Nature reports

Why do some females not just reproduce until they die? As in humans, killer whale females go through a menopause and stop reproducing at a certain age. A new study by the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB) reveals that..

Tiny predators in the soil can literally sniff out their prey: soil bacteria, which communicate with each other using scent. A team of researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) has discovered that these..

What prompts a hunter to shoot an animal after it is spotted? Wageningen and Norwegian researchers studied more than 180,000 choice situations where hunters had spotted an animal and had to decide whether or not to shoot. They..

Over 700 newly recognised bird species have been assessed for the latest update of The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 11% are threatened with extinction. It also reveals a devastating decline for the giraffe, driven by..

Plastic marine litter, both industrial granules and consumer wastes decline slowly but with certainty. For some years, this tendency was already present. Now, the addition of the data of monitoring year 2015 to the time series of..

55 trillion kilograms: that's how much carbon could be released into the atmosphere from the soil by mid-century if climate change isn't stopped. And all in the form of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane. Tom Crowther..

Recent heavy rains have washed a heavy amount of trash from the nearby landfill site onto one of St Eustatius' main turtle nesting beaches. The positioning of the landfill site means that this could be a regular occurrence..

A research team has mapped areas in tropical Africa containing relatively many rare plant species. They used 3.1 million global distribution records of more than 40,000 African plant species that were all assessed for their..

Deep-sea coral reefs grow in the oceans at great depths in the dark. They can be found around the peaks of limestone mounds rising from the seafloor up to hundreds of meters. The corals produce these limestone mounds themselves:..

Global populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish have declined by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012. Animals living in the world’s lakes, rivers, and freshwater systems have experienced the most dramatic..