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A trail cam photo shows a beaver emerging from its snowy lodge and went foraging for branches in December (Courtesy Photo / Jos Bakker)

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Mild temperatures and busy beavers

I noticed two uncommon things that this beaver did…

A wood frog pauses in the forest just off the Yukon River near the mouth of the Nation River. (Courtesy Photo / Ned Rozell)

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Alaska Science Forum: Report of frog’s death greatly exaggerated

Alive and hopping.

This photo shows a so-called "mummy berry." "The best-studied type of Monilinia attacks a blueberry species that is native to eastern North America but is also widely cultivated (e.g., in Pacific Northwest and British Colubmia)." writes Mary F. Willson. "When Monilinia vaccinii-corymbosi infests Vaccinium corymbosum, the vegetative parts are blighted and the fruits become hard, wizened 'mummy berries.'" (Courtesy Photo / Matt Goff, sitkanature.org/photojournal)

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On the Trails: Climate warming and disease spread

The effects of climate change are being felt far and wide.

William Dall’s sketch of the mouth of what is now called the Melozitna River, which enters the Yukon River near the village of Ruby, from “Alaska and its Resources.”

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Alaska Science Forum: A scientist’s view of Alaska, 150 years ago

One year before Alaska became part of America, 21-year old William Dall ascended the Yukon River on a…

A black-capped chickadee pecks at a frozen turkey carcass in Fairbanks. (Courtesy Photo / Ned Rozell)

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Finding a midwinter night’s roost

During the darkest days of Alaska’s winter, black-capped chickadees stuff themselves with enough seeds and frozen insects to…

This photo available under a Creative Commons license shows a great bustard. These birds, especially the males, selectively eat blister beetles that contain toxic cantharidin, but because the toxin is lethal to the birds except at very low doses, only one or two at a time. This toxin is known, from in vitro experiments in the lab, to kill fungi, round worms, and bacteria. (Francesco Veronesi / Flickr)

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On the Trails: Self-medication by many animals

Examples come from many kinds of critters.

Courtesy Photo / JR Ancheta, UAF Matthew Wooller kneels in the mammoth tusk collection at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in 2021. Wooller is leading the museum’s Adopt a Mammoth program, which will date and identify specimens at the museum.

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UAF partners with Alaska students for a mammoth of a project

“De-extinction” company adopts fossils for Alaska school districts.

Wilson's warblers are sometimes seen in early winter (Courtesy Photo / Gus van Vliet photo)

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On the Trails: Surviving winter is no small feat

Here’s how some diminutive vertebrates do it.

he Alaska Range sits beneath a December sunrise as seen from the UAF campus. (Courtesy Photo / Ned Rozell)

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Alaska Science Forum: The dark season turns on winter solstice

One winter day not long ago, a reporter from the Sacramento Bee called. She had read a story…

Harbor seals have a face full of whiskers, which the seals use to follow hydrodynamic wakes left by prey fish; even a blind seal can track a fish this way, discriminating victims by size and shape and direction of movement. (Courtesy Photo / Jos Bakker)

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On the Trails: The sense of touch

Touch is a mechanical sense, detecting physical stimuli such as pressure, texture, stretch, vibrations and flow. Touch receptors…

Alan Alda, center, was host of PBS’s “Scientific American Frontiers” when he visited Alaska in 2004. To his right is By Valentine, who worked in the glaciers lab at the Geophysical Institute with glaciologist Keith Echelmeyer (on Alda’s left). Echelmeyer died of brain cancer six years after Alda’s visit. (Courtesy Photo / Ned Rozell, enhanced 18 years later by JR Ancheta)

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Alaska Science Forum: Alan Alda and the Alaska messengers

Climate change in the Arctic and Alaska is substantial; we can see signals it has arrived…”

George Argus collects samples of willow shrubs on a slope near the town of McCarthy, Alaska in 1955. (Courtesy Photo / Neil Davis)

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Alaska Science Forum: A man of the mountain, and its willows

When you are a young boy growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, sniffing warm pastries your father…

Clarise Larson / Juneau Empire Mike Bucy keeps the temp while he conducts local composer and musician Ben Holtz’s piece, Atmosphere with Radio Occultation, during Con Brio Chamber Series’ Tuesday evening rehearsal.

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Climate change concern crescendoes with collaborative concert

It’s a collaboration between local scientists, composers and musicians

This photo available under a Creative Commons license shows a lawn wolf spider in its funnel web in Laos. (Courtesy Photo / Basile Morin)

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On the Trails: A wide world of webs

There are wonderfully diverse ways of using silk to detect and capture prey.

Bird researcher Jesse Conklin uses a radio antenna to relocate young bar-tailed godwits outside Nome on July 15, 2022. One of the birds Conklin and Dan Ruthrauff fitted with a satellite transmitter that day later flew from Alaska to Tasmania in a nonstop 11-day trip. (Courtesy Photo / Dan Ruthrauff)

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Alaska Science Forum: 750 miles per day for 11 days, no rest

No…sleep…till…Tasmania?!

This May photo shows Mount Edgecumbe on a relatively clear day. New research has shed new light on magma activity underneath the “historically active” volcano. (Michael S. Lockett / Juneau Empire)

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New research finds magma rising under Mount Edgecumbe

No signs of imminent eruption

U.S. Forest Service fish biologist Eric Castro prepares to drop a minnow trap into East Ohmer Creek. The crew moved hundreds of young fish prior to doing work in back channels. (Mary Catharine Martin / SalmonState)

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The Salmon State: Growing ‘giant pumpkins’ and fish habitat in Petersburg

A tree grows in Petersburg.

A platypus in the Sydney Aquarium chases fish and crayfish in this photo available under a Creative Commons license. (Alan Wolf / Flickr)

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On the Trails: The eclectic marvels of electric ecology

What do a platypus, salamander and dolphin have in common?

UAA associate professor of public health Philippe Amstislavski collects samples of some of the fungi found in the forests around UAA which are similar to those his team has used to develop a lightweight packaging alternative to Styrofoam. (Courtesy Photo / James R. Evans, University of Alaska Anchorage)

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Alaska Science Forum: Home insulation from wood and fungus

Alaska researchers are working to create insulation that removes carbon from the atmosphere.

A bull moose looks at a photographer near Whitehorse, Yukon, in summer 2022. (Courtesy Photo / Ned Rozell)

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Alaska Science Forum: The man who knew moose like no other

Vic Van Ballenberghe had stood amid their knobby legs for many springs and falls in Interior Alaska.