Rainforests on infertile wet soils support more than half of all plant species. Shrublands on infertile dry soils in southwestern Australia, jokingly called 'knee-high tropical rainforests', support another 20 percent of all plants. In both, plants team up with soil bacteria or fungi to gather nutrients more efficiently. The plants' choice of microbial teammates influences a suite of other plant-soil interactions that help explain why such different environments are so biologically diverse.

Detailed information on 958 distinct morphological types of jellyfish that inhabit the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America has been compiled in a census published in Zootaxa, the leading zoological taxonomy journal. Coordinated by Brazilian scientists, the study involved scientists from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay.

Thirty years ago a mysterious disease wiped out long-spined black sea urchins across the Caribbean, leading to massive algal overgrowth that smothered already overfished coral reefs. Now, marine biologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute report that smaller sea urchins and parrotfish may be taking the place of the large sea urchins, restoring the balance on degraded reefs.

In 1969, 60 to 100 peacock bass imported from Colombia, were introduced into a pond in Panama for sport fishing. Several individuals escaped. By the early 1970s, they colonized the reservoir forming the main channel of the Panama Canal. Forty-five years later, native fish populations in the lake still have not recovered, Smithsonian reports.