Dear Kitty. Some blog

November 23, 2009

Many new marine animal species discovered [Economic, social, trade union, etc., Environment, Fish, Invertebrates] — Administrator @ 9:50 am


This is

A video by the Census of Marine Life about why we need to monitor biodiversity in the oceans and how it can be done using existing technologies on a global scale.
By Alison Auld, The Associated Press:
Deep sea census finds bizarre marine life

Last Updated: 22nd November 2009, 3:27pm

From a translucent jumbo octopus to a fish bearing barbed fangs, scientists say they have discovered hundreds of new species living several kilometres beneath the ocean surface and in total darkness.

Researchers probing pitch-black waters from the Antarctic to deep seas off Iceland say they have cataloged about 5,700 marine life forms that have never seen light, with some being new to science.

The data, part of the ongoing Census of Marine Life project, stunned some of the international scientists who say the unexpected finds show how poorly understood the deep seas are and how much more there could be out there.

“It really illustrates just how little we know about the deep ocean and how species-rich it is,” Paul Snelgrove, a marine biologist at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L., said before the release of the findings Sunday.

“The fact that they’re so pervasive is really the exciting thing.”

Scientists plumbed waters from the continental margins to a spine-like ridge running down the mid-Atlantic, taking in huge mountain chains comparable to the Alps and shallow plains that support several fisheries.

Odd Aksel Bergstad of the Institute of Marine Research in Norway said they discovered 1,000 species in an area between Iceland and the Azores and suspects at least 40 are new to science.

“We were surprised to find so many big animals,” he said from Oslo, referring to large squid and fish species.

“That’s not so common anymore. We thought we were getting to the level of knowledge that we wouldn’t find so many.”

Of the close to 700 crustaceans found to the southeastern Atlantic, 99 per cent are thought to be new discoveries.

At up to 3,000 meters down, researchers found nine species of a slimey, gelatinous octopod commonly referred to Dumbo because of its large ear-like fins. One measured two meters, while another may never have been seen before.

They also found a new species of sea cucumber around the Crozet Islands, a sub-Antarctic archipelago of small islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

“We have a more complete picture now of the deep-water habitats,” Bergeron said.

Some of the species lived in frigid waters of 2 degrees C and fed on meagre droppings from the water’s surface far above, bacteria and the bones of dead whales.

At such depths and being so remote, Snelgrove assumed they would find little evidence of human impacts on habitat and ecology. But even at 4,000 meters he said they detected the effects of climate change through warming temperatures and a depletion of food sources.

“I always tended to think of the deep sea as being invulnerable to human activity,” he said. “And we’re starting to see more and more evidence now that in fact there is significant impact of deep-water fishing and ocean acidification.”

Bergeron said the growing understanding of what exists in the world’s deep seas should inform governments and marine “managers“ of what needs to be done to protect the areas.

Some regions with fragile corals and seamounts in the North Atlantic have been closed to bottom fisheries, but he says more should be deemed off limits to destructive fishing and oil industry practices.

The 10-year census is cataloguing the ocean’s marine species, diversity and distribution, and plans to wrap up in October 2010. Using deep-towed cameras, it has so far documented 17,600 species known to live in darker waters.

November 18, 2009

More wildlife than birds in British bird reserves [Plants etc., Environment, Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Fish, Invertebrates] — Administrator @ 9:27 pm

This video from Britain is called Common birds, Northampton January 27th 2008, RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch.

From Wildlife Extra:

13,400 species on RSPB reserves – Less than 3% are birds

18/11/2009 10:34:25

RSPB reserves not just for birds, says new report.

November 2009. Less than three per cent of the species recorded on RSPB reserves are birds, according to a new report.

For the first time the RSPB’s annual report on its 200 reserves across the UK has collated records of all species together - and come up with some surprising results. Of the 13,400 species recorded on our reserves, more than half are insects, almost a quarter are fungi and 12 per cent are plants.

