Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Environmental Science

CitiesEcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Julia Bebout

Urban Gardens Provide Stable Nectar Supply for Pollinators

Insect pollinators are in trouble, and many plants on farms or in the wild need them to be able to grow fruits and reproduce. With so much at stake for plants around the world, and the humans who depend on them, how can we stop the decline of insect pollinator populations? Urban gardens may have a role to play in supporting pollinators, especially if we plant flowers that provide a stable supply of nectar, their most important food.

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Animal behaviorEcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Maria Marlin

Matriarch Madness: Mechanism of Social Parasitism and Colony Takeover in Ants

Carpenter ants play an important role in an ecosystem; they break down wood into smaller pieces that will ultimately become part of the soil. But a parasitic ant can rapidly take over and destroy a colony by simply disguising herself through chemical means.

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Animal behaviorCase StudiesEcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Brianne Palmer

How Citizen Science Led to The Discovery of Tree-Dwelling Toads

Two groups of citizen scientists in the UK discovered something previously unknown to science– toads living in trees. Read on to learn about how citizen science and collaborations with scientists can lead to more interesting questions and discoveries.

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This photo shows the corner of a fenced-off backyard in the foreground, and other yards and houses in the background. The yards are very open and contain short green grass.
Animal behaviorCitiesEnvironmental Science
Lauren Otolski

Fenced Off: What Attracts our Wild Neighbors to our Yards?

Though you may expect to only spot wildlife in natural areas such as parks, urban animal visitors are likely more common than you’d think! What kind of animals might be spotted in human-dominated areas, and how do they interact with our backyards?

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ClimateEcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Etienne Herrick

Managing soil carbon for short and long-term benefits: Have we cracked the code?

Increasing carbon in soils has potential to help fight climate change and support crop growth, but researchers are still figuring out if and how we can do both at the same time. Read on to find out if they’ve discovered a solution!

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EcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Julia Bebout

Buried Alive: How Plants Bounce Back from Volcanic Debris

When a volcano erupts, what happens to plants growing nearby? Some are buried by volcanic tephra, dust and rocks thrown into the air by the volcano. Amazingly, newly published results suggest that this might not kill the plant community under the debris.

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EcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Andrea Valcarcel

Microplastics In Our Fish: How Fish Food Is Affecting Our Food Supply and Our Health

Microplastics are small plastic particles ranging in size from 1μm (the size of a human hair) to 5mm (the size of a pencil-top eraser) that don’t dissolve in water and are usually fragmented from larger pieces of plastics. That sounds like something that should never end up on our plates, right? Well, researchers have found that these small plastics have, unfortunately, found their way into our food chain.

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ClimateEnvironmental SciencePaleontologyScience through time
Abigail Donahue

The Great Oxidation Event: How our atmosphere went from deadly gas to fresh air

In the beginning, Earth’s atmosphere had no oxygen. Then photosynthesis made life as we know it possible, produced much of our mineable iron, and caused an ice age.

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