#multispecies-assembly

#multispecies-assembly

During major floods, thousands of tiny fish convene at Luvilombo Falls in the upper Congo River Basin to undertake a peculiar vertical migration, described for the first time today in Scientific Reports.

Modern scientific societies are increasingly vulnerable due to their dependence on membership fees and journal subscriptions, which are being challenged by the rise of virtual networking and open-access publishing.

A study by researchers at the University of California Berkeley has found that ethanol is surprisingly common in floral nectar, the sugary fuel that keeps pollinators alive. Yeast feeding on those sugars produces trace amounts of alcohol, and in this study, it showed up in 26 of the 29 plant species sampled.

Few transformations in the history of life have been as extreme as the embrace of the ocean by seagrass. Like whales and dolphins, modern seagrasses descend from land-dwelling ancestors.

Wildfires have become an ever bigger problem in Canada. The 2018 wildfires were the biggest in British Columbia's history, but this record was broken in 2021, and then again in 2023, when fires consumed an area three times the size of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and the smoke travelled as far as New York City.

Risks of outbreaks with pandemic potential rise with increasing land-use change, biodiversity loss and climate change. The Pandemic Agreement adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2025 marks a historic shift that establishes the One Health approach as a legally binding obligation for pandemic prevention.

Colossal Biosciences, valued at $10.2bn after raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from investors including celebrities spanning from Tiger Woods to Paris Hilton, has provoked a stampede of acclaim as well as denunciation after announcing last year it had made the dire wolf, a species lost from the world for more than 10,000 years, de-extinct via the birth of three new pups.

Ontario will consolidate its 36 conservation authorities into nine across the province. Environment Minister Todd McCarthy says there will be no job losses as a result. He says the province listened to feedback after several town halls and 14,000 comments on its plan, which initially proposed having seven conservation authorities.

An unnamed tourist saw it and told Aidan Moore, who works for Alcatraz City Cruises. Moore told SFGATE that he was initially skeptical, but the guest's iPhone footage left little room for doubt. The video shows, not a sea lion or an otter, but an actual Canis latrans, doggedly dogpaddling, then clambering out of the water, noticeably shaky and struggling to settle tired paws on the craggy rocks.

Around a third of UK gardeners use pesticides, and our studies found that house sparrow numbers, for example, were nearly 40% lower in gardens where the pesticide metaldehyde was used. By reducing pesticide use, you can actively encourage birds back into your outdoor spaces, as they rely on invertebrates such as slugs and snails as natural prey.

Animals' risk of becoming roadkill depends on several factors, including how many vehicles are on the road, how many animals are on the road, and how animals and human drivers behave, explains Tom Langen, a professor of biology at Clarkson University, who studies animal-vehicle collisions. DST can minimize these collisions, however.

Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures. It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years.

I'll be talking about holistic engineering or the practice of factoring in your technical decisions, designs, strategies, all the non-technical factors that are actually forces that influence your organic socio-technical problem space. As much as you can see in this canyon how natural forces have influenced the shape of the earth, so you can see the color. You can see all the different layers.

When British author Karen Armstrong won the TED prize in 2008, she used the money to convene a group of religious thinkers from a wide range of faiths to craft an updated version of the Golden Rule for the 21st century. What emerged was the Charter for Compassion, which calls on people around the world "to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there, and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect."

Signs of ageing accelerated when fish were exposed to the chemicals, according to the study, which could have implications for other organisms. Chemical safety regulations tend to focus on short-term exposure to high doses of pesticides and other chemicals, but the study focused on long-term exposure. Low doses of pesticides are widespread in the environment, so their effects should be studied and understood, the authors said.

Waterways across Contra Costa County are increasingly threatened by invasive plant species that engulf canals and drains, decreasing biodiversity and reducing safe habitats for wildlife. In an effort to address and restore the environment, the Contra Costa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District is working to reverse that trend. The district hosted its recent 12th annual Giving Natives a Chance event at the Clayton Valley Drain near Concord's Hillcrest Community Park, inviting volunteers from across the county to plant native species around waterways and drains.

The world spends 30 times more money destroying nature than protecting it. That's according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that exposes a massive gulf between so-called "harmful investments" and financing that promotes nature preservation. The global environment agency's latest "State of Finance for Nature" (SNF) report is calling to phase out the US$7.3 trillion (6.2 trillion) in global investments that damage nature including into high-emissions energy infrastructure and manufacturing, for example.