Biology Ecology

Despite decades of warnings about overfishing, Southeast Asia’s capture fisheries have proven remarkably robust.

Anemonefish provision food they don’t eat to increase size of host sea anemones

Field observations in natural river environment hold clues to easing model organisms’ life in labs

Because of climate change, harmful algal blooms are increasing in frequency and intensity. New science helps demystify the frequent harmful algal blooms in the Pacific off the coast of Chile by studying how algae species interact with each other and their environment.

Dr Wan Faridah Akmal Jusoh of Monash University Malaysia's School of Science has been named a 2025 Explorers Club 50 honoree for her outstanding contributions to biodiversity research and conservation.

Tsuyoshi Watanabe uses corals to understand the environment of the past and what it can tell us about people living then.

A new study has lifted the lid on five species of root-lesion nematodes living in maize crops across New Zealand - and suggested the existence of a hitherto-unsuspected cryptic species.

Intimate insights into relationship between cost of gamete production and sexual selection

Venice of the Pacific, Membrane transformers, Diverse meals, Nano dots and spirals & Extinct swimmers. Read all in the latest Editor's Choice.

Clues found relating repair of photosynthetic protein complex to how plants survive in colder regions

Typically, closely related animal species have difficulty coexisting because they are competing for similar resources. Despite eating the same figs, binturong, small-toothed palm, masked palm, and common palm civets do coexist together. To understand how they coexist, a new study explores their degree of faunivory.

Study suggests mycoviral infections affect the ecology of host oomycete

Study shows fish may use punishment to promote help from their offspring

The recently concluded Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes Conference convened tiger range countries, private and public sector donors, international development agencies, the Tiger Conservation Coalition, and other conservation organisations to discuss innovative solutions to sustainably finance tiger landscape conservation.

The effects of a phenomenon called tree masting on ecosystems and food webs can be better understood thanks to new theoretical models validated by real world observations.

Out of this living laboratory emerged unexpected insights on coexistence from an “unusual” source.

In recent years, an emerging zoonotic pathogen called E. albertii, transmitted by wild animals such as raccoons, has garnered attention due to its remarkable similarities to several strains of Escherichia coli (E. coli), including O157, and its potential to cause severe illness, particularly in children. A research group at Osaka Metropolitan University has developed a novel culture medium that allows for the selective cultivation of E. albertii from raccoon fecal samples. This enabled the successful isolation of E. albertii even from samples with very low quantities of this bacterium. Their findings are expected to further elucidate the bacteriological characteristics of E. albertii and to contribute to the control of foodborne illnesses.

A long-lived monocarpic species of bamboo, Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, only flowers once every 120 years before it dies. The upcoming flowering event for this species does not bode well for its continued long-term survival, as most flowers are not producing viable seeds.

Mushrooms 🍄get chattier after rainfall 🌧️, Two-organ chip answers fatty liver questions, History maps 🗺️vs future simulations, Restoring vision in blindness. Plus in our blog: Myanmar: Through eyes of leadership. Read all in the latest Editor's Choice.

Certain types of fungi can communicate with each other via electrical signals. But much remains unknown about how and when they do so. A group of researchers recently headed to the forest to measure the electrical signals of Laccaria bicolor mushrooms, finding that their electrical signals increased following rainfall.

Marine predators have expanded their ranges into the Arctic waters over the last twenty years, driven by climate change and associated increases in productivity.

A group including Osaka Metropolitan University researchers discovered that the rhodopsin—a protein in the eye that detects light—of whale sharks has changed to efficiently detect blue light, which penetrates deep-sea water easily. The amino acid substitutions–one of which is counterintuitively associated with congenital stationary night blindness in humans—aid in detecting the low levels of light in the deep-sea. Although these changes make the whale shark rhodopsin less thermally stable the deep-sea temperature, allows their rhodopsin to keep working. This suggests that the unique adaptation evolved to function in the low-light low-temperature environment where whale sharks live.

Researchers from Osaka University have developed a culture system using pluripotent cells from southern and northern white rhinos, which was refined to produce primordial germ cell-like cells (PGCLCs). These cells are the equivalent of primordial germ cells, the origin of eggs and sperm. The study marks an important first step in the potential production of northern white rhino gametes, which could be used in breeding programs, and is the first to induce PGCLCs in a wild animal.

World's first research into relationship between rich-in-biodiversity garden greenery and health/well-being launched by University of Tokyo and Sekisui House Ltd.

Milling rice to separate the grain from the husks, produces about 100 million tons of rice husk waste globally each year. Scientists searching for a scalable method to fabricate quantum dots have developed a way to recycle rice husks to create the first silicon quantum dot LED light. Their new method transforms agricultural waste into state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes in a low-cost, environmentally friendly way.

Scientists have developed a model that predicts six tropical fish species will expand into northern parts of Japan as sea temperatures rise.

Researchers from Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo find that the occurrence of red snow is closely tied to the length of the snow melt season and new snowfall events

Studying the sensory organs of a 100-million-year-old cockroach offers new insights into how the species may have lived.

Predator species may buffer the negative impacts of climate change by mitigating against the loss of biodiversity, according to new research led by scientists in Trinity College Dublin and joined by scientists at Hokkaido University

A joint research team at the Division of Biotechnology, DGIST, confirmed that microplastics(MPs) ingested orally accumulate in the brain and act as neurotoxic substances.