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"Understanding the relationship between diversity and stability requires a knowledge of how species interact with each other and how each is affected by the environment. The relationship is also complex, because the concept of stability is multifaceted; different types of stability describing different properties of ecosystems lead to multiple diversity-stability relationships. A growing number of empirical studies demonstrate positive diversity-stability relationships. These studies, however, have emphasized only a few types of stability, and they rarely uncover the mechanisms responsible for stability. Because anthropogenic changes often affect stability and diversity simultaneously, diversity-stability relationships cannot be understood outside the context of the environmental drivers affecting both. This shifts attention away from diversity-stability relationships toward the multiple factors, including diversity, that dictate the stability of ecosystems."

"Since cancers have individual clonal karyotypes, are immortal and evolve from normal cells treated by carcinogens only after exceedingly long latencies of many months to decades-we deduce that carcinogenesis may be a form of speciation. This theory proposes that carcinogens initiate carcinogenesis by causing aneuploidy, i.e., losses or gains of chromosomes. Aneuploidy destabilizes the karyotype, because it unbalances thousands of collaborating genes including those that synthesize, segregate and repair chromosomes. Driven by this inherent instability aneuploid cells evolve ever-more random karyotypes automatically. Most of these perish, but a very small minority acquires reproductive autonomy-the primary characteristic of cancer cells and species"

"Gears are ubiquitous in the man-made world, found in items ranging from wristwatches to car engines, but it seems that nature invented them first. A species of plant-hopping insect, Issus coleoptratus, is the first living creature known to possess functional gears, a new study finds. The two interlocking gears on the insect's hind legs help synchronize the legs when the animal jumps."

The oldest big cat fossils ever found - from a previously unknown species "similar to a snow leopard" - have been unearthed in the Himalayas. The skull fragments of the newly-named Panthera blytheae have been dated between 4.1 and 5.95 million years old. Their discovery in Tibet supports the theory that big cats evolved in central Asia - not Africa - and spread outward.

"Evolution likes to keep what works best. The rest falls by the wayside. In theory, this means that the most "fit" variations, say, a color that looks poisonous or one particularly attractive to the ladies, would become the most common. By this logic, the many colors of the guppy should have conformed to a single common pattern long ago. But they haven't. Instead, the male guppies continue to show not only bright colors but also a high diversity of colors. What keeps the variety going? The rare-male effect. Female guppies prefer the males that are rare, no matter what their color pattern actually is. This effect has been documented in the laboratory in guppies and in other species like fruit flies."

Bacteria are often social creatures. Suspended in colonies of varying shapes and sizes, these microbes communicate with their brethren and even other bacterial species - interactions that can sometimes make them more deadly or more resistant to antibiotics. Now, bacterial colonies sculpted into custom shapes by a 3-D printer could be a key to understanding how some antibiotic-resistant infections develop. The new technique uses methods similar to those employed by commercial 3-D printers, which extrude plastic, to create gelatin-based bacterial breeding grounds. These microbial condos can be carved into almost any three-dimensional shape, including pyramids and nested spheres.

We belong to a remarkably quirky species. Despite our best efforts, some of our strangest foibles still defy explanation. But as science probes deeper into these eccentricities, it is becoming clear that behaviours and attributes that seem frivolous at first glance often go to the heart of what it means to be human.

A major extinction event is under way - but predicting which species will survive could be harder than we thought. That's the conclusion of one of the most accurate analyses ever of diversity in the marine animal fossil record.

A parody of environmental action sites, this is said to have fooled a fair number of the middle school students who saw it into thinking that they were reading about a real species.

Finding genes that have evolved in humans among our genome's 3 billion bases is no easy feat. But now, a team has pinpointed three genes that arose from noncoding DNA and may help make our species unique.

A giant asteroid smashing into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global scientific team said on Thursday, hoping to settle a row that has divided experts for decades. A panel of 41 scientists from across the world reviewed 20 years' worth of research to try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which created a "hellish environment" around 65 million years ago and wiped out more than half of all species on the planet. Scientific opinion was split over whether the extinction was caused by an asteroid or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in what is now India, where there were a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted around 1.5 million years. The new study, conducted by scientists from Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada and Japan and published in the journal Science, found that a 15-kilometre (9 miles) wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in what is now Mexico was the culprit. "We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis," said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review.

More than 6,000 different species living on the sea-floor have been identified so far and more than half of these are unique to the icy continent. A combination of long-term monitoring studies, newly gathered information on the marine life distribution and global ocean warming models, enable the scientists to identify Antarctica's marine "biodiversity hotspots". Researcher Griffiths describes how krill populations (the shrimp-like invertebrates eaten by penguins, whales and seals) are reducing as a result of a decrease in sea-ice cover. A much smaller crustacean (copepods) is dominating the area once occupied by them. This shifts the balance of the food web to favour predators, like jellyfish, that are not eaten by penguins and other Southern Ocean higher predators. Sea-ice reduction is also affecting penguins that breed on the ice.

"A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander. In a report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Wistar Institute demonstrate that mice that lack the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue."

"Oxygen may not be the staple of modern complex life that scientists once thought. Until now, the only life forms known to live exclusively in anoxic conditions were viruses, bacteria and Archaea. But in a new study, scientists have discovered three new multicellular marine species that appear to have never lived in aerobic conditions, and never metabolized oxygen. "

When a cycad is ready to reproduce, it grows a large colorful cone, rich with pollen or seed. It signals its readiness by radiating heat or sending out attractive odors to pollinators, who travel back and forth. Once fertilized, the seed-rich cone is ripped apart by hungry seed carriers (who've included over the years, not just birds and insects, but dinosaurs, pterosaurs, bats; these trees have been eaten by just about everybody). But what if you can't find a mate? The tree in London (and its clones that are now growing in botanical gardens all over the world) is a male. It can make pollen. But it can't make the seeds. That requires a female. Researchers have wandered the Ngoya forest and other woods of Africa, looking for an E. woodii that could pair with the one in London. They haven't found a single other specimen. They're still searching. Unless a female exists somewhere, E. woodii will never mate with one of its own. It can be cloned. It can have the occasional fling with a closely related species. Hybrid cycads are sold at plant stores, but those plants aren't the real deal. The tree that sits in London can't produce a true offspring. It sits there, the last in its long line, waiting for a companion that may no longer exist.

You could be sitting alone and still be completely outnumbered for your body is home to trillions upon trillions of tiny passengers - bacteria. Your body is made up of around ten trillion cells, but you harbour a hundred trillion bacteria. For every gene in your genome, there are 100 bacterial ones. This is your 'microbiome' and it has a huge impact on your health, your ability to digest food and more. We, in turn, affect them. Everything from the food we eat to the way we're born influences the species of bacteria that take up residence in our bodies.This slideshow is a tour through this "universe of us". Every slide has links to previous pieces that I've written on the subject if you want to delve deeper.Image by David Gregory & Debbie Marshall, Wellcome Images

"Males have more pronounced personalities than females across a range of species - from humans to house sparrows - according to new research. Consistent personality traits, such as aggression and daring, are also more important to females when looking for a mate than they are to males. Research from the University of Exeter draws together a range of studies to reveal the role that sexual selection plays in this disparity between males and females."

The current release allows you to explore globally the geographic distributions for any terrestrial vertebrate species.