Thousands of plant species likely to go extinct in Amazon
As many as 4,550 of the more than 50,000 plant species in the Amazon will likely disappear because of land-use changes and habitat loss within the next 40 years, according to a new study by two Wake...
View ArticleTheory provides more precise estimates of large-area biodiversity
Ask biologists how many species live in a pond, a grassland, a mountain range or on the entire planet, and the answers get increasingly vague. Hence the wide range of estimates for the planet's...
View ArticleBiodiversity loss: Detrimental to your health
(PhysOrg.com) -- Plant and animal extinctions are detrimental to your health. That's the conclusion of a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Nature by scientists who studied the link...
View ArticleWhat triggers mass extinctions? Study shows how invasive species stop new life
An influx of invasive species can stop the dominant natural process of new species formation and trigger mass extinction events, according to research results published today in the journal PLoS ONE.
View ArticleResearchers link oceanic land crab extinction to colonization of Hawaii
University of Florida researchers have described a new species of land crab that documents the first crab extinction during the human era.
View ArticleFarm 'weeds' have crucial role in sustainable agriculture
Plants often regarded as common weeds such as thistles, buttercups and clover could be critical in safe guarding fragile food webs on UK farms according to Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and...
View ArticleEnvironmental crunch 'worse than thought': OECD
Pressures on Earth's ecosystem are now so great that future generations could be doomed to falling living standards, the OECD said on Thursday in a report looking to the mid-century.
View ArticlePopulation adds to planet's pressure cooker, but few options
The world's surging population is a big driver of environmental woes but the issue is complex and solutions are few, experts at a major conference here say.
View ArticleRio Summit: Scientists warn of 'emergency on global scale'
Leading scientists on Thursday called on the upcoming Rio Summit to grapple with environmental ills that they said pointed to "a humanitarian emergency on a global scale."
View ArticleEndangered species, languages linked at high biodiversity regions
Biodiversity hot spots -- the world's biologically richest and most threatened locations on Earth -- and high biodiversity wilderness areas -- biologically rich but less threatened -- are some of the...
View ArticleMany questions as Rio Summit seeks to help sick planet
Twenty years ago, a burst of sunny optimism radiated from Rio de Janeiro as world leaders staged a meeting that would prove pivotal.
View ArticleLandmark Rio summit on 'green' economy opens
World leaders open a UN summit Wednesday where they are set to endorse a blueprint for eradicating poverty and protecting the environment that critics insist is a threadbare compromise.
View ArticleAre we justified in our fights to save endangered species?
Even under the most optimistic climate-change scenarios, species loss may reach 30 percent by the end of the century, according to Ronald Sandler, associate professor of philosophy in the...
View ArticleResearchers link Caribbean extinction of bats to rising sea levels
(Phys.org)—In a new study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, researchers show that rising sea levels produced by deglaciation, or the melting of glaciers, caused the extinction of most...
View ArticleBengali forests are fading away
Rapid deterioration in mangrove health is occurring in the Sundarbans, resulting in as much as 200m of coast disappearing in a single year.
View ArticleAnimals and humans—a false divide?
We don't just share our lives with animals; we are animals – a reality that we often choose to forget in modern Western culture. Research published in the June special issue of SAGE journal, Social...
View ArticleMicrobes welcome protected habitat
A pond in Salzburg has been granted nature conservation status due to its unusually diverse population of ciliates. As the results of an Austrian Science Fund FWF research project show, this small...
View ArticleTargeted action needed to protect waterbirds
(Phys.org) —Researchers from our Biodiversity Lab have identified specific areas around the world where conservation efforts could best be targeted to safeguard inland-breeding waterbirds.
View ArticleExotic lice causing balding in California deer
California wildlife officials in say an invasion of aggressive lice is causing deer across the state to go bald and is linked to numerous deer deaths.
View ArticleNASA image: Agricultural fires in Africa
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite detected dozens of fires burning in central Africa on June 03, 2013. The fires are outlined in red. Most of the fires...
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