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Researchers from the University of South Florida (USF) and a colleague at the Institute of Zoology in Beijing, China have found that outbreaks of three emerging diseases and parasites – West Nile virus, Lyme disease and amphibian chytridiomycosis – are driven by different ecological processes at different spatial scales. Their data also suggests that focusing on a single spatial scale can lead to inaccurate estimations of the impact humans are having on biodiversity, disease emergence, and the environment.

Researchers have helped solve one of the enduring mysteries of the ancient world: why the inhabitants of Madagascar speak Malagasy, a language otherwise unique to Southeast Asia and the Pacific – a region located at least 6,000 km away. An international research team has identified that ancient crop remains excavated from sites in Madagascar consist of Asian species like rice and mung beans

Far offshore and a mile deep in the dark world below the Gulf of Mexico’s gleaming surface, the catastrophic BP oil spill of 2010 did untold damage on the ocean floor. But scientists are unsure they can do much to heal places in the deep that were hurt the most as they undertake what’s being called the largest ecosystem restoration effort ever.

The waters surrounding Antarctica may be one of the last places to experience human-driven climate change. New research from the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds that ocean currents explain why the seawater has stayed at roughly the same temperature while most of the rest of the planet has warmed.

A global renewable energy project on the Galapagos Islands—one of Earth’s most fragile and important ecological treasures—has helped avoid many tanker loads worth of risky diesel fuel imports since 2007, reduced the archipelago’s greenhouse gas emissions and preserved critically endangered species.

The toxic dinoflagellate, Alexandrium fundyense, is a photosynthetic plankton—a microscopic organism floating in the ocean, unable to swim against a current. New research by scientists at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) suggests that ingestion of this dinoflagellate changes the energy balance and reproductive potential of a particular copepod—a small crustacean—in the North Atlantic, which is key food source for young fishes, including many commercially important species.

Being at the top of the food chain is no guarantee of a species survival. Not only are many of these so-called apex predators susceptible to human impacts, they also are slow to recover from them, which makes these animals vulnerable despite their high-ranking ecosystem status.

A U of T Engineering team has designed a simpler way to keep therapeutic proteins where they are needed for long periods of time. The discovery is a potential game-changer for the treatment of chronic illnesses or injuries that often require multiple injections or daily pills.

With climate change already close to an irreversible tipping point, urgent action is needed to reduce not only our mean (carbon) footprints but also the “number of feet” – that is, the growing population either already creating large footprints or aspiring to do so, argues a leading physician and environmentalist in The BMJ today.

An expansive bed of underwater grass at the mouth of the Susquehanna River has proven it is able to “take a licking and keep on ticking.” A recent study has found that the submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) bed at Susquehanna Flats, which only recently made a comeback in the Chesapeake Bay, was not only able to survive a barrage of rough storms and flooding, but it has proven a natural ability to protect and maintain itself.