Forest & trees
- This tree snake climbs with a lasso-like motion - Researchers have discovered that invasive brown tree snakes living on Guam can get around in a way that had never been seen before. The discovery of the snake's lasso-like locomotion for climbing their way up smooth vertical cylinders has important implications, both for understanding the snakes and for conservation practices aimed at protecting birds from them.
- Conifers can be green because of a photosynthetic short-cut - How can conifers that are used, for example, as Christmas trees, keep their green needles over the boreal winter when most trees shed their leaves? Science has not provided a good answer to this question but now an international team of scientists has deciphered that a short-cut in the photosynthetic machinery allows the needles of pine trees to stay green.
- A new species of mammal may have been found in Africa's montane forests - A research team has discovered a tree hyrax in the Taita Hills, Kenya, which may belong to a species previously unknown to science.