Interbreeding with domestic cats, and also with other wildcat species, is altering the behaviors and genetic profiles of some small wildcats, creating conservation dilemmas about how best to define and protect these species.
A new model that links climate change-reduced oceanic oxygen levels to smaller ectotherms predicts marine microorganisms could shrink as the world gets warmer, with impacts up the food chain, impacting fisheries.
Earth’s vast underwater kelp forests are a vital source of food, pharmaceuticals, and more, while storing huge amounts of carbon. These undersea forests are also at risk, but researchers are working to restore them.
In the past, ocean carbon data was sparse, mostly gathered by ships. But the future of monitoring belongs to robot floats that deliver real-time data across vast oceans — even in the remote Antarctic Southern Ocean.
As climate change worsens, sea turtles on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf seaboards, and in other coastal areas around the world, are increasingly at risk from cold-stunning events. But rescuers often await.
All seven sea turtle species are already endangered. Now humanity’s overshoot of planetary boundaries — climate change, ocean acidification, pollution and more — is upping the ante. Can turtles, people and conservation adapt?
Beneath their prehistoric-looking shells, turtles conceal an extraordinary ability to hold their breath underwater, going without oxygen for hours, even months, at a time. This cellular-level capacity to survive underwater…
After relentless trapping for the pet trade reduced wild Blue-throated macaw populations to mere rumors, the bird was rediscovered in 1992 in a remote area of Bolivia. Endemic only to…
When an Andean cat (Leopardus jacobita) suddenly showed up in the middle of a synthetic soccer field in Bolivia, the wild feline was far from anywhere that should have been home.…
The beauty of the saiga belies first impressions. It may be hard to look beyond the big nose — a bulbous schnozz that looks like a chunk of an elephant’s…
The legal commercial exotic animal trade is a booming enterprise that ships ornamental fish, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians around the world. These pets, livestock and other animals can carry…
When a large swath of the Ross Sea in Antarctica earned marine protected area (MPA) status late last year, becoming the world’s largest MPA, it was hailed as an ocean…
When the world is staring down a population that’s pushing quickly toward nine billion people, aquaculture offers an efficient way to produce high-protein food for the hungry masses. But there’s…
You need a boogie board and a wetsuit to garden with Katharyn Boyer, a biology professor at San Francisco State University in California. They come in handy along the shorelines…
A battle is brewing in southeastern U.S. waters, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea: it’s the lionfish against all comers. With voracious appetites and virtually no predators, these…
The number of Bengal tigers is growing in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park — a United Nations World Heritage Site. The endangered cats have become healthier, and their population is flourishing…
ulture populations worldwide are at lethal risk from toxins that accumulate in the carcasses on which they feed — from poisonous painkillers in cattle in India, pesticides that have killed lions…
cientists have long known that invasive species possess “pesty traits” that benefit their spread. But what if similar, but latent, “pesty traits” could be triggered into action in endangered species…
lmost everything about North American wolverines (Gulo gulo luscus) makes them hard to study. This reclusive mustelid — part of a carnivorous mammalian family that includes otters, badgers, weasels, martens,…
map of Cuba doesn’t give you any feel for what it’s like to traverse the Latin American country. On paper, it’s 1,250 kilometers (780 miles) long, but never more than…
fter more than three decades as professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Donald Waller is a student again. He has dived into a baffling sea of…
oop: picking it up and studying it is one way scientists determine stress levels in animals. But it is not an ideal tool: “I quickly learned that interpreting fecal hormone…
ver the last four decades, industrial agriculture has been a boon to Southeast Asia, but it also helped destroy more than 30 percent of Borneo’s rainforest — one of the…
adagascar is rich in amphibian species. It boasts 500 species of frog, almost all endemic, with more likely undiscovered. That diversity could be in immediate jeopardy due to the chytrid…
uriquis often start their day by hugging one another. The Brazilian monkeys can become so entwined in lanky arms and prehensile tails, around tree limbs and each other, that it’s…
An interview with Brian Machovina, a part of our on-going Interviews with Young Scientists series. Brian Machovina and one of his drones, which he flew over banana plantations to study…
Researchers rethink camera trapping strategies Photo trapping is a popular technique for gathering images and information about elusive wildlife. Recently, camera traps captured the first-ever images of wild flat-headed cats…
Highway development may isolate bird populations in Brazil, Peru When a massive road project connected the ports of Brazil to the shipping docks of Peru in 2011, spanning the South…
Soon, hard rains will hit the steep hillsides of the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, sluicing soil into the rivers and out to the sea. Centuries of slash and burn agriculture…
Madagascar is one of the world’s hotspots for amphibian diversity, home to so many frog species that many of them don’t even have names. But soon the island may also…
Elizabeth Devitt is an independent science writer who draws on her first career on veterinary medicine to write about the inextricable links among animals, people, and the environment that must sustain us all. The ocean is her favorite place to be.
