Biodiversity

More than 50 years after Bob Paine’s experiment with starfish, hundreds of species have been pronounced “keystones” in their ecosystems. Has the powerful metaphor lost its mathematical meaning?

Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be packed into tropical forests.

New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts.

A new, deeper understanding of how the breeding structure of species affects their genetic diversity is giving conservationists better tools for saving animals.

On Mount Everest and in the Peruvian Andes, Tracie Seimon uses DNA to study how species and ecosystems respond to climate change, pathogens and other influences.

The first large-scale comparison of mutation rates gives insights into how quickly species can evolve.

The lush biodiversity of the Amazon may be due in part to the dynamics of branching rivers, which serve as invisible fences that continuously barricade and merge bird populations.

The spate of furious wildfires around the world during the past decade has revealed to ecologists how much biodiversity and “pyrodiversity” go hand in hand.

While the study of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the most urgent priority, biologists also learned more about how brains process information, how to define individuality and why sleep deprivation kills.