The disease is spread by two types of mosquito. The first is a species called Culiseta melanura, or the black-tailed mosquito. This mosquito tends to live in hardwood bogs and feeds on birds like robins, herons, and wrens, spreading the virus among them. But the melanura mosquito doesn’t often bite mammals. A different mosquito species, … Read more
If you stood on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado after the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the rumbling water may have appeared black. This slurry of ash and charred soil cascaded toward the reservoirs that supply drinking water for the downstream city of Fort Collins, home to around 170,000 people. Although … Read more
While immersed in fieldwork earlier in life, Goodall recognized that lifting people out of poverty was integral to preserving biodiversity in the national park. Hence, she initiated the Tacare program, which offers microloans to kick-start sustainable businesses, scholarships for girls previously deprived of secondary education, and family-planning counseling. Additionally, farmers receive advice on chemical-free, sustainable … Read more
Despite the creation of multiple stormwater reservoirs, like the bassin d’Austerlitz, which collect stormwater and slowly release it after the bad weather has passed, if enough rain is concentrated into a small enough time, not everything that falls from the sky can be captured. In such a situation, runoff water has to be released into … Read more
.jpg "Polluted Lakes Are Being Cleansed Using Floating Wetlands Made of Trash")
When Pradhanang found a trash mix that could be fashioned into a platform and resist breaking down with age, she began talking to her colleagues in Nepal. By 2021, they had secured $78,000 in funding from the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research, a research and policy funder, to operate a study across Nepal, India, … Read more
Since the 2000s, cacao production has declined, due to plant diseases and falling local prices, causing many people to turn their cacao farms into pasture. Valenzuela explains that this means that, in general, between one cacao grove and another, there are now pastures, agricultural fields, or human settlements. With the fragmentation of the monkeys’ habitat, … Read more
CAPTION: Chelsea Wood kneels to search for shore crabs at a beach in Tacoma, Washington. She will later dissect the crabs to search for parasites. CREDIT: Jesse Nichols/Grist The parasites were a sign that the local shorebirds were doing great, Wood explained. As scientists have learned more about parasites, some have argued that many ecosystems … Read more
Teams of volunteers now hunt Asian hornets landing on British soil, but detection is only the tip of the iceberg, says Elmes. The true challenge is tracing the hornet back to its nest, to destroy the colony. “If something can automate and help us, it will shave off time,” he says. This is the rationale … Read more
Much like an unexpected free dinner will distract you from the leftovers sitting in your fridge, this summer’s cicada emergence will turn predators away from their usual prey. During the 2021 Brood X emergence, Zoe Getman-Pickering, a scientist in Lill’s research group, found that as birds swooped in on cicadas, caterpillar populations exploded. Spared from … Read more
It was around 5 pm on March 15, and the light was fading fast, when Constantin and Tatiana were attacked by the bear. The young couple, aged 29 and 31 and identified in local media reports only by their first names, were Belarusians living in Poland. But Constantin had been working for the winter as … Read more
