Two types of New Zealand kiwi birds are a rare bright spot in a mostly grim assessment of global species at risk of extinction.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature upgraded the Okarito kiwi and the Northern Brown kiwi from endangered to vulnerable thanks to New Zealand’s progress in controlling predators like stoats and cats.

In a surprise ecological finding, researchers discover medium-sized carnivores spend the most time looking for food, making them vulnerable to change.

Mammalian predators (commonly called carnivores) spend a significant part of their day foraging for food, and the more time they spend, the more energy they use. This makes predators that spend a long time foraging more vulnerable to changes in the environment that affect their primary resource: their prey.

Supercapacitors can store more energy than and are preferable to batteries because they are able to charge faster, mainly due to the vertical graphene nanosheets (VGNs) that are larger and positioned closer together. VGNs are 3-D networks of carbon nanomaterial that grow in rows of vertical sheets, providing a large surface area for greater charge storage capacity. Also called carbon nanowalls or graphene nanoflakes, VGNs offer promise in high-power energy storage systems, fuel cells, bio sensors and magnetic devices, amongst others.

Concerns about biodiversity tend to focus on the loss of species from ecosystems, but a new study suggests that the loss of variation within species can also have important ecological consequences.

Many species play important roles in nature and provide services important to people. For example, many fish species are harvested for food, and many insect species pollinate wild and cultivated plants. The loss of these species may mean the loss of ecosystem services, a major motivation for preventing species extinctions.

Those who crave brownies or hot cocoa may be happy to hear that heroes too small to be seen may help to protect the world’s chocolate supply. Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama found that exposing baby cacao plants to microbes from healthy adult cacao plants reduced the plant’s chance of becoming infected with the serious cacao pathogen, Phytopthora palmivora, by half. The researchers’ study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on July 5.

Researchers have developed a new approach to estimate the true size of very large earthquakes. At present, scientists use seismic waves from a rupture to work out the scale of the event. But a new analysis of the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011 shows that changes in gravity can give more rapid information.

This method could have accurately estimated that magnitude 9 tremor in minutes, not the hours actually taken. As Japan’s largest recorded earthquake, the Tohoku event is probably best remembered for the huge tsunami it unleashed.

Aerial view of a small lake near the city of Clear Lake, Iowa, which represents typical landscapes surrounding the lakes in this study. About 92 percent of land within Iowa is in production agriculture and crops on these lands receive large amendments of nitrogen as anhydrous ammonia and phosphorus. Excessive algae growth caused by these nutrient inputs have turned many of the lakes in this region bright green. Surprisingly, a number of lakes in this study were clearer and appeared bluer than expected, yet are far from healthy. The study authors hypothesize that very high nitrogen levels, often >10 mg/L, suppress high chlorophyll (algae) concentrations.

In a study that shows the importance of climate change on critical pollinators, North Carolina State University researchers found that earlier and longer flowering seasons can have poor effects on the bumble bees that rely on these flowers to live and thrive.

“We wanted to understand how climate change is affecting bee populations – specifically three species of bumble bees that live at higher altitudes and are important pollinators,” said Rebecca Irwin, an NC State professor of applied ecology and co-principal investigator on the study, which is published in the journal Ecology Letters. “We asked whether variation in snowmelt timing and summer precipitation directly affected bumble bee colonies and their survival, or if the snowmelt and precipitation effects on flowers were more important. It turns out that the effects on flowers played a more critical role in affecting bee populations.”

With all the discussion about global climate change effects, new research shows that another kind of climate is an important factor in regional pinyon pine tree recovery after drought events – the microclimate.

Microclimates are localized climates found within a larger one, like that of a cool canyon in the desert Southwest. These occur because of local differences in topography and existing vegetation that control temperature, wind patterns, humidity, and available water. These physical subtleties create smaller ground level environments called microsites, which are often necessary to support individual life forms like a pinyon pine tree.