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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/biogeography/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
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	<title>News on Biogeography</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/biogeography/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>On islands that inspired theory of evolution, deforestation cuts uneven path</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/on-islands-that-inspired-theory-of-evolution-deforestation-cuts-uneven-path/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/on-islands-that-inspired-theory-of-evolution-deforestation-cuts-uneven-path/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Oct 2021 05:15:56 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Carolyn Cowan]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Carolyncowan]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/10/05042925/Manusela-NP-Seram-Maluku_SM-scaled-e1633408255587-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=247785</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biogeography, Climate Change, Community Forests, Conservation, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Endangered Species, Environment, Forest Fragmentation, Forests, Fragmentation, Islands, Plantations, Primary Forests, Rainforests, Threats To Rainforests, Tropical Deforestation, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Biologists often refer to the Wallacea region of Indonesia as a “living laboratory” for the study of evolution. Spanning 1,680 of Indonesia’s central islands, including the Malukus, Nusa Tenggara and the expansive arms of Sulawesi, it is the transition zone where the biota of Asia and Australasia collide. Isolated for tens of millions of years [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Biologists often refer to the Wallacea region of Indonesia as a “living laboratory” for the study of evolution. Spanning 1,680 of Indonesia’s central islands, including the Malukus, Nusa Tenggara and the expansive arms of Sulawesi, it is the transition zone where the biota of Asia and Australasia collide. Isolated for tens of millions of years from neighboring landmasses, a unique assemblage of weird and wonderful species have evolved; and it was here that its namesake, Alfred Russel Wallace, developed his theory of natural selection during the 19th century, around the same time that Charles Darwin was having his own eureka moment in the Galápagos. Today, Wallacea is recognized as one of the world’s most valuable centers of endemism, supporting scores of species that occur nowhere else on the planet: from the babirusa (Babyrousa babyrussa), a forest pig with enormous recurving tusks; to the anoa (Bubalus depressicornis), an enigmatic dwarf buffalo; and the famous Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis). A babirusa (Babyrousa babyrussa), a forest pig in Nantu forest, Gorontalo. Male babirusa have large recurving tusks. Image by Simon Mitchell Although the forests of Wallacea have experienced lower levels of deforestation than neighboring Borneo, Sumatra and Java, development pressure is expected to escalate over the coming decades. According to a new study in Environmental Research Letters, the region could lose up to 49,570 square kilometers (19,140 square miles) of forest by 2053. The research team, comprising scientists from the University of Kent, U.K., and their Indonesia-based colleagues, used dynamic models based on&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/on-islands-that-inspired-theory-of-evolution-deforestation-cuts-uneven-path/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/on-islands-that-inspired-theory-of-evolution-deforestation-cuts-uneven-path/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-247785</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A ‘crazy beast’ that coexisted with dinosaurs discovered from Madagascar</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/a-crazy-beast-that-coexisted-with-dinosaurs-discovered-from-madagascar/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/a-crazy-beast-that-coexisted-with-dinosaurs-discovered-from-madagascar/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Apr 2020 09:32:32 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Malavikavyawahare]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/04/30091725/230456_web-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=229680</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Conservation in Madagascar]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa and Madagascar]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biogeography, Cryptic Species, Evolution, Extinction, Fossils, Islands, Mammals, New Discovery, Research, Species, and Species Discovery]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A 66-million-year-old fossil has allowed scientists to describe a bizarre new species of mammal that lived in Madagascar during the time of the dinosaurs. They’ve christened it Adalatherium hui, which in Malagasy and Greek translates into “crazy beast.” The “hui” is a nod to Yaoming Hu, a paleontologist who specialized in early mammals. To the lay eye, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A 66-million-year-old fossil has allowed scientists to describe a bizarre new species of mammal that lived in Madagascar during the time of the dinosaurs. They’ve christened it Adalatherium hui, which in Malagasy and Greek translates into “crazy beast.” The “hui” is a nod to Yaoming Hu, a paleontologist who specialized in early mammals. To the lay eye, it looks like a house-cat-sized badger; but to the scientists who discovered it, A. hui is nothing short of the “oddest of oddball” creatures. “Knowing what we know about the skeletal anatomy of all living and extinct mammals, it is difficult to imagine that a mammal-like Adalatherium could have evolved; it bends and even breaks a lot of rules,” lead researcher David Krause, curator at the Denver Museum of Nature &amp; Science, said in a statement. The fossil record is sparsely populated with mammalian fossils from the Mesozoic era. The team got lucky and discovered a well–preserved, almost complete, skeleton in northwestern Madagascar. It turned out to be the most complete fossil of any Mesozoic mammal found from the southern hemisphere. The Mesozoic, known as the age of the dinosaurs, lasted from about 252 million years ago to about 66 million years ago. What makes the creature exceptional is its anatomical structure, which is a unique mosaic of features. For one thing, its peculiar teeth give very little indication of its ancestry because they are nothing like those found in other mammals. For another, its vertebral column has more vertebrae that any of contemporaneous mammals. Then, there&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/a-crazy-beast-that-coexisted-with-dinosaurs-discovered-from-madagascar/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/a-crazy-beast-that-coexisted-with-dinosaurs-discovered-from-madagascar/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-229680</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Forest