by the University of Georgia 7/13/2020 Athens, Ga. – The ringtail, a relative of the raccoon, is a nocturnal creature that lives in arid regions of western North America. Despite their solitary nature, they have long been known to inhabit national park buildings in southern Utah, where they scavenge food from trash cans. This makes them an excellent subject for…
by the University of Montana 7/1/2020 FLATHEAD LAKE – In a new study published in the scientific journal Ecology, researchers from the University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station may have unlocked a mystery surrounding unique aquatic insects in the Flathead watershed. “There’s a surprising adaptation of stoneflies in alluvial aquifers that allows them to use low-oxygen or oxygen-free environments,” said…
By Michigan State University 6/30/2020 How many elephants are in Tanzania? How many trees are in the Amazon? How many tuna are in the Atlantic? While we probably wouldn’t know the answers to these questions on an individual level, new research indicates that if we collectively consider all our wrong answers, as a group we would probably arrive at the…
By University of Wyoming 6/29/2020 A University of Wyoming researcher and her Ph.D. student have spent the last three years studying the decline of the Western bumblebee. The two have been working with a group of bumblebee experts to fill in gaps of missing information from previous data collected in the western United States. Their goal is to provide information…
By The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research 6/29/2020 Plants are sprouting earlier and earlier due to climate change, but for roe deer, the timing of fawning is advancing more slowly. This results in changes to the food supply during critical periods of the fawns’ growth. Deer populations at lower altitudes are particularly affected, according to a…
By Boston University 6/28/2020 Pamela Templer, a Professor in the Department of Biology and a Faculty Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, recently co-authored an editorial arguing for a more “solutions-based” higher education experience that combines an interdisciplinary approach with a focus on human and environmental well-being. In the article, published in the journal Frontiers…
By Woods Hole Research Center 6/10/2020 Vehicles and equipment used in winter-time seismic surveys for oil and gas drilling can leave long-lasting scars in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, raising questions about whether existing regulations are sufficient to protect the Refuge and the indigenous communities that rely on its wildlife, according to new research published in the journal Ecological Applications. Despite requirements that…
by University of Alaska Fairbanks 6/9/2020 Winter vehicle travel can cause long-lasting damage to the tundra, according to a new paper by University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers published in the journal Ecological Applications. Scars from seismic surveys for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge remained for decades, according to the study. The findings counter assertions made…
by University of Reading 6/11/20 Around 194 million birds and 29 million mammals are thought to be killed each year on European roads, according to a new study that has ranked the most vulnerable species. An international research team used 90 roadkill surveys from 24 European countries to create a new method of estimating both the birds and mammal species…
By Universidade de Aveiro 6/9/2020 Approximately 194 million birds and 29 million mammals are struck by vehicles each year on European roads, according to estimates by an international team of researchers led by Clara Grilo, from the Center for Environmental and Sea Studies (CESAM) and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. The study was conducted at a…
By Oregon State University 6/7/2020 CORVALLIS, Ore. – Pockets of landscape less prone than adjacent areas to disturbances like fire and drought may hold the key for scientists, conservationists and land managers seeking to preserve vulnerable species in a changing climate. These areas, categorized as “disturbance refugia,” are becoming a focal point for ecologists trying to learn why change doesn’t…
By University of Illinois 6/9/2020 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — For 25 years, Carol Augspurger visited a patch of ancient woods near Urbana to look at the same 25 one-square-meter plots of earth she first demarcated for study in 1993. She surveyed the plots once a week in spring and summer, tracking the major life events of each of the herbaceous plants…
By University of New Mexico 6/8/2020 Fire has been a central component in California’s natural and human history for millennia. Native Americans’ use of cultural burns in landscape management, in addition to lightning-ignited fires that burned unhindered, impacted most of the state’s ecosystems. However, in the late 1800s, California’s landscape underwent an era of Euro-American fire exclusion and suppression. As…
By UC Davis 6/8/2020 Which Lands Stand the Best Chance for Conservation and Wildfire Restoration? Some landscapes can hold their own against climate change better than others. A study from the University of California, Davis, maps these places, called “climate refugia,” where existing vegetation is most likely to buffer the impacts of climate change through the end of the century. It found…
By Penn State University 6/3/2020 The Latin name for brook trout — Salvelinus fontinalis — means “speckled fish of the fountains,” but a new study by Penn State researchers suggests, for the first time, that the larger streams and rivers those fountains, or headwaters, flow into may be just as important to the brook trout. With few exceptions, brook trout…
By Northern Arizona University 6/2/2020 A Northern Arizona University professor co-authored a paper on the importance of springs in a drying climate that is in the inaugural climate change refugia special edition of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The issue focuses on refugia, which refers to areas that are relatively buffered from current climate change and shelter valued wildlife,…
By MNHN – CNRS 6/2/2020 A team of researchers from the ‘Adaptation and Evolution‘ unit of the French National Museum of Natural History (MNHN – CNRS) has published the results of a novel study in French Guiana on the effects that hunting can have on forest regeneration. They found that when large animals that naturally disperse the seeds of some…
By University of Santa Barbara 6/2/2020 Biologists and fishermen alike know that offshore oil platforms function as de facto habitats for fish. The structures climb hundreds of feet into the water column, creating a prefab reef out in open water. But many of these platforms will soon be decommissioned, and government agencies are considering the potential ecological effects in deciding…
By University of Massachusetts Amherst 6/1/2020 The notion of conserving climate change refugia – areas relatively buffered from current climate change that shelter valued wildlife, ecosystems, and other natural resources – is only about 10 years old, but the field has matured enough that a leading journal has prepared a special issue on the topic. It offers “a look back…
By University of Alberta 6/1/2020 North America’s boreal forests are warming and drying from climate change, but they still hold places that can offer refuge for plants and animals, according to University of Alberta scientists who have taken the lead in creating a guide to identify those areas. The information about these sheltered places known as climate-change refugia—including large lakes,…