High in the canopy of a Neotropical Panamanian forest, researchers have discovered that birds, especially native ones during the rainy season, protect trees by reducing the numbers of leaf-eating insects.

The finding — being published this week on the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — was a mild surprise, said researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. That birds help crops and low-lying plants in temperate forests by devouri

Scientists are working to understand what controls flowering time and maturity in soybean production
Scientists from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are investigating the importance of flowering and how to control it. Early flowering and maturity reduces the risk of frost damage and this is an important variety trait for soybeans grown in areas with short growing seasons.

Flowering time in soybeans is controlled by day length. Soybean plants will flower early during short days a

In a high-performance machine, each part is essential to the overall function of the whole. In ecology, species diversity is necessary to the smooth operation of the ecosystem. Until recently, little attention has been paid to the potential ecological effects on plant diversity from combined global environmental changes including increased atmospheric CO2, warming, elevated nitrogen pollution, and increased precipitation. Scientists from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology in

Doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the air significantly reduces the number of plant species that grow in the wild, according to a newly released study on climate change in California.

The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are the latest findings from the Jasper Ridge Global Change Project at Stanford University – a multiyear experiment designed to demonstrate how grassland ecosystems will respond to predicted increases in temperature an

New findings improve the way we take and analyze field measurements

A more accurate and robust method to measure the water content in soil is now available, thanks to a study conducted by researchers from National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
Researchers have developed a numerical model for simulating the waveform in soil by using Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) and a new calibration equation. The results are published in the May/June issue of Soil Science Society of America

The results of twenty years of experiments into the behaviour of bacteria in foods are now freely available on the internet. In an international collaboration between the Food Standards Agency, Institute of Food Research and US Department of Agriculture, the database will help food safety and quality to be predicted quickly and free of charge.

“The behaviour of food poisoning pathogens and spoilage organisms has been intensely studied since the early 1980s in response to major food poisonin

Critically endangered bird to be named after Gordon Moore

A newly described and critically endangered pygmy-owl species discovered in Brazil was named today after Intel founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty Moore, announced Conservation International. The description of the bird appears in the most recent edition of the “Brazilian Journal of Ornithology.”

The tiny owl, measuring 6 inches from bill to tail and weighing a mere 2 ounces, was found in fragmented secondary fore

Scientists from the University of California at Berkeley along with researchers from Ethiopia and several other countries have uncovered fossils of the earliest modern human, Homo sapiens, estimated at 154,000 to 160,000 years old. According to the scientists, the findings provide strong evidence that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals co-existed, rather than the former descending from the latter.

In two articles appearing in the June 12 edition of the journal Nature, the authors describe the fo

Researchers will assess how businesses manage waste

Researchers at Cardiff University, UK, are aiming to gather vital information from a load of garbage.

Businesses and commercial organisations in Wales, UK, generate millions of tonnes of waste each year, and much of it goes to landfill sites – a method of disposal which is causing mounting environmental concern and is increasingly subject to legislation.

Yet current data on how much waste is produced, what it comp

There is a strong link between poor health and environmental problems. A recent report from the European Environmental Agency, EEA, shows that as many as 60 000 deaths per year in large European cities are caused by long-term exposure to air pollution. Children are more exposed to environmental risks than adults.

One child in seven is affected by asthma. Compared to 30 years ago this is a dramatic increase. In order to reverse this alarming trend the European Commission is today launc

Statistically, there is little likelihood of anybody experiencing a major river flood whose average recurrence interval is one hundred or one thousand years. Predicting and designing of such events involves going back in time, three or four centuries, by scrutinising records of severe flooding. Joint researches by Cemagref hydrologist Michel Lang and historian Denis Coeur have reconstructed the history of three French rivers, the Guiers, Isere and Ardeche, a unique picture which has been incorporated

Medicines released into the environment may be a risk to living species in the long term. Jeanne Garric’s ecotoxicology team at Cemagref Lyon has shown that certain molecules disrupt reproduction, embryo development and growth of representative organisms in aquatic environments. Toxicity tests have been conducted in the laboratory on Daphnia, Rotifera and zebra fish under standard protocols. Active pharmaceuticals ingredients (APIs) concentrations in the environment however are found to be 1000 to 10

Genetically modified crops could help small-scale farmers in developing countries according to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in The use of genetically modified crops in developing countries, a Discussion Paper published today. The Nuffield Council is inviting comments on the draft paper which aims to contribute to ‘GM Nation?’, the public debate organised by the government in the UK during the next six weeks.

In 1999, the Nuffield Council recommended that there was a moral imperative f

The amount of gaseous mercury in the atmosphere has dropped sharply from its peak in the 1980s and has remained relatively constant since the mid 1990s. This welcome decline may result from control measures undertaken in western Europe and North America, but scientists who have just concluded a study of atmospheric mercury say they cannot reconcile the amounts actually found with current understanding of natural and manmade sources of the element. An international group of scientists, led by

If the world’s human population continues to rise at its current rate, the planet will increase the numbers of threatened species at least 7 percent worldwide in the next 20 years and twice that many by the year 2050.

In a recent model of the impact human population growth has on biological diversity, Ohio State University anthropologist Jeffrey McKee and his colleagues warn that the United States alone will add at least 10 additional species to the “threatened” list within 50 years.

All gardeners know that their plants have to compete against insects and weeds. We apply insecticides to protect plants from the munching hordes, and we apply herbicides, or hoe, to protect plants from weeds. But, according to Stan Finch and Rosemary Collier of Horticulture Research International, Wellesbourne, the latter is a bad move that actually helps insects to find our crop plants.

Writing in the June issue of Biologist, Finch and Collier provide evidence that specialist insects, those