Extinctions

New study shows world's protected areas threatened by climate change

...of fresh water, food, medicines and other life-sustaining benefits of nature. However, the study indicates that climate change will cause increased extinctions of species unable to adapt to altered climatic conditions, and substantial changes to the natural ecosystems. We urgently need to better understand...

Parasites a key to the decline of red colobus monkeys in forest fragments

... Forest fragmentation threatens biodiversity, often causing declines or local extinctions in a majority of species while enhancing the prospects of a few. A new study from the University of Illinois shows that parasites can play a pivotal r...

Extinction Risk of Grazing Animals Depends on Reproductive Speed

... She found that where hunting isn't a factor, habitat loss is the biggest issue. But whether the threat comes from hunting or habitat destruction, extinctions are "all human-caused at some level". The worst-case scenario, she said, is where humans are expanding into an area and changing its habitat, ...

Extinctions in Biological News

Mass extinctions and the evolution of dinosaurs

Reporting in Biology Letters, Steve Brusatte, Professor Michael Benton, and colleagues at the University of Bristol show that dinosaurs did not proliferate immediately after they originated, but that their rise was a slow and complicated event, and driven by two mass extinctions. "The sheer ...

Oceans on the precipice: Scripps scientist warns of mass extinctions and 'rise of slime'

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. Such is the prognosis of Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripp...

The mystery of mass extinctions is no longer murky

If you are curious about Earth's periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits. But a new study, published June 15, 2008, in the journal Nature , suggests that...

UGA study reveals ecosystem-level consequences of frog extinctions

Athens, Ga. Streams that once sang with the croaks, chirps and ribbits of dozens of frog species have gone silent. They're victims of a fungus that's decimating amphibian populations worldwide. Such catastrophic declines have been documented for more than a decade, but until recently scientist...

Stanford researchers say climate change will significantly increase impending bird extinctions

Where do you go when you've reached the top of a mountain and you can't go back down? It's a question increasingly relevant to plants and animals, as their habitats slowly shift to higher elevations, driven by rising temperatures worldwide. The answer, unfortunately, is you can't go anywhere. H...

Research team says extraterrestrial impact to blame for Ice Age extinctions

What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home. A tea...

Improved predictions of warming-induced extinctions sought

In the March 2007 issue of BioScience, an international team of 19 researchers calls for better forecasting of the effects of global warming on extinction rates. The researchers, led by Daniel B. Botkin, note that although current mathematical models indicate that many species could be at risk from...

Fish extinctions alter critical nutrients in water, study shows

Ecosystems are such intricate webs of connections that few studies have been able to explore exactly what happens when a species dies out. Now, a Cornell study using computer simulations has teased out how the disappearance of a freshwater fish can affect the availability of certain nutrients tha...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...re nutrients such as sulphates to the ocean. Large extinctions in deep-sea organisms (benthic foraminifera) assoc...l change-based eolian deposits. Vertebrate extinctions and reorganizations during the Late Silurian Lau E...million years ago) fish faunas were struck hard by extinctions caused by the so-called Lau Event. This globally r...

Humans 'damaging the oceans'

...ases, and change in ocean life is likely to be equally quick. These include changes in the areas fish and other sea species can inhabit, invasions, extinctions and major shifts in marine ecosystems. "In the past, the boundaries between geological ages are marked by sudden losses of species. We may now be e...

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Extinctions in Biological Definition

Biodiversity

... handful to upwards of 200 species a day, most scientists believe that the rate of species loss is greater now than at any time in human history- with extinctions occuring at rates hundreds of times higher than background extinction rates. Some studies show that about one of eight known plant species is thre...

Extinction

...onservation Union (WCU, formerly the IUCN ), 784 extinctions have been recorded since the year 1500 (the arbi...kely to have gone unnoticed. Most of these modern extinctions can be attributed directly or indirectly to human ... 2.4 Coextinction 3 Effects 4 Mass extinctions 5 Human extinction 6 Human attitudes on ...

Extinctions in Biological Dictionary

Extinction

... ... that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past. ... first glance, the phy...s of the past might ... An examination of past extinctions and the potential for another wave. ... When Species Die. Five mass extinctions have occurred since life began on Earth. Are ... ...