Ecology & Zoology

Over 100 million years ago, late Mesozoic forests were chock full of a diverse group of plants of the class Equisetopsida, though only one genus, Equisetum, commonly called scouring rush or horsetail, still exists today.   It is unclear about the evolutionary beginnings of the genus Equisetum - molecular dating places the divergence of the 15 extant species of the genus around 65 million years ago but the fossil record had it earlier than that, around 136 million years ago. A new fossil Equisetum species now places this genus at 150 million years ago and living in an environment where…

Welcome to the month of May! The time of Beltane and Walpurgis Night, flowers and maypoles and springtime dancing. Want a May Basket? Well, um, how about a nice gall instead? Dave Hubble zooms in with some exquisite photos and shows us just what a gift a gall can be to the inquisitive mind. Do you like to dress up for May Day? You know who else likes to dress up? The Fir Tussock Moth! Although the adults are rather drab, Rebecca in the Woods found out that the springtime emergence of their caterpillars shows a true love for color and flair.If you're into May Day decorations, you may know…

The last flight of the space shuttle Endeavour will be both manned and squidded. The most famous science experiment on board, of course, will be the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will set up shop at the ISS to measure cosmic rays, dusting for the fingerprints of dark matter and antimatter. So that's cool. But is it as cool as baby squid in space? “The Squids in Space project is a cohesive effort in which the full range of NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium supported categories work together on an experiment destined to fly on what will be the last flight of space shuttle Endeavour,”…

It's not exactly news--the Navy's decision to fund a huge, interdisciplinary research project on squid skin is so last year--but the topic cropped up again and started me wondering: why do squid use different techniques to make different colors? Here's an explanatory bit from MSNBC: Hanlon and colleagues plan to extract the "operating principles" that make the skin of squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish observant, adaptive and responsive to the environment. The information they gather from looking at interactions of pigments and reflectors at the cellular and molecular levels will be used to…

So this is puzzling. The headline is Jumbo flying squid feels impact of tsunami, but after reading the article about a dozen times, I still can't tell what the "impact" is. The situation of the jumbo flying squid (Dosidicus gigas) in the South Pacific changed significantly after the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on 11 March. Since the tsunami, which also affected Peru, the resource in the northern beaches of the country began to move away gradually and now is returning to the situation prior to the disaster. The jumbo flying squid is now 3-4 days away from the ports. This takes…

Discovery Communications' Science Channel recently launched a new iPhone application to engage citizen scientists as mobile field observers right from their own back yard. With the "sci.spy" app, users can venture into their little domain of the world, and take images of all of the biodiversity that can be find. By selecting a "mission" to categorize the pictures, from general wildlife and bugs in your backyard to natural invasions and pets, anyone can contribute detailed information about their native biological environment from where ever they live. This sort of broad repository of location…

Hot new squid research has the world of cephalopod reporting all abuzz! The press release came out last Monday, so I'm a bit late to the game, but hey, that means I get to meta-report on the way everyone else reported it. In brief: Michel André and colleagues discovered that loud sounds can severely damage the statocysts (sort of like our inner ears) of several different species of cephalopods, including two squids. The sounds they used in their experiments are comparable in frequency and strength to the noise pollution that humans are constantly pumping into the ocean with shipping, drilling…

Earlier this year, paleontologists gave us a glimpse into the diets of ammonites, those ancient cousins to squid. I had always thought of ammonites as aggressive predators, so I was charmed to learn that some ammonites, at least, were gentle planktivores. Now, brand new research casts ammonites in an even more sympathetic light--those poor things used to get chewed up by sharks! A surprisingly slender, point shark tooth was found embedded in the shell of a fossilized ammonite. The Economist reports: That a shark with teeth like this would try to make a meal of an ammonite is, at first sight,…

Ants and termites have a significant positive impact on crop yields in dryland agriculture, according to a paper published in Nature Communications.   The authors say it is the first study to show a crop yield increase due to soil fauna in the field.Ants and termites perform the same ecosystem service functions in dryland agriculture that earthworms perform in cooler and wetter areas, but the potential for ants and termites to provide these benefits has received little attention until now, they state. Their studies on ants and termites in soil showed an average 36 per cent higher wheat…

Okay, I know I won't shut up about the Argentine shortfin squid, but the situation is just so weird and complicated, and there's always new news for me to puzzle over. We make a lot of people a lot of money. Biologically we are a big question mark. Here's the latest: The Federal Fisheries Council (CFP) has endorsed the continued commercial exploration of squid (Illex argentinus) which is being conducted by 13 independent vessels in the area between parallels 42° and 44°, despite the refusal of several fisheries chambers to participate with their vessels. If I understand it right, "…