The US Department of the interior has requested a scientific review of the possible ecological impact of drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the Arctic.
We are now at a stage where we have years of extensive research results on the ecological, economic and health aspects of many GMOS.
says Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke university in Durham, North carolina, who advises Pew. Unlike tropical forests,
Belgium, found that mature boreal forests remain active carbon sinks rather than becoming carbon-neutral ecosystems as they mature (S. Luyssaert et al.
which hold an average of 7, 800 tonnes of carbon per hectare, far more than any other ecosystem.
says Hank Margolis, a forest ecosystem scientist at Laval University in Quebec city, who heads the Canadian Carbon Program.
however, that pest control must keep sight of the whole ecosystem. The impact of genetically modified crops must be assessed on the landscape level,
taking into account the ecological input of different organisms, he says. This is the only way to ensure the sustainability of their application.
Meeting co-organizer Matt Walpole, head of ecosystem assessment at the United nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, UK, says that conservation agencies have been na
'But the research by Crowder, an insect ecologist at Washington state University in Pullman, and his colleagues, shows the importance of'evenness'the relative abundance of different species. Evenness quantifies not just the presence of different species,
Almost all the studies that have been done have looked at the number of species in an ecosystem, says Crowder.
agrees Marc Cadotte, a community ecologist at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. This knowledge can shed light on, for example,
and can also be crucial for determining how ecosystems will respond to challenges, such as those posed by climate change.
an ecologist at the University of Minnesota in St paul. Fortunately, there is plenty of cleared land that is underperforming
But work1 by Brigitte Poulin, a bird ecologist at the Tour du Valat research centre in Arles, France,
and her colleagues in the Journal of Applied Ecology provides evidence that mosquito control has effects further up the food chain.
New york. That's the central dilemma of behavioural ecology that we've been grappling with for a long time.
and Ecosystem Services. http://ipbes. net/8-12 june Oslo boasts the'largest polar science gathering ever'at a conference on the 2007-08 International Polar Year. http://www. ipy
says Gregory Asner, an expert in remote sensing at the Carnegie Institution's global ecology programme at Stanford university in California.
It is unlikely that the oil is having any significant ecological effects after weathering away for so long,
however, there are ominous signs that not all ecosystems fared as well. After leaving Champot  n, Tunnell and his colleagues travelled about 125 kilometres north to the tiny village of Isla Arena,
this is one of the least-studied ecosystems in Mexico, says Tunnell. He says that he's intrigued by the oyster story and hopes to do follow-up research on the topic.
but that more productive ecosystems such as mangrove swamps or salt marshes the closest analogue to mangroves in the northern Gulf retain oil indefinitely.
Such fires are often beneficial to the functioning of the ecosystem, and forests usually regrow quickly after them.
and vegetable patches, says Johann Goldammer, a fire ecologist and director of the GFMC. Many poor people will lose their harvest,
researchers told the Ecological Society of America conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, today. The scientists behind the discovery say this highlights a lack of proper monitoring
says Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who led the research team that found the canola (Brassica napus, also known as rapeseed).
whether these escaped GM canola plants have any ecological consequences. But those that have evolved resistance to both herbicides could become a weed problem for farmers,
Alison Snow, an ecologist at Ohio State university in Columbus, says it is not surprising that escaped transgenic plants have now been found in the United states,
an ecologist at the Beijing-based Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, examined phosphate run off into Lake Tai,
How stress shapes ecosystems: Nature Newsyou are tense and wary, alert to every rustle and snapped twig.
but also for the ecosystems they live in. In more relaxed conditions, many animals opt for high-protein foods that help them to grow
an ecologist at Yale university in New haven, Connecticut, has been teasing out the ecological ramifications of this predation stress in meadows.
Hawlena thinks that the ecosystem is likely to be changed in two ways by frightened grasshoppers. First, they eat more goldenrod
Hawlena says that this phenomenon may help ecologists to understand previously unexplained ecosystem changes and could move ecology closer towards being a fully predictive science.
