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Diary of an urban peregrine falcon nest in Chicago – in pictures
Rare images of wild peregrine falcons chart their entire nesting cycle from brooding to hatching and finally fledging from their tower block home. Images by Luke Massey
Continue reading...Green Army Round Four
Extension to ecological community assessment timeframe
Night parrot capture and tagging hailed as 'holy grail' moment for bird lovers
The area of south-west Queensland where the elusive nocturnal parrot, presumed extinct, was caught is now to be protected
The elusive night parrot, a species thought to be extinct for about 100 years, has finally been captured and tagged by scientists as part of a pioneering project to safeguard the remaining ground-dwelling birds.
Aside from two dead parrots found over the past 25 years, the night parrot had not been captured since the 1890s and was presumed extinct by many bird experts.
Continue reading...20 Million Trees Competitive Grants Round Two
OMG… Greenland’s ice sheets are melting fast
An urgent attempt to study the rate at which Greenland’s mighty ice sheets are melting has been launched by Nasa. The aim of the six-year project, called Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG), is to understand how fast the world’s warming seas are now eroding the edges of the island’s vast icecaps. Warming air temperatures are already causing considerable glacier loss there, but the factors involving the sea that laps the bases of its great ice masses, and which is also heating up, are less well understood.
Greenland contains vast reservoirs of ice which, if completely melted, would raise world sea levels by more than six metres. However, some influences on its current dramatic melting are poorly understood. Hence the decision to launch OMG, an acronym that the project leader, Joshua Willis, admits he “barely squeezed past the censors”.
Continue reading...Where are the world's ants? First ever map detailing 15,000 species launched
Four-year project maps location of species, with Australian state of Queensland found to host the greatest number of native species
The world’s first ever ant map showing the distribution of the tiny industrious creatures around the globe was launched on Thursday by the University of Hong Kong in a bid to shed more light on the insect world.
The colourful interactive online map which took four years to complete, displays the geographic locations of nearly 15,000 types of ants, with the Australian state of Queensland home to the highest number of native species at more than 1,400.
Continue reading...Fresh for Spring in the Lachlan River
Chairs' Update 6 August 2015 | Commonwealth Marine Reserves Review
Wasp masters turn enslaved spiders into zombies to build their nests
Parasitic wasp larvae drug their orb spider hosts into altering their normal webs to create a perfect nest for them to transform into adult wasps
People associate wasps with memories of picnic invasions, BBQs under siege, and painful stings. There is a lot more to these much-maligned insects though, and with more than 100,000 different species, their life histories range from the quietly unobtrusive to the bizarre and gruesome. A new study in the Journal of Experimental Biology documents one such disturbing example of wasp larvae that takes control of their unfortunate spider hosts.
The Japanese scientists behind the study thought the host-parasite relationship between the wasp Reclinervellus nielseni (most wasps have only a scientific name) and its orb-weaver spider host Cyclosa argenteoalba could help us understand how parasitic organisms alter their host’s behaviour.
Continue reading...Draft Outcomes-based conditions policy and guidance
National Taxonomy Grants 2016–2017 Research and Capacity-Building Grants
Are plants intelligent? New book says yes
A new book, Brilliant Green, argues that not only are plants intelligent and sentient, but that we should consider their rights, especially in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction
Plants are intelligent. Plants deserve rights. Plants are like the Internet – or more accurately the Internet is like plants. To most of us these statements may sound, at best, insupportable or, at worst, crazy. But a new book, Brilliant Green: the Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence, by plant neurobiologist (yes, plant neurobiologist), Stefano Mancuso and journalist, Alessandra Viola, makes a compelling and fascinating case not only for plant sentience and smarts, but also plant rights.
For centuries Western philosophy and science largely viewed animals as unthinking automatons, simple slaves to instinct. But research in recent decades has shattered that view. We now know that not only are chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants thinking, feeling and personality-driven beings, but many others are as well. Octopuses can use tools, whales sing, bees can count, crows demonstrate complex reasoning, paper wasps can recognise faces and fish can differentiate types of music. All these examples have one thing in common: they are animals with brains. But plants don’t have a brain. How can they solve problems, act intelligently or respond to stimuli without a brain?
Northern Territory Offshore Net and Line Fishery
Flying Ant Day: the science behind the summer swarms
Did a swarm of frisky flying insects put a dampener on your weekend barbecue? Well, there’s a good reason – for a brief period each summer, millions of flying ants appear in Britain for a short frenzy of mid-air mating. This year, what’s known as Flying Ant Day fell on Sunday and colonies were spotted erupting out of pavements, spilling into gardens, bedrooms, on to sofas and even riding the London Underground.
Flying Ant Day is actually a bit of a misnomer, says Professor Adam Hart of the University of Gloucestershire. A flying ant survey he has run with the Royal Society of Biology since 2012 has found that the idea of one synchronised 24-hour period of emergence is a myth. Sometimes they come out over a few days, or even weeks.
Continue reading...Canada's tar sands landscape from the air – in pictures
A new book of aerial photographs, Beautiful Destruction, captures the awesome scale and devastating impact of Alberta’s oil sands with stunning colours, contrasts and patterns. The book also includes 15 essays by prominent individuals from environment and industry, sharing their insights, ideas and opinions. Photographs by Louis Helbig
Continue reading...Australia's leaders 'wilfully blind' about climate change, says former NAB chief
Cameron Clyne says he doesn’t think anyone has ‘grasped quite how revolutionary’ the emergence of renewable energy will be
Australia’s political leaders are “wilfully blind” to the challenge of climate change, with the country at risk from an “economically reckless” reliance upon fossil fuels, the former head of the National Australia Bank has warned.
Cameron Clyne, who was chief executive of NAB from 2009 until he stood down last year, said he doesn’t “think any of us have grasped quite how revolutionary” the emergence of renewable energy will be, warning that Australia cannot continue to be wedded to carbon-heavy fuels such as coal.
Continue reading...Climate models are even more accurate than you thought | Dana Nuccitelli
The difference between modeled and observed global surface temperature changes is 38% smaller than previously thought
Global climate models aren’t given nearly enough credit for their accurate global temperature change projections. As the 2014 IPCC report showed, observed global surface temperature changes have been within the range of climate model simulations.
Now a new study shows that the models were even more accurate than previously thought. In previous evaluations like the one done by the IPCC, climate model simulations of global surface air temperature were compared to global surface temperature observational records like HadCRUT4. However, over the oceans, HadCRUT4 uses sea surface temperatures rather than air temperatures.
Continue reading...Draft policy statement: Engage Early - Indigenous engagement guidelines
Draft policy statement: advanced environmental offsets under the EPBC Act
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