ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

New research aims to ease the process of chemical recycling -- an emerging industry that could turn waste products back into natural resources by physically breaking plastic down into the smaller molecules it was originally produced from.

The networks of predator fish and their prey found on coral reefs all over the world are remarkably similar, and those predator fish are pickier eaters than previously thought. These delicate ecosystems become even more vulnerable when these specialized hunters go extinct.

Biologists sized up an unlikely natural phenomenon: when parasitism actually causes the number of hosts to increase, an effect known as a hydra effect. A study of common water fleas and their fungal parasites includes laboratory components and an analysis of 13 fungal epidemics in nature. The scientists use consumer-resource theory to explain why -- and in what types of systems -- the hydra effect can occur.

Scientists have discovered how the Sardine Run, one of the world's biggest migration events, works. This spectacular event, considered the 'Greatest Shoal on Earth', involves the movement of hundreds of millions of sardines from their cool-temperate core range into the warmer subtropical waters of the Indian Ocean, on South Africa's east coast.