Ecosystems

  1. Ecosystems

    Darwin’s Devices

    What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology, by John Long.

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  2. Animals

    Better bird nesting also good for giant manta rays

    Disrupting tree canopies on a Pacific atoll discourages big fish off shore through a long chain of ecological consequences.

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  3. Life

    Climate change may leave many mammals homeless

    In some places over the next century, projected warming threatens the survival of more than one in three species.

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  4. Humans

    Bat killer is still spreading

    Since 2006, some 6 million to 7 million North American bats have succumbed to white-nose syndrome, a virulent fungal disease. That figure, issued in January by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, at least sextupled the former estimate that biologists had been touting. But the sharp jump in the cumulative death toll isn’t the only disturbing new development. On April 2, scientists confirmed that white-nose fungus has apparently struck bats hibernating in two small Missouri caves. The first signs of clinical disease have also just emerged in Europe.

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  5. Humans

    Yet another study links insecticide to bee losses

    Since 2006, honeybee populations across North America have been hammered by catastrophic losses. Although this pandemic has a name — colony collapse disorder, or CCD — its cause has remained open to speculation. New experiments now strengthen the case for pesticide poisoning as a likely contributor.

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  6. Life

    Rising carbon dioxide confuses brain signaling in fish

    Nerve cells respond to acidifying waters.

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  7. Ecosystems

    Groundwater dropping globally

    Nine-year record collected from orbit finds supply dropping mostly due to agriculture.

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  8. Tech

    Hooking fish, not endangered turtles

    A tuna fisherman has taken it upon himself to make the seas safer for sea turtles, animals that are threatened or endangered with extinction worldwide. He’s designed a new hook that he says will make bait unavailable to marine birds and turtles until long after it’s sunk well below the range where these animals venture to eat.

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  9. Humans

    Infected bats can recover . . . with lots of help

    Researchers reported new data today confirming that with enough coddling, many heavily infected bats can recover. The rub: These scientists also pointed out that there really aren’t sufficient resources to save more than a handful this way.

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  10. Earth

    Eels point to suffocating Gulf floor

    In June, scientists predicted that the Gulf of Mexico’s annual dead zone — a subsea region where the water contains too little oxygen to support life — might develop into the biggest ever. In fact, that didn’t happen. Owing to the fortuitous arrival of stormy weather, this year’s dead zone peaked at about 6,800 square miles, scientists reported on Aug. 1 — big but far from the record behemoth of 9,500 square miles that had been mentioned as distinctly possible.

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  11. Life

    Microbes may sky jump to new hosts

    The role of microbes in cloud formation and precipitation may not be an accident of chemistry so much as an evolutionary adaptation by certain bacteria and other nonsentient beings, a scientist posited at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

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  12. Humans

    Geographic profiling fights disease

    Widely used to snare serial criminals, a forensic method finds application in epidemiology.

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