By National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis 3/16/2020 Conserving natural habitat around strawberry fields can help protect growers’ yields, their bottom line and the environment with no detectable threat to food safety, indicates a study led by the University of California, Davis. KNOXVILLE—The best bargains for conserving some of the world’s most vulnerable salamanders and other vertebrate species can…

By University of Gothenberg 3/13/2020 Researchers have used a new method to identify which eelgrass meadows on the Swedish coasts are particularly vulnerable or valuable and which meadows should be restored in the future. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is a marine flowering plant that provides a habitat for a wide range of marine plants and animals, including several commercial fish, such as…

By University of Washington 3/12/2020 As oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, they are becoming increasingly acidic and shifting the delicate balance that supports marine life. How species will cope with ocean acidification and the other consequences of global climate change is still very much unknown and could have sweeping consequences. Researchers from the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery…

By University of California, Davis 3/11/2020 Conserving natural habitat around strawberry fields can help protect growers’ yields, their bottom line and the environment with no detectable threat to food safety, indicates a study led by the University of California, Davis. In the study, published in the journal Ecological Applications, researchers conducted grower surveys and experiments at 20 strawberry farms stretching between Santa Cruz, Watsonville,…

By University of Washington 3/9/2020 Spring is coming, and with it comes the promise of warmer weather, longer days and renewed life. For residents of the Pacific Northwest, one of the most idyllic scenes of this renewed life is the wildflowers that light up Mount Rainier’s subalpine meadows once the winter snowpack finally melts. These floral ecosystems, which typically arrive…

By University of Hawai’i, Manoa 3/5/2020 The Haleakalā silversword, already one of the rarest species in the Hawaiian Islands, has been declining in recent decades due to drier and warmer climate conditions. Efforts to restore the population should focus on outplanting new plants in geographic areas with the most favorable climatic conditions. That’s according to a three-year study by researchers from…

By the National Science Foundation 3/4/2020 Why are there so many species of plants? Why do some plants thrive, while others don’t? Ecologist Noelle Beckman of Utah State University and her colleagues explore these questions in new findings about seed-to-seedling transitions published in the journal Ecology. The research is supported by the National Science Foundation. “This team used a new approach to analyzing spatial…

By University of Central Florida  3/4/2020 Sea level rise and hurricanes are a threat to sea turtle nesting habitat along national seashores in the Southeast, but a new study predicts the greatest impact to turtles will be at Canaveral National Seashore. The University of Central Florida-led study, which was published recently in the journal Ecological Applications, examined loggerhead and green sea turtle nests…

By University of California Riverside 3/4/2020 Entomologists at UC Riverside have documented that a species of native sweat bee widespread throughout North and South America has a daily routine that makes it a promising pollinator.  Because the bee can thrive in environments that have been highly modified by humans, such as cities and agricultural areas, it could become a suitable supplement…