New research on bioluminescent ostracods shows how tiny crustaceans are helping scientists to understand evolution by sexual selection. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 5, 2015.
New research shows rapid evolution has helped to make the venom of black widow spiders so toxic. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 4, 2015.
Charles Messing, Ph.,D., has identified a new, very rare species of sea lily. Rather than name the creature himself, he's providing the opportunity of a lifetime and auctioning off those rights on eBay. Funds to help further research.
Study with FL. Dept. Of Environmental Protection mapped staghorn coral - found previously undiscovered reef patches
The saga of the Osedax “bone-eating” worms began 12 years ago, with the first discovery of these deep-sea creatures that feast on the bones of dead animals. The Osedax story grew even stranger when researchers found that the large female worms contained harems of tiny dwarf males.
Despite many similarities between Dreissena species, quagga mussels infested native unionids less severely than zebra mussels. The study suggests that minor differences between closely related invasive species can have major differences in environmental impacts on the native communities.
Water off Washington’s coast is warming a third of a mile down, where seafloor methane shifts from a frozen solid to a gas. Calculations suggest ocean warming is already releasing significant methane offshore of Alaska to California.
A Vanderbilt biologist has determined that electric eels possess an electroshock system uncannily similar to a Taser.
A research team has designed a new approach that could lead to underwater imaging lidars that are much smaller and more efficient than the current full-size systems. The new technology would allow modest-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) carry bathymetric lidars, lowering costs substantially.
A new report shows that maritime — or “blue” — industries dominate Mississippi’s economy and that the state’s three coastal counties support at least 35 percent of its entire workforce through the blue economy.
A new site displays real-time ocean acidification data for the open ocean and protected bays in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.
Professor Don Levitan, chair of the Department of Biological Science, writes in the latest issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series that bleaching — a process where high water temperatures or UV light stresses the coral to the point where it loses its symbiotic algal partner that provides the coral with color — is also affecting the long-term fertility of the coral.
Dr. Itay Halevy of the Weizmann Institute and Dr. Boswell Wing of McGill University found that deep-sea microbes that “breathe” sulfur prefer that sulfur to be light. In fact, the microbes will “fractionate” heavier sulfur into lighter isotopes. Learning the preferences of these microbes can help reveal the ancient past … and predict the future.
For the first time, scientists working in the waters of Patagonia are using satellite tags to remotely track southern right whales from their breeding/calving grounds in the sheltered bays of Península Valdés, Argentina, to unknown feeding grounds somewhere in the western South Atlantic.
A new special issue of the journal Harmful Algae that compiles five years of research studies about red tide in the Gulf of Mexico recommends state and federal funding support to maintain and expand the ability to predict and track the movements of these harmful algal blooms.
Conservationists are rejoicing at the listing of 21 species of sharks and rays under the Appendices of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), made official today in the final plenary session of the Conference of Parties (CoP).
The Government of Bangladesh has created the country’s first marine protected area that will now safeguard whales, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and other oceanic species, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Two coastal ocean observing organizations are calling for a major expansion of the high frequency radar (HFR) system in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Southeastern Atlantic coast as a cost-effective way to gain near real-time information about surface currents, wave heights and winds.
A new study has found that implementing stricter fisheries management overcame the expected detrimental effects of climate change disturbances in coral reef fisheries badly impacted by the 1997/98 El Niño, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Phytoplankton blooms can fix as much carbon as an equivalent-size rainforest, but where does the carbon go when the bloom collapses? Three Weizmann Institute scientists – a marine microbiologist, a cloud physicist, and an oceanographer – investigate.
Gordon Burghardt and his colleagues Vladimir Dinets, a psychology research assistant professor, and James Murphy of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., are the first to document play with objects in a cichlid fish species.
The sounds that most animals use to communicate are innate, not learned. However, a few species, including humans, can imitate new sounds and use them in appropriate social contexts. This ability, known as vocal learning, is one of the underpinnings of language. Now, researchers have found that killer whales can engage in cross-species vocal learning: when socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they shifted the sounds they made to more closely match their social partners.
Australian researchers fit oysters with biosensors to measure how they respond to changing environmental conditions or stressors on aquaculture farms. Their results have implications for achieving and maintaining ideal conditions for targeted species in aquatic environments.
A new paper from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Montana State University, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and the U.S. Geological Survey looks at the feasibility of electrofishing to selectively remove invasive trout species from Montana streams as an alternative to using fish toxicants known as piscicides that effect all gill-breathing organisms.
Skates have primitive colons. This may not sound like a big deal, but it is. The discovery could change scientific understanding of evolution, of how animals emerged from water to live on land.
