Ecology

The Same Plants Are Showing Up Everywhere

North America's plant life is becoming increasingly uniform throughout the continent.

Number of Species on Earth

According to recent counts, scientists have described over 1.7 million species of animals, plants and algae.

The Perfect Dust Storm

A desolate basin on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert supplies 45 million tons of dust that naturally fertilizes the Amazon rainforest each year.

Why the Tropics are Biodiversity Hotbeds

Accumulating research is gradually fitting together answers to the question of why, for millions of years, the tropics have housed so many more species than have temperate and polar regions.

Forest Ecology

Some Conifers Clump, Others Scatter

How three species of conifers become distributed throughout a forest as it ages is mediated by competition.

Effects of Bark Beetles Still Evident After 65 Years

Lodgepole pine forests may never be the same, ecologically, following a mountain pine beetle epidemic.

Natural Disturbances Have Broad Boundaries

The transition between a stand affected by wildfire or mountain pine beetles and an undisturbed forest is seldom abrupt.

Marine Ecology

Species Shift Distorts Marine Food Web

The ocean’s interlinked food web of photosynthesizers, grazers, predators and detritus recyclers is being reconfigured.