News by Subject Biology

Five new species of eye-catching snakes with curious eating habits were found to inhabit forests in Ecuador. With four of them already deemed at risk of extinction, the international research team decided to auction their naming rights and use the money to purchase and save the previously unprotected plot of land where some of these species dwell. Their study is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

An age-old challenge of determining the right amount of fish to harvest from the sea has finally been overcome with the creation of a new biomass-yield model that captures all the necessary factors for accuracy, according to a new WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) study.

Almost one in five of British mammal species face a high risk of extinction, according to the first comprehensive review of their populations for more than 20 years launched today.

Though soil bacteria have provided some of our best antibiotics, the drugs come from a small group of all the microbes in soil. UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab scientists used metagenomics to sequence all the genomes of soil microbes in a teaspoon of soil to search for molecules that look like antibiotics. They found several hundred clusters of genes similar to the genes of known antibiotics, plus other complex and possibly useful molecules.

A new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications presents some of the best evidence to date that restoration efforts in Missouri's Ozark Highlands make a difference for nesting songbirds that breed there. Recent studies support that these efforts are making a positive impact on the ecosystem and increasing the survival of bird species that breed there.