Nature reports

A large quantity of fossils from the period just before and during the last ice age have been discovered in French Guiana. The area changed from a species-rich mangrove system to a dry grassland savannah in a relatively short..

Setting up sustainable farming systems requires policymakers and farmers to start weighing factors at different spatial scales. Alternative agricultural policies still place too much emphasis on production and too little on..

An increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere 56 million years ago abruptly led to a wetter Central Asia with more plant growth. The publication in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience by an international group of..

Birds are affected by the mass use of fireworks on New Year's Eve up to a distance of ten kilometres away. This is concluded by researchers of the University of Amsterdam, based on data from weather radar and bird counts. They..

Bewick’s swans fly less far during their autumn migration when the weather is warm. Climate change has therefore led to a shift in their common wintering areas. Now, for the first time, bird researchers have been able to pinpoint..

Male moths get part of the chemicals that they use during courtship from plants. This was discovered by researchers from the University of Amsterdam and North Carolina State University. At the beginning of August they published..

In certain areas in the Amazon, forests that were altered by humans during the past several hundred years may contain higher abundances of plant species that are more resilient to modern fire or drought events. ..

A new model clarifies why millions of years ago more animal species from Asia made the leap to the Australian continent than the other way around: the climate in which the species evolved played an important role. This study was..

Ground nesting in chimpanzees was once thought to be a rare and patchily-occurring behaviour. However, a new paper shows that it is a major component of the species’ behavioural repertoire across a considerable fraction of a..

Many native animals that disperse plant seeds on the island of Mauritius have gone extinct during the past centuries. This includes iconic species such as the dodo and giant tortoises, now replaced by non-native fruit-eating..