Ecology & Zoology

Dendrogrammatidae: New Deep Sea Mushroom-Shaped Organisms Discovered

Two new species of sea-dwelling, mushroom-shaped organisms have been discovered.  Scientists classify organisms based on shared characteristics using a taxonomic rank, including kingdom, phylum, and species. In 1986, the authors of this study collected or ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 4 2014 - 8:00am

California Blue Whales Rebound

The number of California blue whales has rebounded to near historical levels- and they would be even higher if they didn't run into or get hit by commercial shipping. Blue whales, nearly 100 feet in length and weighing 190 tons as adults, are the lar ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 7 2014 - 1:30pm

Spasskia Brevicarinata: New Parasitoid Wasp Species Found In China

Wasps in the genus Spasskia (family: Braconidae) have been found for the first time in China, including a species in that genus which is totally new to science.    The new species, Spasskia brevicarinata, is very small — male and female adults are less th ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2014 - 10:28am

Cat Eats Dog: Not A Wacky Journalistic Aphorism

What do leopards in India do when prowling at night? Like with smaller domestic cats in America, evidence from a GoPro video around their necks would probably horrify pet owners, but scat samples for leopards in India's Ahmednagar's district in ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 11 2014 - 9:19am

Virtually Every Animal Uses The Same Science Of Swimming

At nearly 100 feet long and weighing as much as 170 tons, the blue whale is the largest creature on the planet, and by far the heaviest living thing ever seen on Earth. So there's no way it could have anything in common with the tiniest fish larvae, ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 15 2014 - 11:00am

Wild Mushrooms: You May Eat Something Even Science Doesn't Know About

For lovers of wild foods, autumn means things like mushrooms and fungi of dizzying variety. Intrepid treasure hunters scour the woods in search of delectable wild mushrooms and their not-quite-meat, not-quite-vegetable qualities. A bonus: If you find some ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 16 2014 - 10:41am

The Chicxulub Meteorite Killed The Dinosaurs But Made Forests Great

66 million years ago, a 10 km diameter meteorite hit the Yucatan peninsula with the force of 100 teratons of TNT. It left a crater more than 150 km across and the resulting mega tsunami, wildfires, global earthquakes and volcanism are believed to have wip ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 16 2014 - 4:07pm

Trees Love Climate Change

Last decade, science faced an ecological puzzle: under hotter, drier conditions of global warming, forests should have been penalized but instead the rainforests thrived. It isn't the first time- the climate change that caused the death of the dinosa ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 17 2014 - 9:31am

Nemo Finding Home- The Epic Journey Of Clownfish

New research has found clownfish larvae can swim up to 400 kilometers in search of a home, which makes them better able to cope with environmental change. Clownfish spend their entire adult lives under the protection of their host anemone but as babies th ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 17 2014 - 4:01pm

Tropical Fish Devastate Mediterranean Ecosystems

Tropical rabbitfish have devastated algal forests in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and pose a major threat to the entire Mediterranean basin if their distribution continues to expand as the climate warms, according to a new study in the Journal of Ecology ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 18 2014 - 1:30pm