#species

www.abc.net.au

Video captures ranger's joyful tears on finding rare night parrot chick

New video captures a sighting of the elusive bird in its grassy home in the remote Great Sandy Desert during the day. #endangered #protected #species #birds #science #technology #environment #nature #indigenous #australians

www.thehindu.com

Guwahati school students document 1,517 species in biodiversity survey

A month-long citizen science initiative involving school students across Assam’s Kamrup Metropolitan district has resulted in the documentation of 1,517 species of flora and fauna. Guwahati is the headquarters of the 1,528-sq. km Kamrup Metropolitan district, comprising three development blocks and five revenue circles. Help Earth, a Guwahati-based biodiversity conservation organisation, conducted a 30-day taxonomic survey in association with the Assam Climate Change Management Society. Students from seven schools participated in the exercise, titled Guwahati Bioblitz 2025. Its results were announced on Tuesday (September 22, 2026). “The survey was conceived as an intensive biodiversity documentation (exercise) to encourage students to discover, document, and understand the biological diversity within a largely urban landscape. Students were allowed to explore and observe their surroundings and contribute scientifically useful records,” said Help Earth general secretary Jayaditya Purkayastha. According to the data released at a school in Guwahati’s Barsajai area, 48 students logged 5,932 observations and documented 1,517 unique species. The final tally comprised 993 plant species, 221 insect species, 117 bird species, 25 mammal species, and 10 reptile species. The survey introduced the participants to biodiversity awareness, field exploration, digital photography, species identification using iNaturalist app, monitoring, and continued engagement with biodiversity. “The initiative...

www.abc.net.au

Dead humpback whale towed off Sunshine Coast beach

Authorities are towing the dead juvenile whale, which washed ashore at a popular beach, almost 40 kilometres out to sea. #animals #endangered #protected #species #oceans

www.earth.com

Ethiopia's 'forest in the clouds' is home to a new species of egg-eating snake

In parts of southern Ethiopia’s forests, an entire group of snakes survives on nothing but bird eggs. Almost all of them look the same: black, or close to it, with barely a marking to tell one from another. Sorting out these egg-eater snake species usually takes a lab, not a glance. So, when a herpetologist caught a young, ordinary-looking egg-eater snake in the Harenna Forest, he assumed he already knew what it was. He was wrong. Arthur Tiutenko, at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, had picked up the juvenile female from a local collaborator. The plan was to breed her with a male of the species she resembled, mostly to keep a captive line going. “I received a juvenile female of an egg-eater that appeared to me to be an already known species, and I started looking for a male to breed it,” Tiutenko said. “As she grew to adult size, I noticed morphological differences.” A hybrid litter settled it To test his hunch, Tiutenko crossed the female with a male Dasypeltis atra, the montane egg-eater she most resembled. It is a black snake found across East African forests. “I crossed them nevertheless, to see how the offspring would turn...

www.nature.com

Daily briefing: The first new cat species described by science in a century

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. It takes two to make a brain grow right A new study suggests that two types of precursor cells are required to build the brain, challenging a decades-long theory that a single type of starter cell gives rise to the complex organ. The research finds that one type of precursor cell forms the hindbrain, while another generates the forebrain and midbrain. Not all researchers are convinced by this conclusion, but the work has drawn broad praise for one aspect: the authors found an efficient way to coax stem cells to grow into hindbrain motor-neuron cells, which could aid research into conditions that affect these cells, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Nature | 5 min read Reference: Nature Neuroscience paper Europe’s giant leap into space Europe is taking steps to develop its own sovereign space capabilities, and wean itself off its dependence on infrastructure from the United States. Europe currently relies on NASA and companies such as SpaceX to launch some of its astronauts and satellites to space. But at a summit in Paris earlier this month, leaders such as French...

www.newswise.com

Can a species evolve fast enough to avoid extinction under a changing climate?

Images available for use can be found here. Newswise — Woods Hole, Mass. (Sept. 22, 2026) — As the climate changes, species face a critical question: Can they evolve quickly enough to keep pace with their changing environment? A new study published in the suggests that, for at least one long-lived seabird, the answer is generally no. Although evolutionary adaptation can improve the prospects of black-browed albatross populations, the study finds that evolution alone is unlikely to prevent population declines under projected climate change, but substantially limiting greenhouse-gas emissions improves the species’ chances of survival, reducing projected extinction probability by approximately half. Co-authored by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) senior scientist Stéphanie Jenouvrier and colleagues, the study combines more than three decades of demographic and phenotypic data on black-browed albatrosses, a seabird native to the Southern Ocean and surrounding seas. The species is pelagic, meaning it spends most of its life gliding far out at sea. Researchers used an eco-evolutionary population model and climate projections to examine not only how climate affects population dynamics, but also how natural selection and evolutionary change might alter the population’s response. “Evolution can help populations cope with environmental change, but our results show that...