News by Subject Biology

Research, led by the University of Sussex and the University of Kent, indicates that for wolves to be effective at directly reducing red deer numbers and allowing nature to recover in the Scottish Highlands they may need to be reintroduced to very large fenced reserve.

A new Portland State University study shows that not all populations of a single, widely spread tree species respond the same to climate change, something scientists will need to consider when making climate change projections.

Pollution is changing the fungi that provide mineral nutrients to tree roots, which could explain malnutrition trends in Europe's trees.

Surprising new research shows that red spruce are making a comeback -- and that a combination of reduced pollution mandated by the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act and changing climate are behind the resurgence.

New research looks at how the destructive southern pine beetle reacts to cooler weather in its climate-induced, new northern ranges.

Sixty-six million years ago, the world burned. An asteroid crashed to Earth with a force one million times larger than the largest atomic bomb, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs. But dinosaurs weren't the only ones that got hit hard -- in a new study, scientists learned that the planet's forests were decimated, leading to the extinction of tree-dwelling birds.

Depending on the lighting, the surface of appropriately crafted nanoparticles can change its topography. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences have shown that the molecular mechanism they have designed makes it possible, by the use of light, to effectively uncover or hide catalyst molecules. The technique they present leads to qualitatively new possibilities to control the course of chemical reactions.

The large and small, beautiful and bizarre are among the newly discovered animals, plants and microbes announced by the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) as the Top 10 New Species for 2018.

A molecular study carried out on the chestnut gall wasp, Dryocosmus kuriphilus, has revealed the absence of genetic variability in this invasive species, a chestnut-tree parasite, in Europe. This is due to the fact that the wasp's reproduction is strictly parthenogenetic, the females produce more females without having to be fertilized by a male. The high capacity of reproduction of the females, producing genetically identical daughters, give this insect a high invasive potential.

Smog is a problem. But the knowledge about its constituents -- no longer. Researchers from several leading Warsaw scientific institutions have joined forces and developed a new, extremely precise method for the chemical analysis of suspended particulate matter. The method, easily adaptable in many modern laboratories, not only determines the chemical composition of compounds, but even recognizes changes in the spatial distribution of atoms in molecules.