Architects, ecologists and urban planners design projects to tackle upcoming waterfront property issues in New York City due to rising sea levels from climate change, zebra finches play electric guitar as they go about their routines in a London exhibit and bacteria colonies produce intricate Petri dish art. Here is what’s happening in ecology for the last week in March.

Here are some highlights from the latest Policy News.  See the full edition here.   AIR POLLUTION: CARPER PLANS FOR APRIL MARK-UP OF 3-POLLUTANT BILL–Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) said this week that he expects a mid-April markup of legislation to curb power plant pollution in the full Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. Carper, who chairs the Clean Air Subcommittee,…

One hundred million years ago, Earth experienced its first great peak in biodiversity. Flowers emerged and with them pollinators, dinosaurs towered over newly evolved mammals and marsupials, the steaming jungles were teeming with newly arrived ants and termites, and the oceans were filled with gigantic, air-breathing reptiles. This was life during the Cretaceous period, Earth between two great extinctions.

Scientists are still uncovering the potential uses for nanotechnology. Just this month, researchers have reported on nanotechnology’s potential to eradicate cancer cells and blood diseases, desalinate seawater on the go and convert environmental energy waste to hydrogen fuel. With new research arising daily, it seems nanotechnology could have many applications in medicine and alternative energy.

Video describing the challenges of male pregnancy, photo gallery of the oldest trees in the world, podcast outlining Earth’s environmental tipping points and an article on adapting to the anthropocene. Here is ecological news from the third week in March.

Just last week, two Hawaiian bird species from the island of Kaua’i and their respective habitats were put on the endangered species list along with a Hawaiian fly and 45 types of Hawaiian plants. However, while the action signifies movement from the Obama Administration toward protecting at-risk species and their habitats, the listing does not come a second too soon: Recent research shows U.S. birds, especially in Hawaii, are in great peril.

In the tragic battle against devil facial tumor disease (DFTD), scientists may have found the first “glimmer of hope” near Cradle Mountain in northwestern Tasmania. At least that is what Katherine Belov of the University of Sydney and colleagues are saying about this unique colony that has resisted the disease.

When we consider all the conservation challenges facing our world and society, we know that communicating effectively to the community is not only helpful but necessary. However, many inspiring projects in various conservation areas have failed to succeed—not because the scientific background was not there or because the financial resources were unavailable—but because the community’s support was not entirely there. One of the elements to a successful conservation project is a strong connection to the community, especially during the early stages of project planning.

Aquanaut describes plans to colonize the sea for education and conservation, a pitcher plant previously thought to be carnivorous has been wildly reclassified and the first condor egg in 100 years discovered in California. Here are news stories and studies on ecological science from the second week in March.

March 15: highlights from the latest ESA Policy News by ESA’s Science Policy Analyst, Piper Corp.

I was thumbing through my New Yorker magazine when the featured fiction story caught my eye. The accompanying graphic showed several silhouetted ants and the opening line of the story read: “The Trailhead Queen was dead.” I began reading and got pulled into the plight facing the colony, which was profoundly affected by the death of its long-lived queen.

Something about the fiction story was different though. While it kept my attention it also fed me detailed and fascinating facts (e.g. “…..ants are encased in an external skeleton; their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain, a knight’s armor fully intact long after the knight is gone.”) Halfway through reading, it struck me that this was just the sort of story a biologist could write. I flipped back to check who authored the piece and was startled to see that it was a biologist.

Since Darwin, scientists have been theorizing as to why there is variation in brain size between species and individuals. Does a larger brain, in say humans, indicate advanced cognitive abilities and complex language processing? Or is a smaller brain, such as the Olive-backed thrush’s, adapted to weigh less to accommodate lengthy flights?

In psychology, the field of phrenology has generally been dissolved, and with it, the idea that variations in brain size could indicate differences in intelligence, creativity or personality between humans. In the field of biology, however, scientists are discovering that brain variation across species might actually be linked to ecological competence. In this case, ecological competence describes the efficiency of a species to engage in ecological processes—such as flexible foraging abilities or advanced spatial memory for migration.