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A Polish scientific institute has classified domestic cats as an "invasive alien species," citing the damage they cause to birds and other wildlife.
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Paleontologists digging near St. Bathans in Central Otago have discovered a fossil that probably belonged to the Southern Hemisphere's oldest-known swan species.
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At a sprawling landfill near Madrid, hundreds of white storks dodge garbage trucks as they look for scraps of food among the mountains of multicoloured garbage bags.
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Temperature affects nearly every part of an animal's day-to-day existence. Biologists have, for good reason, spent a huge amount of time trying to understand how animals can survive in the climates in which they live. They have learned a lot about the strategies that animals use to keep themselves from overheating or freezing to death.
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A new study helps reveal why tropical mountain birds occupy such narrow elevation ranges, a mystery that has puzzled scientists for centuries. While many assumed temperature was responsible for these limited distributions, the latest research suggests competition from other species plays a bigger role in shaping bird ranges.
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The newly released State of the Environment report paints a predictably grim picture. Species are in decline, ecosystems are at breaking point, and threats abound. For many of us, it can feel like a problem that's too big, too complex and too distant to solve.
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Climate change is causing a mass extinction the likes of which has not been seen in recorded history. For birds, this biodiversity loss has implications beyond just species loss. In research publishing in the journal Current Biology on July 21, researchers use statistical modeling to predict that extinction will decrease morphological diversity among remaining birds at a rate greater than species loss alone. The team's results reveal which birds are at risk and which regions are most susceptible to homogenization.
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Does the astonishing biodiversity in the Philippines result in part from rising and falling seas during the ice ages?
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Every spring, migratory birds arrive in the continental United States from south and central America to breed. But precisely when they arrive each spring varies from year to year. In a NASA-led study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, scientists have linked this variability to large-scale climate patterns originating thousands of miles away.
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Findings from a new study investigating how birds experience neophobia, which is the fear of new things, could play a vital role in helping to save Critically Endangered species.
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An international team of 40 researchers analyzed the genomes—the complete set of DNA—of all living and recently extinct penguin species and combined this with the fossil record to gain new insights into the key events and processes that shaped the evolution of these iconic birds. The study, published in Nature Communications, is the first comprehensive genetic study involving extinct and extant (living) penguin species.
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Australia's first fossil vulture has been confirmed more than 100 years after it was first described as an eagle.
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Extremely hot weather is becoming more common. The top ten warmest years since 1884 all happened in the last two decades. While experts can help people take adequate precautions to beat the heat, who's looking out for the rest of the animal kingdom?
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Thanks to high-tech, low-cost tracking devices, the study of wildlife movement is having its Big Data moment. But so far, only people with data science skills have been able to glean meaningful insights from this "golden age" of tracking. A new system from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the University of Konstanz is changing that. MoveApps is a platform that lets scientists and wildlife managers explore animal movement data—with little more than a device and a browser—to tackle real-world issues.
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A study published by The American Naturalist, and in which Faculty of Science and Technology researcher David López-Idiáquez participated, explored whether climate change alters the plumage coloration of the blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus).
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Scientists had long wondered how woodpeckers can repeatedly pound their beaks against tree trunks without doing damage to their brains. This led to the notion that their skulls must act like shock-absorbing helmets. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on July 14 have refuted this notion, saying that their heads act more like stiff hammers. In fact, their calculations show that any shock absorbance would hinder the woodpeckers' pecking abilities.
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Many animals use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation. But exactly how they do this remains for the most part a mystery. At the University of Oldenburg, researchers from across disciplines are working together to solve the puzzle.
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A new study shows Australian magpie-larks may use a ventriloquial illusion to make their vocal duets more threatening.
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In a remote part of the Brazilian Amazon, a scientific expedition is cataloguing species. Time is of the essence.
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A comprehensive new genetic and statistical study from researchers at the University of Kansas reveals that two groups of scrub jays—one in Mexico and one in Texas—deserve status as independent species. The paper, appearing in Systematic Biology, also uses genomic data to sketch a natural history of scrub jays, showing how geographic changes over millennia split up and reconnected groups of the birds, swaying the flow of genes between them.
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In its earliest stages, long before it sprouts its signature appendages, a starfish embryo resembles a tiny bead, spinning through the water like a miniature ball bearing.
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When two massive volcanic eruptions blanketed New Zealand in ash, they forever changed the genetics of the brown kiwi bird, a new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough has found.
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An international team of researchers has found evidence that both total brain size and the size of a brain in relation to the body are factors that determine intelligence in animals. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the group describes their study of published papers involving research on intelligence in animals.
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A botanist looks up at a man dangling 20 meters (yards) above ground in a tree that belongs to an endangered species in Brazil's Amazon.
Climate change and vanishing islands threaten brown pelicans
in Bird Research in the Media
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