Nature and ecology
Natural History is Science Blog's desk for the living world. Animals, evolution, and ecology, reported from the field science and the papers rather than the press releases.
A Europe-wide habitat model suggests climate shifts moved Neanderthal refuges without erasing them, while weak links among some regions may have made small populations harder to rescue after local shocks.
Sep 5, 2026
Antarctica’s high plateau receives less than 50 millimetres of water-equivalent accumulation a year. Its immense ice sheet is the product of cold retention, compression, flow and deep time.
Sep 5, 2026
A red kangaroo can overlap three generations through embryonic diapause, prolonged pouch development and mammary glands that supply different milk to young of different ages.
Sep 5, 2026
Twelve centuries of court diaries and monks' chronicles reveal that cherry blossoms are blooming earlier than ever—a cautionary tale written in petals.
Sep 5, 2026
Beatrix Potter's real legacy wasn't whimsical illustrations—it was a radical act of conservation that locked her Lake District farms and their ancient sheep breed into perpetual protection.
Sep 4, 2026
A failed farming venture left South Korea with an invasive predator that now decimates native wildlife across the country.
Sep 4, 2026
A Dutch lake cleanup became an unexpected refuge, bringing back a bird species that hadn't successfully bred in the country for over six decades.
Sep 3, 2026
Isolated on Scottish rocks, lighthouse keepers became unlikely collaborators in a pioneering citizen-science network that still influences ornithology today.
Sep 3, 2026
A tiny material that seems obviously recyclable becomes waste because most sorting systems can't handle it—unless you know where to send it instead.
Sep 3, 2026
In a Louisiana marsh threatened by erosion, waste glass is being transformed into something the coast desperately needs: a natural breakwater that lets vegetation flourish where waves once won.
Sep 3, 2026
What started as a radical alternative to a holiday killing spree became science's most valuable window into how climate change is reshaping North America's wildlife.
Sep 3, 2026
The evidence comes from intact retinal layers, active rod genes and blue-sensitive pigment, while the proposed role of DNA repair remains a mechanism to test rather than a proven longevity switch.
Sep 2, 2026
A new genomic method detected roughly 0.49% to 1.1% ancestry from an unidentified human population across five sampled groups. The signal points to mixing in Africa before the main out-of-Africa expansion, but it has not been matched to a fossil species.
Sep 1, 2026
A private sugar industry's untested hunch to solve a rat problem created a predator that thrives exactly when native Hawaiian birds are most vulnerable.
Sep 1, 2026
