https://phys.org/biology-news/plants-animals/ en-us The latest science news on plants and animals In a study of monk parakeets, researchers at the University of Cincinnati and Duke University found that sex has little to no impact on who initiates fights, who is targeted or who rises in the dominance hierarchy. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-parakeets-male-female-good.html Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:00:02 EDT news708620402 A team of researchers has found that a common wastewater pollutant turned male fathead minnows into worse fathers and fiercer rivals, revealing ecological impacts that laboratory studies missed. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-common-wastewater-pollutant-male-minnows.html Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news708614642 Cocoa farmers in West Africa cannot stop intense downpours from damaging their crops. But they may be able to anticipate the risk and prepare, protecting both their livelihoods and their plants, the source of one of the world's most beloved foods. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-chocolate-climate-threat.html Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:00:02 EDT news708349861 New techniques have enabled researchers in Sweden to begin decoding how one of Northern Europe's most important coniferous tree species switches from growing branches to producing cones—their seed-bearing reproductive organs. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-spruce-decades-genetic-clues.html Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:00:08 EDT news708349223 Human development may be changing more than where pollinators live—it may also be changing when they are active. University of Florida researchers at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) have found that pollinator seasons shifted later in the year across some of the most human-modified landscapes in the eastern United States. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-pollinators-calendar-human-landscapes.html Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:40:10 EDT news708594061 Deep within an ancient sinkhole lie the remains of dozens of mammoths, prehistoric wanderers who waded into the warm springs to their deaths. These deaths had long been accepted as having occurred roughly 26,000 years ago, but new dates published in the journal Quaternary Research suggest these ice-age giants were more than 160,000 years old. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-luminescence-dating-age-south-dakota.html Plants & Animals Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:40:02 EDT news708253643 Research teams from INRAE, the University of Clermont Auvergne and the CNRS have reconstructed 10 ancient genomes (paleogenomes) that are the common ancestors of 84 botanical species of agronomic interest. Their work makes it possible to identify particular genes, shared across different species of plants and retained throughout their evolutionary history, that might play a key role in adapting to environmental constraints such as drought. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-years-wheat-barley-reveal-climate.html Plants & Animals Fri, 11 Sep 2026 16:40:01 EDT news708348423 Scientists have identified the mechanisms that allow plants to change their root anatomy to maximize survival when nutrients are scarce. The findings could pave the way for developing new ways to improve beneficial plant-microbe interactions in agriculture. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-shapeshifting-roots-anatomy-metabolism-microbes.html Plants & Animals Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:00:01 EDT news708344161 The seemingly trivial ability to hear a regular pulse in music is a remarkable—and perhaps distinctively human—feature of the brain. In a wide-ranging critical review, Gábor Háden of the HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences and Henkjan Honing of the University of Amsterdam evaluate more than two decades of research into how this capacity develops and has evolved. Their paper was published this week in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-brain-ability-musical-distinctly-human.html Plants & Animals Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:20:04 EDT news708343081 New research finds there is no substitute for real-world observations, but that—under the right circumstances—AI-generated images can be used to improve the performance of computer models used for species identification and biodiversity monitoring. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-generated-images-real-world.html Plants & Animals Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:01 EDT news708339901 In non-tropical forests, cold winters hinder tree growth. There, climate warming prolongs the period during which trees absorb carbon through photosynthesis and store it in wood, known as the growing season. This could potentially mitigate further climate change as wood formation and carbon storage increases. But is this really the case? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-faster-wood-formation-longer-seasons.html Plants & Animals Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:40:07 EDT news708339481 Like all other snakes, sea snakes shed their skin as they grow. But because they live near the surface of the open ocean, they don't have the benefit of removing their old skin by slithering against a hard surface. Instead, they wriggle into a pretzel and use the friction generated by their scales to get the job done. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-planes-snake-scientists-crab-species.html Plants & Animals Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:40:02 EDT news708335546 Allowing females to mate with multiple males, rather than just one, could help make species more resistant to extinction, University of East Anglia research shows. A new study reveals that when females have multiple males to mate with, their offspring inherit significantly fewer harmful genetic mutations. This, in turn, makes the entire population healthier and less likely to die out. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-sex-multiple-species-extinction.html Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:40:07 EDT news708262195 Unlike an animal cell, a plant cell can't crawl or migrate. It's locked inside a rigid wall, cemented to its neighbors for life. A cell born at the center of a young fruit will still be there when that fruit ripens. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-fruit-war-tissues.html Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:00:02 EDT news708260161 Harmful algal blooms pose serious threats to people, animals and the environment. The University of Toledo's Dr. Jeanine Refsnider counts it as a positive discovery that northern map turtles tend to steer clear, as she and an undergraduate collaborator recently reported in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-northern-turtles-lake-erie-algal.html Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:20:06 EDT news708252187 Lots of animals use mimicry to survive. Some copy the appearance of threatening predators, and others have evolved to resemble plants or rocks so they can blend into the background and avoid being attacked. But a viper from Iran has found an even stranger strategy. The tip of this snake's tail looks like a spider, complete with a bulbous body and long dangling legs. And when a bird swoops in to try to eat this "spider," the snake springs into action and eats the bird. