News by Subject Biology

Scientists with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and collaborators surveying the birdlife of Borneo have discovered a startling surprise: an undescribed species of bird, which has been named the spectacled flowerpecker. While scientists and birdwatchers have previously glimpsed the small, gray bird in lowland forests around the island, the Smithsonian team is the first to capture and study it, resulting in its formal scientific description as a new species.

Oaks have a complex evolutionary history that has long eluded scientists. New research, however, provides the most detailed account to date of the evolution of oaks, recovering the 56-million-year history that has made the oaks one of the most diverse, abundant and important woody plant groups to the ecology and economy of the northern hemisphere.

Researchers from the University of Maryland and the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the type of beneficial soil fungi living around tree roots determined how quickly the trees accumulated harmful, pathogenic fungi as they grew and could play a key role in determining forest biodiversity.

Wildfire is transforming some forestlands into shrublands, a UC Davis study finds. The results suggest these forests, which are used to living with and even benefiting from fire, have not yet adapted to this newer regime of intense, high-severity fires.

Removing dead trees from the forests and reforesting on a large scale: this is the German Federal Government's strategy against 'Forest Dieback 2.0'. Ecologists from the University of Würzburg call for other solutions.