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A recent global study conducted by over 50 scientists has found that mosses play a crucial role in ecosystems by providing essential services to the environment. The scientists collected samples of mosses from 123 different ecosystems around the world and analyzed how other plants and soils benefit from them. They discovered that moss-covered soil had higher levels of soil health, nutrient cycling, decomposition of organic matter, and control of harmful pathogens compared to soil without mosses. With approximately 12,000 species worldwide, mosses are considered the "lifeblood" of many ecosystems. [Extracted from the article]

According to an article in National Wildlife, researchers at The Ohio State University have found that white-tailed deer in Ohio are being infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The virus is evolving about three times faster in deer than in humans. The researchers collected nasal swabs from wild deer and found that over 10 percent of the animals carried the virus, with many of the infections being passed from humans. This discovery suggests that humans can potentially contract COVID-19 from deer, and understanding how the virus is mutating in deer populations is important for human health. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTSVANISHING AMPHIBIANSA team of international scientists reports in Nature that two in five of the planet’s amphibian species are now threatened with extinction (including the webbed harlequin frog, left), making them among Earth’s most imperiled animal groups.PHOTO (COLOR)PHOTO (COLOR) [Extracted from the article]

A recent study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) suggests that cracking down on poaching in tropical forests could help combat climate change. The research found that many of the mammals and birds frequently targeted by hunters play important roles in maintaining the carbon storage capacity of forests. Animals such as elephants, apes, hornbills, and toucans help disperse seeds from big trees with high carbon storage capacity and thin the underbrush, allowing these trees to thrive. As hunters reduce the populations of these animals, smaller-seeded or wind-dispersed trees with lower carbon storage capacity may become more prevalent. The study emphasizes the importance of maintaining intact faunas in order to conserve forests and address climate change. [Extracted from the article]

A recent study conducted in the city of Leeds by scientists from the University of Sheffield has found that nectar-feeding moths play a crucial role in pollinating urban flowering plants, including crops and trees. These moths carry more pollen and visit more plant species than previously thought. The study also revealed that moths feed on different plant communities, including night-blooming species, compared to bees. The scientists recommend including plants that benefit both moths and native bees, such as borage and comfrey, in residential gardens and green spaces to support the health of urban ecosystems. [Extracted from the article]

A team of British and Australian researchers have found that backyard ponds and other water features can be just as beneficial for urban wildlife as lakes. In a survey conducted in England's Hertfordshire county, the researchers discovered that 70% of respondents had water sources in their yards. They compared the wildlife visiting these sources with the wildlife in community lakes and found few differences in terms of quantity and variety. The researchers concluded that garden water sources can supplement water-dependent biodiversity in urban areas, especially during hot and dry weather. [Extracted from the article]

A study published in the journal National Wildlife reports that the increase in European honey bee populations in Montreal, Canada may be harming native North American bees. Researchers compared data collected on 180 wild bee species in 2013 with data from the same sites in 2020, during which honey bee colonies in the city increased significantly. The study found that sites with the largest increase in honey bee populations had the fewest wild bee species. The researchers suggest that urban beekeeping, often marketed as a solution to biodiversity loss, may be more detrimental to native bees than beneficial. They recommend planting pollinator gardens instead of adding more hives of nonnative honey bees. [Extracted from the article]

A study conducted by Swedish scientists and published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has found that providing seeds, nuts, and other bird-feeder foods to small birds during winter can help them survive the cold months. The researchers monitored the health of two groups of wild great tits and found that the birds with regular access to feeder food were able to maintain lower body temperatures, which helped them fight off infection and conserve energy. The scientists suggest that winter feeding not only supports the health of small birds but also provides people, especially in urban areas, with more opportunities to engage with nature. [Extracted from the article]

microscope Rising global temperatures have reduced offspring production in migratory and large-bodied birds (such as Adeliepenguins, left) but not in small and sedentary species, scientists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.PHOTO (COLOR) [Extracted from the article]

A recent study conducted by Christopher Clark, a biologist at the University of California, Riverside, has found that great gray owls have the ability to locate and capture voles hidden beneath up to 2 feet of snow with remarkable accuracy. The owls use sound to pinpoint their prey, with lower-frequency sounds being able to penetrate deep snow. Great gray owls have large "facial discs" that are sensitive to these low-frequency sounds, and they use their faces to funnel the sounds of buried voles towards their ears before using their talons to punch through the snow and catch their prey. This hunting technique is unique to great gray owls and makes them the most extreme birds in terms of hunting beneath the snow cover. [Extracted from the article]

