Friday, August 29th, 2014
Protected areas conserve biodiversity and more action is needed to ensure safeguards are in place to protect these areas, researchers say.Published in PLOS ONE, researchers from Monash University, Stellenbosch University and the University of Exeter, used meta-analysis – combining results from different studies – to look at the past 30 years of research into these areas, to determine
Monday, August 25th, 2014
The National Science Foundation has awarded six grants totaling about $7.5 million to digitize biodiversity collections, a nationwide effort coordinated by the iDigBio program based at the University of Florida. The research is critical to understanding our planet and how changes in biological diversity affect human societies. The funding will shed light on “dark data,”
Thursday, August 21st, 2014
UBC PhD candidate Jake Wall has adapted satellite tracking technology to help protect endangered African elephants. Wall’s research looks into elephant needs of food, space, connectivity with the environment, security and water. According to Wall, his research, and that of the Save the Elephants organization which he works with in Kenya “focuses on the movement
Thursday, July 17th, 2014
During the 2011 and 2012 migration seasons, University of Missouri researchers monitored mallard ducks with new remote satellite tracking technology, marking the first time ducks have been tracked closely during the entirety of their migration from Canada to the American Midwest and back. The research revealed that mallards use public and private wetland conservation areas
Wednesday, July 9th, 2014
Monitoring wildlife in the Arctic is difficult. Study areas are cold, barren and often inaccessible. For decades scientists have struggled to study animals, like polar bears, which live in these remote areas. Now researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey have begun testing a new, yet counterintuitive solution – rather then get close to the animals,
Tuesday, July 8th, 2014
Since the 19th century, scientists have brought voucher specimens back from the field. Most now sit in research institutions around the world “dried, mounted, pickled, preserved, frozen, and stuffed,” according to the creators of Lifemapper, an online species-distribution tool.
Monday, July 7th, 2014
The unprecedented effort to conserve greater sage-grouse and sagebrush habitat is a complicated process that encompasses 11 states, six federal agencies and numerous non-governmental groups. To help journalists, stakeholders and the interested public stay informed about this effort, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has built a new greater sage-grouse website and assigned three public
Tuesday, July 1st, 2014
Assistant Professor Michael Madritch from Appalachian State University’s Department of Biology is part of the National Science Foundation’s “Dimensions of Biodiversity” program. The goal of the decade-long NSF program is to transform how Earth’s biological diversity is described and understood by the year 2020.
Thursday, June 26th, 2014
Existing protected areas are performing very poorly in terms of protecting the world’s most threatened species, a James Cook University researcher has found. Dr Oscar Venter, a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in JCU’s School of Marine and Tropical Biology, led a team of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, Stanford University,
Tuesday, May 27th, 2014
Scientists have discovered that the rapid spread of hybridization between a native species and an invasive species of trout in the wild is strongly linked to changes in climate. In the study, stream temperature warming over the past several decades and decreases in spring flow over the same time period contributed to the spread of
