Ecology & Zoology

At least five mass extinction events have profoundly changed the course of life on Earth - animal life, at least. Plants have been very resilient to those events, finds a new study. For over 400…

In 2006, there was a large die-off in bees and though their numbers quickly rebounded and have continued upward since, scientists have been looking for ways to make the periodic collapses that occur…

The Great Lakes have been invaded by more non-native species than any other freshwater ecosystem in the world, and though there have been increasing efforts to stem the tide of invasion threats, they…

Evolution starts species off on different paths and even if they arrived in one spot from common descent in the past, they can't reproduce. So in modern times an elephant is not hybridizing with a…

By Tobias Pamminger, University of Sussex Ants have a reputation of being industrious hard-working animals, sacrificing their own benefit for the good of the colony. They live to serve their queen…

A few years ago, another colony collapse occurred. Though it has happened more times than recorded history has been able to log, the concern was that new pesticides, which replaced the old pesticides…

If you own a home, termites are the enemy, but if you want to hold back a desert, their large dirt mounds can be crucial to protecting semi-arid ecosystems and agricultural lands. That's obviously…

By: Leigh Cooper,  Inside Science (Inside Science) – Despite their agility in flight, birds often find themselves unable to escape vehicles – a conundrum that puzzles scientists. To solve the…

A brilliant-green sea slug can live for months at a time "feeding" on sunlight like a plant and now scientists have the first direct evidence that its chromosomes have some genes that come from the…

Sex or no sex?  If you want to be healthier as a species over time, sexual reproduction is the way to go, according to a new study.  It's a long-debated topic among biologists - some argue…