【推荐1】Most dogs hate being left at daycare (日托) — Not Riley! In fact, the five-year-old golden retriever (金毛寻回犬), who lives in Belmont, North Carolina, loves being at the Happy Dog Cafe & Boutique so much that he recently decided to pay the center a visit all by himself.

The chain of events began on May 6 when his owner, Tonia Mosteller, let Riley out in the backyard. But the pet had bigger plans than to relax and enjoy the warm spring afternoon. Earlier that day, Riley had run into his pals (朋友) who were spending the day at the Happy Dog Cafe & Boutique, and wanted to be with them. Hence, as soon as he was alone, the dog lifted the gate latch (插销) and began the mile-long walk to the doggy daycare.

When Tonia returned a short time later, she found the backyard empty and the gate wide open. Fortunately, before she had time to panic, her husband called to let her know that Riley was safe and having the time of his life at his favorite daycare.

According to Teresa McCarter, owner of the centre, a customer had found Riley patiently sitting outside, just waiting to be let in. No sooner had Teresa opened the door than the golden retriever ran in to greet 26 of his best friends, who all seemed as thrilled to see him.

Tonia was not surprised that Riley knew exactly how to get to the daycare, given that he has been going there since he was a puppy. She was, however, amazed that he loved it enough to escape from the house. Though the Mostellers offered to pick Riley up, Teresa decided that if Riley had made the effort to get to the daycare on his own, the least she could do was allow him to enjoy a nice day with his pals.

【推荐2】The mass death of flying foxes in extreme heat in North Queensland last month underlines the importance of University of Queensland wildlife research released today.The UQ research sheds light on how various species have responded to major climate events.

A study led by UQ School of Earth and Environmental Science researcher Dr Sean Maxwell has spent more than 70 years quantifying the responses of various species.

“The growing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as cyclones, droughts and floods is causing unpredictable and immediate changes to ecosystems and blocking existing management efforts,” Dr Maxwell said.“Some of the negative responses we found were quite concerning, including more than 100 cases of dramatic population declines and 31 cases of local population extinction following an extreme event.”

"Populations of critically endangered bird species in Hawaii, such as the palia, have been annihilated due to drought, leaving none of its kind, and populations of lizard species have been wiped out due to cyclones in the Bahamas."

Cyclones were the most common extreme event for birds, fish, plants and reptiles, while mammals and amphibians were most responsive to drought events, with drought leading to 12 cases of major population decline in mammals.Drought also led to 13 cases of breeding declines in bird populations and 12 cases of changes in the composition of invertebrate communities.

UQ Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science director Professor James Watson said the detailed information would help inform ecosystem management.

“The research clearly shows species will respond, often negatively, to extreme events,” Professor Watson said.“As climate change continues to ensure extreme climate and weather events are more and more common,we now need to act to ensure species have the best chance to survive.Wherever possible, high quality and intact habitat areas should be retained, as these are the places where species are most resilient(易恢复的) to increasing exposure to extreme events.”

【推荐3】Finding fish is going to get harder as climate change continues to heat the world’s oceans. A new study finds that warming seas over the past 80 years have reduced the sustainable (可持续) catch of 124 species of fish.

Sustainable catch refers to the amount that can be harvested without doing long-term damage to the health of populations of some species.

Overfishing has made that decrease worse, researchers say. Overfishing refers to catching so many fish that the size of the population falls. In some parts of the world, such as the heavily fished Sea of Japan, the decrease is as high as 35 percent. That’s a loss of more than one in every three fish.

Researchers examined changes in 235 populations of fish between 1930 and 2010. Those fish populations were in 38 ocean regions. Temperature changes are different from one ocean site to another. But on average (平均) over that time, Earth’s sea-surface temperatures have risen by about 0.5℃.

On average, that warming has caused the sustainable catch to drop 4.1 percent, the study found. About 8 percent of the fish populations the team studied saw losses as a result of the ocean warming. About 4 percent of the population increased. That’s because certain species have thrived in warmer waters. One example is the black sea bass (鲈鱼). It lives along the northeastern U. S. coast. But as warming continues, even these fish will reach their limit, says Christopher Free. He works at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He led the work while he was at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N. J. His team shared its findings March 1 in Science.