Standard Podcast [ 19:07 | 17.5 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18)

Kansas native Jesse Nippert loves the prairie. He spends much of his time immersed in the tall grass as an assistant professor at Kansas State University. Though agriculture has vastly changed the plains of North America, pockets of tall grass remain on rangeland and preserves. But the remaining tallgrass prairie, like grasslands all over the [...]

Considering canopy cover in Ecuador [ 10:46 | 9.85 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3)

Loss of canopy cover in rainforests—compared to the other fragmented habitats in Manabi in southwest Ecuador—leads to a region-wide loss of diversity in species interactions, said researchers from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. As Jason Tilianakis and Etienne Laliberté reported in the June issue of Ecology, the food webs and interactions between parasitoids [...]

Stepping stones of diversity [ 10:34 | 9.67 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3)

What is it about the rocky habitat in California that makes giant kelp so prevalent? And how do they spread from one section of the Santa Barbara Channel to another? According to Filipe Alberto, a marine population geneticist at the Centre for Marine Sciences in Portugal, giant kelp spread from one area to another in [...]