But the relationship, if it exists, may not be clear cut. Like Hawlena's grasshoppers, the elk of Yellowstone national park in Wyoming were thought to eat differently because of the threat of predation.
and is swamped by all the other convoluted causal factors in ecosystems. It is very intriguing that Hawlena
Martin Lechowicz, a plant ecologist at Mcgill University in Montreal Quebec is not surprised, however. Lechowicz and his colleagues have analysed
says Johann Goldammer, a fire ecologist and director of the GFMC. But it could happen,
an ecologist at Tohoku University in Japan who led the study. We've found that a single gene can have major effects on speciation and adaptation simultaneously.
says Menno Schilthuizen, an evolutionary ecologist at the National Museum of Natural history of The netherlands in Leiden,
ecologists are starting one of the biggest environmental projects ever run. The ten-yearlong Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems project will be launched on 29 january in the forests of the Maliau Basin on the island of Borneo,
where the study is based. It is being funded with 30 million ringgits (US$10 million), from Sime Darby,
and the resources and processes provided by the ecosystem as the forest is logged and replanted with oil palms.
says Rob Ewers, an ecologist at Imperial College London and the project's scientific director.
Tim Killeen, an ecologist with Conservation International, a not-for-profit environmental group, says that he is glad to see that someone is doing this study.
We are expanding our vision to look beyond natural ecosystems and towards improving functional landscapes so they are not just making food,
for example, but also providing ecosystem services. This kind of study looks at that question in a well organized way,
whereas the other emphasizes feeding the world while preserving ecosystems. The second scenario, based on a food intake of 3, 000 kcal per person per day in all regions of the world, including 500 kcal per day of animal origin,
some 12%smaller than the previous estimate from the United nations. Some scientists argue that despite their ecological importance,
The original agreement pledged to respect the principles of ecosystem-based management, an approach that takes into account human needs as well as ecological concerns.
This would include the needs of aboriginal communities and others who are tied economically to the forest, such as trappers and tourism organizations.
Brooks says that the final plan must respect all aspects including human ones of ecosystem-based management.
Jill Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist at Duke university in North carolina, and her team had discovered previously thousands of seeds in the guts of Colossoma macropomum fish in Peru's Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve1.
although written about for decades as of great potential value in this important ecological role, says Michael Horn,
Many fish may provide a hugely important link between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and not only in the Amazon.
a worrying development given the emerging proof of the importance of these animals to the ecosystem (see also:
Nature Newsto ecologists overseas, the invitation might sound tempting. It offers travel to Australia and unspecified remuneration to serve on an advisory panel considering a juicy scientific question:
More than 100 Australian ecologists have signed a letter to the Australian government denouncing the trial. The letter's organizers claim that the trial is a naked attempt to use the imprimatur of science to allow cattle to graze in an ecologically sensitive area,
an ecologist at the University of Melbourne who helped to organize the protest letter. The decision in question is the return of cattle to portions of the 646,000-hectare park, a landscape of deep ravines, high plateaux and snow gum trees.
and manure damage sensitive wetland ecosystems. Coleman says that the cattle do stop fires, by eating the vegetation that forms potential fuel,
and that ecologists have ignored mountain cattlemen's knowledge of the land. We've got generational knowledge that goes back 150 years in my family.
Libby Rumpff, an ecologist at the University of Melbourne and an organizer of the scientific protest, disagrees.
an ecologist at the University of Sydney, has been invited by the Victoria government to lead the program of research that will accompany the trial, according to Victoria's website.
but merely testing methods suitable for measuring the impact of cattle on fuels and on ecosystem functions.
The ecologists have been indoctrinated by politicians on the left, he says, whereas the coalition is trying to deliver on a political promise.
But attempts to directly link local changes in species distribution and biodiversity to climate warming hold little promise, ecologists warn in Nature Climate Change1.
But when it comes to managing and conserving species and ecosystems, trying to figure out exactly how much of any one particular decline is due to greenhouse gases is not necessarily helpful,
As it shifts, it's been devastating local ecosystems. But it may not have become invasive
But biology and ecology are fundamentally different from and I argue more complex than climate science humans are doing much more harm to wild species than just adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
or at least knew nothing of the threat they might pose to native ecosystems. So Hulme decided to check
says Lian Pin Koh, an ecologist with The swiss Federal Institute of technology Zurich and a member of the study team.
however, a furious debate has emerged among behavioural ecologists over whether the train of the male peafowl,
says Roslyn Dakin, a Phd student in behavioural ecology at Queen's university in Kingston, Canada. Dakin and a colleague, Robert Montgomerie, tracked three populations of feral peacocks and peahens during the spring breeding season,
Beginning in the 1980s, Marion Petrie, a behavioural ecologist at Newcastle University, UK, examined the role of the peacock's tail in mating rituals.
