NatureTodayINT's Avatar

NatureTodayINT

@naturetodayint.bsky.social

Brings news from nature worldwide. Share passion for nature.

30 Followers  |  9 Following  |  55 Posts  |  Joined: 04.02.2025  |  2.078

Latest posts by naturetodayint.bsky.social on Bluesky

Preview
A green pharmacy: medicinal plants in the Leiden Hortus botanicus Physician and botanist Philipp Franz von Siebold brought unique Asian plant species to Leiden in the 19th century. His legacy shows which plants once played an important role in healthcare. Many of these medicinal plants can be admired in Hortus botanicus Leiden up till today. Maxim Bax, a volunteer at the Leiden Hortus, tells us more.
05.10.2025 10:01 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
The first type catalogue of the mammal collection is a fact Naturalis presents the first type catalogue of its mammal collection: a comprehensive overview of 405 scientific names with their official tangible type specimens. Five years of research have brought together old, often brief descriptions into a reference work for future mammal research.
04.10.2025 08:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Reducing harm done by man-made chemicals to terrestrial wildlife Man-made chemicals, including pesticides, industrial chemicals, and medicines, enter the European environment. Many are classed by the EU as harmful to the environment and humans, but effects on terrestrial wildlife are little known. TerraChem, a major EU-funded project, is working to address this challenge and to develop new tools to prevent harm.
28.09.2025 16:02 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
10 percent natural habitat is insufficient for pollinator recovery Bees, bumblebees and butterflies have too little natural habitat around them to survive. A new study, led by researchers at Wageningen University & Research and published in Science, shows that these insects need much more space to recover than is currently stipulated in EU directives. Habitat quality needs to be taken into account as well.
26.09.2025 16:01 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
“Living Sand” organisms have a stable partner and a flexible crew Foraminifera, small but incredibly important marine organisms, spend their lives together with two types of roommates: algae and bacteria. They are very picky when it comes to the algae, but open minded when it comes to the bacteria. Understanding this difference makes forams even more valuable tools for monitoring coral reefs.
26.09.2025 14:05 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Decades-old fish stomach contents reveal: who eats whom in the Wadden Sea? Using a unique treasure of data, marine biologist Suzanne Poiesz investigated the fish food web in the Wadden Sea between 1946 and the present day. Dissected stomach contents revealed who eats whom. The position of species in that food web has remained unchanged, but there are far fewer fish than in the past. The sea bass came, saw, and conquered. Poiesz will obtain her PhD from the RUG.
26.09.2025 13:33 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Lutjewad is one of four crucial locations for spoonbills in the eastern Wadden Sea region Spoonbills spend a large part of the summer outside their protected breeding grounds. After breeding, the migratory birds gather on the mudflats of Lutjewad, on the coast of Groningen. Research by BirdEyes shows the seasonal movements of spoonbills in the eastern Dutch Wadden Sea region. They move between four locations in clear and predictable phases.
24.09.2025 13:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
A student found the first Pacific barnacles in the Wadden Sea NIOZ researchers have found the Pacific barnacle in the Wadden Sea for the first time. Until now, this species was only known to exist in European waters in Belgium and on the south coast of the Western Scheldt. It probably travels in the ballast water tanks of large ships and as fouling on ship hulls.
17.09.2025 10:32 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Why is the pale-headed brushfinch more at risk of extinction than the osprey? According to the IUCN Red List, over 47,000 plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. Most species, however, are at little to no risk. What makes one species much more vulnerable than another?
15.09.2025 15:35 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Arctic-bound birds can still keep up with climate change – for now As climate change drives earlier spring conditions in the Arctic, birds species that travel there to breed are under pressure to migrate faster. Despite their remarkable ability to adapt, researchers warn that speeding up spring migrations has natural limits.
10.09.2025 11:21 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Foraminifers: the smallest organisms drive the biggest processes The increasing amount of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere causes ocean acidification. That could pose a serious problem for calcifying organisms, such as shellfish and corals. And for foraminifers, but they appear to have their own solution to this problem, Lennart de Nooijer and colleagues write in Science Advances.
06.09.2025 12:00 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Increasing number of plant-protecting wasps in botanical garden Over four centuries ago, the first prefect of Hortus botanicus Leiden founded a botanical garden collection that currently encompasses over sixteen thousand plants. The current prefect hopes to create a hotspot for biodiversity here by gardening without the use of pesticides.
04.09.2025 10:02 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Urban lichens are getting thicker In city centers, lichens are becoming heavier. Thanks to the urban heat island effect, they adapt to higher temperatures by growing thicker than their counterparts outside the city. This remarkable phenomenon shows how even the smallest organisms respond to a warming urban climate.
31.08.2025 05:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
DNA reveals families of Asian elephants For the first time worldwide, the complete DNA of all Asian elephant subspecies has been mapped. It has also been genetically confirmed that the Sumatran elephant is a distinct subspecies – a population listed as Critically Endangered on the Red List. The research was conducted by Wageningen University & Research and was recently published in Ecology and Evolution.
26.08.2025 05:02 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Plants & humans: dog rose In the Netherlands, the dog rose (Rosa canina) is a familiar face in hedgerows, woodland edges, and along dikes. But this wild rose’s roots run far deeper than European soil alone. With its soft blossoms and bright red rosehips, it has been entwined with nature and people for centuries.
