life
A team of American and French researchers recently published the most detailed study ever made of species extinction over the past 500 years. The data they collected has provided evidence that we are indeed experiencing the sixth mass extinction. In…
life
A plant that symbolises the Christmas season, decorating homes and shops and featured prominently by the florists and garden centres in our cities. We are talking about the Poinsettia, better known to everyone in Italy as the Stella di Natale…
life
BirdLife International, together with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has published the European Red List of Birds 2021, which examines the regional extinction risk for 544 bird species in more than 50 countries and territories in…
life
Three weeks before the start of the 26th UN World Climate Conference, COP26, which will be held in Glasgow in the first half of November, the 15th Conference of the Parties on Biodiversity (COP15) opens today in Kunming, south west China,…
life
World Migratory Bird Day provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. The anniversary, initiated by the United Nations, is celebrated twice a year (on the second Saturday in May and…
life
Can you be intelligent without a brain? The answer is "in a certain sense, yes" and this is demonstrated by a strange organism that looks like yellowish gelatinous mould but that has nothing to do either with moulds or fungi...…
life
How important trees are to life is well known: they provide oxygen through chlorophyll photosynthesis, they provide the habitat for half of the world's known terrestrial animal and plant species, and they are essential for carbon storage in many ecosystems…
life
Throughout history, humans have used lichens for a variety of purposes. The oldest evidence of lichen use dates back to the ancient Egyptians, who used some species to make bread flour and others for cosmetic and medicinal purposes. They also…
life
Distributed at all latitudes, lichens are able to conquer extreme biotopes, adapting to living in places where plants would find it difficult to survive: they overcome critical periods by rapidly going into dormant phases during which respiration and photosynthesis are…