However, in 2008, a team of Japanese ecologists studying the same group of feral peafowl over seven years reported that, overall,
To estimate the abundance of carbon in mangroves, lead investigator J. Boone Kauffman, an ecologist at the Northern Research Station of the US Forest Service in Durham
and understanding the significant pool of carbon in mangrove ecosystems, says Shimon Anisfeld, an expert in coastal ecology at Yale university in New haven,
Connecticut. However, the numbers still only represent rough estimates, owing to a lack of information about geographic variation in soil depth,
most robust stands around, says Thomas Smith, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey in St petersburg, Florida.
an expert in coastal ecosystems at Mcgill University in Montreal, Canada. Hopefully, it will help arguments to extend REDD+to mangroves,
Robert Jackson, an ecologist at Duke university in Durham, North carolina, agrees with Chmura, adding: Mangrove forests are important for diversity, for coastal stability and for carbon, based on this paper.
Their results are published this week in Environmental science & Technology. The soil samples used for the analysis came from a contaminated forest area 25-45 kilometres northwest of Fukushima.
We need many more samples before we can try to determine the full extent of Fukushima's ecological effects.
says Nick Beresford, a radioecologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Lancaster, UK.
this is a very useful ecological assessment. Many land species, says Hinton, may get off relatively lightly
Radioecologists regret that the few ecological studies done after the Chernobyl reactor meltdown 25 years ago missed out on many research opportunities
together with an international team, is studying the long-term ecological and health consequences of the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine.
Biologist Kevin Mcgraw of Arizona State university in Tempe says that pigments are good ecological tools:
'But Rebecca Mcculley, an ecologist at the University of Kentucky, sees a high volume of requests as a sign of desperation in the face of so much uncertainty about what the AFRI will fund.
UK ecosystem services declining: Nature Newsmany UK ecosystem services, including fish catches and soil quality,
are declining or have already become degraded as a result of over exploitation, poor management and habitat change,
according to the first national assessment of the United kingdom's ecosystems, released today. Over the past 60 years, there have been declines in around 30%of ecosystem services the benefits that humanity receives from the natural environment.
Only 20%of services got better, says The UK National Ecosystem Assessment, despite environment-improving measures such as the clean air act in the 1950s.
Crop production and species diversity in woodlands were among the few services that improved. Wheat yields doubled between the 1960s and 2010
Continued population growth and climate change in the country will probably put more pressure on ecosystems in the future, further reducing benefits and services.
Aquatic ecosystems are among those most degraded, for example from pollution from fertilisers running off of agricultural land, says Bob Watson, chief scientist for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs,
As drivers of change in ecosystem services, climate change and invasive species will become more and more important over the next 50 years,
That value takes into account a range of non-market goods provided by ecosystems, including flood and erosion control, recreational enjoyment and spiritual inspiration,
such as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a European effort to assess the global economic benefits of biodiversity,
The UK National Ecosystem Assessment is advanced the most interdisciplinary assessment of ecosystems and services yet anywhere in the world, says Ian Bateman, an environmental economist at the University of East Anglia, UK,
Ecosystem services are ignored typically and given a value of zero in political decision-making, the assessment says.
Steve Albon, an ecologist at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, UK, and co-chair of the study,
Nature Newsfor tropical ecologist Greg Asner, it's all about seeing the forest through its trees.
biochemistry and ecology, beginning with measuring subtle differences in the way the forest canopy absorbs
but ecologists many of whom have spent decades tramping through the jungle in muddy boots are lining up to find out.
