Humans tend to fear bed bugs, and rightly so. The bloodsuckers are tough to get rid of once they’ve entered a home. But new research has, for the first time, identified one thing the bugs seem to fear—water and wet surfaces.
Research from Adelaide University and the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) has shown for the first time that Australian sea lion pups can learn foraging behavior from their mothers. Social information transition exists in some mammals, such as sea otters, bottlenose dolphins and chimpanzees—the latter of which teaches their young to fish for termites using a stick. However, this type of behavior was not previously known in otariids, or “eared seals,” the family of pinnipeds that comprises fur seals and sea lions.
There are many ways to communicate with prospective romantic partners. If you are a Japanese scarab beetle, it’s a matter of distinguishing left from right. New work from U.S. and Chinese scientists, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how these beetles use mirror-image pheromones to find a mate. The work could lead to better monitoring and control of significant agricultural pests.
Researchers from the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of California, Davis, are helping beekeepers protect their colonies from destructive varroa mites. In a new study, the researchers investigate the effectiveness of combining a widely used mite-killing pesticide with an agent that inhibits the mites’ ability to tolerate the pesticide.
Growing up, you probably changed your style based on your social influences. It turns out, such pressures affect the appearance of young clownfish (anemonefish) too. A new study from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) has revealed the social influences and biological mechanisms controlling bar loss in tomato anemonefish, showing how the presence of older fish changes the speed at which young fish lose their additional white vertical stripe.
Strong social networking plays an important role in human relationships. New research on female red deer shows that those bonds are also crucial for their reproductive success and survival. The study, which looked at more than 40 years of data for free-ranging adult female red deer on the Isle of Rum in Scotland, was recently published in Royal Society Open Science.
Species numbers alone do not fully capture how ecosystems are changing. In a global study, scientists analyzed long-term data from nearly 15,000 marine and freshwater fish communities. They found that fish food webs have changed substantially over recent decades, even in places where the number of species (species richness) has remained stable. Published in Science Advances, the study shows consistent shifts in species composition, body size, and feeding relationships, highlighting that changes in species traits such as body size and interactions can alter ecosystem structure without obvious changes in species richness.
There may be twice as many vertebrates on the planet as previous estimates claimed, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. That’s not because of any errors or miscalculation, but because thousands of species have been hiding in plain sight. These are so-called cryptic species that appear identical to our eyes but are actually very different genetically.
Pygmy sperm whales (Kogia breviceps) are among the ocean’s most enigmatic inhabitants—rarely seen and largely unstudied. They live far offshore in small groups, diving in search of squid and fish. Their quiet behavior and elusive nature have made it difficult to study them in the wild. Pygmy sperm whales are rarely encountered free-swimming. Most scientific knowledge about them has come from stranded individuals—especially along the southeastern coast of the United States, where these whales strand more frequently than nearly any other large marine mammal species.
In the realm of entomology, few creatures command as much fascination as the mantis. Throughout history, these striking insects have been deeply woven into local myths and legends, sometimes respected as mystical soothsayers that can guide lost travelers home, and other times feared as little devils.
Up to 30% of bird diversity hotspots, places where large numbers of different bird species occur, in the western United States face threats from high-severity wildfires in the future that could eliminate critical forest habitats, according to research published in the journal Nature Communications.
Birds currently inhabiting many territories across Africa, Latin America and Asia are, on average, considerably smaller than those that predominated in 1940. This is the conclusion of an international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), which documents—drawing on the collective ecological memory of 10 Indigenous Peoples and local communities—a reduction of up to 72% in the mean body mass of the bird species present in their territories between 1940 and 2020.
New research has identified optimal design for artificial habitats to support restoration of oyster reefs, based on a detailed understanding of natural oyster reef geometry. Published in the global journal Nature, the Sydney-based study shows the complex shapes of natural oyster reefs are not random—their structure and arrangement optimize the establishment and survival of developing oysters and their protection from predators.
While killer whales (Orcinus orca) can trigger the immediate departure of white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), extended absences from their aggregation sites are also part of the sharks’ natural behavior, new research reveals.
Studying foraging behavior in marine mammals is especially difficult. Unlike terrestrial animals, which can often be directly observed, marine mammals feed underwater and across vast, remote areas, making it challenging to determine where and what they eat. Most diet studies rely on stomach contents of stranded animals, making it impossible to know where or when feeding occurred.
An ungainly barrel of a shark cruising languidly over a barren seabed far too deep for the sun’s rays to illuminate was an unexpected sight.
For 40 years, scientists have been monitoring the Neotropical otter (Lontra longicaudis) along the southern coast of Brazil. A study published in Estuarine Management and Technologies reveals that these charismatic mammals are far more than just inhabitants of the coast; they are “living sensors” providing information about ecosystem decay.
Humans have climbed to the top of the food chain by skillfully hunting, trapping, and fishing for other animals at scales that far exceed other predators, altering how the animals behave and earning the tag of a “super-predator.” But a new study led by the Center for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), suggests that there is a bit more nuance to this idea. While animals clearly respond with fear to humans who hunt or kill, they are far less consistent in how they react to non-lethal human presence.
Jessica Allen crunched through fallen leaves among Manzanita trees hunting for something few have spotted before: the Manzanita butter clump—a rare and little-known yellow mushroom found, so far, only along North America’s Western coastlines.
A global study has revealed the conditions under which non-native plants thrive in the world’s many dryland regions and the factors that limit their spread. Using data from 98 study sites across 25 countries on six continents, researchers found that non-native plants often grow faster than native species and are particularly successful in areas with intensive grazing and nutrient-rich soils. However, their success is significantly reduced in ecosystems with a high diversity of native plant species.
Extreme heat can have a devastating effect on seagrass, but new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) could shape how these vitally important marine ecosystems are managed and restored. In separate studies carried out on both the west and east coasts of Australia, researchers have investigated how seagrasses stand up to marine heat waves and prolonged ocean warming.
A team from the University of Freiburg led by neurobiologist and behavioral biologist Prof. Dr. Andrew Straw studied the flight behavior of honey bees. Using a drone, the researchers tracked honey bees as they flew between their hive and a food source about 120 meters away in an agricultural environment.
Researchers have shed new light on the features that enable tree-dwelling mammals to move effectively through their environments, providing insights into the evolution of the distinct upright postures seen in primates. The study, published in eLife, is the first to compare upward and downward climbing behaviors across a broad range of tree-dwelling (arboreal) mammal species. eLife’s editors describe the work as valuable, with convincing analyses that will be of interest to biologists studying animal movement.
When you look out across a snowy winter landscape, it might seem like nature is fast asleep. Yet, under the surface, tiny organisms are hard at work, consuming the previous year’s dead plant material and other organic matter.
We like to think that animals follow the crowd. If most of the group does something, surely the individual will copy. But what if the story is more complicated? What if the deciding factor isn’t just what the majority is doing, but how strongly you already feel about it? That’s the question we set out to test in zebra finches.
At high densities, white-tailed deer inhibit growth of trees but increase the overall diversity of smaller plant and weed species, according to a long-term study published recently. The work is published in the journal PLOS One.
A new study published in Conservation Biology shows that geotagged social media photos can significantly improve biodiversity datasets, especially in regions underrepresented in global monitoring efforts. Led by scientists from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, and Monash University, the team integrated Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) occurrence records with public images of the tawny coster butterfly (Acraea terpsicore) from Flickr and Facebook, and saw a 35% increase in total observations.
