Scientists using natural tracers off Queensland’s coast have discovered the source of previously unquantified nitrogen and phosphorous having a profound environmental impact on the Great Barrier Reef.
Genes sfrp and smoothened are crucially important for regeneration of lost organs. Scientists have found out that regeneration of sea cucumbers depends on genes sfrp (sfrp1/2/5, sfrp3/4) and gene smo.
Biologists have analyzed about 200 articles dedicated to composition of connective tissue (Extracellular Matrix) of echinoderms. That has enabled them for the first time to compare the composition of extracellular matrix of echinoderms and vertebrates.
The “Margaritaville” in Jimmy Buffett’s famous song isn’t a real place, but it’s long been associated with the Florida Keys. This string of tropical islands is home to the only living coral barrier reef in the continental US, along with many animals found nowhere else in the world.
A team of researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that tropical forest ecosystems are more reliant on aquatic insects than temperate forest ecosystems and are therefore more vulnerable to disruptions to the links between land and water.
The Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States. As it flows along the coast and then across the Atlantic Ocean, this powerful ocean current influences weather patterns and storms, and it carries heat from the tropics to higher latitudes as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
A new study published today in Nature Climate Change now documents that over the past 20 years, the Gulf Stream has warmed faster than the global ocean as a whole and has shifted towards the coast. The study, led by Robert Todd, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), relies on over 25,000 temperature and salinity profiles collected between 2001 and 2023.
Details of past climate conditions are revealed to researchers not only by sediment samples from the ocean floor, but also by the surface of the seafloor, which is exposed to currents that are constantly altering it.
New study shows signs of early creation of modern human identities. Ancestors collected eye-catching shells that radically changed the way we looked at ourselves and others.
Laden with dissolved salt, Antarctic waters can hover just above freezing and even dip below it. Temperatures this low would likely kill the animals that prosper in warmer waters further north. Yet, some creatures have found ways to live in this inhospitable cold.
RUDN University biologists and colleagues from Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the first to study the effect of nanoparticles of the natural polymer chitosan on the fish's health in aquaculture. It turned out that chitosan nanogel increases the resistance to a dangerous yeast by 22%. It increases the productivity of fisheries.
A new device, currently being designed by a University of Adelaide PhD candidate, could help to close a loophole currently being exploited by illegal wildlife traffickers.
During a recent review of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recovery plans for more than 200 endangered and threatened vertebrate species in the United States, Michigan State University researchers made an interesting discovery.
Sometimes simple solutions are better. It all depends on the nature of the problem. For humpback whales, the problem is the rope connecting a crab trap on the seafloor to the buoy on the surface. And for fishermen, it’s fishery closures caused by whale entanglements.
Scientists show the extraordinary diversity of cichlid fish in Africa’s Lake Victoria was made possible by ‘genetic recycling’ - repeated cycles of new species appearing and rapidly adapting to different roles in the ecosystem.
Scientists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University have found out unique properties of Asian plant, that help to struggle with vermin at fish farms.
Protecting large areas of land from human activity can help stem the tide of biodiversity loss, especially for vertebrates like amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, according to a new study in Nature.
In two recent papers, Saint Louis University researchers report finding high concentrations of microplastics present in a Missouri cave system that had been closed to human visitors for 30 years.
In a groundbreaking study, a team of Georgia Tech researchers has unveiled a remarkable discovery: the identification of novel bacterial proteins that play a vital role in the formation and stability of methane clathrates, which trap gigatons of greenhouse gas beneath the seafloor. These newfound proteins not only suppress methane clathrate growth as effectively as toxic chemicals used in drilling but also prove to be eco-friendly and scalable. This innovative breakthrough not only promises to enhance environmental safety in natural gas transportation but also sheds light on the potential for similar biomolecules to support life beyond Earth.
Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent on Sept. 19, 2023, making it the sixth-lowest year in the satellite record, according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
What makes for a successful climate-resilient fishery, one that sustainably produces resources for human benefit despite increasing climate stressors and human impacts?
New research, reported in Nature Ecology & Evolution, (25 September 2023) has for the first time validated at scale, one of the theories that has underpinned ecology for over half a century.
Ocean acidification will likely almost triple by the end of the century—a drastic environmental change that could impact important marine species like fleshy seaweeds, algae that grow vertically and promote biodiversity in more than a third of the world’s coastline.
Three researchers from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science are conducting experiments to better determine the important role of fish play in the oceanic carbon cycle, studying everything from how much carbonate fish produce to the path of the minerals in the water column.
With coral reefs worldwide undergoing unprecedented stressors due to climate change and other human pressures, a large-scale application of innovative techniques shows promise for detecting the health condition of reefs.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it has awarded a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations a second, five-year contract to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI).
New research shows that mussels are pretty crafty sea creatures: able to withstand marine heatwaves by adjusting their heart rate and other physiological functions, boding well for their survival in future decades as the world heats up.
72% of cetacean and pinniped stocks managed under US jurisdiction are highly or very highly vulnerable to climate change, according to a study published in PLOS ONE.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Kim Budil today announced the 2023 John S. Foster, Jr. Medal is awarded to retired U.S. Navy Admiral Richard W. Mies.
This article reviews conservation measures taken in recent decade to protect waterbirds in China's coastal wetlands and provides recommendations for future conservation action from three aspects: policy and administration, habitat conservation and management, and multiparty participation.
One of the biggest crises in Earth history was marked by a revolution in the shellfish – brachiopods, sometimes called ‘lamp shells’ were replaced everywhere ecologically by the bivalves, such as oysters and clams. This happened as a result of the devastating end-Permian mass extinction which reset the evolution of life 250 million years ago.
The lack of evidence about shark biology, their prey, and changes in the ecosystems of New York area coastal waters is a driving force to expand research about sharks and their populations in the region, so say a team of scientists in an article published in the Journal of Fish Biology.
University of Florida scientists are trying to raise as many urchins as possible because they eat algae that could otherwise smother reef ecosystems and kill corals. A UF post-doctoral researcher led newly published research that identifies algae on which larval sea urchins grow into juveniles in a lab setting.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers are among the 17 projects that have been awarded funding by NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program on behalf of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP).
Through nearly $800,000 in new support from the National Science Foundation this summer, lab researchers are focused on South Asia and the Middle East.
Rutgers-led research found that marine heat waves – prolonged periods of unusually warm ocean temperatures – haven’t had a lasting effect on the fish communities that feed most of the world. The finding is in stark contrast to the devastating effects seen on other marine ecosystems cataloged by scientists after similar periods of warming, including widespread coral bleaching and harmful algal blooms.
The rapid sea level rise and resulting retreat of coastal habitat seen at the end of the last Ice Age could repeat itself if global average temperatures rise beyond certain levels, according to an analysis by an international team of scientists from more than a dozen institutions, including Rutgers.
Researchers at the University of New Hampshire, along with other regional partners, have been monitoring the development of an expansive algal bloom that has formed in the Gulf of Maine—stretching more than a hundred miles from Massachusetts to Maine.
The ice shelves — the marine-terminating glaciers of the Antarctic Ice Sheet — are melting, and it's not just because of rising atmospheric temperatures.
Four out of five emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica, saw no chicks survive to fledge successfully in the spring of 2022, reports a study published in Communications Earth & Environment.
Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research.
A study concluded that particles of glitter can hinder the growth of organisms at the base of aquatic ecosystems, such as cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which play a key role in the biogeochemical cycles of water and soil, as well as being eaten by other organisms.