Amazing images! So colorful down there!
Showing posts with label fauna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fauna. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Sponging up sea water pollution
Good news! This is very preliminary, but promising research!
"... Sponges filter water through their pores, removing heavy metals, organics and bacteria while recycling nutrients.
Since shipping ports suffer from high concentrations of oil and toxins, researchers thought hardy sponges might provide a natural cleaning service. A team collected members of five sponge species for introduction to the Mediterranean port Marina Palamós. They began by growing the sponges on ceramic plates in the lab, then transplanted 42 specimens onto metal grids coated in calcium carbonate which were located within the port. ...
But the chicken liver sponge, Chondrosia reniformis, had a 92% survival rate over 455 days, even reproducing asexually. The sponge also showed an ability to “creep” away from threats such as pollution and UV radiation to more hidden crevices. ..."
"... “Here we show that some sponge species have exceptional potential for use in the restoration of degraded harbor habitats,” ...
“Unlike many sponges, the chicken kidney sponge can ‘creep’ away if local conditions deteriorate – for example, when nearby organisms compete. It can also relocate from the exposed upper surface of a rock, where it is subjected to UV radiation, polluted sediments, and predators, to sheltered crevices where these stresses are greatly reduced.
It also reproduces asexually by fission: this allows populations to expand rapidly and later reproduce sexually, increasing the chances of successful fertilization.” ..."
From the abstract:
"Harbor infrastructures impose strong environmental stress on coastal marine communities, limiting the persistence of many native species and hindering ecological restoration.
Identifying resilient habitat-engineering organisms is therefore key to developing effective and affordable renaturalization strategies. In this study, we evaluated the suitability of five Mediterranean sponge species to withstand the process of collection, laboratory manipulation, and transplantation to a recreational harbor, where they were monitored over 455 days using image-based morphometric analyses coupled with computational modeling.
Among the species tested, only Chondrosia reniformis showed high resilience under harbor conditions, with 91.7% survival. In contrast, all individuals of Corticium candelabrum, Crambe crambe, Scalarispongia scalaris, and Ircinia oros died during laboratory preparation or shortly after deployment in the harbor. Individuals of C. reniformis initially underwent a moderate size reduction but subsequently stabilized their biomass.
The sponges demonstrated remarkable morphological plasticity, including continuous substrate crawling (up to 12.7 cm of total displacement) and the capacity to recover from disease.
Some individuals underwent body fission [asexual reproduction?] during warm months, generating clonal offspring that nearly doubled the size of the experimental population in the harbor.
Collectively, the results indicate that the high survival of this species in the degraded harbor environment, together with its resistance to disease, its ability to proliferate clonally, and its capacity to reposition itself for improved environmental adaption, makes C. reniformis a highly suitable candidate as putative habitat engineer in future multitrophic approaches aimed at enhancing biodiversity and renaturalizing degraded harbor environments and other anthropogenically impacted coastal habitats."
Chicken kidney sponge could be ‘outstanding’ at cleaning up polluted ports "Hardy sea sponge shows great promise as an ecosystem engineer to clean up and rewild degraded harbors"
Specimen of the chicken kidney sponge Chondrosia reniformis transplanted into the harbor
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Shrinking squid brains due to climate change. Really!
Caution: Again junk science disseminated by the AAAS!
Reminder: Climate models are largely junk! We can not even forecast local weather accurately for more than 48 hours!
"... Squid are some of the ocean’s most intelligent inhabitants. Capable of clever problem solving, advanced communication, and learning from past experiences, these squishy swimmers’ brains contain a similar number of neurons as dogs. But now, thanks to climate change [???], those impressive brains may be doomed to downsizing.
At the Society of Experimental Biology conference held this month in Florence, Italy, scientists presented early data from a study of bigfin reef squid. They raised the animals for 90 days in one of two water tanks: one with a pH of 8.2, similar to modern oceans, and one with a pH of 7.8, which is the value oceans could reach by the year 2100 [???] under continued climate change. As carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere, nearly one-third gets absorbed into the ocean, causing the water to become more acidic.
