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Categories: Ecology: Invasive Species, Ecology: Trees

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Bugs including hoverflies, lacewings and ladybirds play an important role in keeping Britain's apples healthy, a new study has shown.

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Eight new Pacific bee species and new insights into Fijian bird behaviour on Viti Levu Island have been described in new scientific studies. The research highlights the potential for species discovery, ecological and conservation knowledge and cultural engagement from Asia-Pacific research collaborations.

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Australia can lay claim to two new species of native rodent thanks to a new study. The aptly named delicate mouse was previously thought to be a single species spanning a massive stretch of the country from the Pilbara in Western Australia, across parts of the Northern Territory and through Queensland down to the New South Wales border. We now know there are three distinct species.

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The effects of a phenomenon called tree masting on ecosystems and food webs can be better understood thanks to new theoretical models validated by real world observations.

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Deep-water corals in the Gulf of Mexico are still struggling to recover from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, scientists report at the Ocean Science Meeting in New Orleans. Comparing images of more than 300 corals over 13 years -- the longest time series of deep-sea corals to date -- reveals that in some areas, coral health continues to decline to this day.

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Knowledge from local communities has resulted in the first-ever nesting evidence and discovery of a breeding population of an incredibly rare turtle in India.

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New research reveals the scale of inappropriate reforestation projects across Africa. A new study reveals that an area the size of France is threatened by forest restoration initiatives, such as the AFR100 initiative (African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative), due to inappropriate restoration in the form of tree-planting.

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Researchers have identified significant differences between the diversity of gut bacteria in grey squirrels compared to red squirrels which could hold the key to further understanding the ability of grey squirrels to outcompete red squirrels in the UK.

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Researchers demonstrate the contribution of climate change to the spatial expansion of West Nile virus in Europe, a virus that constitutes a new public health threat in the continent. Their findings highlight a notable increase in the area ecologically suitable for the virus circulation since the beginning of last century and an increase in the human population at risk of exposure, due in part to climate change.

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Global warming may be interacting with regional rainfall and deforestation to accelerate forest loss in the Amazon, pushing it towards partial or total collapse. New research has identified the potential thresholds of these stressors, showing where their combined effects could produce a 'tipping point' -- in which the forest is so fragile that just a small disturbance could cause an abrupt shift in the state of the ecosystem.

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Australian birds that live on islands are among the species most at risk of extinction, a first-of-its-kind study has shown. Australia has over 750 native bird species. But many of them are facing an uncertain future.

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Analysis reveals imported earthworm species have colonized large swaths of North America, and represent a largely overlooked threat to native ecosystems. The researchers warn of the need to better understand and manage the invaders in our midst.

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The Greenland ice sheet lies thousands of miles from North America yet holds clues to the distant continent's environmental history. Nearly two miles thick in places, the ice sheet grows as snow drifts from the sky and builds up over time. But snow isn't the only thing carried in by air currents that swirl around the atmosphere, with microscopic pollen grains and pieces of ash mixing with snowfall and preserving records of the past in the ice. A new study examined these pollen grains and identified how eastern Canada's forests grew, retreated, and changed through time.

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New research reveals that denser, and more sheltered, kelp forests can withstand serious stressors amid warming ocean temperatures.

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Extreme events wipe out entire forests, dramatically eliminating complex ecosystems as well as local communities. Researchers have become quite familiar with such attention-grabbing events over the years. They know less, however, about the more common moderate-severity disturbances, such as relatively small fires, ice storms, and outbreaks of pests or pathogens.

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In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new study, researchers describe fossilized trees from New Brunswick, Canada with a surprising and unique three-dimensional crown shape.

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Researchers have discovered a change in what scientists already knew about global warming dynamics. It had been widely accepted since the 1950s that global temperature rises were not consistent throughout the day and night, with greater nighttime warming being observed. However, the recent study reveals a shift in dynamics: with greater daytime warming taking place since the 1990s. This shift means that the temperature difference between day and night is widening, potentially affecting all life on Earth.

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Green roofs have become increasingly popular thanks to their benefits related to climate adaptation, mitigation, and urban biodiversity management. But, in the U.S., green roofs are typically planted with non-native plants in sterile soils, and their effectiveness declines over time. A new study finds that managing green roof soil microbes boosts healthy urban soil development, which is a methodology that could be applied to support climate resilience in cities.

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As sea otters recolonize a California estuary, they are restoring its degraded geology by keeping populations of overgrazing marsh crabs in check, a new study shows. The crabs' appetite for plant roots, and their tunneling behavior had caused many of the estuary's marshes and creekbanks to erode and collapse in the otters' absence. Today, erosion has slowed by up to 90% in areas with large otter populations and marshes and streambeds are restabilizing.

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How is a beech leaf constructed? What determines the appearance of an asparagus? A new 'encyclopaedia' helps us learn more about the building blocks of plants. The encyclopaedia, probably the largest of its kind, could be used to improve targeted plant breeding efforts, to make them both more climate-resilient and more easily digestible.