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Understanding Arctic Ocean’s carbon cycle

Zigmund — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:32:16 +0000

Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have conducted a new study to measure levels of carbon at various depths in the Arctic Ocean. The study, recently published in the journal Biogeosciences, provides data that will help researchers better understand the Arctic Ocean's carbon cycle -- the pathway through which carbon enters and is [...]

Intricate, often invisible land-sea ecological chains of life threatened with extinction around the world

Zigmund — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:48:54 +0000

Douglas McCauley and Paul DeSalles did not set out to discover one of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented. But that's exactly what they and a team of researchers -- all current or former Stanford students and faculty -- did in a new study published in Scientific Reports. Their findings shed light on how [...]

DNA barcoding verified the discovery of a highly disconnected crane fly species

Zigmund — Fri, 18 May 2012 05:35:04 +0000

Northwestern Europe harbors one of the best known biotas, thanks to the long faunistic and floristic traditions practiced there. However, some animal groups are far better known than others. The diversity of true flies there is fascinating, and undescribed species of flies, midges and gnats are not uncommon. Because Northwestern Europe was almost totally glaciated [...]

Common fungicide wreaks havoc on freshwater ecosystems

Zigmund — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:17:47 +0000

Chlorothalonil, one of the world's most common fungicides used pervasively on food crops and golf courses, was lethal to a wide variety of freshwater organisms in a new study, University of South Florida researchers said. Biologists Taegan McMahon and Jason Rohr, co-authors of the study published in the journal Ecology Letters, report that chlorothalonil killed [...]

Ancient plant-fungal partnerships reveal how the world became green

Zigmund — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:33:15 +0000

Prehistoric plants grown in state-of-the-art growth chambers recreating environmental conditions from more than 400 million years ago have shown scientists from the University of Sheffield how soil dwelling fungi played a crucial role in the evolution of plants. This ground breaking work provides fundamental knowledge of how plants colonised the land before roots evolved and [...]

Mixed bacterial communities evolve to share resources, not compete

Zigmund — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:11:34 +0000

New research shows how bacteria evolve to increase ecosystem functioning by recycling each other's waste. The study provides some of the first evidence for how interactions between species shape evolution when there is a diverse community. Predicting how species and ecosystems will respond to new environments is an important task for biology. However, most studies [...]

Arctic seabirds adapt to climate change

Zigmund — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:24:52 +0000

The planet is warming up, especially at the poles. How do organisms react to this rise in temperatures? An international team(1) led by a CNRS researcher from the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology(2) has shown that little auks, the most common seabirds in the Arctic, are adapting their fishing behavior to warming surface waters [...]

Absence of elephants and rhinoceroses reduces biodiversity in tropical forests

Zigmund — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:36:33 +0000

The progressive disappearance of seed-dispersing animals like elephants and rhinoceroses puts the structural integrity and biodiversity of the tropical forest of South-East Asia at risk. With the help of Spanish researchers, an international team of experts has confirmed that not even herbivores like tapirs can replace them. "Megaherbivores act as the 'gardeners' of humid tropical [...]

Antarctic octopus study shows West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have collapsed 200,000 years ago

Zigmund — Thu, 10 May 2012 07:27:57 +0000

Scientists at the University have found that genetic information on the Antarctic octopus supports studies indicating that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could have collapsed during its history, possibly as recently as 200,000 years ago. Genes from more than 450 Turquet's octopuses, collected from species in the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica, were analysed to [...]

European mountain plant population shows delayed response to climate change

Zigmund — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:17:42 +0000

European Mountain Plant Population Shows Delayed Response to Climate Change A modeling study from the European Alps suggests that population declines to be observed during the upcoming decades will probably underestimate the long-term effects of recent climate warming on mountain plants. A European team of ecologists around Stefan Dullinger from the Department of Conservation Biology, [...]

Plastic trash altering ocean habitats

Zigmund — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:42:44 +0000

A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study led by a graduate student researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. In 2009 an ambitious group of graduate students led the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) to [...]

One-quarter of grouper species being fished to extinction

Zigmund — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:36:37 +0000

Groupers, a family of fishes often found in coral reefs and prized for their quality of flesh, are facing critical threats to their survival. As part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, a team of scientists has spent the past ten years assessing the status of 163 grouper species [...]

Adirondack lakes in North Eastern US lose ice cover as climate warms: Most pristine lake marks biggest change

Zigmund — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:11:30 +0000

Lakes in the undeveloped High Peaks area of the Adirondack Park are covered with ice for significantly shorter periods than they were 32 years ago, providing evidence that climate change is occurring rapidly and that not even the most pristine wilderness areas are immune. Since 1975, five high-elevation lakes in the Adirondacks have had rapid [...]

Dry rivers, vibrant with culture and life

Zigmund — Mon, 07 May 2012 06:45:57 +0000

When the River Runs Dry' is a familiar song in Australia. Some rivers in the arid center of the continent flow only after a stiff monsoon season, and smaller tributaries all over the country commonly shrink to puddled potholes and dry river beds during the dry season. But rivers also run dry in more temperate [...]

Endangered species, languages linked at high biodiversity regions

Zigmund — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:52:49 +0000

Biodiversity hot spots -- the world's biologically richest and most threatened locations on Earth -- and high biodiversity wilderness areas -- biologically rich but less threatened -- are some of the most linguistically diverse regions on our planet, according to a team of conservationists. "Results indicate that these regions (hot spots and high biodiversity wilderness [...]

Weed-eating fish ‘help protect jobs, livelihoods’

Zigmund — Sun, 06 May 2012 07:45:00 +0000

Jobs, livelihoods and ecotourism industries can benefit from having a diverse supply of weed-eating fish on the world's coral reefs, marine researchers say. Despite their small size, relative to the sharks, whales, and turtles that often get more attention, herbivorous fish play a vital role in maintaining the health of coral reefs, which support the [...]

Gaseous emissions from dinosaurs may have warmed prehistoric Earth

Zigmund — Sun, 06 May 2012 06:02:03 +0000

Sauropod dinosaurs could in principle have produced enough of the greenhouse gas methane to warm the climate many millions of years ago, at a time when Earth was warm and wet. That's according to calculations reported in the May 8th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The hulking sauropods, distinctive for their enormous [...]

Different recipes for success in the world of plants

Zigmund — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:19:10 +0000

In order to prevail against native plants, non-native plant species develop special strategies. These differ in part considerably from the propagation strategies of endemic plant species. Dr. Ingolf Kühn and Dr. Sonja Knapp of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) reached this conclusion in a study published in the current issue of the scientific [...]

Plant diversity is key to maintaining productive vegetation

Zigmund — Thu, 03 May 2012 07:14:48 +0000

Vegetation, such as a patch of prairie or a forest stand, is more productive in the long run when more plant species are present, results of a new study show. The long-term study of plant biodiversity found that each species plays a role in maintaining a productive ecosystem, especially when a long time horizon is [...]

Decades of data show spring advancing faster than experiments suggest

Zigmund — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:19:15 +0000

Plants are leafing out and flowering sooner each year than predicted by results from controlled environmental warming experiments, according to data from a major new archive of historical observations assembled with the help of a NASA researcher. Researchers use experiments that manipulate the temperature of the environment surrounding small plots of plants to gauge how [...]