Killer whales are skilled assassins, hunting everything from herring to great white sharks. Now, for the first time, scientists witnessed a pod of killer whales bring down the world’s largest…
Category: Ecosystems
Earth may have 9,200 more tree species than previously thought
Trillions of trees are growing on Earth, though how many kinds there are has been underestimated, a new study finds. Earth hosts roughly 64,100 known tree species. But there could…
An Arctic hare traveled at least 388 kilometers in a record-breaking journey
Arctic hares can go the distance. A member of Lepus arcticus in northern Canada has traveled farther than anyone knew possible. BBYY, as the adult female was known, made a…
Here’s how spider geckos survive on Earth’s hottest landscape
A handful of small, nocturnal geckos have spilled their guts for science, revealing how the creatures get by in a part of Earth’s hottest landscape. Surface temperatures in the Lut…
Cleared tropical forests can regain ground surprisingly fast
Tropical forests are disappearing at an alarming clip across the globe. As lush land is cleared for agriculture, climate-warming carbon gets released and biodiversity declines. But when farmland is left alone,…
Baleen whales eat (and poop) a lot more than we realized
Whalers have plucked giant whales from the sea for much of the last century, reducing their numbers by up to 99 percent for certain species. Some scientists thought that krill…
Fires may have affected up to 85 percent of threatened Amazon species
Much of the Amazon’s biodiversity is under fire — literally. In the last two decades, deforestation and forest fires have encroached on the ranges of thousands of plant and animal…
Female hummingbirds may sport flashy feathers to avoid being harassed
Some female hummingbirds don flashy feathers to avoid being bothered by other hummingbirds, a new study suggests. Male white-necked jacobin hummingbirds (Florisuga mellivora) have bright blue heads and throats. Females…
An incredibly resilient coral in the Great Barrier Reef offers hope for the future
A coral the size of a carousel is the widest known in the Great Barrier Reef. Found just off the coast of Goolboodi Island in Northeast Australia, this reef-building Porites…
An ecologist’s new book gets at the root of trees’ social lives
Finding the Mother TreeSuzanne SimardKnopf, $28.95 Opening Suzanne Simard’s new book, Finding the Mother Tree, I expected to learn about the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. I had…