Sea monkeys have captured the popular attention of both children and aquarium hobbyists because of their easily observable life cycle. Physicists are interested in a shorter-term pattern: Like other zooplankton, brine shrimp vertically migrate in large groups throughout the day in response to changing light conditions. New research suggests that the collective movement of small marine organisms could affect global ocean circulation patterns on a level comparable to the wind and the tides.
The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF), Government of Indonesia, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)’s Wildlife Crimes Unit announced today the first-ever series of enforcement actions against a trader of sharks and rays in Indonesia.
A nearly 600-year reconstruction of climate indicators along the West Coast of North America indicates that upwelling in the California Current became more variable over the latter part of the 20th century.
A group of researchers have used a special camera developed by Viktor Gruev, PhD, to discover that female northern swordtail fish choose their mates based on polarization signals from the males.
The Wisconsin State Herbarium, director Kenneth Cameron is spearheading a project to “digitize” images and data on invasive species from the Great Lakes basin. The $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation will also be disbursed to other natural history museums. Together, these institutions expect to digitize 1.73 million specimens.
The increasing acidification of ocean waters caused by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could rob sharks of their ability to sense the smell of food, a new study suggests.
Researchers have created a new model that could help determine what area of the world is to blame for each ocean garbage patch of floating debris – a difficult task for a system as complex and massive as the ocean. The researchers describe the model in a paper published in the journal Chaos.
Some fish will leap out of water to escape a predator, but Northern Arizona University researcher Alice Gibb has observed that the mosquitofish chooses the most energy-efficient method for returning—a finding that has evolutionary implications.
An international team of scientists compared mainstream bioeconomic theory with the lesser-known “fishing-down” theory, to discover that a large, commercially important fish from the Amazon Basin has become extinct in some local fishing communities.
Scientists examining a taxonomically confused group of marine mammals have officially named a species new to science: the Australian humpback dolphin, Sousa sahulensis, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and Clymene Enterprises.
Researchers at URI and MBARI have observed a deep-sea octopus brooding its eggs for four-and-a-half years—longer than any other known animal. Throughout this time, the female kept the eggs clean and guarded them from predators.
The first measurements of waves in the middle of the Arctic Ocean recorded house-sized waves during a September 2012 storm. More sensors are going out this summer to study waves in newly ice-free Arctic waters.
A rugged peninsula in Argentina’s Patagonia region teeming with wildlife has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations Environmental, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
A new study shows that some shark species may be able to cope with the rising salinity of Arctic waters that may come with rising temperatures.
NSU is partnering with the Westin Beach Resort & Spa in Ft. Lauderdale on a new package that provides guests the chance to visit NSU's Oceanographic Center and go with researchers on a shark tagging trip.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a widely distributed group of marine bacteria that produce compounds nearly identical to toxic man-made fire retardants.
Scientists have found how the electric fish evolved its jolt. Writing June 27, 2014 in the journal Science, a team of researchers led by Michael Sussman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Harold Zakon of the University of Texas at Austin and Manoj Samanta of the Systemix Institute in Redmond, Washington identifies the regulatory molecules involved in the genetic and developmental pathways that electric fish have used to convert a simple muscle into an organ capable of generating a potent electrical field.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- The Great White Shark is not endangered in the Eastern North Pacific, and, in fact, is doing well enough that its numbers likely are growing, according to an international research team led by a University of Florida researcher.
New research reveals how the algae behind red tide thoroughly disables – but doesn’t kill – other species of algae. The study shows how chemical signaling between algae can trigger big changes in the marine ecosystem.
An internationally renowned palaeontologist, who has recently joined the University of Adelaide, is calling for a global ban on the trade of the highly sought-after Nautilus seashell.
The total amount of trash picked up during the 28th year of Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup weighed more than 12 million pounds, the most ever collected in the event’s history, according to a report on the Cleanup and its data released today.
The relationship between the Hawaiian bobtail squid and the bacterium Vibrio fischeri is well chronicled, but writing in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a group led by University of Wisconsin-Madison microbiologists Margaret McFall-Ngai, Edward Ruby and their colleagues adds a new wrinkle to the story.
Identifying larval stages of marine fishes in the open ocean is difficult because the young fishes often bear little or no resemblance to the adults they will become. Confronted with a perplexing fish larva collected in the Florida Straits, Smithsonian scientists turned to DNA barcoding, which yielded an unexpected discovery—a match between the mysterious fish larva and adults of a new species of sea bass discovered off the coast of Curacao.
Large storms produce strong undertows that can strip beaches of sand. By predicting how undertows interact with shorelines, researchers can build sand dunes and engineer other soft solutions to create more robust and sustainable beaches. New research presented in Physics of Fluids clears up some of the controversy in undertow modeling, so planners can assess erosion threats faster and more accurately.
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