Ecology News

For more than a century, the natural cycles of the Cerrado grasslands have guided the lives of the farmers and cowboys in the deep west of Brazil’s Bahia state. Residents…

Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet: the Amazon carries more than five times the volume of world's…

New Guinea's diversity of life, cultures and landscapes has long inspired prominent scientists, from Alfred Russel Wallace to Jared Diamond. Sitting just below the equator at the nexus of Asia…

In the late 1990s, a Yale ecologist named Oswald Schmitz and his students made an interesting discovery by gluing spiders’ mouths shut. Schmitz’s team placed the glued spiders in enclosed…

Trees capture carbon, produce oxygen, and run on sunlight. So when it comes to fighting climate change, the more trees the better, right? As it turns out, this isn’t always…

Meet biologist Jonathan Slaght as he spends years tracking a giant bird “the size of a fire hydrant with a six-foot wingspan.” Slaght’s new book, Owls of the Eastern Ice, offers engaging tales from the field.

Referred to as barking deer, 12 species of muntjacs inhabit Asia. The rarely seen, critically endangered Large-antlered muntjac inhabits the evergreen forests of Southeast Asia’s Annamites Range.

Well organized global crime networks are pulling millions of tropical birds, fish, turtles and mammals out of the Amazon — a lucrative trade that is destroying ecosystems and putting public health at risk.

Narwhals are Arctic-dwelling whales with a unique feature: the males have spirally, sword-like tusks that can extend up to 3 meters (10 feet). But these magical-looking creatures are facing a…

MANNAR, Sri Lanka — The Vidattaltivu coastal belt in Sri Lanka’s north was once home to the marine unit of the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group, known as the “Sea Tigers.”…

A lapsed moratorium protecting the Amazon river dolphin is up for renewal, but the Bolsonaro administration has delayed acting, even as scientists warn it could mean the freshwater mammal’s extinction.

Madagascar is often called the “red island” because of its iron-rich soils. In school, Malagasy children are taught that their island was green until human beings destroyed most of the…

With its groves of pockmarked white bark and trembling green medallion leaves, Pando looks like any other aspen forest. But the approximately 47,000 stems that form its giant body share…

Scraping sounds fill the nights at Mapungubwe, a national park at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where the borders of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa meet. Families…

Life can’t function without insects. At least, not for long. Dutifully, they pollinate, break down waste, cycle nutrients, move seeds, and touch every web of life, filling endless functional niches…

Research measured the impacts of human disruption: bird flocks declined and vanished, seed dispersion changed, while the Rupununi region showed just how bountiful an undisturbed ecosystem can be.

COLOMBO — A rare new orchid described from a tropical lowland rainforest in Sri Lanka now bears the name of two of the island’s pioneering forest ecologists. A new paper…

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A hidden invasion is taking place beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea. In recent years, scientists have recorded more than 700 alien species in Mediterranean waters,…

Law enforcement officials around the world have seized more than 200 tonnes of pangolin scales since 2016, more than half of it linked to Nigeria, a new report has found.…

Fish populations in coral reefs off Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique are being harvested at unsustainable rates, new research has found. In the study published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress…

It’s a beguiling proposition: pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by supercharging populations of microscopic, carbon-munching marine phytoplankton through the relatively simple and inexpensive process of adding iron to…

Patagonia’s huemul is an agile herbivore of which only about 1,500 may remain at 100 or so scattered sites between sea level and the Andes; it is being buffeted by complex interrelated stressors.

Remote islands are often held up as vestiges of pristine wilderness. In stark contrast, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Henderson Island are drowning in piles of plastic. A recent study…

Purse seine fishing nets may be set for tuna, but they trap whatever fish swim into them, including manta and devil rays. As the net tightens, rays will panic and…

A new analysis based on estimated deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 pinpoints hotspots of forest loss and identifies several country-specific trends in the region. The figures project that deforestation…

Fish stocks around the world are doing better, in general, where science guides their management, according to a recent study. Publishing their findings Jan. 13 online in the journal Proceedings…

There are plenty of ways to hide in the open ocean if you want to fish unnoticed. Many fishing boats do just that. They turn off their public tracking systems…

The effects of commercial logging, mining and farming can ripple beyond the boundaries of the operations, leading to the substantial loss and degradation of nearby forest for subsistence agriculture, a…

The Isha Foundation, a spiritual organization headquartered in south India, is taking on the cause of revitalizing India’s imperiled rivers. With government and public support, it says it has successfully…

Howler monkeys change their calls when they’re close to deforested areas, a new study has found. A team of researchers, led by anthropologist Laura Bolt of the University of Waterloo…