Skydiving salamanders live in world’s tallest trees
Researchers have documented in a vertical wind tunnel the amazing ability of one species of salamander — which spends its entire life in the tops of redwoods — to parachute, glide and maneuver in mid-air. Ground-dwellers, on the other hand, freak out during free-fall. The salamander’s skydiving skills are likely a way to steer back […]
A family of termites has been traversing the world’s oceans for millions of years
A comprehensive family tree, based on DNA sequences, has revealed that drywood termites have made at least 40 oceanic journeys over the last 50 million years to reach far flung landmasses.
Plastic pollution: European farmland could be largest global reservoir of microplastics
Dylan de Jonge/Unsplash, CC BY-SA Plastic particles smaller than 5mm (known as microplastics) are well-documented pollutants in ocean and freshwater habitats. The discovery of microplastics in the most remote rivers of the Himalayas and the deepest trenches of the Pacific Ocean has sparked widespread concern. But how much microplastic lies closer to home – buried […]
Factors including extreme winds, topography and vegetation influenced the severity of burns from Oregon’s devastating 2020 megafires
In a new study examining burn patterns from the 2020 Labor Day fires, researchers studied the influence of weather, topography, vegetation and other factors on burn severity in areas where the fires killed more than 75% of the trees. Their research confirms that extreme winds over the Labor Day holiday were the primary driver of […]
Five facts about the gruesome beauty of solitary wasps
Malloscelis taiwanianus, a spider wasp, found in Sichuan, China. Shutterstock Most people recognise a wasp as those stripy insects who ruin our summer picnics. They live in huge societies, much the same as the honeybee; you might even have a nest in your loft or shed. But there’s a lot more to wasps than these […]
David Bowie and the birth of environmentalism: 50 years on, how Ziggy Stardust and the first UN climate summit changed our vision of the future
David Bowie released his seminal album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars 50 years ago, on June 16, 1972. It was an artsy and ambitious rock album which captured the time’s sense of being on the cusp of new technological and cultural frontiers. In the early 1970s, the US […]