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For wildebeest, the yearly migration across the Serengeti can mean life or death. Predators such as crocodiles and big cats lie in wait as the herd of more than one million makes its 1,000-mile loop across the savannas of Tanzania and Kenya.

Barbara Han’s research is at the intersection of ecology, computing, and global health. Han has pioneered the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to understand when and where new zoonotic diseases are likely to emerge, and why.

African wildebeests are like clueless couples that get hacked to pieces in horror movies. Time after time, year after year, giant herds of the animals creep to the edge of the Mara River in Kenya and start to drink, seemingly oblivious to danger.

Each year, more than a million wildebeest migrate through Africa’s Serengeti Mara Ecosystem. While crossing the Kenyan reach of the Mara River, thousands perish. A new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to reveal how wildebeest drownings impact the ecology of the iconic river.

When the Zika virus arrived in Brazil, it went largely unnoticed until infected infants were born with microcephaly, a neurological disorder marked by a small head caused by severe underdevelopment of brain tissue in utero. As the number of Zika-affected babies grew, the World Health Organization moved quickly to declare Zika virus a public health emergency of international concern.

Sylvia Lee, PhD, is a scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. She has access to an unusual-yet essential-set of laboratory equipment: a whole greenhouse filled with white fiberglass bathtubs. 

The U.S. is subject to the introduction of 2.5 new invasive insects into its forests ever year, according to a comprehensive analysis of this problem by Gary Lovett of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and a group of 15 colleagues. And that number is just for insects — it doesn't count diseases, such as sudden oak death.

Milder winters, burgeoning mice and deer populations and a bumper acorn crop from two years ago mean this year's tick season is expected to be bad and more widespread, experts say. With that comes the threat of more tick-borne diseases, including the most common, Lyme disease.

Range maps used by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) fall short of protecting birds endemic to the Western Ghats, a mountainous biodiversity hotspot in southern India. 

In the 1940s, Americans found a new way to love salt. Not simply for sprinkling on food — we'd acquired a taste for the mineral long before that — but for spreading on roads and sidewalks. Salt became a go-to method to de-ice frozen pavement.

North America's freshwater lakes are getting saltier due to development and exposure to road salt. A study of 371 lakes published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that many Midwestern and Northeastern lakes are experiencing increasing chloride trends, with some 44% of lakes sampled in these regions undergoing long-term salinization.

A new prediction says 2017 and 2018 will see major Lyme disease outbreaks in new areas. This could lead to lifelong health consequences, so where's the vaccine?

Shannon LaDeau works at the interface of ecology and disease. Her research explores how environmental conditions shape populations of disease-carrying animals such as mosquitoes and ticks, with the goal of reducing human exposure to Zika, West Nile virus, Chikungunya, Lyme disease, and other infections.

The New York Times reports that most Americans believe that our climate is changing, and a majority of them feel that the combustion of coal should be scaled back.  But, what lags in public opinion is the motivation to do very much else about climate change.  Most people don’t think climate change will matter to them.

At any moment, science gives us its best explanation of reality. It proceeds by rigorous tests of hypotheses through observation and experimentation.

Most of the planet’s freshwater stores are found in the northern hemisphere, a region that is changing rapidly in response to human activity and shifting climatic trends. An international team of scientists analyzed 147 northern lakes and found that many rely on nutrients from tree leaves, pine needles, and other land-grown plants to feed aquatic life.

For many of us, winter in the Northeast means cold temperatures and piles of snow, drifting through forests and across fields. It’s hard to imagine that winter here could be different, but the prospect of climate change has scientists asking just what our winters might look like in the future – and how those changes might influence forest ecology.

One implication of the warm weather is that it attracts mice, which also harbor the ticks and bacteria that cause Lyme disease: 2017 is expected to be a very risky Lyme disease season.

Reports that the world’s oceans showed a two percent decline in oxygen content over the past 50 years gathered a lot of press attention a couple of weeks ago. This was not the first time that oceanographers have reported human impacts on the marine environment, and it is not likely to be the last.

Rick Ostfeld and Felicia Keesing have been studying Lyme disease and ways to stop it for more than 20 years. The couple has come up with a way to predict how bad a Lyme season will be a full year in advance.