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-fake-spider-snake-tail-lure.html Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:00:01 EDT news708089822 Researchers have developed an AI-based system that automatically and objectively detects the moment when fish experience loss of equilibrium (LOE) due to temperature stress. The system combines DeepLabCut, a deep-learning AI that captures animal posture from video, with ResNet34, a deep-learning AI-based image classification technology. Their system is expected to help predict the effects of climate change on fish. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-fish-thermal-limit.html Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:00:06 EDT news708104701 Taylor Swift is now the namesake of a genus of plant-feeding insects from Australia that were previously unknown to science. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-insect-genus-species-taylor-swift.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:40:01 EDT news708185701 Researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College have found that Asian elephants can suppress impulsive behaviors and adjust their actions when circumstances change—a cognitive ability that may help explain the animals' sophisticated problem-solving skills and social behavior. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-asian-elephants-resist-impulsive-behavior.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:00:08 EDT news708004141 A new comparative review, published in The Anatomical Record, examines factors that may lead to birth complications among humans and other mammals. The study suggests that fetal sex may play an important role in risky births in humans and several other species. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-son-hypothesis-bigger-sons-births.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:27:09 EDT news708175596 A new study reveals that horse personality is not only a matter of genetics, age or breed but also systematically linked to how horses are housed, ridden and cared for, and to the quality of the relationship they share with their owners. The findings underscore the importance of everyday management decisions for equine personality and welfare. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-engage-horses-personality.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Sep 2026 11:40:04 EDT news708166321 Monash University scientists have developed a global framework to tackle a major blind spot in biodiversity conservation: Insects underpin ecosystems and food production but remain largely invisible to conservation efforts across the tropics. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-parachute-science-world-tropical-insects.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Sep 2026 10:40:04 EDT news708164041 Hidden deep in the bush, ranging over huge territories at speeds humans can't match and through terrain not even the most rugged vehicle can handle, hyenas and lions are hard to study. Now, new research using GPS collars to map the movements of individual animals has revealed crucial information about the relationship between these competing carnivore species. We've long assumed that hyenas simply shadow lions for scraps, but these findings show that when they encounter each other, it's the lions, especially males, that approach hyenas, and the hyenas that give way. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-gps-collars-reveal-secrets-power.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:01 EDT news708004081 Surinam toads (Pipa pipa) are strange, flat frogs with minuscule eyes that live in the murky waters of the Amazon basin and carry their eggs on their backs. The way they catch prey is even weirder. They lie in wait with outstretched forelimbs until a small fish approaches, then snap open their jaws to create enough suction to draw the fish into their tongueless mouths and swallow it whole, all in a few hundredths of a second. But how do these frogs hunt in low visibility with poor vision? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-star-fingered-toads-fingertip-lobules.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:00:09 EDT news708091981 New research shows that larval Antarctic krill could be carried far from their birthplace by drifting sea ice, linking distant ecosystems in ways conventional models may miss. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-sea-ice-hidden-highways-young.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Sep 2026 10:40:01 EDT news708077641 A squishy worm that starts its life as something of a floating head in the Pacific Ocean is changing what scientists know about metamorphosis at the cellular level. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-worm-radical-metamorphosis-functions-cells.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Sep 2026 05:00:04 EDT news707993581 A few years ago, I drove with an old friend from Togo, West Africa, towards the country's last remaining large protected area, Fazao-Malfakassa National Park. Our destination was the Hotel Fazao, where his uncle had once worked as a professional chef after its opening in 1980. For decades, while the park was managed by the Swiss Franz Weber Foundation (FWF), the hotel had hosted tourists from around the world who came to see elephants, monkeys, and other wildlife for which Africa is famous. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-rangers-residents-togo-national.html Plants & Animals Mon, 07 Sep 2026 18:00:09 EDT news707988573 Scientists have discovered that one of the most unusual creatures in the animal kingdom is far more diverse and evolutionarily complex than previously known. An international team led by the University of Göttingen has reconstructed the evolutionary history of branching marine worms—rare annelids that live hidden inside sea sponges and whose bodies branch repeatedly into multiple posterior ends. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-decades-museum-specimens-reveal-extraordinary.html Plants & Animals Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:20:01 EDT news707989621 While the highly virulent avian influenza strain has only recently been discovered on Australian shores, researchers at Deakin University have been working behind the scenes for years, anticipating what an outbreak might look like. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bird-movements-track-global-virus.html Plants & Animals Sun, 06 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news707401817 New research has found that tree species diversity can play a crucial role in protecting forests from the growing threat of extreme climate events. The study analyzed data from 88,116 separate forest plots across the United States to investigate the impact of "compound climate extremes," when events such as drought and extreme heat occur at the same time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tree-species-diversity-forests-climate.html Plants & Animals Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:00:01 EDT news707665667