Articles by Shreya Dasgupta

Underneath the ground, hidden from view, there’s a massive network of fungi and bacteria hard at work in close partnership with tree roots. In exchange for food from the trees,…

Thanks to human actions, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are soaring. But plants are thankfully removing some of that greenhouse gas. In fact, the amount of atmospheric carbon that…

During a routine shark survey in the northern Gulf of Mexico in 2010, ecologist Marcus Drymon caught a small tiger shark. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about it.…

Sometimes looking for rare plants can mean taking extreme steps. And for decades, botanists at the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), a nonprofit based on the island of Kauaʻi in…

When Rohan Pandit and Wangchu Phiang accidentally stumbled upon a brown snake on a steep slope of a forest in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in India, little did…

The ocean is increasingly becoming too hot to handle. And coral reefs are suffering as a result. Above-normal sea surface temperatures due to human-induced climate change are creating conditions that…

In the East African savanna landscape, hippos and their poop play a critical role. By chomping on large amounts of silica-rich grass at night, then defecating into the Mara River…

Six grassroots environmental activists will receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize today. Dubbed the Green Nobel Prize, the Goldman Prize honors environmental activists from each of the six continental regions:…

Between 2005 and 2010, 24 huemul deer in Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins National Park developed a mysterious foot disease. Their hooves swelled, they limped and appeared to be in pain. In…

The waters off the Galápagos Islands have nearly 10 times more alien marine invertebrates than previously recorded, a recent study has found. Located 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) off Ecuador, the…

Over the past decade, archaeologists have dug out several pieces of bones and teeth from a cave on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. These fossil remains, all estimated…

The government of Belize has approved a plan to nearly triple the area under its strictly protected waters, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced in a press release. According to the…

Researchers have finally described a new species of skink from Angola, specimens of which have lurked on museum shelves for more than 70 years. Belgian herpetologist Raymond Laurent first suspected that…

Overfishing is rapidly pushing many of the world’s sharks and tunas toward extinction. The world’s fastest known shark, the shortfin mako, for example, was recently uplisted to endangered on the…

The ensatina is a fairly common salamander. From southern British Columbia in Canada to northern Baja California in Mexico, it can be found lurking under logs in forests along the…

What kinds of animals and plants are people interested in? When does their interest spike? Wikipedia may hold some answers, a new study has found. As a free and open-access…

The tiny nation of Belize on the eastern coast of Central America is famed for its sparkling blue waters and rich marine life. But it has much more to offer:…

Seahorses continue to be traded in large volumes, despite many source countries imposing bans on exports of the animals, a new study has found. While some of these peculiarly shaped…

All the amphibian and reptile species that have ever been recorded in Angola have now been included in a comprehensive atlas. Covering published records from 1840 to 2017, the atlas…

In 1991, all of the African wild dogs that previously lived in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania completely disappeared. In the debates that followed, one hypothesis became particularly controversial: in…