news 2024

New research by the University of Southampton shows that human settlement increases the similarity of flora growing across island groups - impacting ecosystems and the wildlife that relies upon them. Researchers have found that during approximately the last 3,000 years the distinctiveness of the range of plant species on any one island in the many groups of islands in the South Pacific has reduced - a process which scientists call 'homogenisation'.

Bats fly back to their roosts in a "leap frogging" motion ensuring they can stay out as long as possible foraging for food, researchers have found. The team from Cardiff University and the University of Sussex, developed a model from trajectory data on greater horseshoe bats - one of 18 species in the UK - to better understand how they move and engage with their environment.

There is an urgent need to expand the genetic monitoring of species in Europe to help detect the impacts of climate change on populations. That's one of the findings of new research undertaken by an international team involving Cardiff University's late Professor Mike Bruford - a world-leading conservationist - in one of the last studies he undertook before his death.

A major international collaboration of 356 scientists led by UCL researchers has found almost identical patterns of tree diversity across the world's tropical forests. The study of over one million trees across 1,568 locations, published in Nature , found that just 2.2% of tree species make up 50% of the total number of trees in tropical forests across Africa, the Amazon, and Southeast Asia.

Traditional navigation techniques from across the world, some of which have been in use for thousands of years, can inform western science, according to research from UCL and the University of York. The new review paper, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences , sheds new light on remarkable feats of navigation from cultures ranging from sailors in the Marshall Islands using wave patterns to navigate the vast Pacific Ocean, to indigenous communities in Alaska using stars to find their way across the Yukon.