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Rising carbon dioxide levels have boosted the growth of trees in the Amazon rainforest over the past few decades, but it is unclear if this trend will continue The average size of trees in the Amazon rainforest has been steadily increasing as carbon dioxide levels have risen, meaning these larger trees play a more important role in determining whether the forest can remain a carbon sink. How forests will react to a changing climate is an open question. For example, one hypothesis is that [...]

An analysis of the sloth family tree suggests three different groups of the animals evolved to gigantic sizes in response to cold and dry conditions By Jake Buehler A cooling, drying climate turned sloths into giants – before humans potentially drove the huge animals to extinction. Today's sloths are small, famously sluggish herbivores that move through the tropical canopies of rainforests. But for tens of millions of years, South America was home to a dizzying diversity of [...]

A fossilised 113-million-year-old hell ant from Brazil adds to the evidence that the first ants evolved in the southern hemisphere before moving north – and beyond

A flurry of studies has found microplastics in nearly every organ in the human body, from the brain to the testicles. But very few have revealed whether these tiny bits of plastic impact our health. It seems every few months, we discover microplastics in a new part of the body. We have found them in our livers, kidneys, lungs and guts. They have even shown up in human breast milk and blood. Last week, they turned up again in eight people’s olfactory bulbs, a brain structure [...]

Satellite data suggests 47 per cent of the Amazon will experience at least one environmental stressor in the next 25 years that will nudge the region towards a climate tipping point Large portions of the Amazon rainforest are threatened by the compounding effects of drought, heat and deforestation, which could push some ecosystems past a tipping point. But the potential for a wider scale collapse remains uncertain. “The forest as a whole is very resilient, and that's why we [...]

The dwarf planet Quaoar, which sits beyond Neptune in our solar system, appears to have a ring of debris around it that is much further out than was thought possible. “We have observed a ring that shouldn’t be there,” says Bruno Morgado at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Until now, every ring or orbiting moon observed by astronomers has obeyed a limit put forward by astronomer Édouard Roche in 1848 that relates to its [...]

When Murilo Pastana at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC set out with a group of colleagues to search for fish in less explored regions of the Amazon river basin, he didn’t know what they would find. A few days into their 2015 expedition, Pastana pulled a net from the water and was surprised to see small, vibrant orange fish in the plastic netting. The combination of long, reddish fins and a dark spot in front of the tail of the fish were unlike anything [...]

Face covering rules in Scotland will remain in place until April. On 15 March, Scotland reported 38,770 new covid cases, up from a daily average of 6,900 three weeks ago. As a result, coverings will continue to be required on public transport and in shops, although other covid restrictions will be lifted on 21 March. The BA.2 omicron sublineage, which is even more transmissible than the initial omicron variant, accounts for 80 per cent of Scotland’s SARS-CoV-2 cases, according to first [...]

Two new electric eel species have been identified in the Amazon basin, including one fish with a record-breaking shock, scientists say. Researchers had previously identified only one species of electric eel in more than 250 years of studying the creatures that lurk in South American waters and stun their prey with electric discharges. However, the new genetic and ecological analysis, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications, identifies a total of three unique [...]