On land, snails and slugs — the Gastropods — are confined to terrestrial prison, but in the ocean, they are free to shed their shells and fly. These are the sea angels, the sea butterflies, and the sea elephants — and probably quite a few more I’m not aware of. For instance, this slinky and [...]

In these hyperlinked days, one might reasonably guess that the subject of the first book of photographs may have been along the lines of the True Purpose of the Internet (ask someone who’s seen “Avenue Q” if you don’t know). Or if not that, perhaps cityscapes, or naval vessels, or still lifes, or battlefields. But [...]

UPDATE: After being accidentally closed all launch day, comments are now open! Please feel free to introduce yourself, suggest an organism or topic for a post, or say hi below. I would love to meet you. In early November 2005, about a year after I joined the staff of the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle as a cub [...]

As I am sure you are aware, September 9th is International Rock-Flipping Day. What’s that? You don’t know about Rock Flipping Day? Well, no matter. It’s the day when we find a rock, carefully turn it over, and photograph the organisms we find living underneath it. Rock-flipping day is a simple biodiversity exercise designed to [...]

Animals with backbones (vertebrates) make up only 4% of the species on our planet. Yet when you walk into a natural history museum, they’re all you see. The dinosaur skeletons stretching across a ballroom? Vertebrates. Dioramas starring posed buffalo, lions, or zebra? Vertebrates. The endless cases of delicate stuffed birds? You guessed it: vertebrates. “It’s [...]

Get off of Facebook. Next time you feel the urge to procrastinate, help scientists identify animals instead.

Hardly four years ago, I started my first job in science. After an 8-hour drive up the east coast, my brother escorted me into a small, single-floored building facing a woody patch above a salt marsh, the headquarters of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. My heart swelled with anticipation: Here I was, finally living the [...]

As go the elephants, so go the trees. That’s the message of a new study published in the May 2013 issue of Forest Ecology and Management that found more than a dozen elephant-dependent tree species suffered catastrophic population declines in new plant growths after forest elephants were nearly extirpated from their ecosystems. The fruit-bearing trees [...]

The rising and often illegal trade in bushmeat—wild-caught animals, often threatened species such as primates, birds and elephants—threatens African biodiversity and could drive numerous species into extinction. Finding replacements for that trade could solve the need for both income and subsistence in many African communities. The answer, according to experts speaking at a meeting held [...]

People often ask me, "Why should I care if a species goes extinct? It’s not essential to my daily life, is it?" Well, according to new research published December 2 in Nature, the answer is yes—healthy biodiversity is essential to human health. As species disappear, infectious diseases rise in humans and throughout the animal kingdom, [...]

One fifth of the world’s vertebrates are threatened with extinction. That’s the word from the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity this week in Nagoya, Japan, where a team of 174 scientists presented an assessment of the world’s at-risk vertebrate species. According to the study, published in the October 28 [...]

Why are we approaching biodiversity conservation from such different points of view? We are currently rounding out the year 2010, proclaimed by the U.N. as the "International Year of Biodiversity."  While the recognition of the importance of nature is extremely valuable, I’m left at a loss as to what a "year of biodiversity" really means. [...]

My coffee habit is killing the black-handed spider monkey, a cute New World simian (my favorite kind) that thrives in the canopy of Central American forests with tall trees. That’s pretty much the opposite of the kinds of forests that still exist where the spider monkey lives, because for decades we’ve been cutting down those [...]

If you turn on the news, you’re likely to be inundated with depressing pictures: Oceans are rising, species are dying, pollution is spreading. But how bad do most scientists think it really is? Are these doom-and-gloom projections the real deal, or just the lamentations of a few pessimists? Sadly, at least for conservation biology, the [...]

In the animal kingdom it pays to look more dangerous and less tasty. It also helps if harmful species resemble one another so that predators might "learn" more easily to avoid both. A new example of this form of mimicry has been discovered among catfish that live in the Amazonian basin, where a school of [...]

In the rugged, remote reaches of Papua New Guinea live a multitude of strange species that scientists are just starting to catalogue. A recent initiative, the results of which were announced October 5, reports some 26 potentially new animal species, nine previously undescribed plants and some 200 likely new bug species. In two months of [...]

On May 15th, the U.S. was given an assignment to create a contingency plan for oil and gas spills in the Arctic. Seven other Arctic Council nations – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden – have to do the same. The need for such a strategy first surfaced due to the Macondo blowout [...]

After 10 years of zooming around the world to cover the ozone, climate, and biodiversity negotiations, I realize the outcome of Rio+20 (and meetings of the like) has been staring me in my face. It became clear when Rio+20 concluded with much applause, but little else in terms of solid outcomes. Yes, there’s a lukewarm [...]

Our planet’s health is ailing. That’s the message in short from the 2012 Living Planet Report. Its content is sobering. We are devouring 50 percent more resources than the Earth produces annually. Species populations have plummeted by 30 percent in the last 40 years. Freshwater scarcity abounds, and CO2 levels are soaring. Yet, the report’s co-authors [...]