Loss of big fruit-eating birds impacting trees in endangered rainforests

Loss of big fruit-eating birds impacting trees in endangered rainforests

The extinction of large, fruit-eating birds in fragments of Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest has caused palm trees to produce smaller seeds over the past century, impacting forest ecology, finds a study published in the journal Science. The researchers — led by Mauro Galetti from Brazil’s Universidade Estadual Paulista — looked at Euterpe edulis palm seeds in […]

Read More

New insect discovered in Brazil, only third known in its bizarre family (photos)

New insect discovered in Brazil, only third known in its bizarre family (photos)

A new species of forcepfly named Austromerope brasiliensis, was recently discovered in Brazil and described in the open access journal Zoo Keys. This is the first discovery of forcepfly in the Neotropics and only the third known worldwide. The forcepfly, often called the earwigfly because the male genital forceps closely resemble the cerci of the […]

Read More

New species tree-dwelling porcupine discovered in critically threatened Brazilian habitat

New species tree-dwelling porcupine discovered in critically threatened Brazilian habitat

Scientists in Brazil have described a new species of tree-dwelling porcupine in the country’s most endangered ecosystems. The description is published in last week’s issue ofZootaxa. A team of researchers led by Antonio Rossano Mendes Pontes, a biologist at the Federal University of Pernambuco, found the porcupine in a small forest fragment in the state […]

Read More