In a fascinating new study, human life expectancy – which is rarely included in analyses of human impacts on the environment – emerged as the key predictor of invasive species and extinctions. The study, published inEcology and Society, examined a combination of 15 social and ecological variables – from tourism and per capita gross domestic […]
Dating from only around 13,000 years ago, fossils from two caves in south-west China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people who exhibit a highly unusual mix of ancient and modern anatomical features. The curious mash-up of features has startling implications for theories about the early peopling of Asia. The international team of researchers […]
Calculating species extinction rates is a tricky business at the best of times, but a new research paper in Nature suggests the most widely used methods are “fundamentally flawed” and overestimate extinction rates by as much as 160 percent. Paper co-author Stephen Hubbell, a distinguished professor of ecology at UCLA, explained why he believed extinction […]
Species don’t evolve faster in warmer climes as had been thought; rather, it appears to be cooler, more temperate, regions that crank-up speciation rates (the process in which one species splits into two). This surprising conclusion has been drawn by University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers who have charted the genetic family tree of 618 […]
