Earth's services in peril, report concludes
...least 32 percent of amphibians are threatened with extinction over the next century. Increases in food production have kept pace with population growth, but often at the expense of other ecosystem services that form the foundation for more food depleted soils, over-fished oceans, polluted waters. Abrupt chan...Introduced foxes transformed vegetation on Aleutian Islands from lush grasslands to tundra
...us on the direct effects, such as the reduction or extinction of species that are consumed by an introduced predator. This study shows how the effects of introduced species can spread throughout an ecosystem in unpredictable ways," said Donald Croll, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at...UF science discovery raises questions about origin of African mammals
...years ago, roughly 10 million years after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs that had dominated them. In this ...es and many other mammals, Bloch said. "After the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, there was an explosion of diversity," he said. "Mammals had a...Wolves alleviate impact of climate change on food supply, finds new UC Berkeley study
...hroughout North America, but were nearly hunted to extinction by 1970. Since the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone in 1995, a growing body of research is finding that this top carnivore, which has been making a comeback, is an essential player in the region's ecosystem. There are n...Aggressive aquatic species invading Great Lakes
...ieve that gobies have contributed to or caused the extinction of some native species in Lake Erie, the first lake to be invaded. "Obviously people are concerned about the effects on native species in the other lakes that gobies have now spread to," says Balshine....Ecological destruction fuels emerging diseases
...e destruction of habitat by human activity and the extinction of species around the world is more than a looming environmental catastrophe, warns a Canadian zoologist. This ecological damage also endangers human health by turning parasites into "evolutionary land mines." Dr. Daniel (Dan) Brooks, a parasitologis......survive, Smith speculates that substantial species extinction may have occurred in the whale fall fauna. The deep ocean appears to be a major reservoir of biodiversity on the planet. Some of the oddest animals ever discovered occur on whale falls, says Smith. These communities are the undertakers of the deep, a...Selective predation and productivity jointly drive complex behavior in host-parasite systems
...s at lower productivity and sudden but unavoidable extinction of parasites at higher productivity. In the former case, parasites have difficulty invading a host population, while in the latter case, parasites cannot persist with their hosts, even if they can invade. When predators less strongly prefer parasitiz...New evidence indicates biggest extinction wasn't caused by asteroid or comet
... of a comet or asteroid triggered the biggest mass extinction in Earth history, but new research from a team hea...nhouse gases triggered by erupting volcanoes. The extinction occurred at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods at a time when all land was concen...Holes in fossil shells show effects of competition and evolution
...les drilled in clam shells before and after a mass extinction two million years ago show patterns of predator-pr...asizes a new way of looking at the consequences of extinction and recovery, by closely observing how individual species interact with each other. "Our work shows...Drilled shells show extinction's lasting effects
...environment," Vermeij said. A severe but regional extinction event at the end of the PlioceneEpoch 1.7 million ...nds of fossil clam shells from beforeand after the extinction and compared them with modern shells.Edge-drilled shells are abundant up to 1.7 million years ago, a...Latest census finds more American pika populations disappear as climate warms
...lobal warming apparently contributing to the local extinction of an American mammal at sites across an entire ec...hich American pika populations have suffered local extinction to nine out of twenty-five or 36 percent. Continued loss of populations raises concern, as does the...Global bird populations face dramatic decline in coming decades, study predicts
... island species will be extinct or on the brink of extinction by 2100. Birds with highly specialized diets are p...ey wrote, adding that some plant species also face extinction if their primary pollinators and seed-dispersers vanish. "It's hard to imagine the disappearance of ...Wolves gone, western ecosystems suffer
...t than realized in the American West. The near extinction of the gray wolf across most of the West in the pa...nal Park. In Grand Teton National Park, the local extinction of grizzly bears and wolves caused an increase in herbivory on willow by moose, and ultimately decre...Northwestern and Chicago Botanic Garden join forces to train botanists
...ental changes -- loss of habitat and biodiversity, extinction of species, global climactic change -- and these s...tened or endangered. The primary causes of species extinction or endangerment are habitat destruction, commercial exploitation (such as plant collecting), damage ...Say goodbye to Rudolph and other reindeer if global warming continues
...uthwestern France." He added that the Pleistocene extinction was not the first time that reindeer vanished from the region, noting that the animals were present in the glacial period prior to 130,000 years ago. However, he said there is no record of reindeer in southwest France during the Eemian Interglacial ...Fragmented habitats no ultimate refuges for forest-dwelling tropical birds
...al extent. "There are more species threatened with extinction in this coastal strip of rain forest than anywhere...r years in Brazil's Atlantic Forest because of the extinction threats. That group's research website includes Pimm's own personal account http://www.nicholas.duk...Studies in Royal Society journals include stress in birds and depletion of medieval fish stocks
... pollination to explore vulnerability of plants to extinction of their pollinators. Many plants are pollinated ...ists. These features confer relative tolerance to extinction for plant species. But tolerance is not immunity, and it is essential to conserve pollinators that ...2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species reveals 15,589 species at risk of extinction
...ecies survive only in captivity. However, the real extinction figure is believed to be much higher, due to the c...typically more ecologically fragile, and Current extinction rates are at least one hundred to a thousand times higher than background, or "natural" rates. The ...New study links low fish supply to increased bushmeat hunting
...ing marine resources for Ghanaians have led to the extinction of almost half the species studied in some reserves. It is the first study to provide empirical evidence of an association long suspected by many conservation groups. "This study provides the strongest link yet between a local fish supply with im...