21 news posts in Frontiers in Conservation Science

Environment

20 Apr 2022

Most read articles of March 2022: Secrets of ancient leftovers revealed and endangered shark discovered in pet food

By Colm Gorey, Science Communications Manager, Frontiers Image: Shutterstock.com Each month, Frontiers shines a spotlight on some of the leading research across a wide range of topics. Here are just some of the highlights that resonated strongly with readers on our news site in the month of March. Leftovers in prehistoric pots let scientists peek into the kitchen of an ancient civilization How do you reconstruct the cookery of people who lived thousands of years ago? Bones and plant remains can tell us what kind of ingredients were available. But to reconstruct how ingredients were combined and cooked, scientists need to study ancient cooking vessels. “Fatty molecules and microscopic remains from plants such as starch grains and phytoliths – silica structures deposited in many plant tissues – get embedded into vessels and can survive over long periods,” said Dr Akshyeta Suryanarayan, a researcher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and co-author on a recent study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. In their study, Suryanarayan and co-authors analyzed such ‘leftovers’ in Copper and Bronze Age vessels – including pots, vases, goblets, jars, and platters – from today’s Gujarat, India. “Our study is the first to combine starch grain […]

Neuroscience

28 Mar 2022

Most read articles of February 2022: Does life really flash before our eyes before death?

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers Science Communications Manager Image: Shutterstock.com Each month, Frontiers shines a spotlight on some of the leading research across a wide range of topics. Here are just some of the highlights that resonated strongly with readers on our news site in the month of February. A replay of life: What happens in our brain when we die? Imagine reliving your entire life in the space of seconds. Like a flash of lightning, you are outside of your body, watching memorable moments you lived through. This process, known as ‘life recall’, can be similar to what it’s like to have a near-death experience. What happens inside your brain during these experiences and after death are questions that have puzzled neuroscientists for centuries. However, a new study published to Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and even after the transition to death, and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal. Article link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.813531/full 2. Eating vegetables does not protect against cardiovascular disease, finds large-scale study A long-term ‘UK Biobank’ study on almost 400,000 people published to Frontiers in Nutrition found little or no evidence that differences in the amount of consumed cooked or […]

Climate crisis is making endangered mountain gorillas more thirsty

Climate crisis is making endangered mountain gorillas more thirsty, finds a news study in Frontiers in Conservation Science

Injuries to Zambian lions and leopards caused by shotguns and wires snares greatly underestimated

Injuries to Zambian lions and leopards caused by shotguns and wires snares greatly underestimated, finds new study in Frontiers in Conservation Science

Beached whale carcasses answer mysteries of elusive species

Stable isotope analysis shows that beaked whales exhibit ocean-wide site fidelity, finds new study in Frontiers in Conservation Science

Life sciences

20 Mar 2016

Triage in Conservation: Interview with Ralf Buckley

By Kirsten Martin In conservation, there is an ongoing debate over triage. Advocates of triage argue that some extinctions are unavoidable, and that fixed, limited and fully fungible resources are therefore best allocated where they are most likely to yield the largest conservation benefit. That is, they perceive conservation essentially as an economic optimisation problem. But the opponents of triage believe the opposite. They argue that species recovery is possible no matter how few individuals remain, that small peripheral subpopulations may contain genetic diversity not available in larger core populations, and that funds and resources are neither fixed nor fully fungible. They think that conservation resources are at least partly tied to particular sites and species, and can be increased. Needless to say, both sides have strong opinions and more research and case studies are needed to gain a further understanding. The Frontiers Research Topic “Triage in Conversation” hopes to shed a brighter light on the debate. Professor Ralf Buckley, Specialty Chief Editor of the section Frontiers in Conservation, recently wrote an article entitled “Grand challenges in conservation research.” We asked him about the debate and the importance of this research. Tell me about the Research Topic (the research area […]