Currently, the main method of combatting CoTS outbreaks is by manually culling each starfish one-by-one, which is highly inefficient, labor-intensive, and costly. But now, a team of researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan have discovered that CoTS use their characteristic spines to ‘smell’ peptides and communicate with one another, even outside mating seasons. Building on this finding, the team has created a synthetic peptide that consistently attracts CoTS at very low concentrations and with no toxicity. The results are published in iScience. Their discovery could lead to the further development of potent pest-management peptides – dubbed Acanthaster attractins – that prompts the starfish to congregate at one spot, enabling the efficient removal of many CoTS in one sweep.

Researchers of the University of Groningen and the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg studied population trends across 3,058 populations of various species throughout the entire Wadden Sea. Twenty-four per cent of the populations showed a significant decline in size, and this trend is occurring simultaneously across various groups. Only fourteen per cent of the populations showed an increase in size.

New research reveals the importance of winter sea ice in the year-to-year variability of the amount of atmospheric CO₂ absorbed by a region of the Southern Ocean.

In years when sea ice lasts longer in winter, the ocean will overall absorb 20% more CO₂ from the atmosphere than in years when sea ice forms late or disappears early. This is because sea ice protects the ocean from strong winter winds that drive mixing between the surface of the ocean and its deeper, carbon-rich layers.

The findings, based on data collected in a coastal system along the west Antarctic Peninsula, show that what happens in winter is crucial in explaining this variability in CO₂ uptake.

 

Physicists at the University of Liège (Belgium) have succeeded in sculpting the surface of water by exploiting surface tension. Using 3D printing of closely spaced spines, they have combined menisci to create programmed liquid reliefs, capable of guiding particles under the action of gravity alone. This is a promising advance for microscopic transport and sorting, as well as marine pollution control.

Antarctic krill is a key species in the Antarctic marine ecosystem: it is an important food source for many species, such as whales, seals and penguins. However, the small crustaceans are increasingly becoming the focus of fishing, which can incur significant consequences for the entire Southern Ocean ecosystem. Therefore, concepts that minimize the negative effects of fishing on the krill themselves and on the animals that feed on krill are required urgently. A research team from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research in Bergen has now been able to use acoustic recordings, that fishing vessels routinely record, to identify areas and periods in which there is an increased overlap between fishing and krill predators. The results can contribute to developing effective management strategies to protect the Antarctic ecosystem. The study will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History sheds light on the ancient origins of biofluorescence in fishes and the range of brilliant colors involved in this biological phenomenon. Detailed in two complementary studies recently published in Nature Communications and PLOS One, the findings suggest that biofluorescence dates back at least 112 million years and, since then, has evolved independently more than 100 times, with the majority of that activity happening among fish that live on coral reefs.

A new study from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science finds that juvenile great hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna mokarran), a critically endangered species, rely heavily on the resources of Florida’s Biscayne Bay as a nursery habitat during their earliest and most vulnerable years.

Dr Beatriz Cosendey is an associate researcher at the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development and a postdoctoral fellow in the Eastern Amazon Program for Biodiversity Research at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. She holds degrees in marine biology from Fluminense Federal University and ecology and evolution from Rio de Janeiro State University. Her postdoctoral work at the Federal University of Pará focused on the intersection of ecology and traditional knowledge.

In the newest installment of Frontier Scientists, she tells us about her recently published Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science article. In it, she and co-authors investigated the role of the anaconda as a mythical creature in Brazil’s Lower Amazon region, locals’ perception of the snake, and how better coops for chickens could play a vital role in the peaceful co-existence of people and snakes.