By UMass Amherst 4/1/2019 UMass Amherst, Smithsonian, Florida research reports wider ecological benefits In a new analysis of the effectiveness of marine protected areas worldwide, University of Massachusetts Amherst marine ecologist Brian Cheng and colleagues report that reserves not only replenish target fish populations, they also restore ecological functioning. However, not all reserves performed equally well. Ecological functioning is a…
By UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences 4/4/2019 Tracking changes in diseases over time is an increasingly important topic given changes in global temperature. Put simply, is a warmer world a sicker world? Reported rates of disease may increase over time but it is difficult to distinguish between better reporting of disease, and true increases in disease prevalence. A new…
By The Cornell Lab of Ornithology 4/1/2019 An estimated 600 million birds die from building collisions every year in the United States. Scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have published new research highlighting artificial light at night as a contributing factor. They’ve ranked metropolitan areas where, due to a combination of light pollution and geography, birds are at the greatest…
By University of Alberta 3/26/2019 Tracking animals using DNA signatures are ideally suited to answer the pressing questions required to conserve the world’s wildlife, providing benefits over invasive methods such as ear tags and collars, according to a new study by University of Alberta biologists. Genetic tagging, or the identification and tracking of individual animals using DNA, is a non-invasive…
By Center for Biological Diversity 3/20/2019 Big Cats’ Habitat Fragmentation Highlights Need for Wildlife Crossings LOS ANGELES— Mountain lions in California’s Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains are heading rapidly toward extinction, a new study in Ecological Applications finds. Researchers with UCLA, UC Davis and the National Park Service found that habitat loss and fragmentation have driven the populations to dangerously low levels of…
By UC Davis 3/20/2019 Two isolated mountain lion populations in Southern California’s Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains are at risk of local extinction, perhaps as soon as within 50 years, according to a study published in the journal Ecological Applications. The study showed the extinction risk is due to low genetic diversity and mortality that affects the stability of the…
By UMass Amherst 3/19/2019 UMass Amherst, Canadian researchers identify blackpoll warbler migration routes Blackpoll warblers that breed in western North America may migrate up to 12,400 miles roundtrip each year, some crossing the entire North American continent before making a nonstop trans-ocean flight of up to four days to South America. Now a new study led by first author Bill…
By University of Guelph 3/19/2019 It’s an epic journey for a tiny bird. For the first time, University of Guelph biologists have tracked an annual migration of up to 20,000 kilometres made by the 12-gram blackpoll warbler, one of the fastest declining songbirds in North America. The bird’s trek between its breeding grounds in the central and western boreal forest…
By McGill University 3/14/2019 New research from McGill University reveals an overlooked impact that the widely used herbicide glyphosate may be having on the environment. First commercialized by Monsanto under the name Roundup, glyphosate has come under scrutiny in the past, mostly in relation to its potential toxicity. This new research, published recently in the Ecological Society of America’s Frontiers…
By Montana State University 3/13/2019 As a college freshman, Alex Washburne already had his dream job: capturing lizards in the arid grasslands of New Mexico. He later went on to study snails, analyze stock prices for a hedge fund and collect scat for a major elk study around the Rockies. But it wasn’t until he crashed his rear-wheel drive truck…
By University of Wyoming 3/13/2019 Driven by the need for food, moose in western Wyoming are less likely to change their behavior to avoid wolves as winter progresses, according to new research by University of Wyoming scientists. The findings, published today (March 13) in the journal Ecology, provide new insights into the interactions of the region’s apex predators and their prey….
By San Diego State University 3/14/2019 California sheephead and spiny lobsters may be helping control sea urchin populations in Southern California kelp forests, where sea otters — a top urchin predator — have long been missing, according to a new San Diego State University (SDSU) study published in the journal Ecology. The research provides new insight into the complex predator-prey relationships…
By University of Freiburg 3/12/2019 The little owl, Athene noctua, is a small nocturnal owl and is classified as an endangered species on the German Red List. In recent years the existing population of little owls has successfully been stabilized in the south-west of Germany, and in some places numbers are even rising. In neighboring northern Switzerland on the other…
By Michigan State University 3/1/2019 African carnivores face numerous threats from humans. So, it’s a fair assumption that the presence of more humans automatically equates to decreases across the board for carnivores. New research led by Michigan State University and published in the current issue of Ecological Applications, however, shows that’s not always the case. The truth is some species…
By University of Göttingen 2/19/2019 Fairy circles are round gaps in arid grassland that are distributed very uniformly over the landscape and only occur along the Namib Desert in southern Africa and in parts of Australia. Various theories circulate about the actual cause of these unusual spatial patterns, ranging from poisonous Euphorbia plants or rising gases, to ants, termites or…
By Point Blue Conservation Science 2/21/2019 How wildlife respond to climate change is likely to be complex. To better understand the effects of climate change on the bird community in the Sierra Nevada region, new research published today from Point Blue Conservation Science examines the impacts to birds from a recent extreme drought (2013-2016). The drought resulted in the widespread…
By Princeton University 2/20/2019 Tokita, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB), is partially funded by a fellowship from the National Science Foundation. He works with Corina Tarnita, an associate professor in EEB, to create computational models for how social groups — including ants and humans — develop properties like division of labor and social networks. Read more here: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/02/20/tokita-receives-graduate-student-policy-award-ecological-society-america
By National Science Foundation 2/6/2019 Scientists find that decades of degradation created ‘resistant’ coral reefs Marine biologist Peter Edmunds was prepared for the worst. Back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes had torn through the Caribbean in September 2017. The scientist and his colleagues weren’t sure what they’d find when they visited fragile coral reefs near the island of St. John after the…
By THÜNEN INSTITUTE 2/4/2019 Sustainable exploitation of wild fish is possible, but only when fisheries policies are implemented that ensure precautionary catch regulations Due to overcapacities in fishing fleets and insufficiently regulated catches, many fish stocks in the Northeast-Atlantic had reached very low levels by the end of the 20th century. However, an increasing number of stocks has shown signs…
By The University of Oklahoma 2/6/2019 An OU team from the Geographical Ecology Group conducted 54 experiments in both grazed and ungrazed grasslands to determine the salt cravings of insects and the types of insects that crave salt. NORMAN–A University of Oklahoma team from the Geographical Ecology Group has published a new study in the journal Ecology on the nutritional preferences of…