Biodiversity– tag –

Several kinds of bees visit the same flower. If one becomes scarce, can the others make up for its loss? It is a tempting thought: if several species share a task, one may cover for another. Some ecological studies have found that measur...

Learning the name of one animal can change what you notice about a familiar place. Once you have identified it, another question may follow: what else lives here? Fauna refers to the animal species of a particular region or environment. ...

A bird opens its wings. A bat does the same. Look more closely, however, and different structures come into view: the bird spreads feathers, while the bat stretches a thin membrane supported by remarkably long fingers. They achieve the s...

Cover image: Wikimedia Commons — Tuatara A leatherback turtle crosses the open ocean. A tuatara rests beside a burrow on a New Zealand island. They look very different, yet they share something surprising: each is the only living species...

Cover image: Wikimedia Commons — File:Harmonia axyridis IT.jpg, by IvanHabiprot. A woodland full of different trees, birds and insects offers an obvious introduction to biodiversity. Yet the variety of life extends beyond the number of s...

Among living birds, some occupy a particularly narrow place within a chosen classification system: their family contains only one living genus, and that genus contains only one living species. In this article, I will call this arrangemen...

A desert plant with only two permanent leaves. A Japanese conifer found naturally nowhere else on Earth. A tiny moss that seems to shine green in the dark. Welwitschia mirabilis, Sciadopitys verticillata, and Schistostega pennata look no...

In the cool, rain-soaked forests of southern Chile and Argentina lives a tiny marsupial with rounded ears, dark rings around its eyes and a long tail that helps it move through branches. It is called the monito del monte—roughly, “little...