loss moves swiftly once 50% deforestation ‘tipping point’ reached</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/forest-loss-deforestation-tipping-point-50/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/forest-loss-deforestation-tipping-point-50/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Jan 2020 08:34:47 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/01/27234112/brazil-11.81-55.57-aug2020_3x2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=226115</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[North America and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Biogeography, Climate Change, Conservation, data, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Ecology, Environment, Forestry, Forests, Illegal Logging, Logging, Rainforests, Remote Sensing, Research, Satellite Imagery, Saving Rainforests, Solutions, Threats To Rainforests, Traditional People, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Scientists believe they’ve uncovered a tipping point in the deforestation of landscapes across Earth: Once an area loses half its forest, the rest of the forest is often swift to fall. Deforestation of the first half takes more time, as humans chip away the forest to create hodgepodges of forests and agricultural lands, for example, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Scientists believe they’ve uncovered a tipping point in the deforestation of landscapes across Earth: Once an area loses half its forest, the rest of the forest is often swift to fall. Deforestation of the first half takes more time, as humans chip away the forest to create hodgepodges of forests and agricultural lands, for example, or as anthropogenic climate change levels its effects, the researchers reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on Dec. 3. “You would expect people would create more fragmentation, but as it turns out, people never stop,” Tomasz Stepinski, a physicist at the University of Cincinnati in the U.S. and one of the paper’s authors, said in a statement. “They convert the entire block on a large scale.” A soy plantation abutting the Chaco forest in Bolivia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay. Even the natural causes of these transitions are more apt to lead to uniform landscapes rather than mosaics, Stepinski said. “Planet Earth wants to be homogeneous. The land wants to be the same in all these patches,” he said. “And when they start to change, they don’t stop until they convert everything into another homogeneous block.” Using satellite maps from the European Space Agency, Stepinski and fellow author Jakub Nowosad, a former postdoctoral scholar at the University of Cincinnati, plotted out 9-by-9-kilometer (5.6-by-5.6-mile) squares across Earth’s surface and identified 64 landscape combinations present in these blocks. They then analyzed the changes that occurred in these areas between 1992 and 2015. Over that period, about&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/forest-loss-deforestation-tipping-point-50/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/forest-loss-deforestation-tipping-point-50/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-226115</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Study finds massive reorganization of life across Earth’s ecosystems</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/study-finds-massive-reorganization-of-life-across-earths-ecosystems/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/study-finds-massive-reorganization-of-life-across-earths-ecosystems/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Oct 2019 10:44:26 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/10/21073432/blowes1HR.192b0107d79c4f69b95d87cef1ff5975-768x450.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=223649</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Biogeography, Climate Change, Conservation, Coral Reefs, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Marine, Marine Conservation, Marine Protected Areas, Oceans, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Research, Species, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Life is reshuffling itself at an unsettling clip across Earth’s surface and in its oceans, a new study has found. The research, published Oct. 18 in the journal Science, drills into data from 239 studies that looked at changes in biodiversity over time. It reveals that almost 30 percent of all species are being swapped [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Life is reshuffling itself at an unsettling clip across Earth’s surface and in its oceans, a new study has found. The research, published Oct. 18 in the journal Science, drills into data from 239 studies that looked at changes in biodiversity over time. It reveals that almost 30 percent of all species are being swapped out for other species every 10 years. Fish swim near a coral reef. Image by Maria Dornelas. The sweeping hemorrhage of species across the planet continues to rattle scientists and conservationists. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services revealed that a million species or more could go extinct. But squaring that global trend with what’s happening at local levels has been difficult. At this level, research shows that the sheer number of species in many spots are holding steady or even going up. That’s led some scientists to believe that species richness, an oft-used measure of biodiversity that tabulates the number of species living in a given area, provides an incomplete understanding of how life on Earth is changing. “It is increasingly recognized that species richness alone cannot fully describe how biodiversity is changing,” Shane Blowes, the paper’s co-lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Halle-Jena-Leipzig, said in an email. “Species richness will continue to play an important role in our understanding of taxonomic diversity, but a more complete, nuanced picture of biodiversity change emerges when it is combined with other&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/study-finds-massive-reorganization-of-life-across-earths-ecosystems/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/study-finds-massive-reorganization-of-life-across-earths-ecosystems/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-223649</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New species of ancient human found in a Philippine cave</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/new-species-of-ancient-human-found-in-a-philippine-cave/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/new-species-of-ancient-human-found-in-a-philippine-cave/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Apr 2019 11:01:18 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/04/12082635/DSC_4469b-1024x680-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=217439</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Philippines, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Archeology, Biogeography, Environment, Evolution, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Human Migration, Islands, Research, Science, and Species Discovery]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
