By DAVID JOLLY7 January 2013 PARIS (The New York Times) – About five years ago, Alain Lenoir, a researcher at François Rabelais University in Tours, France, was studying the biochemical process by which ants differentiate between friends and foes. Scientists had come to understand that the insects used their antennae to sense the makeup of […]
By Charlotte Stoddart21 October 2012 Bees, the most important pollinators of crops, are in trouble. All over the world, their populations are decreasing and scientists and farmers want to know why. In some cases, such as the widely reported colony collapses in North America in 2006, it is probably down to disease. But a blooming […]
By Alister Doyle; editing by Tim Pearce31 August 2012 OSLO (Reuters) – The vital tasks carried out by tiny “engineers” like earthworms that recycle waste and bees that pollinate crops are under threat because one fifth of the world’s spineless creatures may be at risk of extinction, a study showed on Friday. The rising human […]
By Jeremy C. Fox 20 August 2012 Harvard scientists say they have found shifts in the Massachusetts butterfly populations tied to climate change, according to a new study published Sunday in the scholarly journal Nature Climate Change. The study, which used data collected during 19 years by amateur enthusiasts from the Massachusetts Butterfly Club, found […]
By Nick Crumpton, BBC News13 August 2012 Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests. Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae, and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident. The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was […]
By David Richardson9 Apr 2012 Susan Peters, who moved from the East Coast to Tucson, Ariz., a couple of years ago, calls her adopted town an “oasis” — never mind that it only gets 12.6 inches of rain each year on average. “I have a very green, beautiful yard with desert-adapted plants, not the East […]
By Nathan Rao28 March 2012 Almost half of Britain now faces devastating water shortages with supplies at critically low levels. Weeks of virtually no rainfall have decimated river and underground sources leaving the country in the worst drought for 124 years. The Environment Agency will today announce that parts of Yorkshire, the largest county, are […]
By Alison Benjamin, www.guardian.co.uk29 March 2012 In July 1994, French beekeepers reported that their honeybee population had displayed strange, agitated behaviour and had “melted away”. “Mad bee disease,” as it quickly became known, was thought to have caused the death of 40% of bee colonies and beekeepers looking for an explanation for the catastrophe began […]
The total annual area occupied by overwintering monarch butterflies from 1994 through 2011 has declined significantly, with the all-time smallest area reported during the 2009–10 overwintering season. The dashed line shows the 17-year average (7.24 ha). Both linear (upper) and exponential (lower) regression lines are included. Abstract: During the 2009–2010 overwintering season and following a 15-year […]
By JOSEPHINE MARCOTTY, Star Tribune 16 March 2012 Genetically engineered corn and soybeans make it easy for farmers to eradicate weeds, including the long-lived and unruly milkweed. But they might be putting the monarch butterfly in peril. The rapid spread of herbicide-resistant crops has coincided with — and may explain — the dramatic decline in […]
