Ecology & Zoology

A new species of Antarctic fish, Gosztonyia antarctica, has been discovered at a depth of 650 meters in the Bellingshausen Sea in the Antarctic Ocean, an area which had not been studied since 1904 and where the fauna is "completely" unknown. Jesús Matallanas, the Spanish researcher responsible for the find, collected four specimens of the new species during Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) campaigns in the southern hemisphere summers of 2003 and 2006. The study of the biodiversity of the Bellingshausen Sea has been systematically ignored by international projects because it is quite…

An octopus flooded the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium (note the link on the 2nd page to a video showing an octopus climbing through a very small hole- really cool if you haven't seen them in action before)!  And here's another take. This reminds me of a story they told me at the Baltimore Aquarium on a behind the scenes tour.  Apparently their octopus had, several times, at night, climbed out of her tank and into the tank next door.  She would have a snack and then go back home before morning.  They didn't figure out where all the critters were disappearing to until they put a…

"Psychedelica" seems the perfect name for a species of fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and behaves in ways contrary to its brethren, says University of Washington’s Ted Pietsch, first to describe the new species in the scientific literature and therefore got to select the name. Psychedelica is perhaps even more apt given the cockamamie way the fish swim, some with so little control they look intoxicated and should be cited for DUI. Members of Histiophryne psychedelica, or H. psychedelica, don't so much swim as hop. Each time they strike the seafloor they use their…

Puny Crayfish may have big claws for show but they can't really use them - their muscles are actually weaker than females with smaller claws. So why does it work?  A group of scientists writing in The Journal of Experimental Biology set out to discover the answer. Slender crayfish are aggressive territorial creatures, explains ecologist Robbie Wilson of the University of Queensland, Australia. When two crayfish catch sight of one another, they size each other up in a ritualistic display, which can quickly escalate from careful tapping of their opponent's chelae (enlarged front claws) to…

You guys....this is SO COOL!  Apparently this fish, which has a TRANSPARENT HEAD, has been known since the 1930's, but scientists just got video and photos of it for the first time.  It's scientific name is Macropinna microstoma. The eyes (the green blobs inside the head, and the green appears to be an artifact of exposure to bright lights) appear to be looking "up", but can be rotated if necessary.  So it's a nice touch that the fish, of course, generally looks for prey above it.  Some more pictures can be found here, courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research…

Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recently solved the half-century-old mystery of a fish with tubular eyes and a transparent head. Ever since the "barreleye" fish Macropinna microstoma was first described in 1939, marine biologists have known that its tubular eyes are very good at collecting light. However, the eyes were believed to be fixed in place and seemed to provide only a "tunnel-vision" view of whatever was directly above the fish's head. A new paper by Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler shows that these unusual eyes can rotate within a transparent shield…

Like sweet, tender romance?   Don't date a sand beetle.   Researchers at Uppsala University say what is good for one sex is not always good for the other sex and evolutionary conflicts between the two sexes cause characteristics and behaviors that are downright injurious to the opposite sex. In both males and females in the animal world it is common – much more common that one might like to think – for one sex to evince characteristics and properties that are injurious to individuals of the other sex. "One especially tricky case involves species where the males have mating organs…

A new gene that provides resistance to a fungal disease responsible for millions of hectares of lost wheat yield has been discovered by scientists from the US and Israel.  Resistance to stripe rust has previously been achieved using genes that are specific to single races of the disease. Unfortunately, each of these genes has had limited durability in the field because the pathogen has mutated to overcome them. In the paper to be published in Science Express tomorrow, the international team of scientists report finding a novel type of gene in wild wheat that is absent in modern pasta and…

The world economy is an elaborate, complex system so a recession can have unforeseen effects all along the food chain - even among sharks, though that is a good thing for people. Shark attacks worldwide in 2008 dipped to their lowest level in five years, a sign that Americans may be forgoing vacation trips to the beach, said George Burgess, ichthyologist and director of the International Shark Attack File, which is housed at the University of Florida. According to the latest statistics released today, the total number of shark attacks declined from 71 in 2007 to 59 in 2008, the fewest since…

I saw the coolest thing ever on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight. Ever. Thomas Gillespie of the Geography Department at UCLA was on the show discussing his attempt to predict bin Laden's location using satellite imagery and biogeographic theory! It was so amazingly cool to hear him discussing distance-decay models and island biogeography theory to predict bin Laden's location. It's all the cooler because Gillespie is, at least in part, a tropical forest ecologist, did his Ph.D. on tropical dry forests in Nicaragua, and has published on dry forest fragments in south Florida. It also make me…