News by Subject Biology

Results from a 2016 research cruise show ocean acidification has interfered with shell development of zooplankton that are a critical part of the marine food web.

The Messina Strait, a submarine bridge separating the island of Sicily from the Italian Peninsula, is the area with the largest marine litter density worldwide -more than a million objects per square kilometre in some parts-, as reported in a new review paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Researchers have used the world's smallest, smartphone-sized DNA sequencing device to monitor hundreds of different bacteria in a river ecosystem.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have found that ocean acidification limits algal communities to a state of low diversity and complexity. Communities grown in waters rich in carbon dioxide (CO2) were dominated by turf algae, and had low biodiversity, ecological complexity and biomass. Communities grown under acidic conditions and then transferred to waters that weren't CO2-enriched increased their biodiversity and complexity, showing that they can recover if CO2 emissions are significantly reduced.

Partially protected marine areas create confusion and don't meet their broad conservation objectives, UNSW researchers have found.

Just like humans trying to stick to New Year's resolutions, guppies have varying levels of self-control, a new study shows.

Posidonia oceanica seagrass -an endemic marine phanerogam with an important ecological role in the marine environment- can take and remove plastic materials that have been left at the sea, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports. The article's first author is the tenure-track 2 lecturer Anna Sànchez-Vidal, from the Research Group on Marine Geosciences of the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona (UB).

A team led by Sebastian Stumpf from the University of Vienna describes an well-preserved skeleton of the ancient shark Asteracanthus. This rare fossil find comes from the famous Solnhofen limestones in Bavaria, which was formed in a tropical-subtropical lagoon landscape during the Late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago. The almost complete skeleton shows that Asteracanthus was two-and-a-half meters long, which makes this ancient shark one of the largest of its time. The study is published in Papers in Palaeontology.