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Categories: Archaeology: General, Environmental: Ecosystems

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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.

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If global warming continues unchecked, summer monsoon rainfall in India will become stronger and more erratic. This is the central finding of an analysis by a team of researchers that compared more than 30 state-of-the-art climate models from all around the world. The study predicts more extremely wet years in the future - with potentially grave consequences for more than one billion people's well-being, economy, food systems and agriculture.

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A new study has shown that ozone in the lower layers of the atmosphere decreases crop yields in maize and changes the types of chemicals that are found inside the leaves.

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A new study finds that the risk is low that scientists could pass coronavirus to North American bats during winter research.

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Biologists have discovered that plants influence how their bacterial and fungal neighbors react to climate change. This finding contributes crucial new information to a hot topic in environmental science: in what manner will climate change alter the diversity of both plants and microbiomes on the landscape?

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Every year, an estimated four percent of the world's vegetated land surface burns, leaving more than 250 megatons of carbonized plants behind. A study has now recorded elevated concentrations of environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFR) in these charcoals - in some cases even up to five years after the fire. These EPFR may generate reactive substances, which in turn harm plants and living organisms.

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The development of agriculture is often thought of as a human innovation in response to climate change or population pressure. A new manuscript challenges that concept, suggesting that plants that had already evolved adaptive traits for life among large-bodied grazing and browsing animals were more likely to prosper on a highly disturbed anthropogenic landscape.

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An international team of scientists presents an analysis of sediments from a cave in northeast Greenland, that cover a time period between about 588,000 to 549,000 years ago. This interval was warmer and wetter than today, the cave deposits provide an outlook in a possible future warmer world due to climate change.

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The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and concurrent climate change has led to yield reductions of grass-rich grassland vegetation in the past century.

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Geologists unexpectedly found mineral deposits in former ice caves in the Austrian Alps dating back to the peak of the last ice age. These special calcite crystals demonstrate that intensive snowfall during the second half of the year triggered a massive glacier advance leading to the climax of the last ice age.

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An article reports that whooping cranes migrating through the U.S. Great Plains avoid 'rest stop' sites that are within 5 km of wind-energy infrastructure.

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Scientists have discovered a previously unknown breeding site used by the world's rarest seal species.

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With a bit of 'metal whispering,' engineers have developed technology capable of recovering pure and precious metals from the alloys in our old phones and other electrical waste. All it takes is the controlled application of oxygen and relatively low levels of heat.

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Satellite images taken over three decades show that keeping dingoes out comes at a price.

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A new study explores the impacts of climate warming on microbial network complexity and stability, providing critical insights to ecosystem management and for projecting ecological consequences of future climate warming.

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Almost 80 years after its discovery, a large shell from the ornate Marsoulas Cave in the Pyrenees has been studied by a multidisciplinary team: it is believed to be the oldest wind instrument of its type.

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First ever in-depth analysis of ECMWF's latest seasonal forecasting system shows it accurately predicts Indian monsoon onset and rainfall, and could be used to avoid crop losses.

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A new study challenges the 'Field of Dreams' hypothesis in restoration ecology, which predicts that restoring plant biodiversity will lead to recovery of animal biodiversity. The study of restored tallgrass prairie found the effects of management strategies (specifically controlled burns and bison reintroduction) on animal communities were six times stronger on average than the effects of plant biodiversity.