ecology

An agreement signed Friday formalizes seven tribes as co-managers of the Clear Lake watershed. Mercury contamination, toxic algal blooms and invasive fishes have threatened a rare and revered local fish.

Nature Communications, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77711-w Mycorrhizal associations with trees help regulate nutrient cycling in forests. This study found that the dominance of arbuscular mycorrhizal trees across Japan is associated with climate warming and tree diseases and may influence forest nitrogen cycling.

New animal species are often associated with remote rainforests or the deepest parts of the ocean. But scientists believe unknown creatures could also be living in the heart of New York City. An international project is searching for previously unidentified insects in Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The team includes researchers […] The post Scientists Search New York Cit…

What catches your eye about the flowers in your city? Perhaps it is their vibrant colours, their fragrance, or simply the beauty of a city in bloom. Flowers can brighten the entire urban landscape, bringing a sense of delicacy, wonder, and relief amid the stresses of daily life. For a long time, however, architects and landscape designers chose urban plants mainly for their appearance and how eas…

Drought can quickly turn a promising forest seedling into a damaged plant by disrupting water balance and triggering oxidative stress. A new study identifies a molecular control system that helps white birch withstand these pressures.

Britain’s wasps have become mysteriously scarce this summer, and scientists suspect an unusual combination of temperature swings, heatwaves, and food shortages may be responsible. Even the wasps that remain appear unusually small, potentially offering a glimpse of how extreme heat could reshape insect populations.

Stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, a massive bloom of sargassum seaweed is swamping beaches and killing coastal wildlife. But scientists have discovered the floating algae also shelters a vast array of ocean creatures, and some are now calling for its protection.

In 1998, unusually hot ocean temperatures stressed corals worldwide, causing them to expel the microalgae living within their tissues that normally nourish the tiny animals and give them color. Over the next year, more than 20 percent of the world’s reefs turned white during the first global coral bleaching event on record.  Fortunately, some of […]

IntroductionLong-term grazing exclusion is widely used to restore degraded grasslands, yet whether its effects on soil microbial metabolism–particularly nutrient limitation and carbon use efficiency (CUE)–vary among grassland types remains poorly understood.MethodsWe investigated three typical grassland types in Xinjiang, China: temperate desert (TD), temperate steppe (TS), and mountain meadow (M…

Researchers have dueled for years over how the magnetic sense works. New data from monarch butterflies could finally help settle the debate.

This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of SoundToxins, a Washington Sea Grant program that serves as an early warning system to protect people and shellfish safety from toxic phytoplankton blooms. As a former phytoplankton sampler for SoundToxins and its Pacific coast sister program Olympic Region Harmful Algal Bloom (ORHAB), I am so happy to dig deeper into this program’s history and shine …

The endangered nabarlek is not easy to find and difficult to distinguish from similar species. But a research team made new detections of the animals that offer “good news for their long-term survival”

Thylacines had powerful snapping bites suited for catching small and medium-sized prey like bandicoots—not taking down large animals such as sheep and cattle, as European colonists feared

Scientific Reports, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-70733-w Ultra-processed food increases mortality in the cockroach Nauphoeta cinerea