Habitat fragmentation is a landscape-level process in which continuous habitats are subdivided into smaller, isolated patches by natural or anthropogenic disturbances, altering spatial configuration without necessarily reducing total habitat area proportionally. It modifies edge-to-core ratios, connectivity, and matrix composition, thereby disrupting ecological flows such as dispersal, gene flow, and trophic interactions. Fragmentation typically leads to smaller population sizes, increased demographic and environmental stochasticity, and heightened vulnerability to local extinction. It also drives community reassembly through edge effects, altered microclimates, and differential species responses based on dispersal ability, habitat specialization, and sensitivity to isolation, making it a central topic in landscape ecology and conservation biology.
Birds play a larger role in the dispersal of wild cotton than previously assumed. This is shown by a study in the journal Oikos, carried out in southern Africa. Researchers discovered that birds actively collect wild cotton ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 17, 2026
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Plants are usually seen as stationary life forms, quietly supporting environments. But plant communities and populations are far from static. They are constantly being shaped by the world around them.
Plants & Animals
Mar 17, 2026
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Since the 1970s, the U.S. has lost billions of birds. We now know that those losses aren't just growing—they are accelerating in places with intensive human activity, particularly where agriculture and expanding communities ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 14, 2026
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Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have documented the farthest trek of a young female fisher (Pekania pennanti) moving 118 kilometers (over 73 miles) from Durham to the outskirts of Lincoln, a small town in New ...
Ecology
Mar 14, 2026
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64
By the time Kim Ring arrived at her neighbors' yard that spring afternoon in 2022, their chicken coop was a flattened pile of lumber surrounded by feathers. The poultry had been raided by a bear. At the neighbor's request, ...
Ecology
Mar 13, 2026
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A new study reveals that habitat fragmentation can lead to sudden "tipping points" where a species' genetic health unexpectedly collapses after appearing stable for long periods. By merging network theory with population ...
Ecology
Mar 5, 2026
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66
A research team led by Dr. Chris Baumann and Dr. Dorothée Drucker from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen has found that the European wildcat is increasingly using ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 26, 2026
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132
A pair of disturbances common in Western Canada's boreal forests, when combined, may have an unexpected benefit of limiting the spread of non-native plant species, a University of Alberta study shows. The research gauged ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 25, 2026
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Forest loss does more than reduce tree cover. A new global study involving UBC Okanagan researchers shows it can fundamentally change how watersheds hold and release water. The research, published in the Proceedings of the ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 19, 2026
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50
For 40 years, scientists have been monitoring the Neotropical otter (Lontra longicaudis) along the southern coast of Brazil. A study published in Estuarine Management and Technologies reveals that these charismatic mammals ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 17, 2026
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