Part of my online life includes editorial duties at ResearchBlogging.org, where I serve as the Social Sciences Editor. Each Thursday, I pick notable posts on research in anthropology, philosophy, social science, and research to share on the ResearchBlogging.org News site. To help highlight this writing, I also share my selections here on AiP Great reads this week! [...]

Few people have ever seen a critically endangered Malherbe’s parakeet (Cyanoramphus malherbi) in the wild. Luis Ortiz-Catedral has not only seen more of the birds than just about anyone else, one of them has landed on his head. He has also witnessed something that almost no one else has ever seen among this species: mating. [...]

A primitive, venomous mammal endemic to Cuba and once listed as extinct has been rediscovered after a decadelong quest. The shrewlike Cuban solenodon (Solenodon cubanus)—a “living fossil” that has not changed much in millions of years—was all but wiped out in the 19th century by deforestation and introduced species. The 30-centimeter-long, nocturnal solenodons possess a [...]

Deforestation in the Amazon has put nearly 100 bird species at greater risk of extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced (IUCN) on Thursday. The news comes in conjunction with the release of the 2012 update on the world’s bird species for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, data for which is [...]

Rare reptiles known as tuatara (the last two species of the order Sphenodontia) survived the age of the dinosaurs, but the age of man has given them a bit more trouble. After living in New Zealand for millions of years, tuatara were completely wiped out on the country’s two main islands by invasive Polynesian rats [...]

The Galápagos National Park Service has launched a project to protect the famous archipelago’s endangered species by wiping out introduced, invasive rats. As has been done in other locations, such as Australia’s Christmas Island, the Galápagos rats will be targeted with poison bait dropped from helicopters, starting on nine of the chain’s small and medium-sized [...]

Six Australian birds that have not been seen in decades have been declared extinct by a team of scientists assessing the health of the country’s bird species. In most cases they could have been saved, says team leader Stephen Garnett, professor of tropical knowledge at Charles Darwin University in Australia’s Northern Territory. The lost birds [...]

Fifteen years ago, the future looked bleak for the Antiguan racer (Alsophis antiguae), the world’s rarest snake. In 1995 just 50 of the creatures survived on the isolated 8.4-hectare Great Bird Island off of Antigua in the Caribbean. Introduced mongooses had wiped out the species on Antigua itself; invasive rats almost did the same trick [...]

I’m still playing a bit of catch-up after last week’s AZA conference. In the meantime, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 was published this week, which includes a piece I originally posted in July, 2011. In honor of the publication, I’m reposting that piece, below. Also, check out my new fortnightly column at BBC Future, [...]