5,537 results
5,537 results for: Forests
- Animals
Can leeches leap? New video may help answer that debate
For some, it’s the stuff of nightmares. But a grad student’s serendipitous cell phone video might resolve a long-running debate over leech acrobatics.
- Plants
Ancient trees’ gnarled, twisted shapes provide irreplaceable habitats
Traits that help trees live for hundreds of years also foster forest life, one reason why old growth forest conservation is crucial.
- Life
The largest known genome belongs to a tiny fern
Though 'Tmesipteris oblanceolata' is just 15 centimeters long, its genome dwarfs humans’ by more than 50 times.
- Earth
Polar forests may have just solved a solar storm mystery
Spikes of carbon-14 in tree rings may be linked to solar flares, but evidence of the havoc-wreaking 1859 Carrington event has proven elusive until now.
- Archaeology
A new study challenges the idea that Rapa Nui islanders caused an ‘ecocide’
Rapa Niu islanders farmed and fished enough to feed only a few thousand people, too few to decimate society before Europeans arrived, researchers contend.
- Ecosystems
A new road map shows how to prevent pandemics
Past viral spillover events underscore the importance of protecting wildlife habitats.
- Animals
Giant tortoise migration in the Galápagos may be stymied by invasive trees
An invasion of Spanish cedar trees on Santa Cruz Island may block the seasonal migration routes of the island's giant tortoise population.
- Particle Physics
Forests might serve as enormous neutrino detectors
Trees could act as antennas that pick up radio waves of ultra-high energy neutrinos interactions, one physicist proposes.
- Animals
This orangutan used a medicinal plant on his face wound
Rakus the orangutan appeared to be treating a cut to his face with a plant that’s also used in traditional human medicine.
- Animals
Getting wild mosquitoes back to the lab alive takes a custom backpack
The new low-tech transportation method could help scientists in Africa assess if malaria-carrying mosquitoes are resistant to a common insecticide.
- Earth
Geoscientists found the most dangerous part of a famous West Coast fault
Seismic data reveal that the Cascadia megathrust consists of at least four segments, the most dangerous of which may lurk offshore of Washington.
- Life
The fruit fly revolutionized biology. Now it’s boosting science in Africa
African researchers are using Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies to advance studies of genetics, biomedicine, developmental biology, toxicology and more.
