The yellow-billed cuckoo has soft brown wings, a white belly, a long tail with black and white spots, and is running out of places to live. The cuckoo's population in its native breeding range in the eastern United States has declined in recent decades due to urbanization, heat waves and other factors. Climate change will likely further reduce its suitable habitat.

More than 110 million years ago, a lumbering 1,300-kilogram, armor-plated dinosaur ate its last meal, died, and was washed out to sea in what is now northern Alberta. This ancient beast then sank onto its thorny back, churning up mud in the seabed that entombed it—until its fossilized body was discovered in a mine near Fort McMurray in 2011.

Typically, each somatic cell in an organism holds the same amount of DNA. However, researchers have, for the first time, shed light on a process that leads to tissue-specific differences in DNA content in plants. With an unusually high efficiency rate of 100%, this programmed chromosome elimination mechanism could become a valuable genetic tool for plant breeding or medical applications.

Bee populations are experiencing a global decline as a result of climate change, parasites and pathogens, and pesticide exposure, as well as a lack of foraging resources due to human land use. The good news is that gardens and parks can be valuable sites for providing foraging resources to these urban pollinator communities because of their low pesticide use, complex landscapes, and protected environments.

Researchers at the University of Southampton have shown that an extinction event 360 million years ago, that killed much of the Earth's plant and freshwater aquatic life, was caused by a brief breakdown of the ozone layer that shields the Earth from damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This is a newly discovered extinction mechanism with profound implications for our warming world today.

A recently published study led by Iowa State University scientists applied a fresh perspective to vast amounts of data on rice plants to find better ways to predict plant performance and new insights about how plants adapt to different environments.

The dazzling floral displays of early spring are starting to draw to a close. But wily gardeners know that they can keep plants in flower for longer by removing fruit and seeds as soon as they form.

Shea yields are likely to benefit from a diversity of trees and shrubs in parkland habitats in West Africa, according to a new study led by scientists from Trinity College Dublin. The findings have important implications for managing a crop that is typically harvested and sold by women in rural areas, and which helps finance education for children.

A species of parasitic wasp discovered by chance could provide growers with a chemical-free way of controlling a major pest.

When pollen is in short supply, bumblebees damage plant leaves in a way that accelerates flower production, as an ETH research team headed up by Consuelo De Moraes and Mark Mescher has demonstrated.