Often isolated from larger waterways, seasonal wetlands such as prairie potholes (left) are frequently drained for agriculture or development. "Being disconnected can be better because the wetlands are catching the pollutants and retaining them as opposed to leaking them back into streams", says lead author Frederick Cheng, now at Colorado State University. Draining wetlands also destroys wildlife habitat and increases the risk of floods, drought and other impacts of climate change. [Extracted from the article]

In newer secondary forests, such spring ephemerals tend to be scarce - and in recent research published in Ecology, scientists say one explanation may be a lack of woodland ants. The scientists say low numbers of woodland ants in regenerated forests stems from several factors, including competition with invasive slugs that thrive on former agricultural lands. [Extracted from the article]

Microscope WIDE-OPEN SPECTRUM After analyzing vision research on nearly 450 species, University of Arkansas biologists report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that wildlife adapted to open habitats (such as prairie dogs, left) see a wider range of colors than forest animals. Unfortunately, these "small pockets of deciduous forest are often neglected in conservation planning", says Princeton ecologist and lead author Fengyi Guo, who hopes the new migration stopover map will help to change that. The map, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "gives us a powerful new tool for identifying the key habitats these birds are using during their epic migrations", says Princeton ecologist and co-author David Wilcove. [Extracted from the article]

Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Ferraro's paper is far from the only study finding that the presence of wild birds - particularly multiple bird species - can lift people's spirits. NATURE AND HEALTH For as long as she can remember, Danielle Ferraro has been captivated by birds. In a subsequent analysis of medical data provided by German authorities for 30,000 residents, Methorst and his colleagues confirmed that the larger the number of bird and plant species in a region, the more content people are. [Extracted from the article]

Scientists at Columbia University used high-resolution imagery to map urban vegetation and calculate the daily and seasonal changes, or "flux", in carbon the plants capture during photosynthesis. They found that on some summer afternoons, carbon absorbed by vegetation may temporarily equal up to 40 percent of the area's carbon emissions from all sources, or almost all carbon dioxide generated at those times by motor vehicles. During summer, trees, grasses and other vegetation in New York City (left) and nearby communities may play a larger than expected role counteracting human-caused carbon emissions. [Extracted from the article]

To make this discovery, Swedish zoologists broadcast a variety of songs to some 2,000 wild flycatcher nestlings from seven populations - each with its own distinct dialect - then observed the baby birds' responses. Because flycatcher hatchlings hear surprisingly few songs, Wheatcroft says the results also raise the intriguing possibility that the birds innately recognize their own dialects. When they are as young as 12 days old, nestling pied flycatchers (right) will respond - by begging for food - to songs from adult males that live in their own population, scientists have found. [Extracted from the article]

By analyzing brain tissue from 94 species - including solitary, pair-living and group-living mammals - the researchers also identified 31 genes linked both to longevity and a species' social system. The finding, published in Nature Communications, held true for a wide array of species, from group-dwelling and long-lived golden snub-nosed monkeys (above), naked mole rats and horseshoe bats to solitary and shorter-lived giant armadillos and short-tailed shrews. In an analysis of scientific papers on the body masses, life spans and lifestyles of 974 species, Chinese zoologists found that mammals living in groups generally outlive solitary mammals. [Extracted from the article]

Writing in eLife, the scientists explain that larger bull's-eyes contain more UV-absorbing compounds called flavonols that prevent excessive water loss. Scientists have long known that sunflower petals produce ultraviolet (UV)-absorbing pigments that create bull's-eye patterns invisible to humans but not to insects such as bees (longhorn bee, left). Now, in a study of nearly 2,000 wild sunflowers, researchers at the University of British Columbia find that sunflower UV patterns also help the plants survive by regulating water loss. [Extracted from the article]

"There was a big gap in the literature on this topic", says João Vitor de Alcantara Viana, a behavioral ecologist at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, who led an investigation into which strategies work best. Though scientists have spent more than a century observing and studying the camouflage tactics animals use to deter detection by predators, few of those efforts have compared the effectiveness of different concealment strategies. In general, the ecologists report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, predators must spend about 60 percent more time finding camouflaged prey than noncamou-flaged prey. [Extracted from the article]

"Our results support the idea that nest types can be important factors in the ecological success of birds", writes lead author Iliana Medina in Ecology Letters. A bout a third of the planet's roughly 11,000 bird species build elaborate domed nests with roofs that would appear to provide better protection for eggs and hatchlings than open nests. [Extracted from the article]

Say "thank you" to the birds and the bees that team up on farms where coffee is grown. Conducting field work on 30 Costa Rican coffee farms, researchers discovered that coffee beans grow larger and more plentiful when birds and bees join forces - with the bees pollinating the plants (Scaptotrigona pectoralis on coffee flower, left) and the birds protecting them from pests. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report that without the combined efforts of these winged helpers - many of which have migrated from thousands of miles away - the $24 billion coffee industry would suffer nearly a 25 percent decrease in crop yields. [Extracted from the article]

