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Categories: Ecology: Animals, Ecology: Sea Life

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A new study of squirrels in California's Sierra Nevada mountains finds that climate is just one factor impacting where species make their homes in a changing world.

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Researchers have discovered the first effective bacterial probiotic for treating and preventing stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), a mysterious ailment that has devastated Florida's coral reefs since 2014 and is rapidly spreading throughout the Caribbean. The probiotic treatment provides an alternative to the use of the broad-spectrum antibiotic amoxicillin, which has so far been the only proven treatment for the disease but which runs the risk of promoting antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

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Natural disasters can devastate a region, abruptly killing the species that form an ecosystem's structure. But how this transpires can influence recovery. While fires scorch the landscape to the ground, a heatwave leaves an army of wooden staves in its wake. Storm surges and coral bleaching do something similar underwater.

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A framework has been developed to test disgust and its associated disease avoidance behaviors across various animal species, social systems, and habitats. Over 30 species have been predicted to exhibit disease avoidance strategies in the wild. With these predictions, the team accounts for models of specific ecological niches, sensory environments and social systems for a number of species including the native common octopus and the invasive red-eared slider, which are both relevant to Japan.

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Researchers created a new way to estimate the abundance of invasive 'sleeper' species in freshwater ecosystems and help guide management strategies.

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Current methods to monitor red tide are limited. Using AUTOHOLO, a new autonomous, submersible, 3D holographic microscope and imaging system, a study is the first to characterize red tide in the field and breaks new ground for monitoring harmful algal blooms.

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The number of insects has been declining for years. This has already been well documented for agricultural areas. In forests, however, temporal trends are mostly studied for insect species that are considered pests. Now, a research team has studied the trends of very many insect species in German forests. Contrary to what the researchers had suspected, the results showed that the majority of the studied species are declining.

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Marine predators have expanded their ranges into the Arctic waters over the last twenty years, driven by climate change and associated increases in productivity.

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A groundbreaking three-year study in the South Pacific has found evidence that ocean warming can trigger outbreaks of 'dinoflagellate-infecting RNA viruses' that attack symbiotic algae inside corals. Coral reef viruses have gained greater attention since being implicated in 2021 as a possible cause of stony coral tissue loss disease that has decimated Florida and Caribbean reefs for almost a decade.

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In the face of a warming climate that is having a profound effect on global biodiversity and will change the distribution and abundance of many animals, a research team has developed a statistical model that improves estimates of habitat suitability and extinction probability for cold-blooded animals as temperatures climb.

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While pollinator populations of many species have plummeted worldwide, one bee species is blowing up the map with its rapid population expansion. The key to this insect's success? Its passion for pumpkins, zucchinis, and other squashes, and the massive increase in cultivation of these crops across North America over the last 1,000 years. A new study found that the squash bee (Eucera pruinosa) has evolved in response to intensifying agriculture -- namely squashes in the genus Curcurbita. The research has demonstrated the role of agriculture as an evolutionary force acting on a wild insect pollinator and may have implications for food security.

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Researchers are deploying the latest mapping techniques to identify the most important suburban habitat for North America's largest woodpecker. Wildlife habitat in congested places is becoming increasingly fragmented as forests give way to new construction. Eventually, this could spell trouble to an animal with specific habitat needs like the pileated woodpecker.

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The Indo-West Pacific is the largest marine ecosystem on Earth, but scientists who study its diversity have to contend with a problem so well-known it was remarked upon by Charles Darwin: related species in the IWP have similar appearances, making it difficult to assess just how many there are. A new study reveals that nearly identical crab species have one consistently distinguishing feature, which only evolves when their ranges overlap.

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The McCloud River redband trout, or O. mykiss calisulat, is newly identified as its own distinct subspecies of rainbow trout in a new study. It was named in consultation with the Winnemem Wintu tribe.

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Life comes in all shapes in sizes, but some sizes are more popular than others, new research has found. A survey of body sizes of all Earth's living organisms has uncovered an unexpected pattern. Contrary to what current theories can explain, our planet's biomass -- the material that makes up all living organisms -- is concentrated in organisms at either end of the size spectrum.

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Moths are more efficient pollinators at night than day-flying pollinators such as bees, finds new research.

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Larvae produced by black rockfish, a linchpin of the West Coast commercial fishing industry for the past eight decades, fared better during two recent years of unusually high ocean temperatures than had been feared, new research finds.

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Researchers have developed a method to measure coral biodiversity through extracting the environmental DNA (or eDNA) from a liter of surface seawater collected from above a reef. The method has been confirmed to work through observations made by scientific divers in the same areas of ocean. This has paved the way for large-scale comprehensive surveys of reef-building coral to take place and removes the reliance of direct observations made through scientific scuba diving or snorkeling.

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A group of researchers discovered that the rhodopsin -- a protein in the eye that detects light -- of whale sharks has changed to efficiently detect blue light, which penetrates deep-sea water easily. The amino acid substitutions -- one of which is counterintuitively associated with congenital stationary night blindness in humans -- aid in detecting the low levels of light in the deep-sea. Although these changes make the whale shark rhodopsin less thermally stable the deep-sea temperature, allows their rhodopsin to keep working. This suggests that the unique adaptation evolved to function in the low-light low-temperature environment where whale sharks live.

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Solving the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis are not separate issues. Animals remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide each year. Restoring species will help limit global warming, new science reveals.