											<grant>
							<![CDATA[4127-1 SEA-ENV-SIDA]]>
						</grant>
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[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 to be at least 50,000 years old, belong to a new species of early human, researchers have now confirmed in a study published in Nature. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[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 to be at least 50,000 years old, belong to a new species of early human, researchers have now confirmed in a study published in Nature. The journey to discovering this early human species, dubbed Homo luzonensis, has been a long one. Archaeologist Armand Mijares, an associate professor at the University of the Philippines and co-lead author of the study, first began excavating around Callao Cave on Luzon in 2003, when his team unearthed evidence of human activity dating back some 25,000 years. He returned to the cave in 2007, this time digging much deeper than he had the first time. At depths of around 8 to 9 feet (2.4 to 2.7 meters), among bones of deer and other animals, his team discovered a foot bone. The team sent the bone to Philip Piper, a professor at the Australian National University, who soon confirmed what Mijares suspected: the bone belonged to a human. “When Dr. Armand Mijares (Project Leader) and I found the first human bone dating to more than 50,000 years ago at Callao in 2007, we knew [what] we had was something special,” Piper, co-author of the study, told Mongabay in an email. “We didn’t know it was a new species then of course, but we did know that we had the oldest human remains in the Philippines. From then&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/new-species-of-ancient-human-found-in-a-philippine-cave/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-217439</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In the Solomon Islands, making amends in the name of conservation</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/02/making-amends-in-the-name-of-conservation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/02/making-amends-in-the-name-of-conservation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Feb 2019 09:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/02/18073317/In-partnership-with-the-Kwaio-people-Lavery-conducts-research-that-bolsters-Malaitan-conservation-efforts-2-c-Ben-Speare-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=215590</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indigenous Peoples and Conservation]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Oceania, Pacific Ocean, and Solomon Islands]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Amphibians, Animals, Bats, Biodiversity, Biogeography, Birds, Cats, Colonization, Conservation, Corruption, Culture, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Ecology, Environment, Extinction, Forests, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Human Rights, Hunting, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Islands, Land Rights, Logging, Mammals, Medicinal Plants, Mining, Mountains, Natural Resources, Plants, Poverty, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Resource Conflict, Resource Curse, Rodents, Saving Rainforests, Solutions, Species Discovery, Timber, Traditional People, Trees, Tropical Forests, Videos, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Wearing nothing more than leaves hanging from belts of woven vegetation, the three scientists stand in the rain with little idea of what to expect. They’ve lived and worked with the Kwaio people for years, and two of them speak the language. But they’re now on new ground in just about every sense. At an [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Wearing nothing more than leaves hanging from belts of woven vegetation, the three scientists stand in the rain with little idea of what to expect. They’ve lived and worked with the Kwaio people for years, and two of them speak the language. But they’re now on new ground in just about every sense. At an ancestral shrine deep in the forested mountains of the Solomon Islands, with no vestiges of themselves as individuals, the scientists are simply representatives of their tribe — in this case, Australia. The trio has set out on a path toward mending a long-simmering rift with the Kwaio, represented here by their Kwaio friends, who have invited them to this sacred space. Mammalogist Tyrone Lavery remembers being “very nervous.” “There was very much a different atmosphere to the place and it felt very tense,” Lavery said. He wasn’t altogether sure that everything would work out for the best. For more than 90 years, the Kwaio people living on the island of Malaita have been haunted by the memory of a handful of violent months in 1927. That’s when a group of Kwaio led by a warrior named Basiana, chafing at having to pay a new tax levied by the colonial government, led an attack that killed two British officers and 13 local enforcers sent to collect. In reprisal, Australia sent a naval ship to the island, and British administrators dispatched a militia of the Kwaios’ local rivals on Malaita to hunt down Basiana. An expeditionary force&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/02/making-amends-in-the-name-of-conservation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-215590</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Study maps out reptiles’ ranges, completing the ‘atlas of life’</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/study-maps-out-reptiles-ranges-completing-the-atlas-of-life/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/study-maps-out-reptiles-ranges-completing-the-atlas-of-life/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Oct 2017 08:26:52 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/10/16085650/Hypsilurus-papuensis-2_Alex-Slavenko-768x451.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=200035</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Amphibians, Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Biogeography, Birds, Conservation, Deserts, Ecology, Ecosystems, Environment, Frogs, Global Environmental Crisis, Grasslands, Herps, Lizards, Mammals, Mapping, Parks, Plants, Protected Areas, Reptiles, Research, Snakes, Turtles, Water, Wetlands, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Across the swath of vertebrate lifeforms that inhabit Earth, scientists have a pretty good idea about where most of the known land mammals, birds and amphibians live. That makes identifying areas for protection where a lot of these animals live relatively straightforward, even if the details of actually protecting these places are far more complicated. