Wildness in urban parks important for human well-being

As metropolises balloon with growth and sprawl widens the footprint of cities around the world, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find. If you’re lucky, a pocket park might be installed next to a new condominium complex on your block, or perhaps a green roof tops the building where you work downtown. But it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild — even though our evolutionary history suggests we need interactions with wild nature to thrive.

Luke Tornabene: Curator and Ichthyology Professor

In 2017, University of Washington ichthyologist Luke Tornabene was inside a small submersible called Idabell near the island of Roatan, Honduras. Sitting next to him were a masters’ student in his lab named Rachel Manning, and a pilot. They were collecting samples of marine life 550 feet deep when they spotted an unfamiliar bright blue and yellow fish. “We knew it was something new before we even got it into the collection tube,” Tornabene says, excitement still clear in his voice.

‘The blob,’ food supply squeeze to blame for largest seabird die-off

The common murre is a self-sufficient, resilient bird. Though the seabird must eat about half of its body weight in prey each day, common murres are experts at catching the small “forage fish” they need to survive. Herring, sardines, anchovies and even juvenile salmon are no match for a hungry murre. So when nearly one million common murres died at sea and washed ashore from California to Alaska in 2015 and 2016, it was unprecedented — both for murres, and across all bird species worldwide.

A day to celebrate the magic of soils

In 2013, the United Nations designated December 5 as World Soil Day. The date coincides with the birthday of the late King Rama IX of Thailand, a leading global advocate for the promotion of healthy soils and sustainable soil management. This World Soil Day, we’re digging into the history of soil science and looking ahead to see what the future holds for the oft-overlooked hero of our terrestrial ecosystem.

Old friends and new enemies: How evolutionary history can predict insect invader impacts

About 450 nonnative, plant-eating insect species live in North American forests. Most of these critters are harmless, but a handful wreak havoc on their new environment, attacking trees and each year causing more than $70 billion in damage. The problem is, scientists often don’t know which insect will emerge as the next harmful invader. A team led by the University of Washington, drawing largely on the evolutionary history of insect-plant interactions, has developed a way to understand how nonnative insects might behave in their new environments.