After analyzing the squids’ heads with magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers made a shocking discovery: The brain volume of squid raised in more acidic tanks was half as large as their counterparts.
Further analysis revealed that the squids’ brain volume had shrunk the most in regions responsible for visual processing. Since bigfin reef squid rely on their eyes to hunt, the findings help explain a previous observation that this species, when exposed to high carbon dioxide levels for 90 days, showed a 42% reduction in hunting behaviors. ..."
Greenland deep-sea shark, the longest living vertebrate on the planet, can live for around 400 years
Amazing stuff!
"... But in April 2026, a group of researchers and volunteers stood on the cloudy shoreline of County Sligo, Ireland, and marvelled at the sight of a species that had never been stranded here before – a dead Greenland shark.
Judging by its size – around 3m (10ft) long – the grey-beige animal lying on the tidal flats was over 150 years old. ...
The Greenland shark, the longest living vertebrate on the planet, can live for around 400 years. ..."
"... The [recovered dead] shark is now undergoing detailed scientific postmortem examination, contributing valuable data to the understanding of this elusive deep-water species. Tissue samples and selected anatomical components are being preserved as part of the National Museum’s scientific collections, ensuring a permanent record of this exceptional specimen. ..."
Remains of a rare Greenland shark recovered (original news release) "The remains of a rare 3-metre-long Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) has been successfully recovered from the shoreline in County Sligo, marking the first recorded stranding of this species on the Irish coast."
Recovery of the remains of the dead shark
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Near Brazil humpback whale population has grown from around 2,000 whales four decades ago to roughly 35,000 today
Good news! What about other whale populations or humpback whales in other oceans? If I remember correctly, other whale populations also have recovered in recent decades.
What about overpopulation?
"Commercial whaling was effectively banned globally on January 1, 1986" (Google search)
"The co-founder of The Humpback Whale Project, a Brazilian research and conservation nonprofit, estimates that the western South Atlantic humpback population has grown from around 2,000 whales four decades ago to roughly 35,000 today, approaching or possibly matching its estimated pre-commercial whaling abundance."
Sightings of humpback whales surge in Rio de Janeiro, fueling demand for whale-watching trips
Projeto Baleia Jubarte (The Humpback Whale Project) (Unfortunately, I could not find the news release on their website, which is odd)
A humpback whale breaches off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, June 30, 2026.
Sunday, May 31, 2026
The Ocean Census identified 1,121 likely new marine species in a single year
Amazing stuff!
What little we still know about our oceans!
"The Ocean Census, an international research project dedicated to accelerating the discovery of marine life, claims to have identified 1,121 likely new marine species in a single year, well above the usual pace of discovery. Much of the acceleration seems to have come from better coordination;
728 of the species were identified by researchers analyzing existing collections, and the Ocean Census also credits a new database that centralizes records of potential new species while they await formal scientific description, a process that typically takes over a decade."
"
- Scientists have found 1,121 previously unknown species, fast-tracking discovery and marking a 54% jump in annual identification.
- Discoveries from depths of up to 6,575m include a new species of deep-sea ghost shark, a symbiotic bristle worm living within a ‘glass castle’, as well as corals, crabs, shrimps, sea urchins, and anemones.
- Led by The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, this global effort included 13 expeditions and 9 species discovery workshops with leading scientists across the world.
...
With up to 90% of ocean species still undiscovered, the findings highlight both the sheer scale of life yet to be documented and the importance of building scientific data that policymakers and marine managers need to protect the ocean. ..."
PRESS RELEASE: Scientists discover over 1,100 new marine species in landmark Ocean Census (original news release)
The ‘Ghost Shark’ Chimaera
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Newly discovered life forms on rocks in deep ocean trenches
Amazing stuff! We still know so little about our oceans!
When will autonomous submersibles investigate the flora and fauna at the depth of our oceans? I bet, we will learn a lot more surprising things!
