Endangered Plants News

August 5, 2025

Top Headlines

These Butterflies Look the Same, but DNA Uncovered Six Hidden Species

Aug. 4, 2025 — Glasswing butterflies may all look alike, but behind their transparent wings hides an evolutionary story full of intrigue. Researchers discovered that while these butterflies appear nearly identical to avoid predators, they produce unique pheromones ...

Ancient Bird Droppings Reveal a Hidden Extinction Crisis

Aug. 4, 2025 — An intriguing new study reveals that over 80% of parasites found in the ancient poo of New Zealand’s endangered kākāpō have vanished, even though the bird itself is still hanging on. Researchers discovered this dramatic parasite decline by ...

Your Nature Photo Might Be a Scientific Breakthrough in Disguise

Aug. 3, 2025 — Every time someone snaps a wildlife photo with iNaturalist, they might be fueling breakthrough science. From rediscovering lost species to helping conservation agencies track biodiversity and invasive threats, citizen observations have become vital ...

This Genetic Breakthrough Could Help Thousands of Species Cheat Extinction

July 21, 2025 — Gene editing may hold the key to rescuing endangered species—not just by preserving them, but by restoring their lost genetic diversity using DNA from museum specimens and related species. Scientists propose a visionary framework that merges ...

No Training Needed: How Humans Instinctively Read Nature’s Signals

July 10, 2025 — People can intuitively sense how biodiverse a forest is just by looking at photos or listening to sounds, and their gut feelings surprisingly line up with what scientists ...

Scientists’ Top 10 Bee-Magnet Blooms—turn Any Lawn Into a Pollinator Paradise

July 7, 2025 — Danish and Welsh botanists sifted through 400 studies, field-tested seed mixes, and uncovered a lineup of native and exotic blooms that both thrill human eyes and lure bees and hoverflies in droves, ...

When Rainforests Died, the Planet Caught Fire: New Clues from Earth’s Greatest Extinction

July 3, 2025 — When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ ...

Tiny Creatures, Massive Impact: How Zooplankton Store 65 Million Tonnes of Carbon Annually

June 27, 2025 — Zooplankton like copepods aren’t just fish food—they’re carbon-hauling powerhouses. By diving deep into the ocean each winter, they’re secretly stashing 65 million tonnes of carbon far below ...

Fruit-Eating Mastodons? Ancient Fossils Confirm a Long-Lost Ecological Alliance

June 15, 2025 — Ten thousand years after mastodons disappeared, scientists have unearthed powerful fossil evidence proving these elephant cousins were vital seed spreaders for large-fruited trees in South America. ...

Why Past Mass Extinctions Didn't Break ecosystems—But This One Might

June 9, 2025 — For millions of years, large herbivores like mastodons and giant deer shaped the Earth's ecosystems, which astonishingly stayed stable despite extinctions and upheavals. A new study reveals that only twice in 60 million years did environmental ...

New Velvet Worm Species a First for the Arid Karoo

May 30, 2025 — A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the Cape Fold Mountains, we now know that every ...

Agriculture in Forests Can Provide Climate and Economic Dividends

May 30, 2025 — Forest-based agroforestry can restore forests, promote livelihoods, and combat climate change, but emerging agroforestry initiatives focusing only on tree planting is leading to missed opportunities to support beneficial outcomes of forest ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:01pm EDT

Woodpeckers Thrive Where Missiles Fly. How a Bombing Range Became a Wildlife Refuge

Aug. 4, 2025 — In a surprising twist of conservation success, a U.S. Air Force bombing range in Florida has become a sanctuary for endangered species like the ...

400-Million-Year-Old Fish Exposes Big Mistake in How We Understood Evolution

July 29, 2025 — A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species ...

The 10,000-Mile March Through Fire That Made Dinosaurs Possible

June 13, 2025 — Despite Earth's most devastating mass extinction wiping out over 80% of marine life and half of land species, a group of early reptiles called archosauromorphs not only survived but thrived, ...

What a Dinosaur Ate 100 Million Years ago—Preserved in a Fossilized Time Capsule

June 10, 2025 — A prehistoric digestive time capsule has been unearthed in Australia: plant fossils found inside a sauropod dinosaur offer the first definitive ...

Cannabis Pangenome Reveals Potential for Medicinal and Industrial Use

May 29, 2025 — Scientists analyzed almost 200 cannabis genomes to create the most comprehensive, high-quality, detailed genetic atlas of the plant to date. The atlas reveals unprecedented diversity and complexity ...

Long Shot Science Leads to Revised Age for Land-Animal Ancestor

May 29, 2025 — The fossils of ancient salamander-like creatures in Scotland are among the most well-preserved examples of early stem tetrapods -- some of the first animals to make the transition from water to land. ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 — A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope ...