It is going to change a variety of fields of tropical ecology, says Alan Townsend, an ecologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
How much and in what ways we don't really know, but there is no doubt that we are starting to walk down a new path.
an ecologist at Stanford university in California, says that he started off with the same mindset as many of his colleagues:
which the spectral data themselves led the researchers to discover an ecological interaction, rather than simply confirming data gathered on the ground,
says Oliver Phillips, an ecologist at the University of Leeds, UK, who coordinates RAINFOR. It's very exciting
severe droughts and high temperature, says Monica Turner, a landscape ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Turner and her colleagues developed a model to estimate how climate change might affect the frequency of fires larger than 200 hectares in and around Yellowstone national park, one of the most pristine and well-studied ecosystems in North america.
and area burned will change from now to the end of the century in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, under three different climate models.
Before 1990, the fire rotation the amount of time needed to burn an area equal to an entire landscape of interest was more than 120 years in most of the Yellowstone ecosystem.
fire rotation will fall below 20 years for all but the most southeasterly portions of the ecosystem.
Cathy Whitlock, an ecologist at Montana State university in Bozeman who studies the effects of fire on the environment,
Francis Nang'ayo, an ecologist and regulatory affairs manager at the African Agriculture Technology Foundation based in Nairobi,
and bulldozers, says Dan Nepstad, a US ecologist who works with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Bras  lia.
a tropical ecologist at the Heinz Center in WASHINGTON DC, says that the bill is a recipe for Amazon dieback,
an ecologist at the University of S £o Paulo in Piracicaba who is analysing the legislation for senators.
We want to understand ecosystems and the people who are living in them, Sachs said, warning his colleagues not to count on their governments for funding or leadership.
and various philanthropic organizations to discuss ways to track both ecological and socioeconomic trends in agricultural areas.
Sandy Andelman, an ecologist with Conservation International in Arlington Virginia, discussed her work setting up a pilot project that began two years ago in southern Tanzania.
an infectious-disease ecologist at Princeton university in New jersey who commends the project's focus. To control the increasing occurrence of diseases making the jump from animals to humans,
says Uriel Safriel, a desert ecologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. This move could make the convention more directly relevant to rich nations.
will be the engagement of ecologists, whose expertise is becoming increasingly valuable because even molecular biologists are flocking to learn more about how the genes
Fuwen Wei, an ecologist at the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing,
By regulating the amount of nitrogen in the ecosystem, the practice also minimised the need for applying fertiliser.
and ecology of individual species should offer clues as to which are under greatest threat. Others
and woodlands, says Daniel Nepstad, an ecologist who works with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brasilia.
an ecologist who works with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) in Brasilia, says that the new forestry measure could"unleash a wave of impunity to wipe out forests and woodlands.
an ecologist at the University of S £o Paulo in Piracicaba who has analysed the legislation for senators.
and further threaten the Amazon s fragile ecosystems, but also erode Brazil s reputation as a global leader in cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.
Public health, business, agriculture and forestry, urban infrastructure and natural ecosystems are identified all as priority areas for early action.
Palaeoecologists can usually only infer the richness of an ancient forest ecosystem by piecing together fossils of plant fragments of varying ages.
and ecology of the forest, says Hermann Pfefferkorn, a palaeoecologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
The researchers reconstructed the ancient ecosystem by analysing the positions of individual plants across three sites that together cover more than 1, 000 square metres.
Alfred Ngomanda, director of the Research Institute in Tropical Ecology in Libreville, Gabon, also believes the prevailing view that climate change was largely responsible for the loss of rainforest from Central africa is correct.
but development can be catastrophic for ecosystems.""Even though a large investor would prefer to have his thousands or millions of hectares near a port or road, in reality,
In the past, the biggest pressures on locally held natural ecosystems have been agriculture and logging, but large mineral-extraction deals are now catching up."
and dice rural ecosystems, says White. Â But international efforts at sustainable development are also threatening these areas.
a US ecologist who heads the international programmes for the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM),
and co-editor of the April issue of Molecular Ecology, which is devoted to the emerging field of studying environmental DNA.
says Nicholas Wilkinson, a Vietnam-based wildlife ecologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who is working with the conservation group WWF.
