A groundbreaking study of 7000-year-old exposed coral reef fossils reveals how human fishing has transformed Caribbean reef food webs: as sharks declined by 75% and fish preferred by humans became smaller, prey fish species flourished —doubling in numbers and growing larger. This unprecedented look into prehistoric reef communities shows how the loss of top predators cascaded through the entire food web, shifting the balance amongst coral reefs

Fifty years after "Jaws" captured the imagination — and fear — of the public, Mizzou wildlife ecologist Michael Byrne is working to change the pop culture narrative.

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.

Researchers trace the evolutionary history of the PD-1 immune checkpoint system across jawed vertebrates, uncovering conserved features with potential relevance for cancer immunotherapy.

Inspired by the suckerfishes-shark motion behavior, they designed and prepared a kind of NIR light-propelled micro@nanomotor with weak acid-triggered release of H₂O₂-driven nanomotor. By the coordinated bond interaction, a large amount of Janus Au-Pt nanomotors with hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂)-driven capacity, analogous to suckerfishes, were attached onto immovable yolk-shell structured polydopamine-mesoporous silica (PDA-MS) micromotor as the host to create two-stage PDA-MS@Au-Pt micro@nanomotor. PDA-MS@Au-Pt micro@nanomotor moved directionally by self-thermophoresis under the propulsion of NIR light with low power density. When the PDA-MS@Au-Pt entered into the weak acidic environment formed by a low concentration of H₂O₂, most small Au-Pt nanomotors were detached from the surface of PDA-MS due to the weak acidic sensitivity of the coordinated bond, and then performed self-diffusiophoresis in the environment containing a low concentration of H₂O₂ as a chemical fuel.

When a tourist boat left port in the spring of 2024, passengers probably didn’t expect to bear witness to a rare scene where sharks of two species that usually don’t occupy the same habitats flocked to a heavily decayed carcass and fed peacefully for a day. The sharks didn’t exhibit any aggressive behavior towards each other, or the tourist operators and photographers who observed the event. This kind of observation can help scientists better understand inter-species relations and social interactions between some of the oceans’ biggest hunters.

Contrary to widespread assumptions, the largest shark that ever lived – Otodus megalodon – fed on marine creatures at various levels of the food pyramid and not just the top, as an international research team led by Goethe University Frankfurt has now discovered. The scientists analyzed the zinc content of a large sample of fossilized megalodon teeth, which had been unearthed above all in Sigmaringen and Passau, and compared them with fossil teeth found elsewhere and the teeth of animals that inhabit our planet today.