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Georgia Tech scientists are revealing how decades-long research programs have transformed our understanding of evolution, from laboratory petri dishes to tropical islands—along the way uncovering secrets that would remain hidden in shorter studies.

A team of scientists with the Sea Mammal Research Unit, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, in the U.K. has found that gray seals are able to monitor their blood oxygen levels as a means to prevent drowning. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes experiments they conducted at a pool with captured gray seals involving changes to oxygen...

Insecticides may help growers hoping to protect their crops from harmful insects, but they also may contribute to a larger amount of some weeds, according to a study led by researchers at Penn State.

An international team on board Schmidt Ocean Institute's R/V Falkor (too) working in the Bellingshausen Sea rapidly pivoted their research plans to study an area that was, until last month, covered by ice. On January 13, 2025, an iceberg the size of Chicago, named A-84, broke away from the George VI Ice Shelf, one of the massive floating glaciers attached to the Antarctic Peninsula...

Researchers from the University of Florence and University of Pisa conducted an experiment demonstrating that managed honeybees (Apis mellifera) on Giannutri Island significantly deplete nectar and pollen availability, leading to around an 80% decline in wild bee populations. Results provide strong causal evidence that honeybee competition, rather than environmental change, is responsible for wild bee decline.

Climate change is causing the world's glaciers to disappear at an alarming rate. Scientists have been studying and modeling this process for years, but until now, no research group has specifically examined how glacier melt will affect glacier-fed streams and their ecosystems.

A team of botanists with members from Muse–Museo delle Scienze, Udzungwa Corridor LTD, Via Grazia Deledda and the National Museum of Kenya has discovered a new species of tree growing in the mountainous rain forests of Tanzania. In their paper published in the journal Phytotaxa, the group describes how and where the tree was found and its characteristics.

A new study has discovered that birds in the Galápagos Islands are changing their behavior due to traffic noise, with those frequently exposed to vehicles showing heightened levels of aggression.

Protecting native forests combined with transitioning fallow and unmanaged agricultural lands to 'Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) and other place-based agroforestry systems has direct benefits for local fisheries, according to a new study published in npj Ocean Sustainability by an interdisciplinary team from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, Kamehameha Schools and Seascape Solutions.

Forests provide many ecosystem services, including microclimate regulation, biodiversity preservation, air and water purification, and soil protection. Together with the oceans, they are one of the two most important carbon sinks, due to their capacity to store carbon in the soil and in tree biomass.

The oceans teem with photosynthesizing bacteria, tiny-tailed dinoflagellates gobbling other plankton, algae surrounded by intricate glass skeletons. In the 1960s, the ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson pointed out something confusing: Why do so many kinds of plankton exist? Mathematically, they shouldn't all be able to survive when they must compete for the same set of nutrients.

Scientists stalking a small marsupial through a remote Australian rainforest say they may have found a clue to the mystery of why its bigger kangaroo cousins hop instead of walk.

Imagine looking at the world through the stalked compound eyes of krill in the Southern Ocean. All of a sudden, a penguin appears like a voracious giant, streamlined like a torpedo, chasing and consuming thousands of krill at rapid speed.

Climatic stress events, such as extreme temperatures and prolonged droughts, are increasingly affecting tree growth and phenology—the timing of developmental stages like leaf burst and senescence.

When Jeff Kneebone was a college student in 2002, his research involved a marine mystery that has stumped curious scientists for the last two decades. That mystery had to do with thorny skates in the North Atlantic. In some parts of their range, individuals of this species come in two distinct sizes, irrespective of sex, and no one could figure out why. At the...

A study conducted by researchers from São Paulo State University (UNESP), in Brazil, and collaborators shows that lemon leafcutter ants (Atta sexdens) exhibit behaviors that go beyond so-called social immunity, i.e. the ability to detect pathogens and try to get rid of them for the benefit of the colony.

A major review of over 67,000 animal species has found that while the natural world continues to face a biodiversity crisis, targeted conservation efforts are helping bring many species back from the brink of extinction.

The red coral colonies that were transplanted a decade ago on the seabed of the Medes Islands have survived successfully. They are very similar to the original communities and have contributed to the recovery of the functioning of the coral reef, a habitat where species usually grow very slowly.

Although fungi of the genus Piloderma are common, scientists have now discovered five previously unknown species. One of these is one of the most widely distributed species in Northern Europe, while another is found only in old-growth forests.

Recent research by scientists at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), Texas Tech University, and several other collaborating institutions have identified ancient fossils of a newly described tree species named Astropanax eogetem.

In the summer of 2020, researchers from the University of Manitoba set up a time-lapse camera overlooking the Churchill River Estuary. The goal of their research was to understand the interactions between beluga whales and marine vessels. However, what they captured was unexpected—a group of bowhead whales, a phenomenon never before documented in the area.

On first inspection, the Cuban blue-headed quail dove doesn't look like much: drab brown feathers, a slender beak, and a pronounced strut in its walk, typical of most other doves. You'd be forgiven for overlooking it in favor of Cuba's prismatic parrots. But looks aren't everything. For decades, this unassuming bird has perplexed biologists, who have no idea where it came from, how it...

Underground seed banks in South Africa that date back over 130 years have been found to contain fynbos seeds that are alive. These seed banks are natural storage areas in the soil where certain plants preserve their seeds.

When Jay Falk and Scott Taylor first saw the white-necked Jacobin hummingbird chick in Panama's dense rainforest, the bird biologists didn't know what they were looking at.