PhysOrg

A global effort by seabird researchers, including those from NIWA, has resulted in the first assessment of where the world's most threatened seabirds spend their time. View the full article

Many animals feign death to try to escape their predators, with some individuals in prey species remaining motionless, if in danger, for extended lengths of time. View the full article

Keeping backyard chickens was already on the rise, and the hobby has become even more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, a University of Georgia researcher cautions that the practice has risks not just for chickens, but for wildlife and people as well. View the full article

The lists of Earth's endangered animals and plants are getting increasingly longer. But in order to stop this trend, we require more information. It is often difficult to find out exactly where the individual species can be found and how their populations are developing. According to a new overview study published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution by Dr. Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and her colleagues, specially trained detection dogs can be indispensable in such cases. With the help of these dogs, the species sought can usually be found

Herd immunity, when a threshold proportion of a population becomes immune to a disease-causing organism, reducing or stopping further transmission, is very much in the news. Avian cholera much less so. But there is an intersection between these two subjects that appears to have played out over eight summers between 2005 and 2012 at the largest colony of Arctic-nesting sea ducks, specifically Northern common eiders, in the Canadian Arctic. View the full article

New research has found that shrimp like creatures on the South Coast of England have 70 percent less sperm than less polluted locations elsewhere in the world. The research also discovered that individuals living in the survey area are six times less numerous per square meter than those living in cleaner waters. View the full article

Due to modern agriculture, biodiversity across many species groups is in decline. Over the last three decades, attempts have been made to counteract this with agri-environmental schemes at various levels—from the national federal state to EU-wide programs. This is not only out of appreciation of nature, but also because many species fulfill important functions for agriculture itself: some pollinate crops, others regulate pest populations. View the full article

Picture this: you're in your backyard gardening when you get that strange, ominous feeling of being watched. You find a gray oval-shaped ball about the size of a thumb, filled with bones and fur—a pellet, or "owl vomit." View the full article

A team of researchers from Indonesia and Singapore has found evidence of the continued existence of a bird long thought extinct. In their paper published in the journal BirdingASIA, the team describes the history of the bird, why it was thought to be extinct and how it was found in Borneo. View the full article

A new study shows that a widespread decline in abundance of emergent insects—whose immature stages develop in lakes and streams while the adults live on land—can help to explain the alarming decline in abundance and diversity of aerial insectivorous birds (i.e. preying on flying insects) across the USA. In turn, the decline in emergent insects appears to be driven by human disturbance and pollution of water bodies, especially in streams. This study, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, is one of the first to find evidence for a causal link between the decline of insectivorous birds

Paleo-ecologists from The University of New Mexico and at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have demonstrated that the offspring of enormous carnivorous dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex may have fundamentally re-shaped their communities by out-competing smaller rival species. View the full article

On a low-lying island in the Caribbean, the future of the critically endangered Bahama Oriole just got a shade brighter. A new study led by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) estimates the population of these striking black and yellow birds at somewhere between 1300 and 2800 individuals in the region they surveyed, suggesting the overall population is likely several thousand. Older studies estimated the entire population at fewer than 300, so the new results indicate there are at least 10 times as many Bahama Orioles as previously understood. The research appear

When building a nest, previous experience raising chicks will influence the choices birds make, according to a new study by University of Alberta scientists. View the full article

As many people in the southern U.S. hosted neighbors who had no heat or water during the vicious February storm and deep freeze, Kate Rugroden provided a refuge for shell-shocked bats. View the full article

Dozens of flamingos in a northern Greek lagoon have died in recent days after ingesting lead shot illegally used by hunters, a wildlife group said Wednesday. View the full article