Ecology & Zoology

Newly exposed parts of Tiktaalik roseae--the intermediate fossil between fish and the first animals to walk out of water onto land 375 million years ago--are revealing how this major evolutionary event happened. A new study in Nature provides a detailed look at the internal head skeleton of Tiktaalik roseae and reveals a key intermediate step in the transformation of the skull that accompanied the shift to life on land by our distant ancestors. A predator, up to nine feet long, with sharp teeth, a crocodile-like head and a flattened body, Tiktaalik's anatomy and way of life straddle the…

The President of SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture, Karl Andreas Almås, crouches over his laptop, opens one of his presentations and finds an illustration. It shows one red curve and one blue one. He then indicates the point where they meet each other, then frowns and says the message he cannot repeat often enough: There is a huge gap between world demand for fish and what we can harvest from the world’s natural stocks. The figures are clear: If we don’t do something about the over fishing, the stocks of wild fish will be dealt a death blow. At the same time, the world’s population continues…

Scientists have confirmed the second-ever case of a 'virgin birth' in a shark, further confirming that female sharks can reproduce without mating and that many female sharks may have this incredible capacity. Lead author Dr. Demian Chapman, shark scientist with the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, Beth Firchau of the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, and Dr. Mahmood Shivji, Director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute and Professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, have proven through DNA testing that the offspring of a female…

Feeling down? Wondering how to cheer up? Well perhaps all you have to do is sing a song. Hey, it works for birds. Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have recently uncovered a breakthrough in animal behavior. In their recent study, they concluded that singing by male birds to attract females stimulates reward centers in their brains, reinforcing their behavior. In essence, singing for mates makes male birds really happy. Animal brains, including humans, are designed to have a positive emotional response to certain rewarding stimuli. These stimuli are genetically…

The first ecosystem ever found having only a single biological species has been discovered 2.8 kilometers (1.74 miles) beneath the surface of the earth in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa. There the rod-shaped bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator exists in complete isolation, total darkness, a lack of oxygen, and 60-degree-Celsius heat (140 degrees Fahrenheit). D. audaxviator survives in a habitat where it gets its energy not from the sun but from hydrogen and sulfate produced by the radioactive decay of uranium. Living alone, D. audaxviator must build its organic…

Scientists filming in one of the world’s deepest ocean trenches have found groups of highly sociable snailfish swarming over their bait, nearly five miles (7700 metres) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. This is the first time cameras have been sent to this depth. ‘We got some absolutely amazing footage from 7700 metres. More fish than we or anyone in the world would ever have thought possible at these depths,’ says project leader Dr Alan Jamieson of the University of Aberdeen’s Oceanlab, on board the Japanese research ship the Hakuho-Maru. ‘It’s incredible. These videos vastly exceed…

Smell plays an important role in our lives: It influences the way in which we choose fruit and vegetables, perfume, and even a partner. And yet, smell is not just what we smell with our noses, it's also what we taste, explains Prof. Alexander Vainstein, who is heading the team at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Aroma is of major importance for defining the taste of food." Scent in flowers and plants is used to attract pollinating insects like bees and beetles that pass on the pollen and help in the reproduction and…

Natural grass fires are evidently more important for the ecology of savannahs than has previously been assumed, according to the findings of a study carried out in Etosha National Park in the north of Namibia. Writing in the Journal of Ecology, researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the University of Frankfurt am Main and the University of Cologne say that fire plays an important role in regeneration. It is the first study to have investigated the complex interplay of the factors fire, competition, moisture and seed availability in relation to a grass…

Gulf Coast residents were alerted today -- jelly in the grass. Not only in the grass but also in the swimming pools! A man's net scooping out quarter-size buttons left an indelible impression in my brain. The news was meager in details. But "Jellyfish-like creatures invade coast after storms" had been reported on 20 September 2008 in The Mississippi Press.(1) Hurricanes Gustav and Ike were blamed for blowing in Porpita porpita, or the blue button. These coin-size carnivores are actually colonial animals, resembling the eye of a "peacock's feather". They float in open sea at the surface while…

The effect of global climate change on the planet's ecosystems is one of the key issues scientists are currently focusing on and, while there isn't a lot of good news, there is some; the main source of food for many fish, including cod, in the North Atlantic appears to adapt in order to survive climate change. Billions of Calanus finmarchicus, a plankton species, which are just a few millimeters in size, live in the waters of the North Atlantic where the research was carried out. It showed they responded to global warming after the last Ice Age, around 18,000 years ago, by moving north and…