In the backyard of my childhood home, there was a swamp, a mud kingdom of sorts. For hours each afternoon, we played hide-and-seek behind the ferns and skunk cabbage. Some days we crossed the wooden bridge to my parent’s garden to pick raspberries, blackberries, peaches, whatever the neighborhood kids hadn’t yet stolen. We walked through the creek that marked the border between towns, muddying our overalls. We hid toy parachute soldiers in trees, inside holes carved out in the trunks masking the secret lives of chipmunks. We pranced along the green moss carpet. As evening approached, we were herded like cattle to the dinner table to eat our chicken and carrots and drink a full glass of milk. The faster we ate, the more time we’d have outside before the sun went down. Full Article »

On a dark, clear night, as we gaze up into the sky, the stars and the moon glow back at us, surrounded by what appears to be a desolate void. It was once believed that space was empty—a static home to the planets, stars and galaxies. But scientists suspect that there is a mysterious, invisible matter more than five times as abundant as ordinary matter—tiny, ghost-like particles existing not only in the far reaches of space, but all around us.

If so, these phantom particles pass effortlessly through our bodies, through the earth, and throughout the universe. They do not reflect light or emit light, and therefore cannot be seen. They can only be understood through the gravitational force they produce. Full Article »

Wind turbines killed more than 600,000 migratory bats in the U.S. in 2012, for reasons that may be related to their mating practices. This, combined with a smaller number of deaths of eagles from turbines, is posing a challenge for the spread of sustainable wind energy.

Mark Hayes, a biologist at the University of Colorado, analyzed published studies where researchers counted the number of dead bats underneath turbines to produce a range of estimates for bat mortality—from 600,000 to 900,000 bats in 2012.

One theory for the large number of bat deaths is known as the “tall tree hypothesis,” according to researchers. Bats search for the tallest tree on the landscape during mating season as they migrate from their summer to their winter grounds. Wind turbines are often built on high ground so they have access to higher wind speeds, and may be mistaken for trees. Full Article »

The rufa Red Knot navigates from the top of the world to the bottom, and back, each year. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, however, the knot — a subspecies of one of the largest and most colorful sandpipers — is likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future.

The Service recently issued a proposal to add the shorebird to the threatened species list on the Endangered Species Act. The proposal followed several lawsuits urging the Service to “emergency list” the shorebird, whose population has declined by about 75% since the 1980s.

If approved, the knots will join more than 1,200 species in the U.S. on the Endangered Species List. Only a handful of species have been removed from the list because of recovery. Full Article »

Shark fishing on coral reefs can threaten herbivorous fish that help to protect the reefs after natural disturbances such as cyclones, according to new study findings.

In areas where commercial shark fishing has occurred, there were declines in parrotfish and other types of herbivorous fish, and increases in carnivores, such as snappers.

Herbivorous fish help to clean and maintain coral reefs by eating algae off of the coral. “They are really essential to the recovery process of reefs,” said Dr. Jonathan Ruppert, a post-doctoral researcher at York University and lead author on the study. “Herbivores help in removing algae from the reef to allow coral to repopulate or reestablish on the reef.”

Researchers looked at the effects of the presence or absence of sharks before and after a traumatic event, either a cyclone or coral bleaching – a process through which warmer water temperatures cause algae to disappear from the corals. They found there was a link between the presence of sharks and populations of other types of fish further down the food chain. Full Article »