ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Divers retrieve prehistoric wood from Lake Huron
• Bigger, scarier weapons help spiders get the girl
• The case of the dying aspens
• A small step for lungfish, a big step for the evolution of walking
• Hundreds of threatened species not on official US list
• A whole new meaning for thinking on your feet: Brains of small spiders overflow into legs
• Disappearance of the elephant caused rise of modern humans: Dietary change led to modern humans in Middle East 400,000 years ago
• As climate change sets in, plants and bees keep pace
• World's smallest frogs discovered in New Guinea
• Butterflies: 'Twice-punished' by habitat fragmentation and climate change

Divers retrieve prehistoric wood from Lake Huron Posted: 12 Dec 2011 07:10 PM PST Under the cold clear waters of Lake Huron, researchers have found a five-and-a-half foot-long, pole-shaped piece of wood that is 8,900 years old. The wood, which is tapered and beveled on one side in a way that looks deliberate, may provide important clues to a mysterious period in North American prehistory.

Bigger, scarier weapons help spiders get the girl Posted: 12 Dec 2011 12:31 PM PST If you're a red-headed guy with eight bulging eyes and a unibrow, size does indeed matter for getting the girl. More specifically, the bigger a male jumping spider's weapons appear to be, the more likely his rival will slink away without a fight, leaving the bigger guy a clear path to the waiting female.

The case of the dying aspens Posted: 12 Dec 2011 12:31 PM PST Over the past 10 years, the death of forest trees due to drought and increased temperatures has been documented on all continents except Antarctica. This can in turn drive global warming by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by trees and by releasing carbon locked up in their wood. New research offers evidence for the physiological mechanism governing tree death in a drought.

A small step for lungfish, a big step for the evolution of walking Posted: 12 Dec 2011 12:31 PM PST The eel-like body and scrawny "limbs" of the African lungfish would appear to make it an unlikely innovator for locomotion. But its improbable walking behavior, newly described, redraws the evolutionary route of life on Earth from water to land.

Hundreds of threatened species not on official US list Posted: 12 Dec 2011 10:26 AM PST Many of the animal species at risk of extinction in the United States have not made it onto the country's official Endangered Species Act list, according to new research.

A whole new meaning for thinking on your feet: Brains of small spiders overflow into legs Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:47 AM PST Smithsonian researchers report that the brains of tiny spiders may fill their body cavities and overflow into their legs. As part of research to understand how miniaturization affects brain size and behavior, researchers measured the central nervous systems of nine species of spiders, from rainforest giants to spiders smaller than the head of a pin. As the spiders get smaller, their brains get proportionally bigger, filling up more and more of their body cavities.

Disappearance of the elephant caused rise of modern humans: Dietary change led to modern humans in Middle East 400,000 years ago Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:46 AM PST Scientists have connected evidence about diet with other cultural and anatomical clues to conclude that the disappearance of the elephants led to the emergence of Homo sapiens in the Middle East much earlier than first suspected. The findings set the stage for a new, revolutionary understanding of human history.

As climate change sets in, plants and bees keep pace Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:46 AM PST An analysis of bee collection data over the past 130 years shows that spring arrives about 10 days earlier than in the 1880s, and bees and flowering plants have kept pace by arriving earlier in lock-step.

World's smallest frogs discovered in New Guinea Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:39 AM PST Field research has uncovered the world's smallest frogs in southeastern New Guinea. The discovery also makes them the world's smallest tetrapods (non-fish vertebrates). The frogs belong to the genus Paedophryne, all of whose species are extremely small, with adults of the two new species -- named Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa -- only 8 to 9 millimeters in length.

Butterflies: 'Twice-punished' by habitat fragmentation and climate change Posted: 09 Dec 2011 09:32 AM PST Butterflies dispersal is strongly related to demography and ecological specialization, new research shows. Butterfly with narrow tolerance to temperature are also those species that have weak dispersal ability. For such species, the combination of habitat fragmentation and climate warming are a kind of 'double penalty'.

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