A flower's fight against extinction could be big climate change news
USA TODAY
Faced with extreme drought, these flowers adapted. Scientists call it “evolutionary rescue,\
While biologists have worried about how rare species of plants and animals will cope with a rapidly warming climate, one West Coast flower is giving them hope after showing a remarkable ability to evolve with its surroundings.
In a new study in the journal Science published March 12, researchers tracked scarlet monkeyflower populations in Oregon and California for more than a decade and found that some of the flowers rapidly evolved in response to prolonged extreme drought.
"This study shows, for the first time in the wild, that some plant populations were able to evolve quickly enough to rebound from extreme drought," explained study senior author Amy Angert, a botany and zoology professor at the University of British Columbia in an email to USA TODAY.
"These populations were on extinction trajectories because of the drought, but they were able to rescue themselves through rapid adaptation," she said.
The scarlet monkeyflower is part of a broader general group of monkeyflowers, many of which are found in California.
Clergy and staff members at the temple had just undergone FBI-led active-shooter training in January, according to the bureau's Detroit field office.
Gerry Goldberg's wife Andie was killed at a the intersection in 2024. He advocated to make it safer, but was killed there in a March 2 crash.
As TSA officers work without pay amid a partial government shutdown, security experts say the threat of terror linked to the Iran war has risen.
The murder of Denise Amber Lee in Florida exposed the vulnerabilities of the 911 system nationwide and led to reform within the industry.
Ayman Ghazali made the purchase at Phantom Fireworks in Michigan in the early afternoon on March 10, a company executive told the Detroit Free Press.
Local prosecutors confirmed to USA TODAY charges were dropped without elaborating on what prompted the change.
A brief clip of a DoorDasher dropping off a food delivery led to over a half a million dollars in donations. See what happened.
A cargo resupply spacecraft is on its way back to Earth from the International Space Station, where it will make a fiery reentry Saturday, March 14.
Authorities are still investigating what led to the shooting that left an instructor dead and two students wounded. Here's what we know so far.
Relatives of the attacker who rammed his truck into a synagogue outside Detroit were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, a local official said.
Two underdog teams that could make a Cinderella run this March Madness are Saint Louis and Miami (Ohio).
No major cicada broods will emerge in 2026, but stragglers from 13‑ and 17‑year cycles may appear in several states. Here’s what to expect.
NASA's Artemis 2 mission is targeting an April 1 launch, sending a crew of astronauts on a historic trip around the moon.