For more than a century, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has exhibited exotic specimens from around the world. But recently that global focus has shifted, as biologists recognize that LA itself is among the planet’s most diverse ecosystems. A new Urban Nature Research Center is enlisting citizen scientists to catalog species that they find in their backyards, from spiders to squirrels. Their goal is to better understand how biodiversity is affected by urbanization and glob ...read more

Researchers have partially hidden Earth’s largest life-form behind a small protective fence. On a cold, sunny October day, I travel with Paul Rogers, an ecologist at Utah State University, to see the largest known living organism on Earth. The creature resides in the high mountains of southern Utah on public land. It’s a 106-acre aspen stand named Pando — literally, “I spread,” in Latin. Linked by a single root system, Pando consists of tens of thousands of gen ...read more

River floods can have a huge impact on the surrounding lands. Overflows can be harmful not just to local wildlife populations, but to human communities across the globe. Effects from climate change are on the rise, making it more important than ever to understand changes in seasonal flooding patterns. A study recently published in Science looked at data from more than 4,200 observational hydrometric stations in Europe over the past 50 years, and picked out some noticeable patterns. For example, ...read more

6. The Beauty of Numbers in Nature: Mathematical Patterns and Principles from the Natural WorldBy Ian StewartThe prolific and engaging mathematician uncovers formulas underpinning everything from mountains to music in a fun read. 7. The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the WorldBy Anthony Brandt and David EaglemanNeuroscientist Eagleman and composer Brandt explore the many manifestations of our most unique trait. 8. The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience From the Edge of Cli ...read more

In all the early chaos, a thousand Plutos may have formed in the distant part of the solar system where Neptune orbits today, including a nascent Ceres. Then the shifting gas giants scattered those bodies everywhere. “In the great rearrangement of the solar system, Pluto went outward, Ceres came inward,” says planetary scientist and New Horizons co-investigator William McKinnon. He proposed Ceres’ migration in 2008 — the first hint of a potential sibling relationship betw ...read more

Society has long misunderstood these spineless swimmers. Now they could unlock the keys to regeneration. Hiroshima’s downtown is a garden of modern architecture interspersed with swaths of lovely green parks. In the center is a single structure, in ruins, capped by a skeleton of curved iron. This is the Atomic Bomb Dome, located at the destruction’s epicenter, the sole building that managed to remain standing amid the massive force that flattened everything else for miles in all ...read more

(Credit: Foxys Forest Manufacture/Shutterstock) If you want to teach your children the alphabet while mildly traumatizing them at the same time, look no further than “The Gashlycrumb Tinies.” In alphabetical order, and with a jaunty rhyme scheme, 26 children meet fates both gruesome and preposterous. In the future, though, as climate change warms the planet beyond our comfort zone in many regions, the book could be rewritten by adding some heat. There are 27 ways that a h ...read more

(Credit: Cornel Constantin/Shutterstock) The content you see on the internet is increasingly becoming tailored to you: Music based on your favorite jams, shopping suggestions corresponding to your recent purchases, and television shows similar to your most beloved episodes. These “similarity searches” drive custom content, and they’re pretty tricky to do correctly and quickly. I Know This Song That is, for computers at least. Fruit flies, on the other hand, seem to be pretty ...read more

East of the now-submerged land bridge Beriniga, a large valley moraine in northern Canada’s Nahanni National Park dates to 13,800 years ago, roughly the end of the last ice age. (Credit Brian Menounos, UNBC) One if by land, two if by sea…if only the debate about how the first humans arrived in the Americas was as easy to sort out as Paul Revere’s fabled lantern signal. Maybe it is. A new study from a different field offers indirect support to researchers advocating a coa ...read more

A crested pigeon in flight. (Credit: Geoffery Dabb) When the crested pigeon of Australia flees potential foes, it can raise an alarm — not by calling out vocally, but with whistling feathers in its wings. These new findings may be the first proof of an idea Darwin proposed nearly 150 years ago suggesting that birds could use feathers as musical instruments for communication. Birds are known for the songs they can sing, but many can also generate unusual noises with their feathers. Darwin ...read more