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…
In the Santa Ana River floodplain, an endangered plant needs the effects of intense flooding to grow and survive in loose soil
By Notre Dame 3/5/2019 In the United States, the Great Salt Lake in Utah is home to a multimillion dollar brine shrimp industry, which collects and sells the brine shrimp cysts, or eggs, as a food source for prawn farming around the world. However, the GSL and brine shrimp are also a key resource for waterbirds during migration and nesting….
Two Canadian biologists, including Dr. Troy McMullin of the Canadian Museum of Nature, are proposing a better way to assess the conservation value of old-growth forests in North America—using lichens, sensitive bioindicators of environmental change.
By University of Wyoming 3/5/2019 A rare plant found only at two sites in central Wyoming has persisted, in part, because it can recover from relatively low densities and grows at different rates within each location, according to new research led by a University of Wyoming scientist. The desert yellowhead, which grows on fewer than 55 acres in the Beaver…
By University College London 3/4/2019 Alien species are the main driver of recent extinctions in both animals and plants, according to a new study by UCL researchers. They found that since 1500, alien species have been solely responsible for 126 extinctions, 13% of the total number studied. Of 953 global extinctions, 300 happened in some part because of alien species,…
Researchers forecast interactions between two owl species and the quality of their habitat in the Pacific Northwest
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…
Upcoming research in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
Researchers on a remote New Zealand island combine traditional field methods with DNA sequencing to estimate invertebrate biodiversity