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Across the swath of vertebrate lifeforms that inhabit Earth, scientists have a pretty good idea about where most of the known land mammals, birds and amphibians live. That makes identifying areas for protection where a lot of these animals live relatively straightforward, even if the details of actually protecting these places are far more complicated. But plotting out the diversity of reptiles, which account for a third of all vertebrate species, has been a more elusive goal, leaving questions as to whether current conservation strategies protect this class of animals. Now, a global team of researchers reports that they’ve figured out where more than 10,000 reptile species live, completing an “atlas of life” that could guide future conservation efforts. A Robinson’s Forest Dragon (Malayodracon robisonii). Photo by co-author Lee Grismer / La Sierra University in California. “Mapping the distributions of all reptiles was considered too difficult to tackle,” said co-author Shai Meiri, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel, in a statement. “But thanks to a team of experts on the lizards and snakes of some of the most poorly known regions of the world we managed to achieve this, and hopefully contribute to the conservation of these often elusive vertebrates.” Until now, the siting of protected areas to safeguard biodiversity has relied on information about where the most plants, birds and mammals — and to a lesser extent, amphibians — live. To date, that includes 10,000 birds, 6,000 amphibians and 5,000 mammals. Without data on reptiles, planners often&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/study-maps-out-reptiles-ranges-completing-the-atlas-of-life/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-200035</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indigenous lands &#8216;critical&#8217; to forest protection in Peru, biodiversity maps show</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/indigenous-lands-critical-to-forest-protection-in-peru-biodiversity-maps-show/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/indigenous-lands-critical-to-forest-protection-in-peru-biodiversity-maps-show/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 May 2017 07:23:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/05/05063252/asner3HR-2-768x443.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=195428</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Latin America, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Biogeography, Cattle, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Environment, Extreme Weather, Forest Carbon, Forests, Governance, Impact Of Climate Change, Palm Oil, Protected Areas, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Ranching, Remote Sensing, Satellite Imagery, Saving Rainforests, Solutions, Tropical Forests, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[New maps of forest biodiversity in Peru illustrate the importance of lands held by indigenous peoples in safeguarding a wide variety of forest types, even as more formal protections such as parks and reserves fall a little bit short. “Peru has a pretty good report card overall” in how the country protects its 76 million [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[New maps of forest biodiversity in Peru illustrate the importance of lands held by indigenous peoples in safeguarding a wide variety of forest types, even as more formal protections such as parks and reserves fall a little bit short. “Peru has a pretty good report card overall” in how the country protects its 76 million hectares (293,438 square miles) of forests, said Greg Asner, a global ecologist from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) in Stanford, California, who led the research. The research found that nearly 43 percent of forests in the Andes or the Amazon benefited from some sort of protection. But as Asner and his colleagues layered the data gathered from the skies above Peru with maps of the country&#8217;s local, regional and national protected areas, a “really surprising” conclusion stood out: “These indigenous lands are just critical in the portfolio of protections in Peru today,” Asner said in an interview. They published their research in the June 2017 edition of the journal Biological Conservation. Figure 2 from the team&#8217;s January study published in Science (Asner et al., 2017) shows (a) the forest functional classes (FFCs) in Peru, which make up (b) six forest functional groups (FFGs), resulting from laser-guided imaging spectroscopy and geophysical modeling. Image courtesy of Greg Asner, Carnegie Institution for Science Back in January, Asner and his team reported that, from their measurements of the chemical signatures of different tree communities using an imaging spectrometer mounted on the CAO aircraft, they were able to parse out&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/indigenous-lands-critical-to-forest-protection-in-peru-biodiversity-maps-show/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-195428</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Revolutionary’ new biodiversity maps reveal big gaps in conservation</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/revolutionary-new-biodiversity-maps-reveal-big-gaps-in-conservation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/revolutionary-new-biodiversity-maps-reveal-big-gaps-in-conservation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Jan 2017 14:46:16 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/01/27085340/peru_aerial_1531-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=192722</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Global, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, Agriculture, Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Biogeography, Botany, carbon, Cattle, Climate Change, Climate Science, Conservation, Defaunation, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Ecology, Environment, Evolution, Extinction, Farming, Food, Forest Carbon, Forestry, Forests, Fossil Fuels, Global Environmental Crisis, Global Warming, Gold Mining, Habitat Loss, Innovation, Invertebrates, Logging, Mining, Oil, Oil Drilling, Palm Oil, Peatlands, Protected Areas, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Ranching, Remote Sensing, Research, Satellite Imagery, Solutions, Sustainable Forest Management, Technology, Tropical Conservation Science, Tropical Forests, Water, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Sometimes for a scientist, the disconnected pieces of years of research come together in a single, “really awesome” point in time. For ecologist Greg Asner, where it happened was about as important as the epiphany itself. “I was almost on the Ecuador-Peru border, way up the Rio Tigre, and we had the moment,” said Asner, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Sometimes for a scientist, the disconnected pieces of years of research come together in a single, “really