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What lies beneath: diving to the UK’s answer to the Great Barrier Reef

28 April 2020

Fuchsia-pink submerged cities around our coastlines are home to myriad aquatic species. Heidi Burdett explores these precious maerl beds.

What is a species?

17 June 2019

A species is a group of living organisms that are all broadly similar and can, at least in principle, breed with one another.

Emily Mitchell: Mysterious early lifeforms

18 December 2018

We know very little about Ediacarans, Earth’s first complex life. Palaeontologist Emily Mitchell reveals why they are such intriguing creatures

Lobster krill fight off big penguins with their tiny pincers

21 August 2018

Penguin-mounted cameras show that 7-centimetre-long crustaceans can sometimes fend off attacks from predators 10 times as large

What happens when you seal eight people in a giant bubble?

11 July 2018

From oxygen shortages to divisive factions, Mark Nelson recalls the challenges of two years in the Biosphere 2 ecosystem – and the media circus it spawned

A pack of cyclists pass bare trees in the Belgian countryside

Cycling race footage highlights climate change effects on trees

3 July 2018

Historical footage of the Tour of Flanders shows that trees have been flowering earlier since the 1980s

Wild animals are turning nocturnal to keep away from humans

14 June 2018

Dozens of species all around the world are abandoning the day and becoming more active at night, to avoid contact with humans

When a daddy longlegs is attacked by a flatworm things get messy

14 June 2018

In the forests of Brazil, pitched gladiatorial contests are being fought between flatworms armed with slime and spider-like arachnids with body-chopping spikes

We may have got the evolution of our big brains entirely wrong

23 May 2018

Many scientists think that our big brains evolved to help us cope with the complexities of social living, but a model suggests it was more to do with finding food and lighting fires