Monday, June 20th, 2016
Lima, Peru —More than a dozen institutions signed the historic Joint Statement for the Amazon Waters today at the Amazon Waters International Conference in Lima, marking an unprecedented commitment to collaboration in efforts to promote the integrity of the Amazon Basin, home to the largest continuous rainforest and most extensive freshwater ecosystem in the world.
Thursday, June 9th, 2016
EAST LANSING, Mich. – How can scientists better understand summer monarch butterfly populations in the Midwest? Check spring weather in Texas. This information is just one of many insights that researchers from Michigan State University gleaned from developing a new model to forecast ecological responses to climate change. The model, featured in the current issue
Wednesday, May 25th, 2016
LAUREL, Md.—New U.S. Geological Survey-led research suggests that even though amphibians are severely declining worldwide, there is no smoking gun – and thus no simple solution – to halting or reversing these declines. “Implementing conservation plans at a local level will be key in stopping amphibian population losses, since global efforts to reduce or lessen
Monday, May 23rd, 2016
University of Adelaide environmental researchers have called for a ‘code of best practice’ in using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for wildlife monitoring and protection, and other biological field research. The researchers, from the University’s Unmanned Research Aircraft Facility (URAF) or Adelaide Drone Hub, say that drones are a useful tool for field research and their
Monday, May 16th, 2016
GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Lay people can help scientists conserve the protected Florida fox squirrel and endangered species just by collecting data, a new University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences study shows. So-called citizen scientists did a commendable job collecting information on the fox squirrel, according to the study. Until this study, the conservation and
Thursday, May 5th, 2016
WASHINGTON, May 4, 2016—The leopard (Panthera pardus), one of the world’s most iconic big cats, has lost as much as 75 percent of its historic range, according to a paper published today in the scientific journal PeerJ. Conducted by partners including the National Geographic Society’s Big Cats Initiative, international conservation charities the Zoological Society of
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2016
BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—Earth could contain nearly 1 trillion species, with only one-thousandth of 1 percent now identified, according to a study from biologists at Indiana University. The estimate, based on the intersection of large datasets and universal scaling laws, appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study’s authors are Jay T.
Monday, May 2nd, 2016
NEW YORK, April 28, 2016—Scientists on an expedition through Madidi National Park—the world’s most biologically diverse protected area— have now discovered seven animal species new to science, finds that were made in 2015 and recently confirmed through careful comparisons with known species, according to the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and local partners. In total, Bolivian
Tuesday, April 26th, 2016
Large animals play a key role in mitigating climate change in tropical forests across the world by spreading the seeds of large trees that have a high capacity to store carbon, new research co-led by the University of Leeds has said. The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, sheds important new light on the
Thursday, April 21st, 2016
KINGSTON, R.I., April 18, 2016—Niels-Viggo Hobbs has spent a great deal of time in recent years exploring tide pools and the rocky shoreline of Rhode Island, and he said that the ecology of the shore has changed dramatically in the last two decades due to one relatively recent invader: the Asian shore crab. “Twenty years
