Analysis of data from over 5,000 territories and 1,924 species of toads and frogs shows that two of the main theories about the biodiversity of plants, birds, and mammals in these habitats do not explain the richness of anuran amphibians on their own.

Scuba-diving tourism, which is widely promoted as a sustainable way to experience coral reefs, is causing frequent and often hidden damage to fragile marine ecosystems.

Lakes play a vital filtering role in the ecosystem: they remove excess nitrogen from the water. An international research team led by the University of Basel and Eawag has now shown that climate change could weaken this natural purification process. This would have consequences extending all the way to coastal marine ecosystems.

Researchers have discovered a new species of tiny sea slug named Thecacera sesama in Keelung, Taiwan, which measures less than three millimeters long and lives on aquatic invertebrates called bryozoans. Published in the journal ZooKeys, the discovery highlights the vast number of minute marine species that likely remain hidden due to the region's harsh and highly restricted diving conditions.

A new study in Biodiversity Data Journal has unified over 40 years of unpublished data on marine amphipods from Italian waters. Analysing 4,344 records, researchers identified 302 species across three Mediterranean seas, with the Tyrrhenian Sea showing the highest species richness. Coordinated through Italy's National Biodiversity Future Center, the dataset is now openly accessible via GBIF.

Meet the newest animal found in the Galápagos: a tiny blue octopus. It was discovered by scientists using a robotic camera to examine the ocean floor, and it's a testament of how much of the deep sea remains unexplored.

Marine animals have spent hundreds of millions of years evolving short protein fragments that fight microbes, calm inflammation, and tame tumors. A new review in the Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines maps how researchers are finally catching up: extracting these peptides at scale, decoding their structures with high-resolution mass spectrometry, and using AI to predict which ones might become drugs. The global market for marine peptides already tops USD 310 million, and the authors argue the next wave of therapies for hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and drug-resistant infections may come from the bottom of the food chain.

In tetrapods with a "neck," head stability is achieved by contracting and relaxing neck muscles. Whether head stabilization exists in fish, which lack a "neck," was previously unknown. The research group discovered for the first time that fish can also stabilize their heads against tilting, and identified the neural circuits and muscles responsible for this behavior. The neural circuit architecture underlying head stabilization in fish shares features with that governing neck-based head stabilization in tetrapods, suggesting this research may shed light on the evolutionary origins of head stabilization behavior and the morphological neck.