A coral reef off the coast of Benin, long presumed dead, has just been found alive and full of activity, more than sixty years after scientists first wrote it off. Old surveys from the 1960s, carried out mainly to locate good fishing spots, had picked up signs of a possible deep-water reef sitting more than…
Scientists have uncovered plastic pollution in one of Earth’s most isolated environments, challenging the long-held belief that the deep ocean remains largely untouched by human activity. Analysing animals living more than 2,000 metres beneath the sea, researchers discovered that 92% contained microplastics, offering some of the clearest evidence yet that plastic waste has reached even…
For Londoners living around Greenford Tube station, tiptoeing through floodwater to get to work was a part of their daily routine. The ticket hall found itself inundated after a heavy downpour with neighbourhoods flooded and sandbags routinely deployed to make way.The local council of Ealing, a borough in West London faced the daunting reality every…
The Amazon rainforest is never truly quiet, and its endless chorus of chirps, whistles and calls may carry far more information than humans realise. Scientists studying wildlife in the Peruvian Amazon have uncovered a remarkable network in which birds and primates pick up information from one another’s alarm calls when predators appear. Small canopy birds…
Zoe Kissane says the birds often ate at seed spills around agricultural operations (Supplied: Murdoch Univeristy) Scientists tracking endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoos across Western Australia’s Wheatbelt over three breeding seasons found worrying levels of chemical contamination in the birds’ food. Four out of five seed samples tested positive for pesticides, with some containing chemical levels…
Albert Einstein (Image: Wikipedia) Some people move through the world treating almost everything as ordinary. Others notice something remarkable in the same ordinary details. A line widely credited to Albert Einstein names that exact split. “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as…
The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. In the enlarged section, the nematosomes—which are key to the immune system of these invertebrates—are highlighted. (Credit: HHU/Nida Kaya) A simple sea anemone (a small plant with white, red, blue or purple flowers that are shaped like cups and have dark centres) can distinguish helpful bacteria from harmful invaders despite…
Flowerhorn cichlids are aquarium fish prized for their bright-gold colour and prominent head humps. Photograph: Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP/Getty Images A human-bred aquarium fish prized for its bright gold colour and distinctive head hump has escaped into a volcanic crater lake in the Philippines, where scientists fear it is threatening native wildlife and spreading into local aquaculture.Flowerhorn…
An image of the rediscovered coral reef by Gérard Zinzindohoué (Photo: Gérard Zinzindohoué) A deep-water coral reef off the coast of West Africa that was believed to be dead for six decades has been discovered alive and thriving more than 50 metres below the ocean surface.The forgotten reef was first identified off the coast of…
A mosquito lands on a blackbird’s wing. It pierces the skin, draws blood, and moves on. Somewhere in that moment, a parasite called Plasmodium slips into the bird’s bloodstream. Researchers have long known this happens across the UK, but they weren’t sure which mosquitoes do the transmitting. They finally have answers to that puzzle. A…
