Species that live exclusively in a single region are at a particular risk of extinction. However, for them to be protected, thorough assessments of the environmental impacts need to be performed. There are more than 100 earthworm species living in the soil and dead wood of KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Most of them live exclusively […]
Ahead of Gehry’s Biodiversity Museum‘s opening in October 2014, PhD candidate Patricia Esther Corro Chang, Universidad de Panama, studied the butterflies and moths which had been attracted by the bright colours of the walls and which were visiting the grounds of the tourist site. The resulting checklist, published in the open access journal Biodiversity Data […]
An African rattan palm species has recently been assessed as Endangered, according to the IUCN Red List criteria. Although looking pretty robust at height of up to 40 m, the palm is restricted to scattered patches of land across an area of 40 km². It grows in reserves and conservation areas in Ghana and a […]
While amphibians all over the world are undergoing a continuous decline, their status in certain regions, such as Central Africa, remains unknown due to incomplete information. New paper, published by two scientists in the open access journal ZooKeys, addresses the knowledge gap by providing an updated list of already 50 amphibian species living on […]
The massive decline of over 75% insect biomass reported from Germany between 1989 and 2013 by expert citizen scientists proves the urgent need for new methods and standards for fast and wide-scale biodiversity assessments. If we cannot understand species composition, as well as their diversity patterns and reasons behind them, we will fail not only […]
Primates claim the highest proportion of endangered species among all mammals, according to the IUCN Red List. Yet, the substantial conservation interference from humans, which is already in place, could itself lead to even greater losses. Plenty of studies have proven that while researchers and ecotourists raise vital for ape conservation knowledge and funds, it […]
Having conducted a thorough interpretation of the results of a recent study that inferred decrease in the biodiversity loss among pollinators across Europe, Dr Tom J. M. Van Dooren reveals that this conclusion cannot in fact be drawn. It is only supported for the bee fauna in the Netherlands. His study is published in the […]
International trade of wildlife on the Internet is highly unregulated and has become a threat for species survival. Threatened cacti are available on websites and shipped across countries without any legal documents to certify their trade is not a menace to population viability in the wild. Is this ignorance or unwillingness to comply with regulations? […]
The fate of over 64,000 live wild animals officially reported to have been confiscated by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) enforcement agencies between 2010 and 2014 remains untraceable, according to a new report released by the University of Oxford Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and World Animal […]
Subject to continuing population decline due to a number of factors, an exclusively cave-dwelling (troglobitic) spider endemic to the Azores is considered as Critically Endangered according to the IUCN Red List criteria. To provide a fast output, potentially benefiting the arachnid’s survival, scientists from the IUCN – Spider and Scorpion Specialist Group and the Azorean […]