As rock climbing soars in popularity, some cliff-side snail populations may be crashing. (p. 228)

An ambitious test of group selection considers whether natural selection can act on whole ecosystems as evolutionary units. (p. 39)

The unusually invasive strain of seaweed that has been smothering coastal areas of the Mediterranean has shown up in a California lagoon, the first sighting of this ecologically devastating alga in the Americas. (p. 36)

A blue jay will cooperate with a buddy for mutual gain in food despite opportunities to betray the partnership. (p. 373)

An unusual study of the effects of invading earthworms on North American plants finds that the exotics might be on the way to killing off a rare fern. (p. 341)

Strips of habitat boost insect movement, plant pollination, and seed dispersal among patches of the same ecosystem. (p. 269)

To rebuild northeastern U.S. populations of the spiny dogfish, the first fishing quotas on this species limit the harvest to roughly 10 percent of the 1998 haul. (p. 246)

About one-quarter of the United States' land cover, excluding Alaska, is farmed—some 430 million to 500 million acres. A massive new project has just assessed this and other food-producing environments, such as coastal waters, fresh waters, and rangelands, to tally factors contributing to health. Released on Sept. 24, it indicates that most ecosystems are undergoing change—some declining dramatically while others improve.In 1995, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy commissioned the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment to launch a nonpartisan, scie...

Something looked suspicious.On Aug. 13, a helicopter from the Navy's USS Fife spotted an 84-foot fishing boat—the King Diamond II out of Honolulu—plowing slowly through international seas southeast of Acapulco, Mexico. Riding low in the water, the modern vessel appeared weighted down with heavy cargo. Yet there were no signs of fishing gear. Particularly curious, on its deck was a shipping container like those ferried by long-haul trucks or container ships.When the crew radioed in the sighting, a Coast Guard law-enforcement detachment on the Fife agreed that something didn't sound quite right....

Feeding concerns about developing superweeds, a test of sunflowers shows for the first time that a biologically engineered gene moving from a crop can give an advantage to wild relatives under naturalistic conditions. (p. 99)