Tag: biodiversity
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Daily Sea Monster: The earthquake fish
The largest ecosystem on the planet is also the most mysterious–the bathypelagic or “midnight zone“, that thick layer of seemingly monotonous dark water between the film of sunlit surface ocean above, where the alchemy of photosynthesis spins sunlight into the tiny algal cells that feed the rest of the ocean, and the cold dark desert…
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Daily Sea Monster: the Phyllosoma
In retrospect, it seems I might trace the first recognizable step in my path toward a career in marine biology to sitting in Miss Evanson’s 2nd grade classroom at Barcroft Elementary one day in . . . well, I won’t tell you when, but I came across Dr. Seuss’s incomparable treatise on marine biology McElligot’s…
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Loss of Plant Diversity Threatens Earth’s Life-Support Systems
An international team of researchers including SeaMonster’s Emmett Duffy of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science has published a comprehensive new analysis showing that loss of plant biodiversity disrupts the fundamental services that ecosystems provide to humanity. Plant communities — threatened by development, invasive species, climate change, and other factors — provide humans with food,…
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The secret social lives of shrimp
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z735I4m8F8c[/youtube] No, we’re not making this up. Deep in the crevices of coral reefs, even deeper inside the hollow Swiss-cheese-like bodies of living sponges, are hundreds of little “pistol” shrimp that band together for protection in a cooperative colony headed by a queen, much as ants and honeybees do. These secretive creatures are in fact…
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Siphonophore from the deep!
Introducing Marrus orthocanna a deep sea siphonophore. Siphonophores belong to the Cnidaria, a group of animals that includes the corals, hydroids, and true jellyfish. There are about 175 described species. Some siphonophores are the longest animals in the world, and specimens as long as 40 meters have been found. The majority of siphonophores are long and…