News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
A spectacular coral reef has been found between 35 and 70 metres below sea level near Tahiti, and it seems to be in good health despite the global biodiversity crisis Environment 20 January 2022 By Chen Ly The pristine coral reef, newly discovered in deep water near Tahiti @alexis.rosenfeld This spectacular rose-shaped coral has been … Read more
The signs of death are everywhere, if you look. For years, scientists have rung the alarm bell, warning that grave declines in animal biodiversity around the globe herald the onset of what will be Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Despite the looming weight of evidence to suggest this grim phenomenon is unfolding all around us, … Read more
As Earth heats up from the burning of fossil fuels, the climate conditions that species have adapted to are increasingly shifting away from their historical ranges. But while birds and other animals can often fly, walk or swim to follow their preferred environment, plants are quite literally rooted to the ground. They require outside forces … Read more
Declines in bird and mammal species are making plant seed dispersal more difficult, which means plants can’t adapt as effectively to climate change Environment 13 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan An American robin eats a winterberry Paul Vitucci Losses in the number of birds and mammals are limiting the capacity of plants worldwide to adapt … Read more
By Chen Ly The new species – Uvariopsis dicaprio Lorna MacKinnon A tropical, evergreen tree from Cameroon, the first plant species to be named as new to science in 2022, has officially been labelled Uvariopsis dicaprio today in honour of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio. It adds to the list of the strange and spectacular plants … Read more
By Graham Lawton Yang Zheng/VCG via Getty Images WHEN it comes to selecting venues for crunch talks on the future of the planet, the United Nations does a nice – if possibly unintentional – line in irony. Much was made of last year’s decision to hold the COP26 climate talks in the UK, which as … Read more
E. O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist who makes a single seminal contribution to his or her field has been a success. By the time I … Read more
From Ensia (find the original story here); reprinted with permission. November 29, 2021—It’s no secret that the diversity of life around us is plummeting fast. In 2020 alone, scientists declared more than 100 species to be extinct. And that’s bad news not only for the creatures themselves, but for those of us (that would be all of us) who … Read more
By Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware Edward O. Wilson in his office in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, in 2014. Credit: Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images E. O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department … Read more
By Adam Vaughan Shane Gross/naturepl.com AS THE world examines the outcome of the COP26 climate summit, spare a thought for conservationists trying to protect the planet’s natural riches. A landmark UN biodiversity summit has been postponed three times because of the pandemic and now won’t be held in person in China until April, after a … Read more