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No Ocean-Borne Radiation from Fukushima Detected on West Coast Shoreline, According to Analysis of 1st Samples from ‘Kelp Watch 2014’

By Guest PostMay 11, 2014Environmentaist tsukuba, alaska, analysis, aufbruch, ballet, benefits, berkeley lab, brent scott, california state university, canada, consistent jerk, detector, deutschen familiennamenatlas, disaster, fadel matta, fukushima, hawaii, indicator of stress, Japan, joffrey ballet, kathrin draeger, klimaaenderung, kohlenstoffskette, lei shi, long beach, lukas lehnert, marine biology, monika ardelt, North America, nuclear power plant, pain reduction technique, professor, scott page, tropics, vancouver island

LONG BEACH, Calif.—Scientists working together on Kelp Watch 2014 announced today that the West Coast shoreline shows no signs of ocean-borne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, following their analysis of the first collection of kelp samples along the western U.S. coastline.

Kelp Watch 2014 is a project that uses coastal kelp beds as detectors of radioactive seawater arriving from Fukushima via the North Pacific Current. It is a collaborative effort led by Steven Manley, marine biology professor at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), and Kai Vetter, head of applied nuclear physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley. (more…)

How red crabs on Christmas Island speak for the tropics

By Guest PostOctober 12, 2013Environment, Natureallison shaw, australia national university, christmas island, climate pattern, cocos, crabs larvae, earth, ecosystem, el niño, erratic rainfall, fluctuations in rainfall, forest dynamics, indian ocean, kathryn kelly, keeling islands, migration data, migratory animals, next generation, North America, ocean, princeton university, red crabs, tropical zones, tropics, university of minnesota, university of washington

Each year, the land-dwelling Christmas Island red crab takes an arduous and shockingly precise journey from its earthen burrow to the shores of the Indian Ocean where weeks of mating and egg laying await.

Native to the Australian territories of Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, millions of the crabs start rolling across the island roads and landscape in crimson waves when the November rains begin. After a two-week scuttle to the sea, the male crab sets up and defends a mating burrow for himself and a female of his kind, the place where she will incubate their clutch for another two weeks. Before the morning of the high tide that precedes the December new moon, the females must emerge to release their millions of eggs into the ocean. A month later, the next generation of crabs comes ashore. (more…)

From obscurity to dominance: Tracking the rapid evolutionary rise of ray-finned fish

By Guest PostAugust 6, 2013Nature, Scienceadaptive radiation, age of fish, backboned animals, darwins comment, devonian era, end devonian extinction, evolutionary biologist, evolutionary rise, fossils from scotland, fouldenia, glaciers, hangenberg extinction, japanese amberjack, john megahan, lauren sallan, long extinct fish, mass extinctions, michael coates, misclassified fouldenia, oceans, post devonian tetrapods, predatory fish, ray finned fish, romers gap, sea levels, shell crushing, styracopterus, tropics, university of chicago, university of michigan, vertebrate species, yellowtail

ANN ARBOR — Mass extinctions, like lotteries, result in a multitude of losers and a few lucky winners. This is the story of one of the winners, a small, shell-crushing predatory fish called Fouldenia, which first appears in the fossil record a mere 11 million years after an extinction that wiped out more than 90 percent of the planet’s vertebrate species.

The extinction that ended the Devonian Era 359 million years ago created opportunities quickly exploited by a formerly rare and unremarkable group of fish that went on to become—in terms of the sheer number of species—the most successful vertebrates (backboned animals) on the planet today: the ray-finned fish. (more…)

Changes in Cloud Distribution Explain Some Weather Patterns

By Guest PostMarch 4, 2013Environmentability to reflect, atmospheric sciences, black carbon, change in clouds, changes in cloud, climate change, cloud cover, cloud features, cloud properties, cumuliform clouds, distribution, global warming, heavy pollution, homogeneous, horizontal clouds, impact on temperature, jet stream, light, mid latitude, monsoons in india, northern india, rainfall, regional cloud changes, russia, ryan eastman, scientist, stephen warren, storm track, study clouds, thickness, tropics, university of washington, volume of data, weather patterns, weather stations

Regional cloud changes, such as those that result in less rain during monsoons in India and those that indicate a widening of the tropics, may be as important to watch as the overall amount of cloud cover, new University of Washington research indicates.

Authors of the paper, led by Ryan Eastman, a UW research scientist in atmospheric sciences, set out to examine observations collected from weather stations around the world as a way to study the distribution of clouds. The research was recently published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate. (more…)

A Whole New Meaning for Thinking on Your Feet

By Guest PostJanuary 9, 2012Natureaxons, biodiversity of spiders, body cavities, brain, brain cells, brain power, brain size and behavior, central nervous systems, costa rica, diameter, energy, genes, genus, hallers rule, human brains, miniaturization, mysmena, nephila clavipes, nerve fibers, nerve signals, nervous system, nucleus, nymphs of spiders, panama, rainforest, rainforest giant, smallest spiders, smithsonian researchers, smithsonian tropical research institute, species of spiders, tiny spiders, tropical ecosystems, tropics, understanding of tropical nature, william wcislo

Smithsonian researchers report that the brains of tiny spiders are so large that they fill their body cavities and overflow into their legs. As part of ongoing research to understand how miniaturization affects brain size and behavior, researchers measured the central nervous systems of nine species of spiders, from rainforest giants to spiders smaller than the head of a pin. As the spiders get smaller, their brains get proportionally bigger, filling up more and more of their body cavities.

“The smaller the animal, the more it has to invest in its brain, which means even very tiny spiders are able to weave a web and perform other fairly complex behaviors,” said William Wcislo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. “We discovered that the central nervous systems of the smallest spiders fill up almost 80 percent of their total body cavity, including about 25 percent of their legs.” (more…)

What’s so Unique About the Tropics?

By Guest PostSeptember 23, 2011Environment, Sciencebeta diversity, brad boyle, calgary, canada, costa rica, distribution of biodiversity across the globe, ecological mechanisms, ecologists, elevations in mountain regions, extinctions, geographical scales, latitudinal diversity gradient, nathan j b kraft, new zealand, northern europe, panama, south america, speciation, temperate forests of canada, tropical rainforests of southeast asia, tropics, university of arizona ecologist, university of british columbia, university of maryland

“Less than we thought,” researchers say in a new study providing insights into the distribution of biodiversity across the globe.

The temperate forests of Canada or Northern Europe may have much more in common with the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia or South America than previously believed, according to a research group including a University of Arizona ecologist.

The assertion, published as the cover article in the journal Science, is focused on the concept of “beta-diversity” – a measure of the change in species composition between two sites, such as neighboring patches of forest. High beta-diversity means that two given sites have few species in common. (more…)

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