Exotic Species News

May 22, 2025

Top Headlines

Climate Change Poses Severe Threat to Bowhead Whale Habitat

May 22, 2025 — New research examining 11,700 years of bowhead whale persistence throughout the Arctic projects that sea ice loss due to climate change will cause their habitat to severely contract by up to 75 per ...

Forest Management Can Influence Health Benefits

May 20, 2025 — Forests play a crucial role in promoting health and wellbeing, but not all forests provide the same benefits. A large-scale study demonstrates how specific forest characteristics -- such as canopy density and tree species diversity -- can affect ...

Native Turtles Return to Yosemite After Removal of Invasive Bullfrogs

May 20, 2025 — After invasive American bullfrogs 'croak,' native turtles return to Yosemite, finds a new ...

Thousands of Animal Species Threatened by Climate Change

May 20, 2025 — A novel analysis suggests more than 3,500 animal species are threatened by climate change and also sheds light on huge gaps in fully understanding the risk to the animal ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:51pm EDT

Fitness Fight: Native Bees Struggle Against Invasive Honey Bee

May 19, 2025 — New research has revealed that high densities of European honey bees could be harming Australian native bees' 'fitness' by reducing their reproductive success and altering key traits linked to ...

Dual Associations With Two Fungi Improve Tree Fitness

May 15, 2025 — When trees and soil fungi form close associations with each other, both partners benefit. Many tree species have further enhanced this cooperation by forming a concurrent symbiosis with two different ...

Europe's Forest Plants Thrive Best in Light-Rich, Semi-Open Woodlands -- Kept Open by Large Herbivores

May 14, 2025 — Before Homo sapiens arrived, Europe's forests were not dense and dark but shaped by open and light-rich woodland landscapes. Researchers have ...

Should We Protect Non-Native Species? A New Study Says Maybe

May 14, 2025 — A new study found that over a quarter of the world's naturalized plant species are threatened in parts of their native range -- raising questions about the role non-native populations may play in ...

Invasive Salmon, Clams and Seaweed Are Next Threats to Biodiversity in Britain

May 12, 2025 — Pink salmon, Purple Asian clams, marine invertebrates that form spaghetti-like colonies and a nematode worm that causes extensive deaths of trees are ...

The Kids Are Hungry: Juvenile European Green Crabs Just as Damaging as Adults

May 12, 2025 — Scientists have found that juvenile European green crabs can do as much damage as adults to shellfish and native sea plants, calling into question ...

First Fossil Evidence of Endangered Tropical Tree Discovered

May 9, 2025 — Scientists have discovered fossil evidence of an endangered, living tropical tree species. The unprecedented find was made in Brunei, a country on the large island of Borneo, and reveals a critical ...

New Pests and Diseases Will Cut UK Tree Growth

Apr. 28, 2025 — The arrival of new plant pests and diseases is likely to severely damage UK trees and woodlands in the coming decades, new research ...

Invasive Rats and Rainforest Mammals Are Sharing Gut Microbes as Urban Areas Grow

May 1, 2025 — As urban development continues to creep further into Earth's oldest and most diverse rainforests, a study reveals native and invasive small mammals ...

Want to Understand Grasslands? Look at the Bigger Picture

Apr. 28, 2025 — New research asks how local and regional factors determine the makeup of plant species in grasslands. Researchers from a restoration ecology lab are attempting to solve a longstanding question in ...

Restoring Oil Wells Back to Nature With Moss

Apr. 30, 2025 — In what could represent a milestone in ecological restoration, researchers have implemented a method capable of restoring peatlands at tens of thousands of oil and gas exploration sites in Western ...

When Sea Stars Fall, Sea Otters Rise: Sea Otters Benefit from Prey Boom Triggered by Loss of Ochre Sea Stars

Apr. 30, 2025 — In 2013, a sea star wasting syndrome decimated populations of Pisaster along the west coast of North America and along the Monterey Peninsula in California, where this study was conducted. The orange ...

Elephant Instead of Wild Boar? What Could Have Been in Europe

Apr. 28, 2025 — Even under today's climatic conditions, the long-extinct straight-tusked elephant could still live in Europe. This is the conclusion of a recent study. For this finding, the research group ...

