Ecology Archives - ScienceNOW

5 March 1999 | ScienceNOW

Greenland's Shrinking Glaciers

by Robert Irion

Another effect of climate change has surfaced, this time on Greenland. A NASA team reports today in Science that the edges of the Northern Hemisphere's biggest ice cap shrank markedly...

11 February 1999 | ScienceNOW

Video Diaries of Antarctic Seals

by Robert Irion

They won't win an Oscar for best performance in an underwater role, but four seals in Antarctica have made a scientific splash by filming themselves in action. Infrared cameras glued...

4 February 1999 | ScienceNOW

UV Glare Gets Genes Jumping

by Kevin Boyd

A thinning ozone layer may ultimately send maverick DNA segments called transposons jumping throughout the genome of corn plants, according to a report in today's Nature. These nomads could lead...

28 January 1999 | ScienceNOW

Magnetic Cells: Stuff of Legend?

by Melissa Mertl

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA--Scientists have come a step closer to unraveling what appears to be an amazing ability of birds, bees, and fish to use Earth's magnetic fields to navigate. At the...

15 January 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Friend of Africa's Gorillas

by Science News Staff

Tomorrow is the birthday of Dian Fossey, whose observations of mountain gorillas have led to a deeper understanding of their habits, communication, and social structure. After a trip to East...

14 January 1999 | ScienceNOW

Manakins: Deformed in the Name of Love

by Elizabeth Pennisi

DENVER--For the club-winged manakin, love knows few bounds. In its quest to secure an attractive partner, this small, stocky bird has evolved bigger wing muscles and heavier bones that likely...

13 January 1999 | ScienceNOW

Fish Protection Plans Fail Test

by Michael Hagmann

Fishery management plans drafted by eight U.S. regional councils won't adequately protect the nation's fish stocks, according to the Marine Fish Conservation Network (MFCN), a coalition of some 80 organizations...

8 January 1999 | ScienceNOW

Mild Nights Threaten Prairies

by Michael Hagmann

Doomsayers may predict melting ice caps and drowned cities, but more subtle fallout from global warming has already struck the American West. Milder temperatures on the Colorado prairie have led...

31 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Nestlings Safer Near Farms

by Mari N. Jensen

Farmland would seem to be a bad neighborhood for forest-dwelling birds, because nest predators easily infiltrate scraps of forest that border fields. And yet, these woody strips may actually be...

22 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Feathered Feminist

by Cassie Ferguson

If male jacana could sing the blues, these birds would have plenty to wail about. While the typical female cavorts wide and far, her loyal partner stays at home and...

21 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Millions of Migrating Mexican Monarchs

by Robert Irion

Subtle chemical traces in the wings of monarch butterflies have revealed where they dine on their beloved milkweed before fluttering to Mexico for the winter. About half of the monarchs...

16 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Salty Eels

by Christie Aschwanden

Most third-graders know that panda bears aren't really bears, and starfish aren't really fish. Add freshwater eels to the list of creatures naturalists have misnamed. Japanese researchers report in tomorrow's...

14 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Net Loss: Trawling Critiqued

by David Malakoff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--A group of marine scientists lobbed a warning shot across the bows of the world's trawling fleets today, charging that sweeping the seafloor with heavy nets in search of...

3 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Songbirds Stressed in Winter Grounds

by Bernice Wuethrich

Minnesotans may dream of relaxing winter escapes to the Caribbean, but not the American redstart. Winters down south are a time of stress for this migratory songbird, and a lean...

30 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

DNA Suggests Cultural Traits Affect Whale Evolution

by Gretchen Vogel

In some species of whales, behaviors learned within families may be altering the course of genetic evolution. In the current Science, Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia,...

23 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Queen-of-the-Hill Gene?

by David Kestenbaum

Ants are social animals (try sharing your home with 100,000 in-laws) that live by a complex social code. Many house rules were thought to be flexible: When food is scarce,...

4 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Blue Light as a Feather

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Ornithologists will be revising a century-long misconception in textbooks with a report upsetting the prevailing view about why some bird feathers appear blue. The work, published in this week's issue...

30 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Elephant-Nosed Fish Plays the Electric Organ

by David Kestenbaum

Most animals rely on two eyes for accurate depth perception. Not the African elephant-nosed fish, which uses electrical pulses to navigate at night. Scientists report in this week's Nature that...

26 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Getting to the Roots of Flying Famine

by Dan Ferber

Huge swarms of desert locusts have devastated crops in Africa, Asia, and Europe since biblical times, but no mortals have been able to predict when they will strike. Now a...

