ecosystems

The eRNA detection method could one day be used to catch early warning signs of distress in wild ecosystems. 

The growing season on the tundra is starting earlier as the planet warms, but the plants aren’t sequestering more carbon, a new study finds.

An experimental study explores how plant communities may be affected by future declines in invertebrate populations.

Plants use two different strategies to photosynthesize underwater.

Geography plays a role in how the small mammals adapt to environmental changes.

The insects have already transformed parts of Signy Island in the South Atlantic Ocean and could drastically change Antarctic ecosystems if introduced by humans.

Researchers suspect the source of the toxins may be some of the state’s 50,000 or so marijuana farms.

Marabou storks on Kenya’s Mara River feast on the carcasses of migrating wildebeest that failed to make it across the waterway.

When scores of migrating wildebeest fail to survive a treacherous river crossing, their corpses fuel thriving ecosystems.

When thousands of animals die during mass migrations, ecosystems accommodate the corpses and new cycles are set in motion.

From fish harvests to cottonwood forests, organisms display evidence that species change can occur on timescales that can influence ecological processes.

Guppies transplanted between different communities in Trinidadian streams evolved in response to changes in predation threat in just a few generations.

Researchers report the first evidence that acidified waters alter the ocellated wrasse’s reproductive behavior in the wild.

Bob Paine, best known for introducing the idea of “keystone species,” has passed away at age 83.

Like cancer, ecological scourges result from the breakdown of regulatory processes, and may be treated with similar logic.

The White House announces the recipients of this year’s US National Medals of Science and of Technology and Innovation.

Mimicking the rainforest water holes left by peccaries can help boost frog populations, a study suggests.

Samples from an Antarctic lake 800 meters below the ice reveal an abundance of microbial life.

As rich sources of genetic diversity, the progenitors and kin of today’s food crops hold great promise for improving production in agriculture’s challenging future.