140,000 hectares

RSPB reserves cover 140,000 hectares across the UK - just 0.6% of the area of Britain - yet this land features 68% of Britain’s native plant species, 78% of its spiders, and all of its resident reptiles and dragonflies. …

Nationally important fungi sites - New species?

Gurney added “The RSPB’s woodland reserves are great places to go to discover fascinating fungi, and now is the perfect time of year to do it. Our reserves at Abernethy in Inverness-shire and Tudeley Woods in Kent are nationally important sites for the rare tooth fungi. Surveys there have already revealed two species new to Britain and experts believe another species may prove to be entirely new to science.

“And while our reserve at Minsmere in Suffolk is a mecca for birdwatchers, mycologists have found over 1,500 species of fungi there, including the endangered bearded tooth fungus. We are grateful to all the dedicated enthusiasts like these, who have helped us record wildlife on our reserves.”

41 mammal species, 500+ spiders

The 3,136 recorded fungus species on RSPB reserves are only 21% of the total number of known UK fungi. However our reserves do have 75% of Britain’s vascular plant species (1,137), 77% of grasshopper and cricket species (23), 78% of spider species (505) and 93% of land mammal species (41). All the native British species of cockroaches (3), earwigs (4), dragonflies (45), lampreys and hagfish (3), and terrestrial reptiles (6) can be found on RSPB reserves.

November 13, 2009

Coral eating jellyfish discovery [Invertebrates, Biology] — Administrator @ 12:39 pm

Coral eating jellyfish, photo by Omri Bronstein

From the BBC:

Predatory coral eats jellyfish

By Jody Bourton
Earth News reporter

A coral is recorded eating a jellyfish for the first time, in intriguing photographs taken by scientists.

Coral usually feed on tiny plankton as well as products provided by photosynthetic algae.

Yet the photos reveal a stationary mushroom coral sucking in a large moon jellyfish.

Researchers believe the ability to feed on a variety of food sources like jellyfish may give the coral an advantage in a changing world.

The researchers publish their findings in the journal Coral Reefs.

Coral surprise

The pictures were taken on a dive by Mr Omri Bronstein from Tel Aviv University in Israel and Mr Gal Dishon from Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel in March 2009 during a survey on reefs near the Israeli city of Eilat in the Red Sea.

Ocean currents and nutrients had created a seasonal bloom of the jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) and many surrounded the reef in which the team were diving.

It was then they saw the strange behaviour.

“During the survey we were amazed to notice some mushroom corals actively feeding on the moon jellyfish,” says Ada Alamaru, a member of the research team who is doing her PhD in marine biology at Tel Aviv University, Israel.

“We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw it,” Ms Alamaru says.

The moon jellyfish is known to be eaten by a number of predators including fish, turtles and sea birds.

However, to find it preyed upon by the mushroom coral (Fungia scruposa) was a unique discovery.

“This is the first documentation of a coral feeding on a jellyfish almost equal to its size,” Ms Alamaru says.

“In fact we saw a few corals feeding and not only one.”

Sponges recycle carbon to give life to coral reefs: here.

Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world: here.

November 12, 2009

Butterflies in space shuttle [Invertebrates, Astronomy, space, Biology] — Administrator @ 11:48 pm


This video is called Painted Lady Butterflies Develop, Emerge in Time Lapse.

From Scientific American:

Nov 12, 2009 03:56 PM

Next shuttle mission will carry butterflies to space for classroom science experiments

By John Matson

Butterflies on the ISSSpace shuttle Atlantis, set to lift off November 16 for the International Space Station, will launch with more than just its six-member astronaut crew onboard. Stowed away in a biological payload module will be larvae of two species of butterfly, whose development students on the ground will track from their classrooms.

For the experiment, formally designated CSI-03, about 100 K–12 schools in the U.S. will receive habitat kits, according to a press release from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where the space-bound payload was developed. Students will be able to observe the butterflies’ metamorphosis up close on Earth and compare their development to the insects in the weightless environs of the space station. (Images of the station’s butterflies will also be posted for public viewing at BioEd Online.)

The monarch and painted lady butterflies won’t be the first insects, or even the first butterflies, flown in space—past experiments have also included bees, ants and silkworms.

