The red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus) is a creature of Earth, although a brief physical description can cast sufficient doubt. One deep red stripe runs the length of its body, though…
The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), a hairy, pig-like mammal that once lived throughout the forests of Central and South America, now only skitters around in 13 percent of its former…
Any day now. That’s when Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), the “salamander-eating” fungus, is expected to arrive in the United States, home to more than a third of the world’s species of…
A new analysis of over 70 years’ worth of shorebird population data suggests that climate change has altered the migratory birds’ Arctic safe haven to such a degree that it…
On a midsummer evening earlier this year, Tracy Pham was on a walk along Huntington Beach, California, an outing she usually made to photograph birds. This time, along the way,…
New research suggests that mountain lions in the western United States play an outsize role in changing their surroundings, leading the authors of the study to suggest that the big…
Using drones for wildlife surveys isn’t new to marine wildlife research, but it’s been focused mainly on detecting the large mammals and sea turtles that break the ocean’s surface to…
The construction of a hydroelectric dam in Thailand in the 1980s devastated the area’s wild birds, leaving behind just a few of the many species that once inhabited the region,…
If you take a stroll in the woods, it’s worth pausing for a moment to take in the sights and sounds, peer into the undergrowth, or even turn over a…
Burning wood pellets, once deemed as carbon neutral, produces big CO2 emissions instead. But developed nations are cooking the books on bioenergy, toying with climate disaster.
Monitoring technology deployed in a remote rainforest over time subjects it to high heat, humidity, and rainfall, as well as potential damage by insects and other wildlife. When you add…
Pesticide use on agricultural plantations may be shifting the color palette of howler monkey fur in Costa Rica, a team of scientists has found. Mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) are…
Hunters in India are helping supply the illegal pangolin trade, and new research that probes their motivations might point to measures that can reduce the poaching and sale of the…
Severe flood events have become five times more common over the last century as a result of natural atmospheric oscillations and human-driven climate change.
The culling of fruit bats in recent years to protect crops in Mauritius has pushed the species closer to extinction, and now the government is planning to do it again.…
Data from GPS-tagged seabirds, as they were swept along in the strong currents of the Irish Sea, could help researchers move a step closer to harnessing the energy in those…
Animal tracking has revolutionized our study of animal movements and behavior. Radio transmitter tags, followed by GPS and other satellite-based tags, placed on animals via a collar, harness, glue, or…
Imagine being able to know how many individual organisms occur at any given time across areas as large as whole continents or even the entire globe. Though satellites may one…
New research published in the journal Nature Sustainability this month attempts to establish the monetary value of the ecosystem services provided by the world’s largest tropical forest, the Amazon. A…
Scientists have mapped whale stress levels in relation to human activity going back nearly a century and a half — using earwax collected from baleen whales. From 1870 to 2016,…