It appears the same Chinese research institute, i.e. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya, China, has previously published a similar study, but more focused on genetic analysis. See Life at depth over 10,000 meters: breakthrough genomic study reveals population dynamics and adaptation to the extreme hadal environments
"The ocean’s mysterious hadal zone, which lies within trenches between 6000 and 11,000 meters down, is one of the least explored habitats on the planet. Recent studies have demonstrated that this abyss is home to a remarkable diversity of life, which manages to thrive despite crushing pressures and frigid temperatures. But many of these organisms, particularly those that are permanently attached to hard, rocky substrates, remain difficult for scientists to sample.
To investigate these deep-sea communities, researchers aboard the Chinese submersible Fendouzhe descended into the darkness of the Kermadec and Mariana trenches. As the team reports in a new study, collected rock samples revealed 32 species, mainly consisting of single-celled organisms called protists, most of them new to science .
The team did find some larger fauna, including two sea anemones, a carnivorous sponge, and a marine worm.
But the vast majority of the observed critters were millimeter-sized and living in a variety of dense formations on rock surfaces, from tubes and chains to large mats. Some organisms were slender and sparsely branched, while others had tiny, bead-like chambers.
One flat, encrusting bryozoan was so transparent that it only became visible once the rocks dried.
Researchers have previously assumed that these organisms get their energy from inorganic chemicals, so the study authors were surprised to find that many of their sampled specimens appear to feed on organic matter. Some have a diet consisting of pine pollen grains, which are transported from the land by wind and ocean currents before settling in trenches."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Characterizing life at the deepest depths of the ocean is extremely challenging, involving sampling at depths between 9000 and 11,000 meters. Our knowledge of these communities is thus relatively limited. Song et al. report a wide array of species sampled by a manned submersible in the Kermedec and Mariana trenches. They describe a new fauna characterized by mostly filamentous and sedentary protists and forams. Particularly surprising was the presence of heterotrophic, rather than chemolithoautotrophic, organisms feeding on terrestrial pine pollen. The authors argue that similar communities occur across the deepest ecosystems, with implications for understanding carbon hotspots at these depths. ...
Abstract
Deep-sea hard substrates host faunal novelties and distinct evolutionary lineages. However, sessile organisms on rocks are difficult to sample and largely unknown at extreme hadal depths.
Here, we report a deep hard-substrate fauna (9000 to 10,898 meters), comprising 32 species of six protist and metazoan phyla, most millimeter-sized and new to science, from the Kermadec and Mariana trenches, using the manned submersible Fendouzhe.
We show that the filamentous organisms dominating these assemblages are heterotrophic foraminiferans, challenging the earlier chemolithoautotrophic hypothesis.
Large-scale seafloor imaging and sampling suggest that similar protistan-dominated sessile communities thrive in seven hadal regions around Oceania. These faunas open new perspectives on biodiversity at the deepest ocean depths and unveil widespread, but previously unrecognized, carbon hotspots in global hadal trenches."
Project 5921 (Apparently, the project website for this research paper. Contains e.g. lots of images.)
Protist-dominated hard substrate faunas thrive at the deepest ocean depths (no public access)
This protist, which scientists recovered from a deep ocean trench, contained dozens of pine pollen grains in various stages of digestion.
Some of the several hundred photos from the project website
Monday, February 17, 2025
Dancing sea turtles reveal how animals navigate magnetic fields for migration over thousands of kilometers and to find food
Amazing stuff!
"... But a new study has presented the first evidence that loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) use magnetic fields as a compass to determine direction and also use it to determine their geographical location.
There’s a little dance involved, too.
Sea turtles are extraordinary navigators, able to trace unseen pathways across thousands of kilometres of the ocean and return to the same feeding sites migration after migration. ..."
"... sea turtles returning to the same feeding sites again and again throughout their lifetimes — despite traveling up to 10,000 miles across the planet. ... hypothesized that these turtles used Earth’s magnetic field to memorize specific geographic areas that they associated with food ...
team conditioned loggerhead turtles to magnetic fields replicating those that exist in various oceanic locations, repeatedly feeding the turtles in some magnetic fields while not feeding them in others. When later exposed to the fields in which they were fed, the turtles exhibited “turtle dancing behavior,” indicating that they associated that specific magnetic signature with food. ..."
