Enlarge / Tawny crazy ants (Nylanderia fulva) feeding on a cricket. (credit: Lawrence E. Gilbert) Several years ago, staffers at Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco, Texas, noticed a new type of invasive ant species. Tawny crazy ants were so aggressive that they were driving birds out of their nests and occasionally swarming over […]
Enlarge / This song sparrow would be a better parent if the ravens would just shut up. (credit: Reed Kaestner) On paper, predators and prey have a pretty straightforward relationship when it comes to population totals. A lion kills a zebra, so there’s one less zebra in a herd. However, new research suggests that predators […]
Enlarge / The ship’s ram as it was found on the seabed off Sicily at a depth of nearly 90 m, covered in marine life. (credit: K. Egorov/SDSS-GUE) Shipwrecks hold an enduring fascination, both because of how they connect us to the past and because of the potentially priceless treasures that could be lurking within […]
Enlarge (credit: Pete Starman / Getty Images ) There’s been a steady stream of worries that artificial lights are steadily eroding our ability to see the stars. And a recent essay published in Science describes how artificial light affects the timing of events such as greening associated with plants in spring and autumn leaf-coloring. This […]
Enlarge / These rodents seemingly manage to avoid developing cancer. (credit: Jason Hollinger / Wikimedia Commons ) Cancer is a sad fact of life, as nearly 40 percent of people are diagnosed with it at some point in their lives. But humans aren’t alone in this. Many different species can also develop the disease—some more […]
Enlarge (credit: Howard Kingsnorth / Getty Images ) We’ve known for decades that tropical rainforests are special. They’re nearly unrivaled in biodiversity, and research has shown that they absorb more carbon dioxide than any other ecosystem. A recent study showed that the tropics sequester four times as much carbon dioxide as temperate and boreal ecosystems […]
Enlarge / From some perspectives, the forest garden doesn’t stand out from the landscape. (credit: Chelsey Armstrong) In the 1930s, an archeologist from the Smithsonian wrote a short paper remarking on the exquisite vegetation around First Nation villages in Alaska. The surroundings were filled with nuts, stone fruit, berries, and herbs—several non-native to the area […]
The bones of a pygmy mammoth. (credit: National Park Service/Justin Tweet) Humans haven’t always been great to nature. But at least our ancestors may not have killed off island megafauna in the distant past, so that’s something. New research, published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, suggests that there’s not enough data to […]
Enlarge / The stark surface of Redonda Island is turning green again. (credit: Invertzoo) Hundreds of years ago, Europeans were sailing the globe and “discovering” new parcels of land—and rats came along with them as stowaways. As crews made landfall on many islands, rats hopped off and made themselves new homes. The rats prospered, out-competing, […]
Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Colombia’s rainforest looked very different 66 million years ago. At present, the humid and biodiverse ecosystem is jam-packed with plants and is covered in a thick, light-blocking canopy of leaves and branches. Notably, there are no dinosaurs. But prior to the dinosaurs going away with the Chicxulub impact, signaling the end of […]