Scientists are collecting the spawn of elkhorn corals as part of a research and education project to grow the newborn juvenile corals for distribution to aquaria and to the wild. The goals of the project are to learn how corals will respond to global warming and also to teach aquarium professionals how they can protect corals by using laboratory-raised specimens rather than removing corals from the ocean.

It's no secret that humans are having a huge impact on the life cycles of plants and animals. UC Santa Barbara researchers decided to test that theory by studying the world's far-flung islands. Their research sheds surprising light on the subject of extinction rates of species on islands.

Power-generating wind turbines have long been recognized as a potentially life-threatening hazard for birds. But at most wind facilities, bats actually die in much greater numbers. Now, researchers think they know why.

Scientists are to carry out a feasibility study on the possibility of reintroducing burbot, a freshwater fish, to UK rivers, and are conducting an online survey to hear the views of members of the public.

Shipwrecks on coral reefs may increase invasion of unwanted species, according to a recent US Geological Survey study. These unwanted species can completely overtake the reef and eliminate all the native coral, dramatically decreasing the diversity of marine organisms on the reef. This study documents for the first time that a rapid change in the dominant biota on a coral reef is unambiguously associated with man-made structures.

A new species of fish has been discovered -- a grouper that reaches more than six feet in length and can weigh nearly 1,000 pounds. This newly discovered species can be found roaming the tropical reefs of the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Common tree species in the Amazon will survive even grim scenarios of deforestation and road-building, but rare trees could suffer extinction rates of up to 50 percent, predict scientists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just frogs, salamanders and their ilk, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. The researchers argue that substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet.

Scientists have discovered a new species of bird in Gabon, Africa, that was, until now, unknown to the scientific community. The newly found olive-backed forest robin (Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus) was named by the scientists for its distinctive olive back and rump. Adult birds measure 4.5 inches in length and average 18 grams in weight.

Burmese Pythons may have chosen Florida as a vacation destination, but are unlikely to expand further, according to a new study. Although the United States Geological Survey earlier this year released "climate maps" indicating that the pythons could inhabit up to 32 states in the US, new research indicates that the snakes are unlikely to expand out of Florida.

Microbial biologists may not have Jimmy Buffett's music from 1977 in mind, but they are changing attitudes about evolutionary diversity on Earth, from oceanic latitudes to mountainous altitudes. They are showing that temperature primarily drives the richness of bacterial diversity in oceans, and that life, plant and microbial, by altitude in the Rocky Mountains may be close, but not exactly, to what biologists have theorized for years.

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.

Scientists sheds new light on the role that our ancestors played in the extinction of Australia's prehistoric animals. Their study suggests that the mass extinction of Tasmania's large prehistoric animals was the result of human hunting, and not climate change as previously believed.

Amphibians, reigning survivors of past mass extinctions, are sending a clear, unequivocal signal that something is wrong, as their extinction rates rise to unprecedented levels, according to a new paper. Humans are exacerbating two key natural threats: climate change and a deadly disease that is jumping from one species to another.

A multi-pronged approach is the only way humanity can preserve biodiversity, say Stanford biologists Paul Ehrlich and Robert Pringle. While many people have gotten the impression that only government-level action can have a significant impact, many small effective efforts are already under way. What is needed, they say, is for these small-scale efforts to be implemented more broadly and scaled up dramatically and for academics to leave their Ivory Towers and do outreach work.

As the Arctic Ocean warms this century, shellfish, snails and other animals from the Pacific Ocean will resume an invasion of the northern Atlantic that was interrupted by cooling conditions three million years ago.

Brown tree snakes have come to embody the bad things that can happen when invasive species show up where they have few predators. But new research suggests that indirect impacts might be even farther reaching, possibly changing tree distributions and altering already damaged ecosystems.

Scientists have long pointed to physical changes in the Earth and its atmosphere as indicators of global climate change. But changes in climate can wreak havoc in more subtle ways, such as the loss of habitat for plant and animal species.

The undisputed queen of animal pollinators is the bee, whose daily flights aid in the reproduction of more than half of the world's flowering plants. In recent years, however, an unprecedented decline in bee populations has placed the health of ecosystems an crops in peril. A group of scientists are exploring the problem of bee habitat loss to determine what can be done to preserve bees in their native habitats.

Mankind's closest relatives -- the world's monkeys, apes and other primates -- are disappearing from the face of the Earth, with some literally being eaten into extinction. The first comprehensive review in five years of the world's 634 kinds of primates found that almost 50 percent are in danger of going extinct, according to the criteria of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.