In the Molecular Ecology special issue, various research teams worked out the diet of a leopard by sequencing DNA in its faeces3;
Cash reward for saving Australia's watera contentious plan to reduce the amount of water that can be taken from the rivers in Australia s Murray-Darling Basin would reap billions of dollars in ecological benefits,
what the ecological and economic benefits would be if the plan goes ahead in its current form.
who is science director of the CSIRO Flagship research programme Water for a Healthy Country, a group of hydrologists, ecologists,
economists and other scientists analysed how the plan would affect water flow and ecosystem services in the basin.
"We found that there would be substantial ecological benefits, he notes. The largest benefits would come to the Murray river,
says William Wint, an ecologist at the University of Oxford, UK, who has become frustrated by the badger-centric debate."
weed ecologist David Mortensen of Pennsylvania State university in University Park and his colleagues argue that the growing number of multiresistant weed varieties proves that"weeds can defy the probabilities (D. Â A. Â Mortensen
an ecologist who heads the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brasilia.""The bill is so bad
"This is the epitome of a healthy ecosystem, says Enrique Ortiz, vice-president of the Amazon Conservation Association, based in WASHINGTON DC."
That finding tallies with as yet unpublished research by Luis Fernandez, a tropical ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, with whom Ashe is about to begin Working in 2009,
Zhu Liu, a co-author of the report, from the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shenyang,
an ecologist at the University of S £o Paulo in Brazil who helped to organize an October 2011 position paper on forest-code reform."
but Dan Nepstad, a California-based ecologist with the Brazilian Amazon Environmental Research Institute, says that the revised code does not necessarily spell doom for the Amazon.
but most important are the ecosystems, says Washington Tapia, director of conservation and sustainable development for the Galapagos National park. George was discovered on the island of Pinta in 1971,
C. M Â rquez et al Ecologia Aplicada 3, 98-111 (2004)/ Galapagos Natl Park"What we re trying to do is bring everyone together to synthesize the perspectives of ecologists,
who was one of the first researchers to carry out an in depth study3 of the behavioural ecology of giant tortoises, in the early 1980s."
But the Floreana-like tortoises on Wolf could help with a long-term project to restore the island s ecology.
and are being tracked by satellite to see what impact they have on the ecosystem. For Cayot, introducing a breeding population of tortoises to Pinta is a much more rational proposal than a plan that relies on cloning Lonesome George."In 100,000 Â years, through evolutionary processes,
five of the world s largest societies for studying evolution and ecology team up for their first joint congress on evolutionary biology. go. nature. com/hwsqna11-15 july Europe s largest
which are among the most ancient and threatened tropical ecosystems on the planet. And the white-lipped peccary, a species closely related to pigs, has been completely wiped out there, the assessment shows.
The study, by a team of ecologists based in Brazil and the United kingdom, focused on populations of 18 mammal species in 196 forest fragments,
even big forest patches are in fact largely empty of mammals a proxy for the general health of the ecosystem."
says Jean paul Metzger, an ecologist at the University of S £o Paulo, who was involved not in the study.
We are directing additional funding to Gulf Coast restoration to bring back the fisheries and coastal ecosystems
which is targeting ecological problems such as invasive species, toxic hot spots, and pollution runoff. We are cleaning up the Chesapeake bay,
an ecologist and director of the CGIAR research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security.
As ecologist Nigel Raine explains in the video, low doses of pesticides have subtle effects on individual bees
including microbiologist Sarkis Mazmanian, astronomer Olivier Guyon and marine ecologist Nancy Rabalais. The awards, popularly known as genius grants, come with no strings attached as to how the money is spent. see go. nature. com/ru2vgy for more.
Featured topics include the changing ecosystem of global neuroscience with collaborative efforts and'big data'coming to the fore. www. sfn. org/am201214-19 october New results from the Curiosity rover on Mars,
and academia in general, says Exequiel Ezcurra, a former president of the National Institute of Ecology,
Hughes and his colleagues wrote in a 2011 BMC Ecology paper describing some of the latest findings.
(which provide energy and signals), according to the BMC Ecology research. Perhaps counterintuitively, when the infected ant bites onto the leaf vein in it's so-called death grip this atrophy causes it to have lockjaw,
Hughes and his colleagues noted in their BMC Ecology paper. The doomed ants do not wander too far afield, often ending up within meters of their familiar territory.
It's really a little ecosystem in its own right. The zombie-ant fungus's doom, of course, is little consolation for the infected ant.
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