Invasive Weed Threatens Southern California's Deserts

Apr. 24, 2025 — Once thought resistant to invasion, California's deserts are losing native plants to aggressive weedy species like Saharan mustard. New research shows its spread is disrupting biodiversity and ...

Introduced Trees Are Becoming More Common in the Eastern United States, While Native Diversity Declines

Apr. 21, 2025 — In a new study, researchers used more than 5 million measurements from individual trees across much of eastern North America and showed the rate at which introduced species are spreading has ...

Experiment in Floodplain Forest: Using Tree Mortality to Support Oak Regeneration

Apr. 16, 2025 — The pedunculate oaks typical of Leipzig's floodplain forest and other German oak forests are struggling to regenerate in the understorey due to a lack of light. One reason for this is the ...

Fishing for Cephalopod DNA Allows for Efficient Marine Surveying

Apr. 14, 2025 — New DNA probes allow for efficient surveying of the hidden lives of squids and octopuses in the deep sea. This development provides an effective tool for marine ecological research and conservation ...

Declining Insect Biodiversity in the Tropics

Apr. 8, 2025 — Ecologists are investigating the decline of insect populations in the world's tropical forests. Insects, the most abundant and diverse group of animals on Earth, are experiencing alarming ...

The Food and Fuel That Farms Itself

Apr. 1, 2025 — Scientists have released new and more accurate genome sequences for five species of duckweed. Their research reveals the specific genes responsible for some of the plant's most useful traits, ...

If Native Plants Are Going to Survive Climate Change, They Need Our Help to Move -- Here's How to Do It Safely

Mar. 26, 2025 — Many native plants in the U.S. cannot possibly move themselves fast enough to avoid climate-change driven extinction. If these native plants are going to have any chance of surviving into the future, ...

Getting Hit by Lightning Is Good for Some Tropical Trees

Mar. 26, 2025 — Getting zapped with millions of volts of electricity may not sound like a healthy activity, but for some trees, it is. A new study reports that some tropical tree species are not only able to ...

The Devastating Human Impact on Biodiversity

Mar. 26, 2025 — Humans are having a highly detrimental impact on biodiversity worldwide. Not only is the number of species declining, but the composition of species communities is also changing. This is one of the ...

Ecologists Document Utah's Bee Species and Say Beehive State Is Rich in Bee Diversity

Mar. 25, 2025 — Understanding bee distributions is essential to protecting these vital pollinators. Since conservation efforts and policies are often made at the state level, maintaining state-specific bee species ...

How Extreme Weather Threatens Nature's Essential Services

Mar. 24, 2025 — A new model suggests that timber production in Minnesota could decrease by half as windstorms intensify with climate ...

Introduced Pacific Oysters Provide Biodiversity Benefits in Port River

Mar. 24, 2025 — The introduction of exotic species can pose significant challenges in the sustainable management of coastal ecosystems, yet researchers have found that Pacific oysters introduced to the Port River in ...

Tiny Musky Rat-Kangaroos Hold the Key to Explain Why 'Roos Hop

Mar. 19, 2025 — To understand why kangaroos hop -- a rarity among animals -- researchers have studied the musky rat-kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus), a diminutive marsupial that weighs only 500 grams but is the ...

Time Is Not the Driving Influence of Forest Carbon Storage

Mar. 18, 2025 — It is commonly assumed that as forest ecosystems age, they accumulate and store, or 'sequester,' more ...

How a Hummingbird Chick Acts Like a Caterpillar to Survive

Mar. 17, 2025 — For the first time, scientists described a hummingbird chick potentially mimicking a poisonous caterpillar to avoid getting ...

The Long Wait for Bees to Return to Restored Grasslands

Mar. 13, 2025 — Recovered grasslands need more than 75 years of continuous management to regain their biodiversity because specialized pollinators are slow to return. A new finding underscores the importance of ...

Social Media Can Help Track Species as Climate Changes

Mar. 13, 2025 — Social media can help scientists track animal species as they relocate in response to climate change, new research ...