As for the rest of the 11-day STS-129 mission, Atlantis will deliver a slew of parts to the station as the U.S. seeks to wrap up the station’s construction and retire the space shuttle. After STS-129, only five shuttle missions remain on the launch schedule, all of them to the International Space Station.


This video is called Monarch Butterflies in Mexico.

November 11, 2009

Deep-sea crab eats trees [Plants etc., Environment, Mammals, Invertebrates, Biology] — Administrator @ 2:09 pm

Munidopsis andamanica

From the BBC today:

The deep-sea crab that eats trees

By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

Deep under the ocean, there is a species of crab that eats trees.

The crab survives by eating wood that has sunk to the ocean floor, comprising trunks and leaves swept into the sea, as well as the odd shipwreck.

Inside the stomach of the crab, also called a squat lobster, are bacteria and fungi that help digest the wood.

The discovery, published in the journal Marine Biology, adds to evidence that these so-called ‘wood falls’ help support special underwater communities.

“At first sight, it seems improbable,” says PhD student Caroline Hoyoux of the University of Liège, Belgium.

“Munidopsis andamanica is a species only found in the deep sea and yet it eats ‘terrestrial food’,” she says.

Ms Hoyoux and colleagues based at the University of Liege and at the Natural History Museum and Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France made the discovery while studying which animals colonise wood falls.

Among worms, bivalves and a host of crustacean species they found Munidopsis andamanica, a species known as a galatheid crab, or squat lobster.

Further investigation of the crabs mouthparts and gut contents revealed they feed exclusively on wood.

“We were surprised, because crustaceans are often regarded as predators or scavengers. The fact I found M. andamanica consistently feeding on vegetal remains, especially wood, instead of eating molluscs or [worms] breaks with the general a priori about the diet of squat lobsters,” says Ms Hoyoux.

Sunken treasure

The importance of wood falls and the communities they host are only just being appreciated.

Although first discovered in the late 19th century, it was not until the late 1970s that scientists began to study the animals that colonise them.

Until this century, these were mainly thought to be wood-boring molluscs.

“However, crustaceans are the second most important group, according to the number of species and individuals,” says Ms Hoyoux.

It sounds like a classic horror story - eyeless, mouthless worms lurk in the dark, settling onto dead animals and sending out green ‘roots’ to devour their bones. In fact, such worms do exist in the deep sea. They were first discovered in 2002 by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), who were using a robot submarine to explore Monterey Canyon. But that wasn’t the end of the story. After ‘planting’ several dead whales on the seafloor, a team of biologists recently announced that as many as 15 different species of boneworms may live in Monterey Bay alone. After years of study, the researchers have begun to piece together the bizarre story of the boneworms, all of which are in the genus Osedax: here.

November 6, 2009

Urban butterflies and dragonflies [Plants etc., Environment, Invertebrates] — Administrator @ 5:36 pm

This is a National Geographic video about butterflies.

At the urban birds conference, there was also a lecture about insects.

It was by Kars Veling, about Butterflies and dragonflies in cities: more than food for birds.

There are quite some butterfly species in Dutch cities and towns. For one category of butterflies, that is not surprising. These are the species who are not so selective about environments. Caterpillars of species like red admiral, peacock, and small tortoiseshell are dependent on stinging nettles, plants which grow even in city centres.

With some luck, one may also see more selective butterfly species in urban environments, like the comma, and meadow brown.

There are also some really specialized species in Dutch cities. As far as we know, the white-letter hairstreak in the Netherlands lives only in Heerlen city. The brown hairstreak numbers are going down in the countryside, but are stable in cities like Wageningen and Zwolle.

Kars Veling once saw 700 common blue butterflies in the ancient town Naarden. He had never seen so many together. Their caterpillars eat bird’s-foot trefoil, abundant in Naarden.

Essex skipper butterflies may also flourish in urban environments. Provided that lawns are not mown, destroying the eggs.

Brown argus butterflies also thrive in cities sometimes, especially on temporarily fallow land.

