ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

The tiny male golden orb-weaving spider faces a considerable challenge when searching for a mate. He is a fraction of the size of the massive female, but must carefully enter her web and approach her without being noticed, because the cannibalistic female will kill and eat him if he makes one wrong move on her web. Add to this gamble the competition he faces from other males also on the delicate arena of the web, and you have a complex optimization problem that even human analysts would find daunting. Yet these little spiders barely have what we would recognize as a brain. How then do they manage?

Researchers are working to improve remote sensing technology's ability to detect subtle changes in real-time across the landscape, namely to diagnose insect infestations in forests before irreparable damage is done.

Good glucose control is important for reduction of cancer risk in obesity and type 2 diabetes. Large durable weight loss, as such, appears to afford protection against cancer, but with good glucose control the number of cancer cases also drops radically, a new study shows.

Migratory birds are specially adapted to find their way over extreme distances that represent remarkable tests of endurance. Now, researchers have discovered an unexpected way that migratory birds keep their cool during such arduous journeys: lighter-colored feathers.

Our body must constantly defend itself against bacteria and viruses. It generates millions of different antibodies, which are selected to recognise the enemy and trigger the best possible immune response. Scientists use these antibodies to for therapeutic purposes to target proteins and disrupt their harmful. However, identifying the small molecules that will form the basis of the drug is a long and tedious process. Chemists have now developed a technique inspired by the theory of Darwinian evolution: amplifying the best combinations and generating diversity allows biology to find solutions to new problems.

Efforts to sequence the genomes of the world's animals tend to focus on those that most resemble humans with the work conducted almost entirely in the Global North, according to new analysis. Researchers warn current efforts are overlooking huge swathes of diversity and opportunity. Their analysis found that nearly 3,300 animal species have had their genomes sequenced and assembled, a process that gives organizational context to an organism's DNA. While the rate is picking up, the number is small in comparison to the world's 1.66 million animal species, and vertebrates make up the lion's share of current sequences. They account for 54% of all the assemblies, despite representing only 3.9% of animal species. In contrast, the invertebrates of the Arthropoda phylum, which includes insects and spiders, comprise only 34% of current datasets while representing 78.5% of all species.

Microplastics dispersed in the environment may enhance antibiotic resistance. A study found the chemical-leaching plastics draw bacteria and other vectors and make them susceptible to antibiotic resistant genes.

Most of the methane gas emitted from Amazon wetlands regions is vented into the atmosphere via tree root systems -- with significant emissions occurring even when the ground is not flooded, say researchers.

Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika viruses have all been recorded in Mexico; however, recent diagnostic advances have improved the accuracy of serological testing. A new study suggests that current estimates of the incidence of arboviruses in Mexico may have been previously underestimated.

Pigtailed macaques are a candidate model organism for two hemorrhagic diseases of public health concern: Kyasanur Forest disease and Alkhurma hemorrhagic disease, researchers report.