PhysOrg

It's not a mirage, our summers are getting hotter on average and we are experiencing more extremely hot days. News from NIWA that 2021 was New Zealand's hottest year on record fits with the long term trend.View the full article

It's widely understood that animals such as salmon, butterflies and birds have an innate magnetic sense, allowing them to use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation to places such as feeding and breeding grounds.View the full article

A snowy owl apparently touring iconic buildings of the nation's capital is captivating birdwatchers who manage to get a glimpse of the rare, resplendent visitor from the Arctic.View the full article

University of New Mexico Ph.D. candidate Ethan Gyllenhaal has been engaged in a series of research projects that use genomic analyses to explain the complex evolutionary processes that take place within and between island bird populations. He is conducting this research in collaboration with researchers from the UNM Andersen Lab and the University of Kansas Moyle Lab.View the full article

One mystery many biologists want to solve is how complexity develops in nature. And among the many social systems in the natural world, multilevel societies stand out for their complexity. Individuals first organize into families, which are members of bands, which are organized into clans.View the full article

Nature is reclaiming her territory at a quarry in the east of England that is being transformed into a vast reserve offering vital sanctuary to endangered birds.View the full article

A team of Australian and international scientists led by Australian Museum (AM) and University of New South Wales (UNSW) paleontologist Dr. Matthew McCurry and Dr. Michael Frese of the University of Canberra has discovered and investigated an important new fossil site in New South Wales, Australia, containing superb examples of fossilized animals and plants from the Miocene epoch. The team's findings were published today in Science Advances.View the full article

The estimate that one billion animals were killed by Australia's 2019–20 Black Summer fires drew international attention to the fate of wildlife during fire.View the full article

Best management practices (BMPs) for solar installations to protect Hawaiʻi's native and endangered birds have been released by the University of Hawaiʻi Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit. The new technical report synthesizes current literature on the threats posed by industrial-scale solar installations to birds, identifies the species most at risk from solar infrastructure, lists the locations of current and future solar facilities, and describes specific strategies to limit negative impacts on Hawaiian bird life.View the full article

The air in a zoo is full of smells, from the fish used for feed to the manure from the grazing herbivores, but now we know it is also full of DNA from the animals living there. In the journal Current Biology on January 6th, two research groups have each published an independent proof-of-concept study showing that by sampling air from a local zoo, they can collect enough DNA to identify the animals nearby. This may prove to be a valuable, non-invasive tool to track biodiversity.View the full article

What gets birds in the mood to knock feathers? It's the unexpected question ecologists and researchers in central Kimberley have been faced with after witnessing an increase in purple-crowned fairy wrens breeding outside of their traditional season.View the full article

Concerns over foodborne risk from birds may not be as severe as once thought by produce farmers, according to research from the University of California, Davis, that found low instances of E. coli and Salmonella prevalence.View the full article

Gardens in cities provide a long and continuous supply of energy-rich nectar from March to October, scientists at the University of Bristol have found.View the full article

At Christmas, thousands of greetings cards feature the iconic winter plumage of the robin. But not all the robins you might find in your backyard are permanent natives to your country. In the UK, for example, some will have migrated from Germany and Russia, and like millions of other animals all over the world, will return back to their breeding grounds next spring. This ebb and flow of birds, mammals, fish and insects is a key part of the Earth's biodiversity.View the full article

More than a quarter of Britain's birds are now on the RSPB's red list, meaning that their numbers are in severe decline.View the full article

Nearly three months after an undersea pipeline spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil into the waters off Southern California, authorities have announced that coastal cleanup efforts are now complete.View the full article

On 17 and 18 December 2021, a few hundred dead knots (Calidris canutus) were discovered on Schiermonnikoog and in Oost-Groningen. At the behest of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR) examined a few dead knots, an oystercatcher, and a curlew who were found in the same location. The avian influenza H5N1 virus was detected in the birds examined. It is suspected to be the highly pathogenic variant, but this is under further investigation.View the full article

Edward. O. Wilson, the trailblazing US scientist, professor and author whose study of insects and clarion call to protect Earth earned him the nickname "Darwin's natural heir," has died at age 92.View the full article

A bird flu outbreak has killed more than 2,000 wild cranes on a reserve in northern Israel, an unusually high toll for the seasonal flu, the parks authority said Sunday.View the full article

Scientists on Tuesday announced the discovery of an exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryo from at least 66 million years ago that was preparing to hatch from its egg just like a chicken.View the full article

The largest-ever flying animal acted like a giant heron, plucking prey from the water and launching itself into the air.View the full article

Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the world's most important fisheries.View the full article

There is renewed debate in California and other states over whether to ban offshore oil and gas drilling, two months after a ruptured underwater pipeline off Huntington Beach spewed tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the ocean.View the full article

In Papua New Guinea's isolated Star Mountains, Indigenous people say the tree kangaroo is king and the bird of paradise is queen. But both have a price on their heads.View the full article

As the Arctic and the oceans warm due to climate change, understanding how a rapidly changing environment may affect birds making annual journeys between the Arctic and the high seas is vital to international conservation efforts. However, for some Arctic species, there are still many unknowns about their migration routes. Using telemetry to solve some mysteries of three related seabird species—the pomarine jaeger, parasitic jaeger and long-tailed jaeger—scientists discovered they took different paths across four oceans from a shared central Canadian high Arctic nesting location. As predators and kleptoparasites that steal prey caught by other animals, jaegers are critical components of marine and terrestrial food webs. These new tracking data add to growing evidence linking marine biodiversity in the Arctic region and the high seas to inform large scale marine biological diversity management in areas beyond national jurisdiction.View the full article