In an oak tree, there may be 50-70 butterfly or moth caterpillar species.

Plants which attract butterflies: here.

Dragonflies and damselflies in cities, like elsewhere, are dependent on clear water. In muddy water, their larvae will not be able to see far enough, and will die. If you want willow emerald damselflies in your city, you need trees as well as clear water: because the adults deposit their eggs in autumn in trees standing close to water. If the larvae hatch in spring, they drop straight into the water. So, don’t cut down all trees near the water. But also don’t let big trees grow all along the water, for then the water becomes too shady. Try to find a balance.

What’s a city-dweller to do — you want to help fight climate change, but does planting trees in the city really make a difference? Can urban forests help sequester carbon and offset emissions? Here.

Insect pollination before flowers evolved [Plants etc., Invertebrates] — Administrator @ 12:10 am


This video is called A Panorpa scorpionfly from Frohnleiten, Austria.

From Science News:

Pollination in the pre-flower-power era

Scorpionflies may have aided plant reproduction long before blossoms evolved

By Sid Perkins

An obscure group of scorpionflies with specialized mouthparts may have pollinated ancient plants millions of years before flowers evolved, a new study suggests.

Fossils indicate that before flowers evolved about 130 million years ago, most plants with seeds were wind-pollinated. Yet the pollen grains of some plants that lived in the prefloral era were too big to be wind-dispersed, say Conrad Labandeira, a paleoentomologist at Smithsonian Institution’s

National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Also, he notes, pollen receptors were hidden deep within some of those plants and wouldn’t have been readily exposed to windborne pollen.

Now, in the Nov. 6 Science, Labandeira and his colleagues propose that an ancient group of scorpionflies might be counted among the missing pollinators of such plants.

The researchers analyzed 21 specimens of scorpionflies representing 11 long-extinct species, with body lengths ranging from 3 to 28 millimeters. Most of these insects were preserved in rocks laid down as fine-grained sediments, but one had been preserved in amber, says Labandeira. The fossil record suggests that these creatures were rare but present in Eurasia throughout a 62-million-year interval that began around 164 million years ago, well before flowers evolved, and stretched into the early evolution of blooms.

All of these scorpionfly specimens have long, siphon-like mouthparts capable of sucking liquids — in one case, the proboscis is about one-third the length of the insect’s body. Because pollen grains could be too large to fit through the slim siphons, the researchers suggest that the pollen stuck to ridges or hairlike structures on the creatures’ mouthparts or face as they fed on nutrient-rich fluids produced by the plants. Then, the insects carried the pollen from plant to plant as they foraged, just as modern-day pollinators do.

Labandeira and his colleagues didn’t find any pollen on or around the fossil insects they analyzed. “That was really disappointing,” Labandeira notes. But, he adds, the pollen may have decomposed or otherwise not been preserved in the sediments for any number of reasons. On the other hand, the amber that entombed one well-preserved scorpionfly didn’t contain any pollen, either — which probably reflects a true absence of pollen in that case, possibly due to entrapment of the insect at a pollen-poor time of year.

Grains of pollen preserved with such specimens would be the missing piece of evidence to definitively link these scorpionflies to the pollination of ancient plants, says Jeff Ollerton, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Northampton in England. But he’s not surprised that pollen hasn’t been found. “Evidence for species interactions rarely fossilizes,” he notes.

See also here. And here.

USA: New research on the Joshua tree and its insect pollinators: here.

November 2009. A rare species of fly that has only been found south of the border until now was recorded for the first time in Scotland this summer. Naturalists carrying out a survey of insect life at National Trust for Scotland’s Rockcliffe nature reserve near Dalbeattie on the Solway Firth have come across an unusual species of Soldier Fly - Chorisops tibialis - which is found occasionally in more Southerly areas of the UK: here.

November 4, 2009

New marine species discoveries off New Zealand [Economic, social, trade union, etc., Environment, Fish, Invertebrates, Biology] — Administrator @ 2:20 pm


This video from New Zealand says about itself:

Carinate Rattail - (Macrourus carinatus)

This weird (ugly) fish is from 1061m deep. From off north-east Chatham Rise, east of New Zealand.