21 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Durable Food Webs, by Computer

by Dan Ferber

Food webs are woven from many plant and animal species that interact in fantastically complex ways. The intricacies of these interactions have eluded attempts to construct realistic computer models of...

15 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Otter Deaths Bode Ill for Ecosystem

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Sea otters off the Alaskan coast play a pivotal role in marine ecosystems: By dining on sea urchins, the animals help preserve kelp forests that feed a range of species,...

15 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Vast Carbon Soaked Up by North America?

by Jocelyn Kaiser

North America may sop up a whopping 1.7 petagrams of carbon a year--enough to suck up all the carbon discharged annually by fossil fuel burning in Canada and the United...

7 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Pesticides Pollute Mountain Slopes

by Robert Irion

Surprisingly high levels of pesticides and industrial pollutants sully the snows of western Canada's stunning mountain ranges, ecologists have found. According to a study in tomorrow's Nature, these toxic compounds...

2 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bug Vanquishes Species

by Dan Ferber

For the first time, scientists have documented an infection wiping out an entire species, in this case a type of land snail. Experts say the finding, reported in this month's...

30 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Warrior Bug Tackles Waste

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

The Cold War may have ended several years ago, but it left behind some dangerous unfinished business: 3000 nuclear waste sites in the United States alone. Now researchers may have...

28 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Leakey Reappointed Head of Kenyan Parks

by David Malakoff

Politics has again created strange bedfellows in Kenya. Just a week after ousting conservationist David Western as head of the embattled Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), President Daniel arap Moi has...

25 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Ecology Lessons From Lilliputians

by Gretchen Vogel

Providing "corridors" that link patches of undisturbed habitats can help protect species from extinction--at least in the tiny world of spiders and mites that dwell on moss-covered boulders. The find,...

21 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Kenya Parks Chief Ousted--Again

by David Malakoff

Kenya's fickle political winds have again blown conservation leader David Western out of office--this time permanently. Just 4 months after losing and then regaining his post as head of the...

14 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Extinction's Ripple Effect

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Like doctors battling a deadly disease, conservationists go about their work knowing that many species will die out despite their best efforts. A new analysis in tomorrow's Proceedings of the...

10 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Soot Blamed for Smog Woes

by Christine Hong

Fresh soot may be the root of urban smog. The finding, published in today's Nature, could solve a long-standing mystery about what triggers smog formation, but it probably won't make...

28 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Ray of Hope for Logged Forests

by Kate O'Rourke

There may be less reason for gloom and doom at the sight of a patch of logged rain forest. Within a decade of selective logging, forests can recover levels of...

18 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Earth-Probing Satellites Still Earthbound

by Andrew Lawler

It is proving harder for NASA to explore Earth than to send spacecraft millions of kilometers to Jupiter. Launches of two important Earth observation satellites are again on hold due...

18 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bugs Snuggled Up Tight With Clams

by Dana Mackenzie

Despite scalding-hot water and poisonous hydrogen sulfide, deep-sea clams prosper along fissures in the sea bottom. But they can't do it alone: The clams survive because symbiotic bacteria inside their...

18 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Dead Zone Dies Back

by David Malakoff

The Gulf of Mexico's dead zone--the huge swath of oxygen-starved, nearly lifeless ocean that appears off the Louisiana coast every summer--was smaller this year than last, the first time the...

14 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Forests' Small Appetite for Nitrogen

by Jocelyn Kaiser

BALTIMORE--A glut of nitrogen washing over the land from car and factory exhaust and crop fertilizers is degrading water and air quality and even altering precarious balances in species diversity....

11 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Coordinated Attack on Eco Threats?

by Science News Staff

BALTIMORE--At the request of the White House, federal ecologists are following the lead of climate scientists and fashioning a blueprint for working together and with academia, according to agency officials...

6 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Resistant Weed Could Outdo Crop

by Kate O'Rourke

BALTIMORE--Weeds that acquire genes for herbicide resistance from a genetically engineered crop can reproduce just as well as nonhybrid weeds. The finding, reported here today at the Ecological Society of...

6 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Pollution Law Slackens Acid Rain

by David Malakoff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--A controversial air pollution law substantially reduced acid rain in the United States in 1995, researchers reported Tuesday. The success story could spur the wider adoption of market-based pollution...

5 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Selfish Genes of Fire Ant Assassins

by Science News Staff

The idea of selfish genes, which stick around even if they do no obvious good for the individual carrying them, has some new evidence to back it up. A particularly...

4 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Cheetahs Adapt to Cub Deaths

by Science News Staff

Endangered cheetah populations in Africa have a staggeringly high rate of infant mortality: Just 5% of cheetah cubs survive to adulthood. This has led to proposals to stop predators from...

Category: Ecology

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