Drylands cover about 41% of the Earth's land surface and host one in three humans inhabiting our planet. In these areas, life is highly influenced by aridity, i.e. the balance between the amount of rainwater and the water lost by evaporation. In this sense, aridity is increasing worldwide as a result of climate change. A study conducted by the Dryland Ecology and Global Change Lab at the University of Alicante (UA) led by Fernando T. Maestre and published in Science revealed for the first time […]

As dinosaurs go, Spinosaurus is one of the most recognizable: a predator with sharp claws, a long jaw full of teeth, and a big sail on its back. It lived near rivers, hunting for fish, 100 million years ago in a place that's now desert; the Kem Kem beds, a geological formation in North Africa.

In a new article published in Trends in Plant Science, an international team of scientists presents the combined use of dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating and isotopic and genetic analysis as a means of investigating the effects of human activities on forest disturbances and the growth dynamics of tropical tree species. The study presents the potential applicability of these methods for investigating prehistoric, historical and industrial periods in tropical forests around the world and […]

As climate change-related drought fanned catastrophic wildfires across Australia, claiming lives, homes, and farms, the richly diverse flora and fauna took a tragic toll. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that more than one billion animals have been killed, including thousands of koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, kookaburras, and cockatoos. Many thousands more are injured and homeless—and under deep stress.

Pac-Man, the open-mouthed face of the most successful arcade game ever, is much more well-known than any of the one-celled organisms called protists, at least among people over 30. But the first study to characterize protists in soils from around the world—co-authored by Smithsonian scientists—found that the most common groups of soil protists behave exactly like Pac-Man: moving through the soil matrix, gobbling up bacteria. Their results are published in Science Advances.