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The ivory-billed woodpecker was once found across the swampy forests of the south-eastern states. Now, sightings of the bird are hotly debated. One team, lead by Nicholas Gotelli at the University of Vermont, studied the historical decline in specimens taken by museums and private collectors. They also looked at areas where bird life has been exhaustively sampled. Dr Gotelli reckons the odds of finding the ivory-billed woodpecker alive are less than 1 in 15,625. Another group, led by Andrew Solow of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, used a different statistical approach, but also concluded that the bird is likely to be extinct. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and one of the leading figures in the search for the woodpecker, agrees there is a high probability that the bird is gone. But he says that, faced with the evidence of sightings, he felt compelled to search for the bird. He cautions that other birds have been assumed to be extinct, only to be rediscovered later.

Honeybee carcasses coated the ground around hundreds of Florida beehives after a mysterious massacre claimed millions of bees and mutilated a way of life for local bee keepers. The massive bee die-off has stung Charles Smith, whose Smith Family Honey Company lost $150,000 worth of bees. 'I'm a pretty tough guy but it is heart wrenching,' he told News 13 in Orlando. 'Not only is it a monetary loss here, but we work really hard on these bees to keep them in good health.' Smith scooped up handfuls of dead bees that littered the ground around his hives. The bees he raises go to farmers around the country to pollinate numerous crops, he said. 'The fact that it was so widespread and so rapid, I think you can pretty much rule out disease,' Bill Kern, a University of Florida entomologist, told Florida Today. 'It happened essentially almost in one day. Usually diseases affect adults or the brood, you don’t have something that kills them both.' County officials sprayed mosquito-killing pesticide from the air last week, though they said the poison dissipates quickly and should not have harmed the bees. 'I'll never get completely compensated for this unless someone handed me 400 beehives,' Smith told Treasure Coast Newspapers. 'I lost the bees, the ability to make honey and the ability to sell the bees.'

The species richness of flower-visiting insects has declined in past decades, raising concerns that the ecosystem service they provide by pollinating crops and wild plants is threatened. The relative commonness of different species with shared ecological traits can play a pervasive role in determining ecosystem functioning, but information on changes in abundances of pollinators over time is lacking. We gathered data on relative abundances of bumble-bee species in Swedish red clover fields during three periods in the last 70 years (1940s, 1960s and present), and on clover seed yields since 1921.

Bumble bees (Bombus) are vitally important pollinators of wild plants and agricultural crops worldwide. Fragmentary observations, however, have suggested population declines in several North American species. Despite rising concern over these observations in the United States, highlighted in a recent National Academy of Sciences report, a national assessment of the geographic scope and possible causal factors of bumble bee decline is lacking. Here, we report results of a 3-y interdisciplinary study of changing distributions, population genetic structure, and levels of pathogen infection in bumble bee populations across the United States.

“White-nose syndrome is causing such catastrophic mortality that it may be the worst wildlife catastrophe in the last hundred years,” said Rob Mies, who is director of the Organization for Bat Conservation. A deadly fungus that has been in the United States for only five years, white-nose syndrome has already killed more than a million bats. One of the most affected species is the little brown bat, a mouse-sized bat that often roosts in suburban attics. Because of white-nose syndrome, Mies said, the “little brown bat could go from one of the most common mammalian species in North America, to one of the least common, if not extinct.”

We assessed 30 triticale fields (15 organic vs. 15 conventional) and recorded vascular plants, pollinators, aphids and their predators. Organic fields had five times higher plant species richness and about twenty times higher pollinator species richness compared to conventional fields. Abundance of pollinators was even more than one-hundred times higher on organic fields. In contrast, the abundance of cereal aphids was five times lower in organic fields, while predator abundances were three times higher and predator-prey ratios twenty times higher in organic fields, indicating a significantly higher potential for biological pest control in organic fields.

Reports over the last decade point to steep, widespread declines of butterflies in Europe and North America, and increasing evidence that the problem represents an emerging global crisis. If butterflies are decreasing in abundance and/or distribution, it is likely that other groups of native insects as well as birds and mammals may be experiencing similar trends. Thus, butterflies are good surrogates of overall biodiversity patterns. In 1976 the Schaus’ Swallowtail (Heraclides aristodemus ponceanus), a large butterfly found only in the Upper Florida Keys, was among the first insects given legal protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) are arriving later in the spring than they did 30–40 years ago at numerous sites in Korea. In some cases their arrival times are later by more than 1 month. This result is perplexing as spring activities of plants and animals are generally getting earlier due to warming temperatures. The first arrival dates of swallows are not related to temperature, suggesting that another factor is involved. On the basis of a questionnaire, a large majority of long-term observers are confident that there has been a moderate to severe decline in swallow populations at their field site over the study period. The greatest delays in arrival times are associated with sites with more severe reported declines in population size. Simulations using trapping data of large migratory bird populations from the United States, consisting of hundreds of individuals, suggest that severe population declines of 99% can result in delays of 10–12 days in arrival times.

Tallgrass prairie butterfly surveys in recent decades in four states in the USA indicate numerous declines of prairie-specialist butterflies including Speyeria idalia, Oarisma poweshiek, Atrytone arogos, Hesperia dacotae, and H. ottoe in fire-managed preserves, including large high-quality ones.