One aim of this screening is to find compounds that block communication in some species but leave others undisturbed.

ECONOMIST: Novel antibiotics

Frogs may be less charismatic than some other troubled species, but their role in the environment is important.

NPR: Alarm Over Vanishing Frogs In The Caribbean

But the overall eel population is not in danger of extinction (though some individual species are), so the authorities decline to protect them.

ECONOMIST: Slithery creatures, strangely determined

But, he said, there were some species that actually did quite well in 2008.

BBC: Butterflies hit by damp summers

Those elements that exist in vast numbers of copies in some species may not be the result of gradual accumulation, but of a sudden burst of proliferation that, for some reason, was permitted by natural selection years ago.

ECONOMIST: Truly selfish genes

Bats prefer to roost in natural features like trees and caves, but as development has made those environments scarcer, some species have adapted to urban areas.

CNN: Architects building dream homes for bats

But some of the best-documented damage caused by the accident occurred to the less cuddly species lurking in the tidal pools along the Pembrokeshire coast.

BBC: News | UK | West Wales recovering from 'environmental disaster'