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Categories: Ecology: Endangered Species, Paleontology: General

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Algorithms can predict what movies or songs you might like, but they can also predict which species a predator would most likely eat. Researchers have been using machine learning to identify species interactions, and can predict which species are most likely to go extinct, so that intervention can be planned before this happens.

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A new study reveals the iconic extinct Megalodon, or 'megatooth shark', was a rather slow cruiser that used its warm-bloodedness to facilitate digestion and absorption of nutrients.

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Humans began altering environments long before records were kept of the things that lived in them, making it difficult for scientists to determine what healthy ecosystems should look like. Researchers show the recent fossil record preserves a reliable snapshot of marine environments as they existed before humans.

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A team has identified a protein that modifies the cellular machinery responsible for producing cellulose, which could inform the design of more stable, cellulose-enriched materials for biofuels and other functions.

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Movement in the Earth's tectonic plates indirectly triggers bursts of biodiversity in 36 million-year cycles by forcing sea levels to rise and fall, new research has shown.

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Research shows global cooling of the climate 10 million years ago led to an explosion of diversity in terrestrial orchids.

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Scientists have unveiled a new mechanism that plants use to sense temperature. This finding could lead to solutions to counteract some of the deleterious changes in plant growth, flowering and seed production due to climate change.

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Financial payments made by land developers to offset their impacts on threatened species may fall short, according to new research.

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Plant roots have their own thermometer to measure the temperature of the soil around them and they adjust their growth accordingly. Through extensive experiments, a team was able to demonstrate that roots have their own temperature sensing and response system. In a new study, the scientists also provide a new explanation for how roots themselves detect and react to higher temperatures. The results could help develop new approaches for plant breeding.

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Indonesia, home to the largest tropical rainforest in Southeast Asia and over 17,500 islands, is a country packed with biodiversity and endangered species. However, scientists studying the region's species and ecosystems are getting banned from Indonesia, and conservation plans are being blocked. A team of conservation researchers with long-term experience in Indonesia discuss scientific suppression and other research challenges they have witnessed while working in the region. They offer suggestions for how to promote nature conservation, protect data transparency, and share research with the public in this and other regions of the world.

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Extinct dwarf hippos that once roamed Madagascar lived in forests rather than open grasslands preferred by common hippos on mainland Africa. The findings suggest grasslands that now cover much of the enormous island off the eastern coast of southern Africa were a relatively recent change facilitated by people rather than a natural habitat sustained in part by these famously large vegetarians.

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Research has revealed that Queensland native forestry, including timber harvesting, could actually help conserve biodiversity and mitigate climate risks.

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Researchers are using a new model to clarify why millions of years ago more animal species from Asia made the leap to the Australian continent than vice versa. The climate in which the species evolved played an important role.

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Researchers describe a 500 million-year-old tunicate fossil species. The study suggests that the modern tunicate body plan was already established soon after the Cambrian Explosion.

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Birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid-induced mass extinction 66 million years ago. But not all the birds alive at the time made it. Why the ancestors of modern birds lived while so many of their relatives died has been a mystery that paleontologists have been trying to solve for decades. Two new studies point to one possible factor: the differences between how modern birds and their ancient cousins molt their feathers.

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Biomechanical studies on the arachnid-like front 'legs' of an extinct apex predator show that the 2-foot (60-centimeter) marine animal Anomalocaris canadensis was likely much weaker than once assumed. One of the largest animals to live during the Cambrian, it was probably agile and fast, darting after soft prey in the open water rather than pursuing hard-shelled creatures on the ocean floor.

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Analysis of global tracking data for 77 species of petrel has revealed that a quarter of all plastics potentially encountered in their search for food are in remote international waters -- requiring international collaboration to address.

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Amazon river dolphins are under threat from fishing and proposed new dams and dredging, research shows.

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Increasing opportunities for up-close encounters with sharks and other animals are making wildlife tourism one of the fastest growing tourism sectors -- leading ecology experts to venture to one of the world's main sites to investigate the effects of tourism on endangered whale sharks. At Oslob in the Philippines, Flinders University's Southern Shark Ecology Group and Global Ecology Lab joined local Filipino researchers to measure how the daily feeding regimes for resident whale shark population might have affected their behaviour and physiology by assessing their activity and metabolic requirements.

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An international team has, for the first time, accurately determined the age of the East Anatolian fault, allowing geologists to learn more about its seismic history and tendency to produce earthquakes.