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Bees are among the world's most important pollinators, supporting wild ecosystems and helping produce many of the crops humans depend on. But while climate change has long been linked to rising temperatures and habitat loss, scientists have now identified another growing threat: increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

As freshwater shortages intensify around the world, scientists are searching for technologies that can do more than simply desalinate seawater. One of the biggest challenges is treating oil-contaminated seawater, where conventional desalination systems often fail because oil clogs membranes, blocks water transport and reduces efficiency.

Scientists have solved the mystery of unusually high concentrations of chlorophyll detected more than 1,000 metres beneath the ocean surface by autonomous underwater robots after years of puzzling. The discovery, which took place between 2014 and 2017 in the North Atlantic, defied existing knowledge, as chlorophyll, produced by microscopic algae that rely on sunlight, is generally found in the upper layers of the ocean.

Plastic waste is a global threat to both the environment and public health, with over 400 million tons produced annually. Turning plastic into value-added chemicals holds significant promise, but the industrial adoption gets slowed down by the high costs of metal catalysts and how they become deactivated by additives.

Some discoveries happen the moment a specimen is collected. Others take years.

Researchers in Spain spent 455 days tracking how sponges from five species of Mediterranean sea life coped with being moved from clean, natural habitats toward a heavily polluted recreational marina near Girona. The experiment was designed to test a restoration approach called renaturalization, in which hardy, naturally occurring species are deliberately introduced into degraded environments to help improve conditions over time.

Pygmy sperm whales are among the least studied large mammals in the ocean, spending nearly their entire lives far offshore, diving deep to hunt squid and fish, and rarely surfacing long enough to be observed alive. Most of what scientists know about the species comes instead from whales that wash ashore, and Florida's coastline sees more pygmy sperm whale strandings than almost anywhere else in the world.

About 150 years ago, famous British naturalist Charles Darwin observed the sticky "hairs" on two plant species in the Saxifraga genus and wondered if some plants in the genus could be carnivorous. While he was unable to prove it then, more than a century later, scientists have shown that Darwin's suspicions were correct.

Science and innovation can do wonders that are even beyond the cource of nature. The future of an entire species sometimes depends on something so small it's almost invisible.

Madagascar has earned a reputation as one of the world's greatest biodiversity hotspots, yet it continues to surprise scientists. A new study published in Vertebrate Zoology has identified seven previously unknown species of diamond frogs belonging to the genus Rhombophryne.