awesome” point in time. For ecologist Greg Asner, where it happened was about as important as the epiphany itself. “I was almost on the Ecuador-Peru border, way up the Rio Tigre, and we had the moment,” said Asner, who heads the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) in Stanford, California. “We were days and days away from the rest of the world.” It was the summer of 2015, and he and a pair of botanists had just connected the sampling they had done from CAO’s state-of-the-art research plane with their shoe-leather, on-the-ground observations of forests in the Peruvian Amazon. They had measured the chemical signatures of different tree communities from high above. From those measurements, it seemed that the sea of uniform green they had flown over represented in reality an assortment of distinct growth and survival strategies. Greg Asner (right) and his team as they made their discovery near the Rio Tigre in the forests of northern Peru. Photo courtesy of Greg Asner At that moment near the Rio Tigre, they figured out that those unique community strategies – what they refer to as “functional diversity” – extended to an even finer scale, correlating with unique species compositions, or “biodiversity.” With that connection drawn, they’d locked on to a new tactic for identifying which areas are the most unique, the most diverse and, consequently, the most important to protect. Their work in Peru, which they&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/revolutionary-new-biodiversity-maps-reveal-big-gaps-in-conservation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-192722</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The matrix matters: scientists find surprising biodiversity between forests</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/05/the-matrix-matters-scientists-find-surprising-biodiversity-between-forests/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/05/the-matrix-matters-scientists-find-surprising-biodiversity-between-forests/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 May 2014 20:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Andrew Mann]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2014/05/the-matrix-matters-scientists-find-surprising-biodiversity-between-forests/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America and Costa Rica]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bats, Biogeography, Conservation, Deforestation, Environment, Forests, Fragmentation, Green, Islands, and Plantations]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The Theory of Island Biogeography, coined by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson, helps describe why species are distributed as they are. The larger and closer an island is to another (or to the mainland), the more biodiverse it should be. This can be used to describe actual islands in the ocean, like the Galapagos, or [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The Theory of Island Biogeography, coined by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson, helps describe why species are distributed as they are. The larger and closer an island is to another (or to the mainland), the more biodiverse it should be. This can be used to describe actual islands in the ocean, like the Galapagos, or even mountaintops, like the Madrean Sky Islands in southern Arizona and New Mexico. In human-dominated countryside areas, forests are often fragmented and scattered among a matrix of developments such as plantations and pastures. Scientists have long overlooked the habitat value of these matrices. However, according to a recent study published in Nature, the biodiversity of altered countryside areas that exist between islands of fragmented forests can be significant and deserving of conservation attention. “A major misconception associated with island biogeography is that the matrix doesn’t matter,” Chase Mendenhall, lead author of the paper, told mondaybay.com. Costa Rican countryside landscape is important habitat for many species. Photo by Mendenhall et al. This study was conducted by comparing the results of two similar projects in nearby areas in Central America. A team of scientists from Stanford University had been studying the diversity of several types of animals, including bats, in and around Las Cruces Biological Reserve in Costa Rica, which is surrounded by agricultural countryside. After hearing that Cristoph Meyer, a German ecologist, had been using identical methods for studying bats on nearby man-made islands within the Panama Canal, the scientists decided to compare the results of&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2014/05/the-matrix-matters-scientists-find-surprising-biodiversity-between-forests/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-25215</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Scientists nearly double the number of biogeographic realms</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2013/01/scientists-nearly-double-the-number-of-biogeographic-realms/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2013/01/scientists-nearly-double-the-number-of-biogeographic-realms/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Jan 2013 16:54:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2013/01/scientists-nearly-double-the-number-of-biogeographic-realms/</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Biogeography, Environment, Evolution, Green, History, and Science]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Wallace&#8217;s original map published in 1876, denoting six biogeographical realms. A recent study in Science extends Wallace&#8217;s findings, creating eleven realms (see below). Click to enlarge. In 1876, British biologist Alfred Russell Wallace published a map of the world that outlined how related animals were spread over the Earth. For example, Wallace was the first [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Wallace&#8217;s original map published in 1876, denoting six biogeographical realms. A recent study in Science extends Wallace&#8217;s findings, creating eleven realms (see below). Click to enlarge. In 1876, British biologist Alfred Russell Wallace published a map of the world that outlined how related animals were spread over the Earth. For example, Wallace was the first to publicize that North American biodiversity was substantially different from South America, and that an invisible line separated Southeast Asian biodiversity from that of Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands. With Wallace&#8217;s research came the founding of biogeography, or the study of species in relation to geography. Today, scientists with the University of Copenhagen have updated Wallace&#8217;s map&#8212;nearly doubling the number of biogeographic realms&#8212;with support from data on over 21,000 species. &#8220;Our study is a long overdue update of one of the most fundamental maps in natural sciences,&#8221; lead author of the new research in Science, Ben Holt, said in a press release. &#8220;For the first time since Wallace&#8217;s attempt we are finally able to provide a broad description of the natural world based on incredibly detailed information for thousands of vertebrate species.