It’s an impressive feat by any standards, but particularly so for an animal that doesn’t have a defined brain.
The laboratory-based study of Carukia barnesi, the tiny but deadly Irukandji jellyfish, was conducted at James Cook University’s Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine in Cairns.
This is an opah caught during a NOAA Fisheries survey off the California Coast. CREDIT: NOAA Fisheries/Southwest Fisheries Science Center
The silvery fish, roughly the size of a large automobile tire, is known from oceans around the world and dwells hundreds of feet beneath the surface in chilly, dimly lit waters.
Pillar Coral. Photo by Mark Vermeij.
From BioMed Central:
A rare and threatened Caribbean coral species has for the first time been successfully bred and raised in the lab, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Ecology.
Reefs in the Middle East experience some of the hottest temperatures. Photo by Daviddarom (C.C.)
A new species of algae has been discovered in reef corals of the Persian (Arabian) Gulf where it helps corals to survive seawater temperatures of up to 36 degrees Celsius – temperatures that would kill corals elsewhere.
Cichlid fish in the Lake Tanganyika (Photo: Stefanie Schwamberger)
The manner and routes of dispersal vary with the species and the ecological conditions. Many fish form shoals to avoid predation.
Staghorn coral found off South Florida
The discovery was found just off the coast of the northern Miami-Dade to northern Broward counties in Florida and is being heralded as a boon for scientists as they believed the Staghorn coral were on the decline in Florida waters, primarly due to disease.
Photos by Aurelie Moya
Ocean acidification, which is a direct consequence of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, is expected to have a deleterious effect on many marine species over the next century.
Research on zoantharians, a group of animals related to corals and anemones, by researchers James Reimer of the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, Angelo Poliseno of Universita Politecnica delle Marche in Italy, and Bert Hoeksema from Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands, has demonstrated how little we know about marine diversity in the so-called “center of marine biodiversity” located in the central Indo-Pacific Ocean.
Photo courtesy of Seabird McKeon
From the Smithsonian:
Guard-Crab Diversity Key to Coral Reef Survival in French Polynesia
Coral reefs face a suite of perilous threats in today’s ocean.
This is an underwater photograph of coral and the life the it supports near Lizard Island. Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science President Matthew P. Scott
From Carnegie Institution
In a quest for historical context on the peril facing coral reefs, the team compared current measurements of the growth rate of a section of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef with similar measurements taken more than 30 years ago.