FLORA FAUNA

5,060 articles

The secret life of underground microbes: Plant root microbiomes rule the world
Sep 22, 2013 (SPX)
We often ignore what we cannot see, and yet organisms below the soil's surface play a vital role in plant functions and ecosystem well-being. These microbes can...
Model organism gone wild
Sep 22, 2013 (SPX)
Model organisms, brought into labs because they are easy to work with, adapt to the lab, often shedding characteristics that allowed them to survive in the wild...
Experts to probe deaths of 64 elephants in Zimbabwe park
Sep 20, 2013 (AFP)
Zimbabwean wildlife authorities will dispatch a team of experts to the country's largest game park Saturday to investigate the poisoning deaths of 64 elephants,...
Mantas, devil rays butchered for apothecary trade now identifiable
Sep 20, 2013 (SPX)
Since dried filters from the mouths of filter-feeding rays hit apothecary shop menus in Asia - the thought being that eating ground-up filters will cleanse one'...
To touch the microcosmos
Sep 20, 2013 (SPX)
What if you could reach through a microscope to touch and feel the microscopic structures under the lens? In a breakthrough that may usher in a new era in the e...
Rhino poaching 'kingpin' arrested in South Africa
Sep 19, 2013 (AFP)
South African national park officials claimed a significant victory in the battle against rhino poaching Thursday, saying they have arrested a man described as ...
Environmental complexity promotes biodiversity
Sep 18, 2013 (SPX)
A new study published in the journal American Naturalist helps explain how spatial variation in natural environments helps spur evolution and give rise to biodi...
Thai police seize nearly 200 pangolins
Sep 17, 2013 (AFP)
Thai police Tuesday said they had seized almost 200 live protected pangolins, which are prized in China and Vietnam as an exotic meal and for use in traditional...
Ants turn unwelcome lodgers into a useful standing army
Sep 16, 2013 (SPX)
Mercenary soldiers are notoriously unreliable because their loyalty is as thin as the banknotes they get paid, and they may turn against their employers before ...
Micro-gels from tiny Arctic and Antarctic ice algae play an important role in polar ocean carbon budgets
Sep 16, 2013 (SPX)
A community of microscopic algae and bacteria thrives within the Arctic and Antarctic pack ice. These ice-organisms are adapted to growing on the ice crystal su...
Doomed deer freed to feed China's elusive tigers
Sep 16, 2013 (AFP)
High in the mountains of northeastern China, conservationists looking to preserve the endangered Amur tiger -- the world's largest living feline -- are releasin...
Taiwan sets up first turtle sanctuary after second major haul
Sep 15, 2013 (AFP)
Taiwan is to set up its first turtle sanctuary, officials said Sunday, after the second seizure within weeks of more than 2,000 of the protected creatures, boun...
360 million year old fossilised scorpion
Sep 13, 2013 (SPX)
A postdoctoral fellow from Wits University has discovered the oldest known land-living animal from Gondwana in a remote part of the Eastern Cape. Dr Robert Gess...
Miserable-looking fish wins Ugliest Animal award
Sep 12, 2013 (AFP)
The blobfish, a denizen of the Pacific that looks like a bald, grumpy old man, has been named the world's ugliest animal, organisers of the offbeat competition ...
Jumping insect has first 'mechanical gears' found in nature
Sep 12, 2013 (UPI)
Functioning "mechanical gears" have been found in nature for the first time, British scientist say, powering the jumping prowess of a common garden insect. Issu...
Pico-world of molecular bioscavengers, mops and sponges being designed
Sep 11, 2013 (SPX)
Computer-designed proteins that can recognize and interact with small biological molecules are now a reality. Scientists have succeeded in creating a protein mo...
Protecting 17 percent of Earth's land could save two-thirds of plant species
Sep 11, 2013 (SPX)
Protecting key regions that comprise just 17 percent of Earth's land may help preserve more than two-thirds of its plant species, according to a new Duke Univer...
More land needs protection to satisfy treaties, study shows
Sep 11, 2013 (SPX)
Can the separate international commitments of protecting 17% of the planet's terrestrial surface and of conserving 60% of the world's plant species within these...
Relocation, relocation
Sep 11, 2013 (SPX)
Scientists at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have devised a novel method to identify suitable new homes for animals under threat from climate change. Co...
US bars sale, trade of white rhino horns
Sep 10, 2013 (AFP)
The last remaining species of rhinoceros that is not endangered will receive new US protection due to an intensifying poaching crisis, federal wildlife official...
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