.

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Adult fragments of a coral species can better tolerate bleaching and recover faster when treated with tougher heat-evolved symbionts, new research indicates. The study also found that treatment with the heat-evolved symbionts did not compromise the coral's ability to grow. This differs from previous studies on Great Barrier Reef corals which found that naturally heat tolerant symbionts could enhance heat resistance in adult corals, but at a cost to its growth.

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A powerful new way to fill major gaps in public bee data -- including from Africa, Asia and other under-reported zones -- has been addressed with a centralized tool for consolidating bee pollinator occurrences around the globe.

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New research shows that potential adaptive responses by sea turtles, such as shifting the timing of when they nest, may not be enough to counteract the projected impacts from climate change on hatchling production.

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Sunflowers famously turn their faces to follow the sun as it crosses the sky. But how do sunflowers 'see' the sun to follow it? Plant biologists show that they use a different, novel mechanism from that previously thought.

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The BioRescue project develops and pioneers advanced assisted reproduction technologies (aART) for conservation in the face of the imminent extinction of most rhino species and subspecies. In a new scientific analysis, the team evaluated 65 aART procedures conducted from 2015 to 2022. The evaluation showed that aART is safe for the donor females with no detrimental health effects, and successful in that it yielded 51 embryos.

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Researchers have mapped how land use changed across Britain throughout the last century. The new map reveals how and where some 50 per cent of semi-natural grassland was lost, including 90 per cent of the country's lowland meadows and pasture, as the nation intensified its agriculture.

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Firsthand observations of a wolf hunting and killing a harbor seal and a group of wolves hunting and consuming a sea otter on Alaska's Katmai coast have led scientists to reconsider assumptions about wolf hunting behavior.

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Australasia's hidden pollination crisis, mirroring global threats, could pose a significant risk to regional biodiversity and food security, new research has found.

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Deforestation in the Amazon causes land surfaces up to 100 kilometers away to get warmer, suggests a new study.   The research suggests that tropical forests play a critical role in cooling the land surface -- and that effect can play out over considerable distances. 

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The first widescale assessment of methylmercury in adult amphibians in the U.S. to date shows that, in amphibians, this toxic compound is common, widespread and, at least for some, can reach very high levels.

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A new approach to valuing the carbon storage potential of natural habitats aims to help restore faith in offset schemes, by enabling investors to directly compare carbon credit pricing across a wide range of projects.

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Researchers have discovered a protein that seals plant roots to regulate the uptake of nutrients and water from the soil, the discovery could help develop climate proof crops that require less water and chemical fertilizers.   

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The tropical wood type ipe is popular for building exclusive wooden decks, and in North America and Europe, the demand for the material has increased sharply. Now, a study shows that more than three-quarters of all ipe from the top producing region in Brazil could have been harvested illegally.

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Endangered whales and dolphins live year-round in an area of the Mediterranean earmarked for oil and gas exploration, new research shows.

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The exciting discovery of three new species of a small Australian marsupial has been tempered by the sad fact that each of the newly identified species of mulgara is likely already extinct.

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A team has identified several factors to help answer a fundamental ecological question: why is there a ridiculous abundance of species some places on earth and a scarcity in others? What factors, exactly, drive animal diversity? They discovered that what an animal eats (and how that interacts with climate) shapes Earth's diversity.

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Named after Japanese folklore, two cephalopod species have been discovered in the coastal waters of the Okinawa Islands.  

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A bacterium, closely associated with deadly septicaemia, could have caused the deaths of six African elephants in Zimbabwe and possibly more in neighboring countries. The findings place infectious diseases on the list of pressures on African elephants, whose populations continue to be under threat.