From the Otago Daily Times in New Zealand:
Scientists discover new deep sea life off NZ coast

Wed, 4 Nov 2009

A deep-sea marine biodiversity survey of seamounts on the Chatham Rise has produced a bounty of new species.

The finds were made by National Institute of Water Atmospheric Research (Niwa) research vessel Tangaroa, on 18-day voyage in July along the Chatham Rise.

The rise stretches for 1000km from near the South Island eastward.

The finds include a coral genus Narella and nicknamed “Rasta” because of its long white dreadlock-like branches; a tiny squat lobster measuring 1cm across; and some specimens of sea urchin which are commonly known as Tam O’Shanters due to their similarity to the Scottish hat.

“There are three new corals that we are confident are new species from the area,” said scientist Di Tracey. …

Three surveys of the Graveyard region since 2001 have revealed high levels of biodiversity, and many undescribed species.

They include benthic macroinvertebrates — animals without backbones that are larger than millimetre long — such as corals, sponges, seastars, snails, lobsters, clams, and marine worms.

The first survey alone showed 15 percent of the species collected were unknown in the New Zealand region, plus 14 species new to science. Six new species of lace coral were discovered in the second survey in 2006.

Seamounts can be ecologically valuable as hotspots of biodiversity and economically valuable and they are often the target of commercial fishing.

But the Chatham Rise — where the fishing industry wiped out the commercial viability of the orange roughy through overfishing — is also being targeted by miners eyeing its multi-billion dollar phosphate resources.

Widespread Energy and its parent company Widespread Portfolios applied in August 2007 for a prospecting licence over a 3048 square kilometre area of the rise.

It hoped that 100 million tonnes of phosphorite (rock phosphate) valued at more than $50 billion can be scraped off the seabed.

And an Auckland company Chatham Phosphate Ltd has applied for another 71,750sq km around the Widespread prospect.

October 31, 2009

Spider web from dinosaur age discovered [Plants etc., Reptiles, Invertebrates, Biology] — Administrator @ 11:14 pm


Spider Research Offers Fossil Insight

This video says about itself:

A team of British researchers have been rebuilding fossils of 300-million year old spiders using computer 3-D technology- they say they are providing a clearer picture of how some extinct species once lived on early Earth.
From the BBC:
Saturday, 31 October 2009

Spider web confirmed as ‘oldest’

Spider webs encased in amber which were discovered on an East Sussex beach have been confirmed by scientists as being the world’s oldest on record.

The amber, which was found in Bexhill by fossil hunter Jamie Hiscocks and his brother Jonathan, dates back 140 million years to the Cretaceous period.

Professor Martin Brasier said they were the earliest webs to be incorporated into the fossil record.

He has published his findings in the Journal of the Geological Society.

Professor Brasier, who is a palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford, said: “This amber is very rare. It comes from the very base of the Cretaceous, which makes it one of the oldest ambers anywhere to have inclusions in it.”

‘Sticky droplets’

He added: “These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky droplets along the spider web threads to trap prey.

“We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber. These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge.”

His studies revealed that the spider that spun the web is related to the modern day orb-web or garden spider.

Scientists think the web became trapped in conifer resin after a forest fire and then became fossilised inside the resulting amber.

Mr Hiscocks and his brother also found the fossilised remains of an Iguanodon jaw bone on the coastline.

The brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa, has a bad and largely undeserved reputation. Across the U.S., people fear the bite of this spider, believing it is an aggressive attacker and certain to cause devastating necrotic wounds. Research on brown recluse spiders has proven these assertions to be false: here.

Pondskater and long-tailed tits [Birds, Invertebrates] — Administrator @ 4:57 pm


This video says about itself:

Pond skater. Gerris sp. feeding on ants that have fallen from bushes and are trapped in the surface tension. Also close up view of adult and nymph.
Today, in the brook in the botanical garden, a pondskater.

Just outside the garden, a group of long-tailed tits.

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