Nature reports

Foraminifera, small but incredibly important marine organisms, spend their lives together with two types of roommates: algae and bacteria. They are very picky when it comes to the algae, but open minded when it comes to the..

Using a unique treasure of data, marine biologist Suzanne Poiesz investigated the fish food web in the Wadden Sea between 1946 and the present day. Dissected stomach contents revealed who eats whom. The position of species in that..

Spoonbills spend a large part of the summer outside their protected breeding grounds. After breeding, the migratory birds gather on the mudflats of Lutjewad, on the coast of Groningen. Research by BirdEyes shows the seasonal..

NIOZ researchers have found the Pacific barnacle in the Wadden Sea for the first time. Until now, this species was only known to exist in European waters in Belgium and on the south coast of the Western Scheldt. It probably..

According to the IUCN Red List, over 47,000 plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. Most species, however, are at little to no risk. What makes one species much more vulnerable than another?..

As climate change drives earlier spring conditions in the Arctic, birds species that travel there to breed are under pressure to migrate faster. Despite their remarkable ability to adapt, researchers warn that speeding up spring..

The increasing amount of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere causes ocean acidification. That could pose a serious problem for calcifying organisms, such as shellfish and corals. And for foraminifers, but they appear to have..

Over four centuries ago, the first prefect of Hortus botanicus Leiden founded a botanical garden collection that currently encompasses over sixteen thousand plants. The current prefect hopes to create a hotspot for biodiversity..

In city centers, lichens are becoming heavier. Thanks to the urban heat island effect, they adapt to higher temperatures by growing thicker than their counterparts outside the city. This remarkable phenomenon shows how even the..

For the first time worldwide, the complete DNA of all Asian elephant subspecies has been mapped. It has also been genetically confirmed that the Sumatran elephant is a distinct subspecies – a population listed as Critically..