Ecology & Zoology

Pretty Young Squid

I thought I'd write a compelling story about Humboldt squid and one of their favorite prey items, the lightfish Vinciguerria. These two creatures are quite the dynamic duo: one flashing like a red-and-white strobe, the other studded with glowing photo ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Jul 31 2011 - 7:38pm

The Ocean Is Full Of Delicious Lights

Squids, as I may have mentioned before, are the snacks of the sea. Everyone who can eat them, does. Whales. Sharks. Birds. Other squids. They're swimming tubes of protein with no scales or bones to get in the way, and they're highly abundant. If ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Aug 2 2012 - 10:28am

Buzzkill: Colony Collapse Disorder Continues To Threaten US Hives

As a teaching assistant for the pilot section of Bio 44Y, I spend Wednesday afternoons accompanying 10 students of field ecology to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Only five miles from the main quad, we’ve battled rattlesnakes and squeezed past poison oa ...

Article - Holly Moeller - Aug 4 2011 - 8:55am

Shark Week--Squid Tie-In

It's Shark Week! Not that I begrudge the elasmobranchs their ten thousand minutes of fame, but come on, Discovery Channel, you do Shark Week every year. When are you going to switch it up and do Squid Week? Anyway, sharks eat squid (along with everyth ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Aug 4 2011 - 4:47pm

More Unintended Fishing Consequences

Yesterday I mentioned the idea that fishermen killing sharks might have allowed squid to proliferate and eat up some of the smaller fish that fishermen like to catch. What goes around comes around! So when I saw this piece suggesting that squid fishing in ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Aug 5 2011 - 12:01pm

It's Hard to Talk About Camouflage on the Radio

NPR's Science Friday was about cephalopods two days ago! I've no time to opine at length, but basically it's awesome and you can take a listen here. It's an interview with Roger Hanlon, who is pretty much the cephalopod camouflage exper ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Aug 7 2011 - 8:51am

Only Twelve Squid Jiggers in Australia??

I love the weird articles that show up on my "squid" news alert. Here's one about the Australia Census called Portrait of a nation, squid jiggers and all: The last official ''snapshot of the nation'', taken in 2006, turne ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Aug 7 2011 - 7:22pm

Chimps Nicer Than Previously Thought

In general, human beings tend to be quite generous. As such, it is not a big step to question whether the same is true for our close evolutionary cousins, the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). A new study indicates that it might. When it comes to chimp shari ...

Article - Gunnar De Winter - Aug 9 2011 - 6:20am

Flexible Sex: Squid Tailor Sperm To The Environment

It's about  squid  and it's about  sperm, and apparently the combination is sexy enough to get this research onto the  BBC,  MSNBC,  Discover, and more. (Not to malign io9--that's actually where I first read about it.) ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Sep 5 2011 - 6:05pm

Swordfish Find Squid Delicious; Suffer Consequences

From a certain perspective, it's really weird that we manage fisheries in these discrete little units based on species. There are swordfish permits, swordfish boats, swordfish managers. There are squid permits, squid boats, squid managers. And so on. ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Aug 16 2011 - 10:26am