Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it – well, maybe they don’t fall in love but they do procreate, so can we estimate how many animals are born every day across the world?
That was the question posed by a listener to the BBC’s More or Less programme, a show which aims to make sense of the numbers that inform our lives.
Spring is a busy time for bumblebee queens.
After emerging from hibernation, their to-do list includes making nests, laying eggs, and keeping their larvae warm and fed. It’s physiologically demanding, and the stakes are high: the success of the colony depends on a queen‘s solitary work during this time.
El Niño was long considered a reliable tool for predicting future precipitation in the southwestern United States, but its forecasting power has diminished in recent cycles, possibly due to global climate change. In a study published today in Nature Communications, scientists and engineers at the University of California, Irvine demonstrate a new method for projecting wet or dry weather in the winter ahead.
A turtle tagged by University of Exeter scientists in Brazil has swum thousands of miles – and is now in the waters of a UK overseas territory.
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) appear to keep tidier sleeping arrangements than humans do. That’s one finding of a recent study that evaluated the microbes and arthropods found in the treetop beds that chimpanzees make each night.
The next time you cook a fish or order some seafood at a restaurant, think about the image above.
It’s a snapshot of all the fishing happening on the ocean over a six-month period. If you zoomed in, you’d see thousands of blue dots, each showing one instance of likely fishing activity at one point in time. This image captures almost 20 million hours of commercial fishing by tens of thousands of vessels around the world. As we approach World Oceans Day this week, it’s sobering to reflect on the fact that industrial fishing now occurs in more than 55% of the ocean – an area more than four times bigger than all the land used for farming.
June, 19, in Frankfurt, Germany, Greenpeace held an action to collect signatures in order to save the Antarctic and make it Sanctuary. President of Eastern European Association of the Greens Alexander Kamenets joined the colleagues and supported their initiative.
Ecovillages are traditional or intentional communities whose goal is to become more socially, culturally, economically and ecologically sustainable. Ecovillages are consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate and restore their social and natural environments. Most range from a population of 50 to 150 individuals, although some are smaller, and traditional ecovillages are often much larger. Larger ecovillages often exist as networks of smaller subcommunities. Certain ecovillages have grown by the addition of individuals, families, or other small groups who are not necessarily members settling on the periphery of the ecovillage and effectively participating in the ecovillage community.
Researchers have found tiny pieces of plastic in all the samples of mussels they tested in British seawaters and bought from local supermarkets.
The scientists, from the University of Hull and Brunel University, said the contamination from microplastics and other human debris, such as cotton and rayon, was significant and widespread.
A fungal pathogen which has led to the extinction of entire species in South America has been recorded for the first time in critically endangered amphibians in India. Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) can cause the lethal disease chytridiomycosis, and is considered a significant threat wherever it is found.
