Cranes, sandpipers, ducks, geese and many other waterbirds have lost essential rest stops along their seasonal migration routes. Bird-friendly agriculture can assist in filling the gaps. ✍️ Lela Nargi.
#KnowableMagazine
Materials scientists are cooking up environmentally friendly polymers from natural sources like silk, plant fibers and whole algae. Economics and acceptance remain hurdles.
The South American country, where the biodiversity of the Andes meets that of the Amazon, is losing the great natural wealth of some 1,500 square kilometers of forest each year, mainly in areas formerly under guerrilla control
How farmers can help rescue water-loving birds as they search for rest stops on their migrations.
Conservation scientist E.J. Milner-Gulland's initial interest was in understanding how much hunting would be sustainable — without causing worrying declines in wild animal populations — but she soon realized that understanding hunters and the people who eat wild meat was equally important.
From pesticide detox to increased longevity, the benefits of the sweet stuff go well beyond simply nourishing the hardworking insects in the hive. 🐝 #WorldBeeDay
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2021/bee-gold-honey-superfood
A balanced menu makes for healthy, productive bees — but the loss of wildflowers means that many fail to find the kind of nutrition they need. 🐝 #WorldBeeDay
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environment/2017/whole-food-diet-bees
Native pollinators are key to both ecology and agriculture, but have yet to get their due. 🐝 #WorldBeeDay
Viruses that roam the fungal kingdom: Certain viruses can be shared by fungi and plants, fungi and animals, or plants and animals, allowing cross-kingdom transmission that influences crops, their fungal pathogens and the insects that transmit viruses.
🍄 Learn more: https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2025/the-strange-viruses-that-infect-fungi
Mushrooms and other fungi can harbor hidden companions — and some of these may fight pesky or dangerous molds.
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2025/the-strange-viruses-that-infect-fungi
To safeguard threatened plants, science must unravel the hidden biology of often-persnickety seeds as they age, sleep and awaken. ✍️ Katarina Zimmer.
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2025/seed-banking-to-preserve-rare-plants
#OPINION ✍️ Sea level rise won’t hit just homes on shorefronts, but also the infrastructure beneath our feet.
Historically, grizzlies were shot, trapped and poisoned across much of the continent, reducing them to just 55 percent of their former North American range by the 1970s, with the remnants almost entirely in Canada and Alaska. Today, attitudes are shifting from human domination of nature toward mutualism — and that means learning to get along with our neighbors.
“A number of well-known factors, including exposure to UV radiation, genetics and aging can lead to cataracts, a condition affecting roughly 94 million people in which the lenses of the eyes get cloudy, causing blurry vision. But in recent years, researchers have found another causative factor for cataracts and other eye disorders: climate change.” https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2025/how-climate-change-threatens-eye-health via @KnowableMag #ScienceMastodon #KnowableMagazine
“I think people hope that you can break some things and then you fix them to make them better. But some of these systems are very old; you need to understand them before you break them.” —Political scientist Katherine Bersch https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/society/2025/how-to-make-bureaucracies-better
#OPINION ✍️ They might be able to help, but only if well-designed and in combination with other policies.
Quantities alone make things complicated — you need as much as 10 times the natural color to get the same visual punch — a change that would affect well-honed recipes, supply chains and more.
For a look at the tricky task of scaling up natural color production, read our 2022 story on an oft-used red 👉https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/technology/2022/cochineal-red-dye-bugs-moves-lab
In a move that’s outraged public health experts, the Trump administration has withdrawn a proposed regulation that would have limited salmonella content in raw poultry and required producers to test their products for salmonella before selling them, reports Seth Millstein for @sentientmedia https://sentientmedia.org/trump-administration-withdraws-salmonella-testing/
💡 Eliminating this food-poisoning bacterium from poultry is tricky. Learn more in our 2021 Q&A:
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environment/2021/salmonella-why-its-chicken-and-egg-thing
Linguists and archaeologists have argued for decades about where, and when, the first Indo-European languages were spoken, and what kind of lives those first speakers led. A controversial new analytic technique offers a fresh answer.
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/society/2024/origin-spread-indo-european-languages
For more on the science of color perception, check out our 2022 Q&A with neuroscientist Jenny Bosten: https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/mind/2022/science-of-color-perception
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