Idaho State University 11/5/2019 POCATELLO – Most people don’t think of weather as having a biological component and aren’t aware of the role airborne bacteria and fungi have in helping create rain and snow. But Ken Aho, Idaho State University associate professor of biological sciences, studies this phenomenon. “Weather is not as simple as we think – it is not…

University of Exeter 11/4/2019 Satellites now play a key role in monitoring carbon levels in the oceans, but we are only just beginning to understand their full potential. Our ability to predict future climate relies upon being able to monitor where our carbon emissions go. So we need to know how much stays in the atmosphere, or becomes stored in the oceans or on…

Andy Fell, UC Davis 11/1/2019 Social networking, even between competing species, plays a much bigger role in ecology than anyone previously thought, according to three biologists at the University of California, Davis.  “There’s mounting evidence that different species pay attention to each other in the wild, especially if they share predators,” said Mike Gil, postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis. “The…

Rick Wahle, University of Maine 10/24/2019 Two new studies published by University of Maine scientists are putting a long-standing survey of the American lobster’s earliest life stages to its most rigorous test yet as an early warning system for trends in New England’s iconic fishery. The studies point to the role of a warming ocean and local differences in oceanography…

James Cook University 10/25/2019 A long-term study of coral cover on island groups of the Great Barrier Reef has found declines of between 40 and 50 percent of live, hard corals at inshore island groups during the past few decades. Scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU) say…

By Kasey Rahn, University of Montana 10/22/2019 MISSOULA – Research led by a University of Montana undergraduate student to identify less error-prone methods for performing wildlife surveys was published Oct. 20 in Ecological Applications. Biologists around the world use a variety of boots-on-the-ground field methods to survey animal populations. When extrapolated, these data provide population counts and other scientific information used to…

By Nadav Nur 10/7/2019 We used Point Blue’s long-term data to examine the complex relationship between house mice, burrowing owls, and ashy storm-petrels on the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge and to provide a quantitative estimate of the anticipated benefit to ashy storm-petrels from a proposed house mouse eradication project. Surveys by Point Blue biologists revealed a strongly seasonal pattern…

By Sarah Nicholas, Mississippi State University 10/2/2019 STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State University researchers are shifting commonly held ideas about the diet of grey wolves in a newly published article gaining national attention. Published in the scientific journal “Ecology,” MSU assistant professor Brandon Barton’s Sept. 18 article “Grasshopper consumption by grey wolves and implications for ecosystems” details the unexpected effects of wolf reintroduction…

By Trent Knoss, CU Boulder 10/2/2019 BOULDER, CO – A lack of tree seedling establishment following recent wildfires represents a crucial bottleneck limiting coniferous forest recovery in the western U.S., new CU Boulder-led research finds. The study, which was recently published in the journal Ecological Applications, examined burn-affected ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir stands in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico to better understand…