17.08.2025 05:02 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Digging for dinosaurs: Naturalis on expedition in Wyoming Each summer, a team from Naturalis Biodiversity Center travels to the United States to dig for dinosaur fossils, and this year is no different. Right now, a team of paleontologists and preparators of Naturalis’ dinosaur lab is excavating a fossil site in Wyoming that is known as the Jurassic Mile. Under the scorching heat, their efforts are already paying off.
16.08.2025 05:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Sea turtles in the Caribbean Netherlands: visible recovery, threats remain After centuries of hunt, habitat loss, and disruption, some sea turtle populations in the Caribbean Netherlands appear to be slowly recovering. The report State of Nature Caribbean Netherlands shows that protection works. But it also warns of ongoing threats. The future remains fragile for these ocean dwellers.
14.08.2025 05:01 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Does north-south adaptation of animals protect against climate change too? Can animal populations adapt to climate change by becoming genetically similar to more southerly populations? That is the question posed by ecologist Natalie van Dis. This knowledge could indicate which populations are most at risk of the changing climate. Van Dis has been awarded a Veni grant from NWO to investigate this over the next three years at NIOO.
02.08.2025 16:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
From plans to action: managing coral reef protection With increasing pressures on the world's biodiversity, the need for effective nature conservation plans rises. In Indonesia marine protected areas are created to protect marine ecosystems like coral reefs. However, many management plans for these areas fall short in accounting for locally specific threats. How do we make sure conservation efforts are supported by complete management plans?
02.08.2025 05:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
1 percent of offshore wind investments could restore millions of hectares of marine life A contribution of 1 percent of all global investments in offshore wind projects by 2050 is sufficient for large-scale restoration of marine nature. This was revealed by an international study led by The Rich North Sea program (De Rijke Noordzee) and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). The study was published in scientific journal Bioscience on 7 July 2025.
01.08.2025 10:17 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Droughts have had limited effect on tropical tree growth, but will it stay that way? Over the past century, the growth of tropical trees has remained minimally affected by droughts. As a result, the rate of CO2 sequestration in tropical wood has been fairly stable. These are the main findings of a global study, led by Wageningen University & Research and published in Science.
01.08.2025 05:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
AI for animal sounds is getting more intelligent Artificial Intelligence is rapidly advancing in its ability to identify animal sounds, proving invaluable for biodiversity monitoring. This cutting-edge technology still relies heavily on human expertise. "Volunteers remain indispensable", emphasizes researcher Burooj Ghani.
26.07.2025 05:00 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Getting used to heat stress helps against heavy metals Small aquatic organisms called rotifers have been found to also be more resistant to copper pollution after adapting to rising temperatures. Interestingly, the reverse is not true. An evolutionary experiment led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) recently showed this in the journal Global Change Biology.
23.07.2025 08:00 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Soil ecology runs deep For a long time, the soil was the domain of chemistry and physics. This only changed forty years ago. Today, the soil has become a large and indispensable field of research. The Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) has been uncovering the role of soil life for a healthy underground and aboveground ecosystem for several decades.
11.07.2025 11:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Sturdy nursery for shellfish turned out to be a predator buffet The formation of mussel and oyster beds on sandy seabeds can be stimulated by using a hard substrate. However, when NIOZ PhD candidate Sterre Witte placed shells and pebbles with a simple or smooth structure, the baby shellfish proved to be easy prey for starfish and crabs. A complex, more rough structure was the solution. Witte will defend her thesis on July 11th at the University of Groningen.
09.07.2025 08:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Grassland butterflies at shockingly low numbers It is the height of summer in Europe, a time when many people head out into nature or to enjoy urban greenspaces . But over recent decades, people are seeing landscapes with fewer and fewer butterflies.
30.06.2025 10:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Under the bird ring's spell Ringing of wild birds has become indispensable as a research method to track individual birds. Since 1911, some 16 million birds have been fitted with a metal ring in the Netherlands. What has that brought in terms of knowledge, protection and policy? And what do new tracking techniques add? We dive into the world of meadow birds, goose visits and infectious diseases.
24.06.2025 12:01 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Not the strongest, but the best-adapted guppy survives Guppies adapt remarkably quickly when faced with predators. In an experiment, researchers from Wageningen University & Research observed changes in reproduction and body shape within just three generations.
24.06.2025 10:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Mirte Bosse awarded international prize for DNA research and wildlife conservation The National Geographic Society has announced that Mirte Bosse, biologist and geneticist at Wageningen University & Research and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is among the winners of the 2025 Wayfinder Award. The official award ceremony will take place next week in Washington D.C.
06.06.2025 08:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Protecting corals with protists Tiny organisms called foraminifera can be incredibly useful for protecting coral reefs. Promovenda Elsa B. Girard developed a method to study them more efficiently. “This way, you can act before the corals are impacted.”
31.05.2025 05:00 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

@naturetodayint is following 9 prominent accounts