Fossils from the sea floor illuminate the relationship between local and global diversity, and these relationships may help us understand the effects of global climate change on species diversity.

“Looking at fossils can tell you something about the controls on global diversity, but so much of the investigation of the fossil record has looked only at global compilations of fossil species,” says Dr. Mark E. Patzkowsky, associate professor of geosciences. “Recently, a few studies ha

Global warming has forced U.S. plants and animals to change their behavior in recent decades in ways that can be harmful, according to a new report prepared for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

The Pew Center review of more than 40 studies is co-authored by Camille Parmesan, integrative biologist at The University of Texas at Austin, and Hector Galbraith of Galbraith Environmental Services, who is affiliated with the University of Colorado at Boulder. Their analyses revea

Both studies appear in Volume 85, issue 10 of Ecology, the most recent issue of the journal.

Invading Trout Reduce Forest Spiders by Altering the Stream Food Web That Supplies Their Prey

A team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan have shown that exotic species can have strong effects that degrade not only the ecosystems they invade, but also spread to adjacent ecosystems as well. Colden Baxter, Kurt Fausch and Phillip Chapman from Colorado State University collabo

Researchers of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Plant Cultivation, Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (St. Petersburg) jointly with their colleagues from Germany and Finland have grown up new lines of Solanum cultivated plants via the somatic hybridization method – hybrids of wild species of plants of the Solanum family with cultivars of tomato and potato, that posess new useful properties.

Potato and tomato – the plants that occupy the honorary place in the me

Like the sailing vessel used by Captain Joshua Slocum to sail solo around the world 100 years ago, another ocean-going vehicle is making history. A small ocean glider named Spray is the first autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, to cross the Gulf Stream underwater, proving the viability of self-propelled gliders for long-distance scientific missions and opening new possibilities for studies of the oceans.

Launched September 11, 2004, about 100 miles south of Nantucket Island,

Way out exists even from the most desperate situations. Water mollusca prove that statement. At first sight, they are absolutely unable to live without water, as they consist almost totally from water. However, this is only at first sight. Russian scientists have analyzed their data and the data from their colleagues who observed mollusca on the banks of various water bodies and have discovered the adaptation mechanisms these animals employ to live without water.

Water mollusc

Long-term exposure to a synthetic estrogen at levels below those currently found in the environment may have a major impact on fish populations, according to a study accepted today for publication in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The study shows that ethynylestradiol, a potent form of estrogen used in oral contraceptives, can produce sexually compromised males.

Researchers exposed zebrafish to low concentrations of the horm

A new modeling framework suggests that climate change alone could cause a 4.5% increase in the number of summer ozone-related deaths across the New York metropolitan region by the year 2050, according to a study published today in the November issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). When population growth and projected growth in greenhouse gas emissions are factored in, the model predicts a 59.9% increase in summer ozone-related deaths by 2050.

An environmentally-friendly method of recycling tyres, which would help solve a growing waste problem across the globe, could soon be on the way thanks to some new technology supported by NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) – the organisation that champions UK innovation and creativity.

NESTA have invested £70,000 from its Invention and Innovation programme, in UTDR Research, based in Flintshire, North Wales, who are developing the new recycling sy

The lowly, ill-regarded tumbleweed might be good for something after all.

A preliminary study reveals that tumbleweeds, a.k.a. Russian thistle, and some other weeds common to dry Western lands have a knack for soaking up depleted uranium from contaminated soils at weapons testing grounds and battlefields. “There is some use to what we consider noxious weeds,” said geologist Dana Ulmer-Scholle of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.

Depleted ura

The longest animal that ever lived just got 40 percent shorter. A reappraisal of Seismosaurus has chopped it from 170 feet – about the length of ten hummers – to about 110 feet – a bit more than six hummers. The new look at the lengthiest beast also suggests it might also be a very close relative of a more common type of dino –Diplodocus.

Though drastically shorter, the new length estimate does not necessarily knock Seismosaurus off the throne as the Earth’s longest creatur

Our four-legged, five-toed ancestors conquered the land earlier and more independently than expected, say paleontologists studying newfound 345 to 359-million-year-old tracks at an eroding beach in eastern Canada.

At least six different kinds of four-limbed reptile-like animals – a.k.a. tetrapods – with five digits on their feet left their tromping prints in the mud of what was once a tropical swamp at Blue Beach, Nova Scotia. The five-digit tracks range in size from four i

The humble tropical honeybee may challenge the idea that a post-asteroid impact “nuclear winter” was a big player in the decimation of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Somehow the tropical honeybee, Cretotrigona prisca, survived the end-Cretaceous extinction event, despite what many researchers believe was a years-long period of darkness and frigid temperatures caused by sunlight-blocking dust and smoke from the asteroid impact at Chicxulub.

The survival of C. prisca is p

The Norwegian National Committee on Polar Research has made a Policy Platform Document for Norwegian Research in the Antarctic 2005 – 2009, commissioned by the Research Council of Norway. The document implies a considerable upgrade of Norwegian Antarctic research.

Being the only country with both Arctic and Antarctic territories, Norway has a special obligation to develop knowledge concerning the polar areas. The new policy document states that Norwegian Antarctic research sho

Recently scientists from NASA and Open University in the United Kingdom set out to study how acid rain affects the methane gas that comes from wetlands in the U.S., England and Sweden.

Scientists went into natural wetlands because although most methane is produced by human activities, a large amount actually comes from natural wetlands. The concern with methane is that it’s a greenhouse gas that contributes to warming our planet. The researchers discovered that low levels of

Human activity causes 10 times more erosion of continental surfaces than all natural processes combined, an analysis by a University of Michigan geologist shows.

People have been the main cause of worldwide erosion since early in the first millennium, said Bruce Wilkinson, a U-M professor of geological sciences. Wilkinson will present his findings Nov. 8 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colo.

Many researchers have tried to assess the im