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Climate Change

Photograph of cupped, gloved hands holding about half a dozen black- and yellow-patterned frogs.
Living World

An amphibious rescue mission

On the edge of extinction, rare frogs and toads need more than a little love to reproduce. High-tech help, from IVF to hormone therapy, may save them.

Photograph about a dozen pale, tan horses relaxing on green grass by a body of water, Trees line the far shore.
Living World

The creative way to pay for wildlife recovery

OPINION: ‘Pragmatic rewilding’ restores damaged ecosystems and harnesses private money, with benefits for all

images of three fish — one too large on the left crossed out, one too small on the right crossed out and one in the middle just right given a green checkmark
Living World

How humans shift fish evolution | Things to Know

VIDEO: By targeting larger individuals, intense fishing may lead to a fishery dominated by the small

Photograph of a muddy track flanked left and right by a long line of olive trees that have been uprooted and are lying on their sides.
Living World

The accidental tree killers

Epidemics of forest-felling diseases are on the rise thanks to globetrotting pathogens that slip through even the best defenses. To prevent further losses, scientists are turning to high-tech surveillance and detection, even canine noses.

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Food & Environment

As coral die, protected areas aren’t enough

COMIC: The reef-builders face larger threats, scientists say. Chief among these is warming seas.

Photograph of the deck of a large commercial fishing vessel. Fish are falling from a massive net and piling on the deck floor, as fishermen look on.
Food & Environment

The human hand in fish evolution

Fishery practices that go for the big ones may be counterproductive when mostly the small survive

Image of a tropical rainforest, in the foreground green plants of medium height and, in the distance, tree trunks rising high, covered by mist.
Living World

A new history for the tropical forests of the Americas

Fossilized leaves and pollen are revealing the evolutionary past of New World tropical forests. The findings are helping to reshape predictions of what might happen to these ecosystems as the climate changes.

On a dark wooden board, a black truffle rests on an orange cloth and, in the background, a knife with the word 'Argentina' written on its wooden handle.
Food & Environment

How truffles took root around the world

For centuries, the wild delicacy grew only in Europe. But improved cultivation techniques have enabled the pricey, odorous fungus to be farmed in new landscapes.

Collage of photos of a wide range of different birds including snowy and spotted owl, rufous hummingbird, lesser prairie chicken, scrub jay, ivory gull and more.
Living World

A shocking number of birds are in trouble

Rich data on the global state of our feathered friends presents plenty of bad news — but also some bright spots. Researchers know better than ever how to help endangered birds, and there are notable bird conservation successes.

Photograph of an aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The swirls of surface oil are colored red and orange; other parts of the water are blue layered with oily iridescence.
Food & Environment

Eyes on the deep

Decades of exploring the seafloor have helped oceanographer Samantha Joye tackle marine issues — from the underwater movement of oil from Deepwater Horizon to the biology of remote microbial communities

Photograph of the greater Indian fruit bat, Pteropus giganteus, flying at dusk in Yala National Park, Sri Lanka.
Living World

Betting on bats for genetic treasures

Bat genomes are full of clever tricks that are treats for biology and medical science — it’s why scientists want to sequence them all

Close-up photograph of a pure California tiger salamander (right) and a hybrid between the California species and the non-native barred tiger salamander (left). Though the two are clearly different in this photograph, they are not always as easy to tell apart.
Living World

A salamander’s dangerous liaisons

The giant genomes of these struggling amphibians tell a story of outsider invasions, assault by disease and cross-species sex. A geneticist explains.

Photograph of Kevin Lafferty climbing onto a small boat from the waters off Anacapa Island near Ventura, California, after spearing fish in March 2018. He’s advising a UC Santa Barbara PhD student on research to determine if reef fish inside protected marine reserves have more or fewer parasites than the depleted fish populations outside the reserve. It’s to test a pattern that has emerged in other studies: that parasites thrive with richness and abundance of marine life.
Living World

In praise of parasites

They worm into snails and infect the brains of fish. They’ve also found their way into Kevin Lafferty’s heart. He sees them as beautiful examples of sophisticated evolution, and as keys to ecosystem balance.

Large algal bloom in the Barents Sea
Food & Environment

Marine wildlife is starting to suffocate

Global warming and agricultural runoff have driven the loss of oxygen in oceans around the world, with looming ecological consequences.

A collage of different kinds of wild seeds, varying in size and shape.
Living World

The surprisingly tricky art of seed banking

To safeguard threatened plants, science must unravel the hidden biology of often-persnickety seeds as they age, sleep and awaken

Close-up photograph of a fly with big red eyes sitting on top of white flower. Its head and thorax are covered with little yellow pollen grains.
Food & Environment

The essential fly

Think before you swat: The much-maligned fly could be the key to ensuring future supplies of many of the world’s favorite foods

A close-up view of a fox standing in the snow in front of an abandoned building.
Food & Environment

Scientists can’t agree about Chernobyl’s impact on wildlife

Is Chernobyl a radioactive wasteland reeling from chronic radiation, or a post-nuclear paradise with thriving populations of animals and other life forms? Studies don’t always agree about levels of mutations and other ill effects.

Artist’s rendering of an icy landscape with a condor flying overhead. Below, a herd of mammoth feeds on the tundra near freezing waters with chunks of nice floating in it. There is a huge glacier or ice sheet in the background.
Food & Environment

The history of climate change offers clues to Earth’s future

PODCAST: Digging — quite literally — into our planet’s past to study its paleoclimate has shed light on bygone ice ages and hints at trouble ahead for our now-warming world (Season 2/Episode 4)

Forest illustration
Food & Environment

Centuries of pondering — and squabbling about — trees

COMIC: Do forests warm or cool the Earth? What’s their effect on global climate change? A comic narrated by polymath Benjamin Franklin describes the evolution of thought on this issue and what we still don’t know.

Photo of a beaver bringing a new stick to its dam.
Living World

As the Arctic warms, beavers move in

Scientists are just beginning to study the impacts of beaver dams on the tundra

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