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Category: Ecology

Viruses, the most abundant form of life on Earth, may be essential to the functioning of diverse ecosystems

Viruses, the most abundant form of life on Earth, may be essential to the functioning of diverse ecosystems

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Arizona State University: The community of viruses is staggeringly vast. Occupying every conceivable biological niche, from searing undersea vents to frigid tundra, these enigmatic invaders, hovering between inert matter and life, circumnavigate the globe in the hundreds of trillions. They are the most abundant life forms on earth. Viruses are justly feared as ingenious pathogens, causing diseases in everything they invade, including virtually all bacteria, fungi, plants and animals. Recent advances in the field of virology, however, suggest that viruses…

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The terrifying sound of a human voice

The terrifying sound of a human voice

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Ed Yong writes: In the summer of 2017, the mountain lions, bobcats, and other residents of the Santa Cruz Mountains were treated to the dulcet tones of the ecologist Justin Suraci and his friends, reading poetry. Some of the animals became jittery. Others stopped eating. A few fled in fear. Suraci, who’s based at the University of California at Santa Cruz, wasn’t there to see their reactions. He and his colleagues had strung up a set of speakers that would…

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News organizations are timidly changing their approach to covering climate crisis

News organizations are timidly changing their approach to covering climate crisis

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The New York Times reports: As Europe heats up, Greenland melts and the Midwest floods, many news organizations are devoting more resources to climate change as they cover the topic with more urgency. In Florida, six newsrooms with different owners have taken the unusual step of pooling their resources and sharing their reporting on the issue. They plan to examine how climate change will affect the state’s enormous agriculture sector as well as “the future of coastal towns and cities…

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Research on honeybees hit by Trump budget cuts

Research on honeybees hit by Trump budget cuts

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CNN reports: The US Department of Agriculture has suspended data collection for its annual Honey Bee Colonies report, citing cost cuts — a move that robs researchers and the honeybee industry of a critical tool for understanding honeybee population declines, and comes as the USDA is curtailing other research programs. It’s also another step toward undoing President Barack Obama’s government-wide focus on protecting pollinators, including bees and butterflies, whose populations have plummeted in recent years. [Continue reading…] WJLA reports: Last…

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Ecologists are racing to restore the world’s tropical rainforests

Ecologists are racing to restore the world’s tropical rainforests

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Forest restoration is underway in Biliran, Leyte, Philippines led by the local community with support from international researchers and government agencies. Robin Chazdon, CC BY-ND By Robin Chazdon, University of Connecticut The green belt of tropical rainforests that covers equatorial regions of the Americas, Africa, Indonesia and Southeast Asia is turning brown. Since 1990, Indonesia has lost 50% of its original forest, the Amazon 30% and Central Africa 14%. Fires, logging, hunting, road building and fragmentation have heavily damaged more…

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These animal migrations are huge — and invisible

These animal migrations are huge — and invisible

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Carl Zimmer writes: Last week, ladybugs briefly took over the news cycle. Meteorologists at the National Weather Service were looking over radar images in California on the night of June 4 when they spotted what looked like a wide swath of rain. But there were no clouds. The meteorologists contacted an amateur weather-spotter directly under the mysterious disturbance. He wasn’t getting soaked by rain. Instead, he saw ladybugs. Everywhere. Radar apparently had picked up a cloud of migrating ladybugs spread…

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‘Frightening’ number of plant extinctions found in global survey

‘Frightening’ number of plant extinctions found in global survey

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The Guardian reports: Human destruction of the living world is causing a “frightening” number of plant extinctions, according to scientists who have completed the first global analysis of the issue. They found 571 species had definitely been wiped out since 1750 but with knowledge of many plant species still very limited the true number is likely to be much higher. The researchers said the plant extinction rate was 500 times greater now than before the industrial revolution, and this was…

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In ecology studies and selfless ants, E.O. Wilson finds hope for the future

In ecology studies and selfless ants, E.O. Wilson finds hope for the future

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Claudia Dreifus writes: No one else in biology has ever had a career quite like that of Edward O. Wilson. One of the world’s leading authorities on ants, an influential evolution theorist, and a prolific, highly honored author, E. O. Wilson—his first name comes and goes from bylines, but the middle initial is ever-present—has over several decades been at the center of scientific controversies that spilled out of the journals and into wider public awareness. Among activists in the environmental…

