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Categories: Environmental: Ecosystems, Paleontology: Early Mammals and Birds

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New findings from zoologists working with birds in Southeast Asia are shining fresh light on the connections between animal behaviour, geology, and evolution - underlining that species can diversify surprisingly quickly under certain conditions. Sulawesi Babblers (Pellorneum celebense), shy birds that live in the undergrowth on Indonesian islands, have begun to diverge quite significantly despite being separated geographically for mere tens of thousands of years.

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Evidence from an ancient eggshell has revealed important new information about the extreme climate change faced by human early ancestors.

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Petroglyphs are carved in a material called rock varnish, the origins of which have been debated for years. Now, scientists argue it's the result of bacteria and an adaptation that protects them from the desert sun's harsh rays.

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Large thunderstorms in the Southern Great Plains of the U.S. are some of the strongest on Earth. In recent years, these storms have increased in frequency and intensity, and new research shows that these shifts are linked to climate variability.

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Wetter conditions in Sub-Saharan and North Africa at certain times of year can result in hundreds of times more Painted Lady butterflies making the 14,000 km round trip to Europe. Findings improve understanding of how insects move to other countries, including pests that destroy crops and disease-carrying species like mosquitoes.

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The biological and historical diversity in museum collections is staggering, with specimens collected across centuries by some of the most famous scientists in history. In a new study, researchers successfully revived museal fungal specimens that were more than 250 years old and used the live cultures for whole genome sequencing and physiological experiments.

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To counter the effects of climate change on drylands, a new study suggests that global access to water should be managed in a more integrated way.

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Ancient chickens lived significantly longer than their modern equivalents because they were seen as sacred -- not food -- archaeologists have found.

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Researchers have used more than two decades of satellite-derived environmental data to form hypotheses about the possible foraging habitats of pre-contact Aboriginal peoples living in Australia's Western Desert.

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In a new study, researchers demonstrate that sick bats, just like ill humans, prefer to stay away from their communities, probably as a means for recovery, and possibly also as a measure for protecting others.

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Researchers have developed a new concept to explain the phenomenon known as Green Sahara. They demonstrate that a permanent vegetation cover in the Sahara was only possible under two overlapping rainy seasons.

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After a wildfire, soils in burned areas often become water repellent, leading to increased erosion and flooding after rainfall events - a phenomenon that many scientists have attributed to smoke and heat-induced changes in soil chemistry. But this post-fire water repellency may also be caused by wildfire smoke in the absence of heat, according to a new article.

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Road verges cover 1.2% of land in Great Britain - an area the size of Dorset - and could be managed to help wildlife, new research shows.

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Free from human disturbance for a century, an inland island in Central America has nevertheless lost more than 25% of its native bird species since its creation as part of the Panama Canal's construction, and scientists say the losses continue.

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Researchers found that a broader diversity of plants in the Arctic 40,000 years ago supported both more -- and more diverse -- big animals like horses, bison and ground sloths. The research could inform conservation of wood bison in Alaska.

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A new report details how nature can be a powerful ally in responding to the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

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If paleontologists had a wish list, it would almost certainly include insights into two particular phenomena: how dinosaurs interacted with each other and how they began to fly.

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Mammals see with their eyes, hear with their ears and smell with their nose. But which sense or organ allows them to orient themselves on their migrations, which sometimes go far beyond their local foraging areas and therefore require an extended ability to navigate? Scientific experiments now show that the cornea of the eyes is the location of such an important sense in migrating bats.

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Expanding the study of prehistoric permafrost thawing to North America, researchers found evidence in mineral deposits from caves in Canada that permafrost thawing took place as recently as 400,000 years ago, in temperatures not much warmer than today. But they did not find evidence the thawing caused the release of predicted levels of carbon dioxide stored in the frozen terrain.

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For more than a decade, ecologists have been warning of a downward trend in bumble bee populations across North America, with habitat destruction a primary culprit in those losses. While efforts to preserve wild bees in the Midwest often focus on restoring native flowers to prairies, a new study finds evidence of a steady decline in the availability of springtime flowers in wooded landscapes.