Ecosystems

  1. Ecosystems

    Aging European forests full to the brim with carbon

    Trees' capacity to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is dwindling.

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  2. Paleontology

    Dinosaur had impressive schnoz

    Fossils found in Utah reveal geographic segregation of horned species.

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  3. Plants

    Mosses frozen in time come back to life

    Buried under a glacier for hundreds of years, plants regrow in the lab.

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  4. Life

    Microbes flourish at deepest ocean site

    At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, eleven kilometers down, bacteria prosper despite crushing pressure and isolation.

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  5. Animals

    Native pollinators boost crop yields worldwide

    Farms with crops from coffee to mangoes don’t get the best yields if they rely solely on honeybees.

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  6. Humans

    U.S. team breaks through subglacial lake

    Testing should continue for a day or more, probing for life in the Antarctic depths.

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  7. Life

    Victorian zoological map redrawn

    Species distribution patterns that inspired Darwin and Wallace get an update.

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  8. Tech

    Antarctic test of novel ice drill poised to begin

    Any day now, a team of 40 scientists and support personnel expects to begin using a warm, high pressure jet of water to bore a 30 centimeter hole through 83 meters of ice. Once it breaks through to the sea below, they’ll have a few days to quickly sample life from water before the hole begins freezing up again. It's just a test. But if all goes well, in a few weeks the team will move 700 miles and bore an even deeper hole to sample for freshwater life that may have been living for eons outside even indirect contact with Earth’s atmosphere.

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  9. Humans

    Warning to bats: Cuddle not

    Ecologist Kate Langwig of Boston University and her colleagues want Eastern bats to listen up: No more cuddling — at least during hibernation. Just keep those wings to yourselves.

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  10. Ecosystems

    Changing seasons inspire science

    Researchers are tapping into the wealth of observations being made by citizen scientists nationwide. One of the largest repositories of such data is maintained by the USA National Phenology Network.

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  11. Life

    Blue-green algae release chemical suspected in some amphibian deformities

    Retinoic acid levels high in waterways rich in cyanobacteria blooms.

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  12. Animals

    Bat killer hits endangered grays

    The news on white-nose syndrome just keeps spiraling downward. The fungal infection, which first emerged six years ago, has now been confirmed in a seventh species of North American bats — the largely cave-dwelling grays (Myotis grisecens). The latest victims were struck while hibernating this past winter in two Tennessee counties.

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