Image credit: Matt Rath/Chesapeake Bay Program For all the headlines it generates, climate change can still feel to many like a vague and distant threat, if not an outright straw man. Coastal communities, however, rarely enjoy such an advantage. A new study published Feb. 15 in the journal Science Advances, measures […]
Image: The butterfly European Skipper (Thymelicus lineola), photo by Ole Martin. A group from Aarhus University, Denmark discovered that insects leave DNA traces on the plants that they visit. Their discovery opens up a whole new way of identifying insect-plant interactions, tracking pollinators – especially endangered ones, and managing pest […]
Image credit:https://www.motherjones.com/food/2014/04/california-almond-farms-blamed-honeybee-die/ Every February in the United States, beekeepers from around the nation pack up their colonies and head to California to pollinate the Golden State’s almond trees. Almond growers pay around USD$300 million to rent these hives and without the bees, there would quite simply be no almonds. In 2014, […]
Photo credit: Dr. Zhanqi Chen Birds don’t do it, bees don’t do it, even educated fleas don’t do it. When it comes to babies drinking milk, breastfeeding probably comes to mind. If you’re Australian, or well versed in biology, you might also think of marsupials (which, although they produce milk, should you […]
Peru’s drying Rimac River. Photo by Jordan Kraft. While a polar vortex provides much of the northern hemisphere with a global warming paradox to mull over, another climate paradox plays out across the globe: despite intensifying rainfall, which is attributed to global warming, freshwater supplies are shrinking. Professor Ashish Sharma and […]
Image source: https://colombiareports.com/chiribiquete-national-park-in-heart-of-colombian-amazon-to-more-than-double-in-size/ War inflicts plenty of damage upon ecosystems (among other things), but peace carries its own pitfalls. In a study recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Drs. Dolors Armenteras, Laura Schneider and Liliana María Dávalos, of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Rutgers and Stony Brook, respectively, describe how the Colombian […]
Photo source: https://www.orangeville.com/news-story/7959809-here-s-the-18-point-roadside-inspection-orangeville-police-will-follow-to-determine-whether-motorists-may-be-impaired-by-drugs/ Debates over political responses to climate change tend to concern large effects, such as preventing the submersion of large and heavily populated coastal cities and preventing the loss of economically vital cropland. A group of researchers from Harvard and MIT, however, have noticed at least two effects […]
Image source: https://aggietranscript.ucdavis.edu/the-relationship-between-genetic-diversity-and-disturbance-in-the-eelgrass-species-zostera-marina/ Blue carbon (Blue C) is the carbon stored in coastal ecosystems, such as mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows. Correctly measuring the amount of carbon stored in these habitats is vital to avoid costly distortions in carbon markets and to efficiently manage conservation efforts. Recent research, however, […]