Cities today are flooded with light and we seldom think of its harmful impacts on the natural world.
Jim Young/Reuters
Urban greening programs need to consider the harmful impacts of artificial lighting on ecosystems. Fortunately, we can do a lot to create more biosensitive lighting.
Durbed/Wikipedia
There might have been as many as 160,000 types of dinosaur, give or take.
BBC NHU/Fredi Devas
Some animals love living in the urban jungle – but they are a small minority, compared to those we risk losing to urbanisation.
Recent decades have seen a rapid growth in new technologies that are rendering the high seas more accessible.
Mike Blake/Reuters
Negotiations regarding a legal framework for the oceans – an area covering roughly half the Earth’s surface – are being dominated by OECD members.
Researchers have found that dragonflies have become on average lighter-colored over the past half-century in response to higher temperatures.
norio-nakayama/flickr
Study shows the footprint of climate change is already vast and that species are trying to adapt to rising temperatures.
Rainforests sustain stunning numbers of insect species, such as this Horny Devil Katydid from Ecuador.
Copy Morley Read/Shutterstock.
The organisms that we’re now discovering are often more hidden and more difficult to catch than ever before.
Not your average starling.
Nathan Rupert/Flickr
Metallic starlings – not the kind that live in your roof – breed in huge colonies that draw thousands of animals.
South Africa’s Proteaceae family, makes up a part of fynbos, a floral region with plants unique to South Africa Cape Town’s Table Mountain National Park.
Shutterstock
Restoring habitats have numerous benefits, they can also benefit humanity. But it is for people to be convinced that they can actually do good.
Suburban expansion on Perth’s fringe pushes into the SouthWest Ecoregion.
Richard Weller/Donna Broun
If Perth can preserve the rich biodiversity of its setting, it will become a model for sustainable city development that fully connects with the value of natural ecosystem services.
A valuable harvest.
Priya Jaishankar/Flickr
American ginseng, a slow-growing native plant long used in traditional medicine, was abundant in colonial times. Now illegal harvesting and other stresses are pushing it close to extinction.
Shane Myers Photography / shutterstock
Huge reserves in the middle of the Pacific are fine, but what about conservation closer to home?
Citizen scientists have a great deal to contribute.
Mount Rainier National Park/Flickr
More and more Africans are becoming citizen scientists – and the benefits are huge both for them as individuals and for science on the continent.
Krzysztof Odziomek/shutterstock
Scientists are pioneering a new way of monitoring water species, using techniques more familiar to fans of crime scene TV shows.
As temperatures rise, will species have enough habitat to move to suitable ground?
bonnyboy/flickr
Animals and plants will need escape hatches to move to cooler climes as the planet warms, but few parts of the U.S. have the natural habitat available for these migrations.
The mesquite tree was introduced into South Africa to aid farmers and local communities. It is now invasive in most parts of the country.
Shutterstock
The invasive mesquite tree has a negative impact on everything from biodiversity to human health. Management programmes are crucial.
NASA/NOAA
Human activity doesn’t just reduce biodiversity – new research explores how we are continually creating new species and ecosystems, too.
How many species of frog are in the picture? Genetics often says ‘more than we thought’.
Michael Lee (Flinders University & South Australian Museum)
The Earth is full of many varied species from the largest mammals to the tiniest organisms. But we now think there could be ten times more species than was originally thought.
This massive dragonfly, the Swordbearer Emperor Anax gladiator , is named for the blade-like spike at its tail tip.
Copyright Jens Kipping
There are 6,000 named dragonfly species worldwide but recently 60 new species were found showing how much more we can learn.
Demand is growing for statistical ecologists to research climate change. Rapidly growing mega-cities in Africa, like Lagos, face the highest risks.
Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
Some of the most in-demand ecologists in Africa are specialists in statistics. But this is currently a scarce skill combination in Africa.
The Louisiana swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii.
Shutterstock
The introduction and spread of invasive freshwater crayfish into Africa threatens the continent’s freshwater biodiversity.