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Category: Ecosystems

  • Saltmarshes Little Affected By Hurricanes

    The saline portions of the marsh lost about a half percent of land area

  • Aliens Introduced Naturally Can Still Be Trouble

    The effects of Cyclone Demonia are still being felt a quarter of a century after it ripped through landlocked Swaziland. … Its lasting legacy was the alien plant seeds that the winds carried.

  • Desperate Measures To Save Wetlands

    The most effective tool for cleaning up the oil working its way into southern Louisiana wetlands may, in the end, be the equivalent of a box of kitchen matches.

  • Why The Pieces Can’t Be Put Back

    A seven-year experiment shows that pond communities bear the imprint of random events in their past, such as the order in which species were introduced into the ponds. This finding locates one of the wellsprings of biodiversity but also suggests that it may not be possible to restore ecosystems whose history we cannot recreate.

  • Battle Between Native vs. Introduced Species Has Unexpected Casualties

    It's a battle between an invasive plant and a native plant, but with a new twist… European beachgrass provides cover that allows a timid deer mouse to get close enough to the lupine to snip off stalks of lupine fruits without being nabbed by overflying birds.

  • Only Trees Can prevent Forest Fires

    The research results suggest that some trees may modify or “engineer” their environment, including the characteristic fire frequencies in a landscape, to facilitate their own persistence at the expense of their competitors,

  • Alien Ants Re-Design Ecosystem

    Since ants have dominated, the forest floor has become crowded and this indirectly affects understorey birds because it changes their habitat and food sources. 'It's an amazing transformation of the forest in a short time'.

  • Carnivorous Plants Evolve For Bigger Meals

    &#133the advantage of being able to catch and digest larger insects may have driven the evolution of the snap traps' many specializations, including sensitive trigger hairs on the inside surface of each leaf and the ability to respond quickly to a potential meal — a Venus flytrap can snap a leaf shut in a fraction of a second.

  • Making Hard Choices

    No one's certain how the meadows formed, and the encroachment is a natural succession… But the Forest Service believes the meadows have both scenic and botanic value, and the only way to keep them open is to beat back the advancing trees.

  • A Symbiotic Relationship That Moves Mountains

    Few plants can grow without soil and even fewer are capable of growing on nothing but bare rock.Yet some species of desert cactus manage this extraordinary feat, and now scientists have worked out how.