From the abstract:
"Growing evidence indicates that migratory animals exploit the magnetic field of the Earth for navigation, both as a compass to determine direction and as a map to determine geographical position. It has long been proposed that, to navigate using a magnetic map, animals must learn the magnetic coordinates of the destination, yet the pivotal hypothesis that animals can learn magnetic signatures of geographical areas has, to our knowledge, yet to be tested.
Here we report that an iconic navigating species, the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta), can learn such information. When fed repeatedly in magnetic fields replicating those that exist in particular oceanic locations, juvenile turtles learned to distinguish magnetic fields in which they encountered food from magnetic fields that exist elsewhere, an ability that might underlie foraging site fidelity. Conditioned responses in this new magnetic map assay were unaffected by radiofrequency oscillating magnetic fields, a treatment expected to disrupt radical-pair-based chemical magnetoreception, suggesting that the magnetic map sense of the turtle does not rely on this mechanism.
By contrast, orientation behaviour that required use of the magnetic compass was disrupted by radiofrequency oscillating magnetic fields. The findings provide evidence that two different mechanisms of magnetoreception underlie the magnetic map and magnetic compass in sea turtles."
Dancing turtles unlock scientific discovery (original news release)
Learned magnetic map cues and two mechanisms of magnetoreception in turtles (no public access)
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Globally shark attacks are declining, only 47 unprovoked attacks in 2024 thanks to climate change
Why are these news not automatically linked to climate change? Short answer: The news is too positive or who cares about such a minute risk!
Or is the largely aging global population not so daring anymore and swims less? 😊
I suspect, shark attacks on humans are underreported. Most attacks are reported mainly from the US and Australia.
Simply don't swim to far from the shore!
"The International Shark Attack File, maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History, provides data on what are considered unprovoked bites, defined as incidents in which a person does not initiate contact with a shark. Instances in which a person intentionally or unintentionally initiates contact, including spearfishing and releasing sharks from nets or hooks, are not included in the report.
The report shows worldwide, there were only 47 unprovoked attacks, down 22 from the previous year and well below the 10-year average of 70. Four of last year’s attacks resulted in fatalities, also a significant reduction from recent years."
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Monday, February 03, 2025
For social bats, the hippocampus is the brain’s ‘who’s who’
Amazing stuff!
Keep in mind: Wind turbines are massive killers of bats in the hundreds if not millions of bats per year! Where are the animal rights activists when you need them! Who is paying them for their silence?
"Egyptian fruit bats are remarkably social animals, often roosting in caves with dozens to thousands of other bats. These furry creatures can’t just flip through a magazine to find out the latest colony gossip, so how do they keep track of who’s who?
To find out more about how these animals navigate their complicated social environments, scientists housed groups of wild fruit bats together in laboratory “caves” for several months. Once the bats had gotten to know each other, the team outfitted some with electrodes, allowing them to monitor activity in a part of the brain known as the hippocampus. Neurons in this region are known to play a prominent role in memory and spatial navigation, thus representing an animal’s place within its physical environment, but the researchers saw them light up during social interaction too. It turns out that these same hippocampal neurons also encode distinguishing features of other bats, including their sex, their place within the colony dominance hierarchy, and whether they were perceived as friends or enemies.
“We found that the same neural network, the same neurons, represented all of these factors together,” ...
This isn’t the first time Egyptian fruit bats have proven themselves to be brainy: Previous studies have revealed that these communal cave dwellers learn new dialects from the colony members around them, are able to recall past experiences and plan ahead for the future, and can even recognize the scientists performing experiments on them."
From the editor's summary and structural abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Classic work on cognitive maps has shown that neurons in the hippocampus code an organism’s environment and their place within it. However, most organisms, and especially social species, exist in complex worlds that include not just their place in their environment, but also the place and identity of other individuals relative to themselves. Ray et al. monitored fruit bats within a naturalistic environment and found that neurons in the hippocampus also coded for distinct individuals, including their sex, rank, location, and unique identity. Thus, the hippocampus creates not only an individual’s cognitive map, but also a complex map of their social environment. ...
Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Social animals live in groups and interact volitionally in complex ways. To perform real-life social behaviors, the brain needs to code other individuals’ identities, represent various types of social interactions, and encode key social factors such as the sex, dominance hierarchy, and social affiliation of multiple other individuals.
However, our understanding of how the brain deals with such diverse requirements stems from constrained laboratory experiments in which an animal typically exhibits one specific behavior with one other animal in one particular task. This leaves the fundamental question unexplored: How does the brain actually represent the real world with its complex, multianimal settings?
RATIONALE
To understand natural social coding in the mammalian brain, we studied Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus), which are highly social mammals, and focused on the hippocampus, a brain area that in previous studies has been shown to be important for memories of social identities, episodic events, and spatial locations. We hypothesized that in natural scenarios, when all of these disparate aspects occur simultaneously, hippocampal neurons would bind together all of these different types of information. To create a naturalistic environment, we established a laboratory-based “cave,” housing mixed-sex groups of five to 10 wild-caught bats. The bats lived together continuously (24/7) for several months, engaging in natural social behaviors without any imposed tasks. During this time, we conducted wireless neural recordings from the dorsal hippocampus area CA1 of both male and female bats and tracked their positions, head directions, and social interactions with each other.
RESULTS
The freely behaving bats formed a stable social network and displayed three key behaviors: (i) flying between two nets located at opposite corners of the setup, (ii) engaging in social interactions, and (iii) being active on the net and observing each other. We found that hippocampal “place cells,” neurons known to represent the animal’s own position, were modulated during flight by the social context, i.e., whether the bat was flying to meet another bat or to be alone. These cells also encoded the identities of other bats. This identity coding was invariant to the bat’s flight direction. We also found that many hippocampal cells encoded social-interaction events, with different neurons typically encoding distinct types of social interactions such as affiliative grooming or aggressive boxing. During active observation on the nets, we used methods from machine learning and game theory to reveal that neurons encoded the bat’s own position and head direction, together with the positions, directions, and identities of multiple other individuals. Identity-coding neurons encoded the same specific bat across different locations and different behavioral states, both in-flight and on the net, providing another example of social invariance. The strength of identity coding was modulated by the sex, dominance hierarchy, and social affiliation of the other bats.
CONCLUSION
Our use of a naturalistic social colony allowed us to discover that the classical hippocampal cognitive map of space also integrates rich social information, forming a sociospatial cognitive map. We found neurons that encoded social interaction events, identities and sex of other individuals, dominance hierarchy, and social affiliation, along with the position and direction of both self and others. These findings combine the historically disparate views on hippocampal function, which suggested that the hippocampus is important for encoding memory, social identity, or spatial maps. Here, we have shown that all of these factors are represented together in the same neural network."
Coding bonus: Bats’ hippocampal cells log spatial, social cues "The neurons represent not only an animal’s place in space, but also the distinguishing features of its fellow bats, including their sex and social status."
Hippocampal coding of identity, sex, hierarchy, and affiliation in a social group of wild fruit bats (no public access)
Hippocampal place cells also encode social information, forming a sociospatial cognitive map.
Friday, January 24, 2025
Thursday, January 23, 2025
A pilgrimage to the corpse flower in Sydney
A rare moment for our noses to behold! Or fragrance is in the nose of the nose of the beholder! 😊
"With bated breath—and plugged noses—spectators are waiting for the rare blossoming of a giant, rancid flower in Sydney.
The endangered corpse flower, lovingly named “Putricia,” is poised to bloom for just 24 hours at the Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney—the first blossom in 15 years. And the plant has gained a cult following, despite the fact that its aroma has been likened to “wet socks, hot cat food, or rotting possum flesh.”
Thousands of viewers have tuned in to the Gardens’ livestream, though there’s not much to see yet: “Putricia stands silent and tall in front of a brown curtain, comfortably ensconced behind a red velvet rope,”"
Corpse Flower: A Plant to Die For "A Corpse Flower — Bunga Bangkai — is about to bloom in Sydney for the first time in fifteen years."
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