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Puffins are starving to death because of climate change

Puffins are starving to death because of climate change

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New Scientist reports: Hundreds of “severely emaciated” puffin carcasses have washed ashore on an Alaskan island, and researchers believe thousands more have died at sea as warming waters continue to shrink their food supply. Between October 2016 and January 2017, inhabitants of St Paul Island in the Bering sea found the starved bodies of more than 350 seabirds, primarily tufted puffins. Analysing the location of bird carcasses and wind data, Timothy Jones at the University of Washington in Seattle and…

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The fast food of coral reefs

The fast food of coral reefs

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Ed Yong writes: Although coral reefs are home to bustling communities of gaudy marine life, half the fishes that live there are hardly ever seen. Aptly known as cryptobenthics—literally “hidden bottom-dwellers”—these species are mostly shorter than two inches and usually hidden in crevices. If you snorkel past, they’ll scurry away. But Simon Brandl of Simon Fraser University has made a career of studying them. And he and his team have now shown that cryptobenthics are a crucial component of healthy…

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Humans are killing off most large wild animals as sixth mass extinction advances

Humans are killing off most large wild animals as sixth mass extinction advances

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The Guardian reports: Humanity’s ongoing destruction of wildlife will lead to a shrinking of nature, with the average body size of animals falling by a quarter, a study predicts. The researchers estimate that more than 1,000 larger species of mammals and birds will go extinct in the next century, from rhinos to eagles. They say this could lead to the collapse of ecosystems that humans rely on for food and clean water. Humans have wiped out most large creatures from…

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I’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil discovery is so revealing

I’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil discovery is so revealing

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Do fungi like this Penicillium mold, which produces the the antibiotic penicillin, trace their origins to an ancestor that lived a billion years ago? Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock.com By Antonis Rokas, Vanderbilt University Biologists don’t call them “the hidden kingdom” for nothing. With an estimated 5 million species, only a mere 100,000 fungi are known to scientists. This kingdom, which includes molds, yeasts, rusts and mushrooms, receives far less attention than plants or animals. This is particularly true for fossils of fungi,…

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‘Wood wide web’ — the underground network of microbes that connects trees — mapped for first time

‘Wood wide web’ — the underground network of microbes that connects trees — mapped for first time

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Science reports: Trees, from the mighty redwoods to slender dogwoods, would be nothing without their microbial sidekicks. Millions of species of fungi and bacteria swap nutrients between soil and the roots of trees, forming a vast, interconnected web of organisms throughout the woods. Now, for the first time, scientists have mapped this “wood wide web” on a global scale, using a database of more than 28,000 tree species living in more than 70 countries. “I haven’t seen anybody do anything…

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Loss of biodiversity is just as catastrophic as climate change

Loss of biodiversity is just as catastrophic as climate change

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Robert Watson writes: A colleague recently described how fish would swim into her clothing when she was a child bathing in the ocean off the coast of Vietnam, but today the fish are gone and her children find the story far-fetched. Another recalled his experiences just last year in Cape Town – one of the world’s most attractive tourism and leisure destinations – when more than 2 million people faced the nightmare prospect of all taps, in every home and…

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Biodiversity crisis is about to put humanity at risk, UN scientists to warn

Biodiversity crisis is about to put humanity at risk, UN scientists to warn

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The Guardian reports: The world’s leading scientists will warn the planet’s life-support systems are approaching a danger zone for humanity when they release the results of the most comprehensive study of life on Earth ever undertaken. Up to 1m species are at risk of annihilation, many within decades, according to a leaked draft of the global assessment report, which has been compiled over three years by the UN’s leading research body on nature. The 1,800-page study will show people living…

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Insects have ‘no place to hide’ from climate change, study warns

Insects have ‘no place to hide’ from climate change, study warns

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The Guardian reports: Insects have “no place to hide” from climate change, scientists have warned, following an analysis of 50 years of UK data. The study showed that woodlands, whose shade was expected to protect species from warming temperatures, are being just as affected by climate change as open grasslands. The research examined the first springtime flights of butterflies, moths and aphids and the first eggs of birds between 1965 and 2012. As average temperatures have risen, aphids are now…

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