Evolution of a Single Gene Allowed the Plague to Adapt, Survive and Kill Much of Humanity Over Many Centuries

May 29, 2025 — Scientists have documented the way a single gene in the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, allowed it to survive hundreds of ...

Even Birds Can't Outfly Climate Change

May 29, 2025 — As rising global temperatures alter ecosystems worldwide, animal species usually have two choices: adapt to changing local conditions or flee to a cooler clime. Ecologists have long assumed that the ...

Managing Surrogate Species, Providing a Conservation Umbrella for More Species

May 26, 2025 — A new study shows that monitoring and managing select bird species can provide benefits for other species within specific ...

New Plant Leaf Aging Factor Found

May 30, 2025 — Researchers have discovered a protein that is involved in plant leaf ...

Scientists Have Figured out How Extinct Giant Ground Sloths Got So Big and Where It All Went Wrong

May 22, 2025 — Scientists have analyzed ancient DNA and compared more than 400 fossils from 17 natural history museums to figure out how and why extinct sloths got so ...

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 ...

Bees Facing New Threats, Putting Our Survival and Theirs at Risk

May 19, 2025 — A new report identifies the top 12 emerging threats that could accelerate pollinator losses within the next 5-15 years, according to ten of the world's leading ...

Cover Crops May Not Be Solution for Both Crop Yield, Carbon Sequestration

May 19, 2025 — People have assumed climate change solutions that sequester carbon from the air into soils will also benefit crop yields. But a new study finds that most regenerative farming practices to build soil ...

Amazon Could Survive Long-Term Drought but at a High Cost

May 15, 2025 — The Amazon rainforest may be able to survive long-term drought caused by climate change, but adjusting to a drier, warmer world would exact a heavy toll, a study ...

Scientists Use Fossils to Assess the Health of Florida's Largest Remaining Seagrass Bed: Surprisingly, It's Doing Well!

May 15, 2025 — A new study shows that seagrass ecosystems along the northern half of Florida's Gulf Coast have remained relatively healthy and undisturbed for the last several thousand ...

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 ...

Artificial Intelligence and Genetics Can Help Farmers Grow Corn With Less Fertilizer

May 14, 2025 — Scientists are using artificial intelligence to determine which genes collectively govern nitrogen use efficiency in plants such as corn, with the goal of helping farmers improve their crop yields ...

Australia's Oldest Prehistoric Tree Frog Hops 22 Million Years Back in Time

May 14, 2025 — Scientists have now discovered the oldest ancestor for all the Australian tree frogs, with distant links to the tree frogs of South ...

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 ...

Red Alert for Our Closest Relatives

May 8, 2025 — New report shows drastic decline in endangered primates and calls for conservation ...

Just 30 Species of Tree Dominate World's Most Diverse Savanna

May 8, 2025 — Scientists have found that a mere 30 species of trees in the Cerrado -- the world's largest and most floristically diverse savanna -- account for nearly half of all its trees. The ...

Biologists Create a One-Stop Shop for World's Most Charismatic Plants, Ferns

May 7, 2025 — Biologists have create a web portal for the world's most charismatic plants, ...

Replanted Rainforests May Benefit from Termite Transplants

May 6, 2025 — Termites -- infamous for their ability to destroy wood -- are rarely welcomed into rainforests that have been painstakingly replanted. But a new paper suggests that termite transplants may be ...

AI Has Untapped Potential to Advance Biodiversity Conservation

May 6, 2025 — A new study suggests the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to rapidly analyze vast amounts of biodiversity data could revolutionize conservation efforts by enabling scientists and policymakers to ...

Saving the Asian 'Unicorn' -- If It Still Exists

May 5, 2025 — The saola, an antelope-like bovine, is one of the world's rarest and most endangered mammals. In fact, it hasn't been observed in over 10 years. Researchers have now mapped the saola's ...

Ancient Poems Tell the Story of Charismatic River Porpoise's Decline Over the Past 1,400 Years

May 5, 2025 — Endemic to China's Yangtze River, the Yangtze finless porpoise is known for its intelligence and charismatic appearance; it looks like it has a perpetual smile on its face. To track how this ...

Electricity-Generating Bacteria May Power Future Innovations

May 1, 2025 — A team has discovered how certain bacteria breathe by generating electricity, using a natural process that pushes electrons into their surroundings instead of breathing on oxygen. The findings could ...

Intensifying Farmland Can Sometimes Degrade Biodiversity More Than Expansion

May 1, 2025 — The intensification of existing farmland can sometimes be more harmful to local biodiversity than expanding the area covered by agricultural land, finds a new ...