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Elevation differences help plants cope with salinity
Bare hollows in a Dutch coastal grassland capture salt, allowing plants on vegetated mounds to grow better and remain green for longer.
WWF report: half of monitored animal populations stable or growing
Roughly half of the more than 35,000 monitored vertebrate populations are stable or even increasing. At the same time, average population size fell by 73 per cent between 1970 and 2022, according to the Living Planet Report 2026.
Optogenetics wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this year goes to three researchers who together laid the foundations for optogenetics: Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel.
Who eats whom? Citizen science maps the web of life
A new global database is using photographs submitted by citizen scientists to map who eats whom in nature. The project, called Who Eats Whom, brings together feeding relationships from iNaturalist.
GE (breathe in) KO! Tokay gecko takes micro-breaths mid-call
The South-East Asian gecko species the tokay gecko (*Gecko gecko*) turns out to have a few handy breathing tricks up its sleeve for its long and loud mating call.
Bottlenose dolphin steals prey by making fish vomit
A bottlenose dolphin at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia steals food from predatory fish: it chases bigeye trevally (*Caranx sexfasciatus*) until they vomit up their prey, then makes off with the morsel.
Flatworm rebuilds its brain using a genetic postcode
A flatworm that loses part of its head can rebuild its brain from scratch. In doing so, not only must new types of nerve...
Fossil teeth reveal that T. rex was warm-blooded
Tyrannosaurus rex was capable of maintaining a body temperature higher than its surroundings, and was therefore warm-blooded. A team of British and American palaeontologists believe they have established this through a thorough analysis of fossilised T. rex teeth.
Tumours deploy antioxidants to disarm T cells
Antioxidants help tumour cells to suppress T cells. Reactive oxygen species turn out to be not merely harmful, but also necessary to mount the immune response against cancer.
Female migratory bird travels hundreds of kilometres while males incubate the eggs
Female dotterels, a northern European migratory bird, sometimes travel hundreds of kilometres after laying their eggs, whilst the male stays behind to incubate the eggs and raise the chicks. This atypical behaviour for female migratory birds – usually it is the male who makes himself scarce after fertilisation – was observed by ornithologists at the German Max Planck Institute after they tracked 21 female dotterels (Eudromias morinellus) fitted with transmitters during the breeding season (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2 September).