&#8221; With vast amounts of data, including DNA sequencing, the scientists have created new biogeographic realms, such as the island of Madagascar which is home to lemurs, tenrecs, mini-chameleons, and slew of other bizarre species. Still, much of Wallace&#8217;s original map survives, such as the split between North and South America, and the line&#8212;known as Wallace&#8217;s Line&#8212;separating Southeast Asia and Australia. However, the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2013/01/scientists-nearly-double-the-number-of-biogeographic-realms/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-29815</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New book series hopes to inspire research in world&#8217;s &#8216;hottest biodiversity hotspot&#8217;</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2012/01/new-book-series-hopes-to-inspire-research-in-worlds-hottest-biodiversity-hotspot/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2012/01/new-book-series-hopes-to-inspire-research-in-worlds-hottest-biodiversity-hotspot/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Jan 2012 23:13:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2012/01/new-book-series-hopes-to-inspire-research-in-worlds-hottest-biodiversity-hotspot/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, East Timor, Flores, Indonesia, Komodo, New Guinea, Pacific Islands, Pacific Ocean, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Sulawesi]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Animals, Beetles, Biodiversity, Biogeography, Birds, Conservation, Deforestation, Education, Endangered Species, Environment, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Governance, Green, Herps, Hunting, Insects, Interviews, Invertebrates, Islands, Logging, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Oceans, Palm Oil, Parks, Plantations, Plants, Politics, Poverty, Poverty Alleviation, Protected Areas, Pulp And Paper, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Roads, Saving Rainforests, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Species Discovery, Threats To Rainforests, Traditional People, Tropical Forests, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Pristine coastal vegetation: Misool island, Raja Ampat. Photo by: Dimtry Telnov, 2009. Entomologist Dmitry Telnov hopes his new pet project will inspire and disseminate research about one of the world&#8217;s last unexplored biogeographical regions: Wallacea and New Guinea. Incredibly rich in biodiversity and still full of unknown species, the region, also known as the Indo-Australian [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Pristine coastal vegetation: Misool island, Raja Ampat. Photo by: Dimtry Telnov, 2009. Entomologist Dmitry Telnov hopes his new pet project will inspire and disseminate research about one of the world&#8217;s last unexplored biogeographical regions: Wallacea and New Guinea. Incredibly rich in biodiversity and still full of unknown species, the region, also known as the Indo-Australian transition, spans many of the tropical islands of the Pacific, including Indonesia&#8217;s Sulawesi, Komodo and Flores, as well as East Timor&#8212;the historically famous &#8220;spice islands&#8221; of the Moluccan Archipelago&#8212;the Solomon Islands, and, of course, New Guinea. Telnov has begun a new book series, entitled Biodiversity, Biogeography and Nature Conservation in Wallacea and New Guinea, that aims to compile and highlight new research in the region, focusing both on biology and conservation. The first volume, currently available, also includes the description of 150 new species. &#8220;This territory is described as one of the most diverse, least explored and most endangered (both in cultural and natural aspects) regions on our planet, the &#8216;hottest&#8217; biodiversity hotspot,&#8221; says Telnov in a mongabay.com interview, adding that, &#8220;generally, [the region] covers less than 1 percent of the world’s total land area but holds the world’s highest biological diversity both in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, in addition to an amazing diversity of human cultures and languages.&#8221; Book cover of Biodiversity, Biogeography and Nature Conservation in Wallacea and New Guinea. Despite its staggering wealth of species and cultures, much of the remote parts of region remain unexplored, while many places are undergoing drastic&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2012/01/new-book-series-hopes-to-inspire-research-in-worlds-hottest-biodiversity-hotspot/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-31461</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Global warming causes sheep to shrink</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2009/07/global-warming-causes-sheep-to-shrink/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2009/07/global-warming-causes-sheep-to-shrink/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Jul 2009 17:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2009/07/global-warming-causes-sheep-to-shrink/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Europe]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biogeography, Ecology, Green, Impact Of Climate Change, Islands, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Climate change is shrinking Scotland&#8217;s wild Soay sheep despite the evolutionary advantages of having a large body, report researchers writing in the journal Science. Arpat Ozgul and colleagues tracked changes in body weight and behavior among female members of a population of Soay sheep on Hirta island since 1985 and found that on average, the [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Climate change is shrinking Scotland&#8217;s wild Soay sheep despite the evolutionary advantages of having a large body, report researchers writing in the journal Science. Arpat Ozgul and colleagues tracked changes in body weight and behavior among female members of a population of Soay sheep on Hirta island since 1985 and found that on average, the sheep have been decreasing in size for the last 25 years. To determine the driver of smaller sheep, the researchers then plugged their data into a numerical model that &#8220;predicts how a trait such as body size will change over time due to natural selection and other factors that influence survival and reproduction in the wild.