Biologist David Mackay got a surprise when he began studying the birds visiting fig trees in his native Australia: While he expected to see plenty of species coming to eat…
Scientists in Belgium have used 36 years of footage from an annual bicycle race to pinpoint the time each year when leaves and flowers appeared on trees and shrubs, allowing…
Tropical forests are key defenders in the fight against climate change. They lock down around 25 percent of the world’s carbon in their canopies, trunks and soils, a function so…
Scientists have long suspected a relationship between deforestation and some infectious diseases. For instance, the 2014 Ebola crisis has been linked to logging that may have put workers and their…
On today’s episode: the sounds of Buller’s shearwaters in New Zealand’s Poor Knights Islands. Listen here: Our guest today is Megan Friesen, a behavioral ecologist who is currently working with…
Citizen scientists have named a newly discovered species of water beetle after Leonardo DiCaprio in recognition of the Hollywood actor’s support of environmental causes. Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi was discovered during an…
European Union member states voted to accept a proposal banning three commonly used pesticides on April 27 in a bid to protect bee populations. “Bee health remains of paramount importance…
High up in the treetops of Borneo live “exploding ants,” so named because of their unique defensive behavior. When a potential enemy threatens their colony, these ants kill themselves by…
Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed and its poisonous compounds that are deadly to most other insects. But a new study finds global warming may be making the very plant monarch…
Every year since 1993, Fabio de Oliveira Roque, one of the authors of this piece, has returned to his hometown of São Paulo, a big city inside a biodiversity hotspot…
Madagascar is known as an ark for biodiversity that's found nowhere else on the planet. Unfortunately, it's also known for the bevy of threats that those distinctive species that live…
Saproxylic beetles live in and eat dead and decaying wood, and play important ecological roles in nutrient recycling and pollination, and as an important food source for birds and other…
Scientists know that bats boost the profits of farmers by fertilizing crops and keeping hungry insects in check. According to recent research, they also could clue farmers in to shifting…
A new study drastically upends conventional wisdom about when plants colonized land, pushing back the date about 80 million years to around half a billion years ago. The new date…
At turns haunting, humorous or just downright bizarre, the studio portraits of the thousands of animal species that photographer Joel Sartore has collected are more than just a catalog of…
Animals that live in trees in the tropics are likely to be better at crossing mountains and dealing with climate change compared to ground-dwelling animals, a new study published in…
Polish researchers have rediscovered a moth in Malaysia that was previously known only from a 130-year-old museum specimen collected in Indonesia. The Oriental blue clearwing (Heterosphecia tawonoides) was rediscovered in…
Over the past 10 years many areas of once-forested land degraded by cattle in the Amazon have been converted to oil palm. To measure how the oil palm plantations may…
Populations of bees, bats, butterflies and other pollinators have been declining for decades due to habitat loss, disease, pesticides and climate change. Now, scientists have documented yet another threat to…
Germany’s flying insect biomass has dropped 76 percent in the past 27 years, according to a study published last week in PLOS ONE. The findings have stunned biologists around the…
