EDB - UMR5174

Menace sur l’écrin du Piton de la Fournaise. Le conseil régional de La Réunion souhaite transformer le Parc national en un parc naturel régional, à la réglementation moins protectrice pour l’environnement. Cette démarche s’inscrit dans un contexte trouble, entre projet de construction d’un écolodge de luxe sur le volcan et éviction brutale de la directrice du Parc.

Polyploidy, that curious increase in a species’ number of genomes, is now a well recognized force in the evolutionary history of plants and animals. Those extra genomes are often much more than just extra: having a spare genome or four may help lineages radiate into unexplored niches and colonize harsh environments previously uninhabitable by parental species.

Selon un article publié dans Sciences Advances, la catégorisation des espèces en danger par l’UICN serait partiellement inexacte. Ainsi la menace qui pèse sur 200 espèces d’oiseaux est gravement sous-estimée.

Two new species of lizards have been discovered in the Andean highlands of Southern Chile. Collected from areas of heroic past, both small reptiles were named after courages tribal chiefs who have once fought against colonial Spaniards in the Arauco war. The study, conducted by a team of Chilean scientists, is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

From the remote mountains of Oaxaca in Mexico, scientists have described three new species of miniature salamanders that are smaller than a matchstick.
These tiny creatures belong to the elusive genus Thorius, members of which are the smallest four-legged animals on earth, scientists report in a new study published in PeerJ.