&#8221; The results suggest that the decrease is primarily an ecological response to environmental variation over the last 25 years, rather than evolutionary change. Soay sheep on St. Kilda archipelago. Photo by Arpat Ozgul &#8220;It&#8217;s only in the last few years that we&#8217;ve realized that evolution can influence species&#8217; physical traits as quickly as ecological changes can. This study addresses one of the major goals of population biology, namely to untangle the ways in which evolutionary and environmental changes influence a species&#8217; traits,&#8221; said Andrew Sugden, Deputy and International Managing Editor at Science. &#8220;Sheep are getting smaller. Well, at least the wild Soay sheep living on a remote Scottish island are. But according to classic evolutionary theory, they should have been getting bigger, because larger sheep tend to be more likely to survive and reproduce than smaller ones, and offspring&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2009/07/global-warming-causes-sheep-to-shrink/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-36591</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sex differences fuel evolution</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2007/05/sex-differences-fuel-evolution/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2007/05/sex-differences-fuel-evolution/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 May 2007 14:30:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Harvard University]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2008/12/sex-differences-fuel-evolution/</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biogeography, Ecology, Environment, Evolution, Green, Herps, Reptiles, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Sex differences fuel evolution Sex differences fuel evolution Harvard University May 10, 2007 Some Caribbean lizards&#8217; strong sexual dimorphism allows them to colonize much larger niches and habitats than they might otherwise occupy, allowing males and females to avoid competing with each other for resources and setting the stage for the population as a whole [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[Sex differences fuel evolution Sex differences fuel evolution Harvard University May 10, 2007 Some Caribbean lizards&#8217; strong sexual dimorphism allows them to colonize much larger niches and habitats than they might otherwise occupy, allowing males and females to avoid competing with each other for resources and setting the stage for the population as a whole to thrive. The finding, reported this week in the journal Nature, suggests sex differences may have fueled the evolutionary flourishing of the Earth&#8217;s wildly diverse fauna in a way not previously appreciated by scientists. Conducted at Harvard University, the University of Hawaii, and Washington University in St. Louis, the research is the first to investigate the role of sexual dimorphism &#8212; which can yield differences between sexes as substantive as those seen between entirely separate species &#8212; in adaptive radiation, the phenomenon by which species diverge from a single ancestor. &#8220;Humans are keenly aware of the differences between the sexes, and such sexual dimorphism is widespread in the animal kingdom,&#8221; says Jonathan B. Losos, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in Harvard&#8217;s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and curator in herpetology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. &#8220;Evolutionary biologists have studied the much larger antlers of male deer, the showy plumage of male birds, and many other traits for decades. This extensive body of research has helped us understand why the sexes of particular species have evolved differences, but this sort of work has not previously been put into a broader context to understand&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2007/05/sex-differences-fuel-evolution/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-39342</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Animals on islands more abundant than mainland</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2007/04/animals-on-islands-more-abundant-than-mainland/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2007/04/animals-on-islands-more-abundant-than-mainland/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Apr 2007 14:30:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Kim Mcdonal Of The University Of California]]>
						</dc:creator>
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						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
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					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2008/12/animals-on-islands-more-abundant-than-mainland/</guid>

					
					
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							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Biogeography, Ecology, Evolution, Green, and Reptiles]]>
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							<![CDATA[Animals on islands more abundant than mainland Animals on islands more abundant than mainland By Kim McDonal of the University of California, San Diego April 30, 2007 A comprehensive survey of lizards on islands around the world has confirmed what island biologists and seafaring explorers have long observed: Animals on islands are much more abundant [&#8230;]]]>
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							<![CDATA[Animals on islands more abundant than mainland Animals on islands more abundant than mainland By Kim McDonal of the University of California, San Diego April 30, 2007 A comprehensive survey of lizards on islands around the world has confirmed what island biologists and seafaring explorers have long observed: Animals on islands are much more abundant than their counterparts on the mainland. Besides confirming that longstanding observation, the study signals an alarm for island populations in a rapidly warming world. It suggests that climate change may have devastating consequences for lizards and other animals that inhabit islands because their ecosystems are much more sensitive than those on the mainland to change. Details of the study conducted by biologists at the University of California, San Diego will appear in a paper slated for publication in the June issue of the journal Ecology Letters, available online in May. Anolis lividus, on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. Credit: Lauren Buckley &#8220;We found that island populations are less resistant to biological invasions, which will likely increase dramatically with changing climate,&#8221; says Walter Jetz, an assistant professor of biological sciences at UCSD and a co-author of the study. &#8220;Climate change will drive animals to move to new places,&#8221; says Lauren Buckley, a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute who is a visiting scholar at UCSD and the other co-author of the study. &#8220;Our research suggests that those animals that move to islands can strongly affect the sensitive animal communities on islands.&#8221; In addition to their&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2007/04/animals-on-islands-more-abundant-than-mainland/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-39537</doi>				</item>
