Extinctions

Improved Predictions Of Warming-induced Extinctions Sought; Species Persist More Than Models Assume, Researchers Say
In the March 2007 issue of BioScience, an international team of 19 researchers calls for better forecasting of the effects of global warming on extinction rates. The researchers, led by Daniel B. Botkin, note that although current mathematical models indicate that many species could be at risk from global warming, surprisingly few species became extinct during the past 2.5 million years, a period encompassing several ice ages.

Metro Boston's Flora And Fauna Reveal Global Warming's Effect
In a Lowell, Mass., cemetery on Memorial Day 1868, a photograph captured mourners in heavy winter clothing gathered under leafless trees near the graves of two brothers killed in the Civil War. At the same spot on Memorial Day 2005, cemetery visitors wore light spring clothes.

Birth Rate, Competition Are Major Players In Hominid Extinctions
Modern human mothers are probably happy that they typically have one, maybe two babies at a time, but for early hominids, low birth numbers combined with competition often spelled extinction.

African Carnage: One Year's Seized Ivory Likely Came From 23,000 Elephants
African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a rate unprecedented since an international convention banning ivory trade took effect in 1989, a University of Washington biologist says.

Yale Biologists 'Trick' Viruses Into Extinction
New Haven, Conn. -- While human changes to the environment cause conservation biologists to worry about species extinction, Yale biologists are reversing the logic by trying to trap viruses in habitats that force their extinction, according to a report in Ecology Letters.

Cambodian Vulture Nests Offer Hope For Species
Found in heavily forested country just east of the Mekong River in Cambodia's Stung Treng Province, the colony also represents one of the only known slender-billed vulture nesting areas in the world, and therefore one of the last chances for recovery for the species, now listed as "Critically Endangered" by the World Conservation Union (IUCN)