From immigration reform to climate change amelioration, researchers and science policy advocates share their hopes for 2021 and beyond.

Water bears can survive extreme temperatures, oxidative stress, UV radiation, and more, but as work in climate change biology shows, they’re not invulnerable to everything.

Stephen Raverty of the Ministry of Agriculture in Canada and Joseph Gaydos of UC Davis speak with The Scientist about their recent study assessing the causes of orca deaths.

This year’s most captivating illustrations tell stories from the micro scale—such as newborn neurons in the adult brain and bacteria in the infant gut—to the scale of entire ecosystems, including reintroduced predators and rising seas.

Responses collected from around 25,000 academics reveal that 20 percent couldn’t do their work at all in the spring, but most had found ways to keep their research going.

One way to investigate the record-setting deaths of the marine mammals is to perform autopsies on them, but researchers are also taking a close look at living whales for clues to what could be killing them.

Environmental engineer Gil Bohrer discusses how long-term, large-scale tracking data can shed light on the unexpected ways animals are responding to changes in the Arctic.

Here’ s what researchers know about the unusually high numbers of gray whale strandings on the US West Coast in recent years.

Knock-on effects of melting sea ice in the Arctic may be to blame for a spate of gray whale deaths along their migration route from Mexico to Alaska.