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Categories: Biology: Zoology, Environmental: Biodiversity

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It is generally believed that, for millions of years, bats and the insects they hunt at night have adapted to each other in an evolutionary arms race to become better at finding or avoiding each other. Now, a new study shows that this may not be the case at all.

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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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Researchers have developed a framework that can help scientists understand trends in biodiversity by using data from well-characterized species to provide insights on data-deficient species. The framework provides a how-to guide for researchers and practitioners to implement.

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Scrape, cluck, lay eggs -- that's it? Anyone involved in chicken farming knows that the animals are capable of much more. Researchers have found evidence that roosters could recognize themselves in a mirror. Whether this is successful, however, depends on the experimental conditions -- a finding that points beyond the experiment with roosters and could also be of importance for other animal species.

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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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An electric knifefish shimmies in the water for the same reason a dog sniffs or a human glances around a new place -- to make sense of their surroundings. For the first time, scientists demonstrate that a wide range of organisms, even microbes, perform the same pattern of movements in order to sense the world.

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New research offers a way to build climate resilience into the designs of ocean and coastal areas intended to protect marine species. The researchers recommend establishing numerous marine protected areas across political borders, starting with the Southern California Bight.

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New research suggests that increasingly severe weather driven by climate change may push oceangoing seabirds to their limits.  

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New research unveils a dataset, gathered over five years, that gives the finest-grained detail into the timing and spatial extent of tarpon migration. The work leveraged networks of thousands of acoustic receivers that tracked 200 tarpon over more than five years. One of the key findings is that there are two distinct subgroups of tarpon, which has immediate implications for efforts to conserve the fish, known to anglers as the 'Silver King.'

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Pair-bonded Java sparrows show enlarged eye rings to signal breeding readiness.

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Scientists analyzed open-source data to track vegetation changes across North America since the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, and conclude that humans have had as much of an impact on the landscape as the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the Ice Age. 

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Through satellite imaging a new AI driven mapping of biomass and CO2 storage shows that a huge number of trees are overlooked in Europe's urban, rural, and agricultural areas. Across Europe, researchers have discovered a billion tons of hidden biomass.

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Consumers would rather pay more for higher-welfare pork than for pork with a reduced climate footprint, according to a new study.

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Recently discovered microfossils date back half a billion years. Resembling modern-day algae, they provide insight into early life in our oceans.

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Which sustainability goals do people find more important: Animal welfare? Or environmental protection? Human health is another one of these competing sustainability goals. A team of researchers have now found that consumers surveyed in their study would rather pay more for salami with an 'antibiotic-free' label than for salami with an 'open barn' label that indicates that the product promotes animal welfare.

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New research reveals how the bacteria strain Wolbachia pipientis enhances the fertility of the insects it infects, an insight that could help scientists increase the populations of mosquitoes that do not carry human disease.

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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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In a meta-study, a research team has provided evidence that the consumption of fruit and vegetables contributes positively to bacterial diversity in the human gut.

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Scientists studied the genomes of 30 kingfisher species to try to identify the genes that allow kingfishers to dive headfirst into water without huring their brains. The researchers found that the diving birds have unusual mutations to the genes that produce tau: a protein that helps stabilize tiny structures in the brain, but which can build up in humans with traumatic brain injuries or Alzheimer's disease. The researchers suspect that these variations in the kingfishers' tau proteins might protect their brains when they dive.

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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.