Ecology

Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be packed into tropical forests.

Extreme microorganisms carpeting the Atacama Desert in Chile illuminate how life might have first taken hold on Earth’s surface.

New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts.

On Mount Everest and in the Peruvian Andes, Tracie Seimon uses DNA to study how species and ecosystems respond to climate change, pathogens and other influences.

By replacing thousands of equations with just one, ecology modelers can more accurately assess how close fragile environments are to a disastrous “tipping point.”

“Virovores” — organisms that survive and multiply by eating viruses — might influence the flow of energy through ecosystems.

The ecologist Holly Moeller studies microorganisms that expand their range by absorbing organelles and gaining new metabolic talents from their prey.

The discovery of a hot spot for horizontal gene transfer draws attention to the possible roles of parasites and ecology in such changes.

A custom-built machine learning algorithm can predict when a complex system is about to switch to a wildly different mode of behavior.