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					<title>World&#8217;s bluest lizard headed toward extinction?</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2007/03/worlds-only-blue-lizard-heads-toward-extinction/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2007/03/worlds-only-blue-lizard-heads-toward-extinction/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 Mar 2007 14:30:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers ButlerTina Butler]]>
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						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
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							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2007/03/26133126/blue-anole-anolis-gorgonae-1210px-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2008/12/worlds-only-blue-lizard-heads-toward-extinction/</guid>

					
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							<![CDATA[Colombia, Latin America, and South America]]>
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											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Biogeography, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecotourism, Endangered Species, Forests, Green, Herps, In-situ Conservation, Invasive Species, Rainforests, Reptiles, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Strange, Threats To Rainforests, Travel, and Wildlife]]>
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							<![CDATA[Gorgona Blues High above the forest floor on the remote Colombian island of Gorgona lives a lizard with brilliant blue skin, rivaling the color of the sky. Anolis gorgonae, or the blue anole, is a species so elusive and rare, that scientists have been unable to give even an estimate of its population. Due to [&#8230;]]]>
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							<![CDATA[Gorgona Blues High above the forest floor on the remote Colombian island of Gorgona lives a lizard with brilliant blue skin, rivaling the color of the sky. Anolis gorgonae, or the blue anole, is a species so elusive and rare, that scientists have been unable to give even an estimate of its population. Due to the lizard&#8217;s isolated habitat and reclusive habits, researchers know little about the blue anole, but are captivated by its stunning coloration. Approximately 35 miles off the Pacific coast of Colombia lies Gorgona, an island with a unique past and an uncertain future. A high security prison colony was maintained on the island beginning in the 1950s until its closure in 1984. Because the island is separated from the mainland by an underwater depression 270 meters deep, Gorgona maintains some endemic biodiversity. In 1985, the island reemerged as a national park to protect the rare species that thrived in the delicate ecosystem. The blue anole is truly stunning to behold&#8211;it is pure blue, with no color differentiation between males and females. The largest visual distinction is the male&#8217;s dewlap, like other anole species, except in this case the dewlap is bright white, making the blue contrast ever more dramatic. In spite of this striking color, few humans have been lucky enough to spot the world&#8217;s only pure blue lizard. Male blue anole on Gorgona. Photo by Thomas Marent (https://www.thomasmarent.com>www.thomasmarent.com), a world renowned photographer visited Gorgona specifically to photograph the blue anole. It took him four days&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2007/03/worlds-only-blue-lizard-heads-toward-extinction/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-39569</doi>				</item>
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					<title>Fragmentation killing species in the Amazon rainforest</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2006/11/fragmentation-killing-species-in-the-amazon-rainforest/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2006/11/fragmentation-killing-species-in-the-amazon-rainforest/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Nov 2006 22:09:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett A. Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
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					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2008/12/fragmentation-killing-species-in-the-amazon-rainforest/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon and Brazil]]>
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											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Biogeography, Climate Change, Climate Science, Deforestation, Extinction, Forests, Fragmentation, Green, Impact Of Climate Change, Rainforests, and Threats To Rainforests]]>
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							<![CDATA[Fragmentation reduces biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and worsens global warming Fragmentation reduces biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and worsens global warming Rhett Butler, mongabay.com November 27, 2006 Forest fragmentation is rapidly eroding biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and could worsen global warming according to research to be published this week in the journal Proceedings [&#8230;]]]>
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							<![CDATA[Fragmentation reduces biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and worsens global warming Fragmentation reduces biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and worsens global warming Rhett Butler, mongabay.com November 27, 2006 Forest fragmentation is rapidly eroding biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and could worsen global warming according to research to be published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. &#8220;Rainforest trees can live for centuries, even millennia, so none of us expected things to change too fast. But in just two decades-a wink of time for a thousand year-old tree-the ecosystem has been seriously degraded.&#8221; said Dr. William Laurance, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and leader of the international team of scientists that conducted the research. The study, based upon observations of nearly 32,000 Amazonian trees since 1980, found that fragmentation causes profound changes to forest dynamics and ecology, resulting in the disappearance of rare species and forest specialists. As large tracts forest are increasingly chopped into smaller blocks, edge effects alter the flora and fauna of forests. Fragmented patches of forest are subject to drying winds that increase the frequency of tree falls. Tree falls tear gaps in the canopy, destroying its function of moderating the humidity, temperature, and heat conditions of the forest floor. These changes affect the species that inhabit the forest patch, usually reducing diversity. Many rare species that dwell in the deep primary forest are unable to cope with the new conditions and are replaced by more common,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2006/11/fragmentation-killing-species-in-the-amazon-rainforest/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-40000</doi>				</item>
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