Ecosystems

Animals

Paw-print DNA lets scientists track out-of-sight polar bears

This environmental DNA can aid in conserving species that are hard or dangerous to observe.

Ecosystems

Restoring giant underwater forests, one blade at a time

Giant kelp are at risk due to climate change and human activities. In New Zealand, a community effort is rebuilding these underwater algal forests.

Earth

Analyze This: Tropical forests have gotten patchier

Although many of the world's forests have gotten less fragmented since 2000, tropical forests have gotten more chopped up, putting animals at risk.

Ecosystems

The Amazon is in trouble. Here’s why — and why it matters

Challenges from human-caused climate change, deforestation and degradation leave the fate of this vast forest uncertain.

Ecosystems

Scientists Say: Predator and Prey

Ecological relationships between predators and their prey drive the evolution of plants, animals and microbes.

Ecosystems

Scientists Say: Food web

All the species in an ecosystem and the feeding relationships between them get summed up with this handy picture.

Fossils

Ocean life may have bounced back after the ‘Great Dying’

Marine ecosystems may have been back in action just a million years after the most severe extinction event known.

Ecosystems

Let’s learn about how wildfires keep ecosystems healthy

Wildfires are so important for many ecosystems that sometimes professionals set them on purpose.

Animals

Study finds big drop in animal populations since 1970

But the same thing is not happening throughout the kingdom. For instance, more than half of vertebrate populations are stable or increasing.

Animals

If mosquitoes vanished, would we miss them? Vampire spiders might

Vampire spiders get their meals from blood-filled Anopheles mosquitoes. But if those insects disappear, the spiders will likely adapt.

Animals

Some spikes in malaria cases may be tied to amphibian die-offs

Amphibian deaths from a fungal disease may have led to more mosquitoes — and an increase in malaria cases in Costa Rica and Panama.

Animals

Let’s learn about parasites that create zombies

Some parasites turn their victims into mindless puppets that do the parasites’ bidding, even at the cost of their own lives.