In analyses of high-speed videos of black (right), pileated and great spotted woodpeckers, the researchers found that the birds do not absorb the shock of the impact with a tree. Even the strongest shocks from dozens of pecks the team analyzed appeared to be safe for woodpecker brains. Building three-dimensional, biomechanical models of the birds, the scientists also concluded that shock absorbance by the skulls would severely hinder the birds' pecking abilities. [Extracted from the article]

In their investigation, published recently in Scientific Reports, the researchers measured the number of sounds and the length of sound patterns produced by humpback populations off the coasts of both east Australia and New Caledonia. "By listening to the Australian humpbacks, we were able to see if the songs changed in any way when sung by the New Caledonian whales", says lead author Jenny Allen, a University of Queensland research fellow. After analyzing several years of high-quality underwater recordings, scientists report that humpback whales (above) from one region of the South Pacific can learn incredibly complicated melodies sung by humpbacks from another region nearly 2,000 miles away. [Extracted from the article]

In a groundbreaking study, zoologists at Israel's Tel Aviv University have discovered how mother bats teach their pups to fly and navigate. To follow the mammals' movements, the researchers temporarily attached tiny monitoring devices to female Egyptian fruit bats (right, with pup) at a cave near Tel Aviv. [Extracted from the article]

"What's surprising is the range of species that benefit from feeding on puma kills", says co-author and Panthera ecologist Mark Elbroch. Ranging from the Canadian Yukon to South America's southern Andes, pumas (right, hunting a guanaco in Chile) have the widest distribution of any native mammals in the Western Hemisphere. [Extracted from the article]

Biologists from New Zealand have identified the first-known example of a plant species that seems to exhibit eusociality, a behavior in which different members of a colony play separate roles that together perpetuate the group's survival. Burns says this division of tasks sets staghorn ferns apart from other colonial plants. "Plants were completely off the radar", says Kevin Burns, a Victoria University of Wellington biologist who led a study of the staghorn fern Platy-cerium bifurcatum (above) on Lord Howe Island off Australia. [Extracted from the article]

In the first study of its kind, scientists at England's University of Reading have found that air pollutants common in both urban and rural areas may interfere with and reduce insect pollination (common eastern bumble bee, right). Writing in Environmental Pollution, the scientists suggest that pollutants may react with and change the scents of flowers, making them difficult for insects to find. [Extracted from the article]

According to a new analysis published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, bison restoration also may offer additional critical benefits: helping to conserve the fragile prairie ecosystems they inhabit and mitigating some of the adverse impacts of climate change in a region that is becoming warmer and drier. Efforts to restore bison (right) to Tribal lands across the Northern Great Plains have emphasized the importance of reestablishing the cultural and spiritual connections lost to Indigenous peoples when European settlers nearly annihilated the animals during the 1800s. [Extracted from the article]

"The idea that such a huge breeding area of icefish in the Weddell Sea was previously undiscovered is totally fascinating", says marine biologist and lead author Autun Purser. Deep beneath the surface of Antarctica's remote Weddell Sea, German researchers have discovered the world's largest-known fish-breeding colony. Given the colony's biomass, the researchers say the size of this breeding area makes it an extremely important ecosystem within the sea. [Extracted from the article]

NEWS OF THE WILD Until about two decades ago, giraffes (right) - Earth's tallest land animals - were thought to be basically aloof and lacking any social structure. Noting that the animals' numbers have declined in the wild by some 40 percent since 1985 - and that they've been declared extinct in at least seven countries - she adds that giraffe "conservation measures will be more successful if we have an accurate understanding of the species' behavioral ecology." In Mammal Review, they suggest that giraffes fit the "grandmother hypothesis" - the idea that females of some species survive well beyond their reproductive years to help raise successive generations of offspring. [Extracted from the article]

In locations where both human noise and light pollution occur, even more birds steer clear of backyards. In a separate study of 142 species, the scientists found that light and noise pollution impact the timing and success of bird breeding in a variety of complex ways. Researchers at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) provide the most comprehensive assessment to date of how the combined effects of human noise and light pollution affect birds across the continental United States. [Extracted from the article]

Scientists have found that the sea's huge baleen whales eat two to three times more food, both daily and annually, than researchers previously thought - which means the animals also poop much more than earlier studies had estimated. The finding is important because whale feces are a critical source of nutrients in the open ocean. The whales capture prey by filtering vast amounts of water through fringed baleen plates in their mouths. [Extracted from the article]