Research Highlights |
Featured
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Research Highlights |
Infected faeces kill coral
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Research Highlights |
Mapping reef stress
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News |
Seafood suffers from fishy eco-labelling
Chilean sea bass certified 'green' aren't necessarily so.
- Amanda Mascarelli
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News |
Little Mexican reserve boasts big recovery
Marine protected area sees fish increase fourfold, sharks tenfold, in a decade.
- Nicola Jones
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News |
Cod genome reveals unusual immune system
Missing molecules show evolutionary flexibility, and may help fish farmers.
- George Wigmore
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Article |
Hydrogen is an energy source for hydrothermal vent symbioses
- Jillian M. Petersen
- , Frank U. Zielinski
- & Nicole Dubilier
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Letter |
Sensitivity of coccolithophores to carbonate chemistry and ocean acidification
- L. Beaufort
- , I. Probert
- & C. de Vargas
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Letter |
Transient dynamics of an altered large marine ecosystem
- Kenneth T. Frank
- , Brian Petrie
- & William C. Leggett
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News |
Coral genomes could aid reef conservation
Sequences of two species shed light on corals' response to stress and disease.
- Ewen Callaway
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Letter
| Open AccessUsing the Acropora digitifera genome to understand coral responses to environmental change
- Chuya Shinzato
- , Eiichi Shoguchi
- & Nori Satoh
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News |
Commercially valuable fish species hit the red list
Study shows perilous state of fish stocks as management meeting begins.
- Daniel Cressey
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World View |
Fishery reform slips through the net
Upcoming change fails to tackle the pernicious relationship between government advisers and the fishing lobby, says Rainer Froese.
- Rainer Froese
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News |
Migration tracking reveals marine Serengeti
Decade of tagging has mapped predatorial pathways in the north Pacific Ocean.
- Zoë Corbyn
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Letter |
Tracking apex marine predator movements in a dynamic ocean
- B. A. Block
- , I. D. Jonsen
- & D. P. Costa
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News |
Too few fish in the sea
Scientists and NGOs wary amid ambitious European fisheries reform.
- Daniel Cressey
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News |
Wayward whale not a fluke
Warming Arctic cited as likely cause of freak migration.
- Nadia Drake
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Books & Arts |
Books in brief
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News |
Cod ranching could keep fishermen flush
Analysis shows training wild fish to herd is economically advantageous.
- Daniel Cressey
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News Q&A |
Virgin Oceanic plumbs the depths for science
Mission scientists discuss what Richard Branson's deep-sea quest hopes to find.
- Daniel Cressey
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Books & Arts |
Books in brief
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Letter |
An armoured Cambrian lobopodian from China with arthropod-like appendages
The 'Cambrian explosion', just over 500 million years ago, was a burst of evolution during which most kinds of animals we see today first appeared in the fossil record. They were, however, accompanied by a large number of creatures whose lineages were destined to disappear. Among these were the lobopodians, creatures vaguely related to modern arthropods and the velvet worms of tropical forests, and which — like velvet worms — looked more like worms with legs. Lobopodians came in a variety of bizarre forms, and the discovery of a lobopodian from the Cambrian of China adds to this group. It looked like a thin, flexible worm with oddly inappropriate, chunky, armoured legs. It is claimed that this creature was, however, the closest known fossil relative of modern arthropods, suggesting that the process of acquiring the robust external skeleton characteristic of the group started with the legs, and worked upwards from there.
- Jianni Liu
- , Michael Steiner
- & Xingliang Zhang
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Letter |
Acoelomorph flatworms are deuterostomes related to Xenoturbella
New molecular research has pulled acoel flatworms from their basal position in animal evolution, uniting them with creatures such as echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins and allies) — indeed, very much closer to the chordates, the group that includes ourselves. The work follows previous revelations that Xenoturbella, a simple flatworm of mysterious evolutionary connections, also belonged to this group. The research implies that acoels are not primitively simple, as had been thought, but have lost features such as a body cavity, anus and gill slits.
- Hervé Philippe
- , Henner Brinkmann
- & Maximilian J. Telford
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Research Highlights |
Whales found where whaling was
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News |
Deepwater Horizon dispersants lingered in the deep
Chemicals' toxicity to deep-water ecosystems remains an open question.
- Amanda Mascarelli
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News & Views |
Why are whales big?
Different groups of diving vertebrates vary greatly in size, with whales being by far the largest. A comparative investigation of the links between swimming speed, size and metabolism provides clues to the reasons.
- Graeme D. Ruxton
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News |
Orcas find shark diet a real grind
Killer whales wear their teeth to the gums by gnawing on the big fish.
- Nicola Jones
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News |
Queensland floods hit Great Barrier Reef
Corals threatened by huge volume of polluted fresh water pulsing into World Heritage Site.
- James Mitchell Crow
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News & Views |
The price tag
Studies of animal populations often use tags to track the fate of individuals and assume that there is no adverse impact. Work on penguins shows that seemingly innocuous flipper bands affect survival and breeding success. See Letter p.203
- Rory P. Wilson
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Letter |
Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change
Much of what we know about the behaviour of animals in the wild comes from studies in which individual animals are marked for identification purposes. But can the marking itself affect the outcome? This study shows that it does. In a ten-year study on king penguins in the Antarctic, penguins sporting identification bands on their wings had significantly lower long-term fitness than unmarked penguins. This study should give pause for thought to researchers seeking to discover the behaviour of animals in the wild.
- Claire Saraux
- , Céline Le Bohec
- & Yvon Le Maho
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News & Views |
Toxic Cambrian oceans
Isotopic evidence from carbon and sulphur points to the spread of anoxia and toxic sulphide as the chief culprits in at least one of a series of crises for marine ecosystems during the nascent stages of early animal evolution. See Letter p.80
- Graham Shields-Zhou
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News |
Fish-farm lice acquitted of killing wild fish
Sea lice from ocean pen farms might not be a menace to wild salmon.
- Emma Marris
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Research Highlights |
Zoology: Showcasing the sea's strange secrets
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News Q&A |
Sailing into the unknown
Oceanographer Patricia Yager explains what the research cruise she is leading could reveal about the future of the Antarctic.
- Jane Qiu
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Research Highlights |
Genomics: Similar bodies, different genomes
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News |
Coral bleaching goes from bad to worse
Raised ocean temperatures result in severe damage to reefs in the Caribbean.
- Melissa Gaskill
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News & Views |
Measuring biodiversity in marine ecosystems
The use of catch data to determine indicators of biodiversity such as 'mean trophic level' does not adequately measure ecosystem changes induced by fishing. Improved ways to assess those changes are required. See Letter p.431
- Joseph E. Powers
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News |
'Fishing down food chain' fails global test
A row has ignited over the finding that a key biodiversity indicator for fisheries is flawed.
- Daniel Cressey
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News |
Mediterranean sharks are Australian immigrants
Antipodean great whites took a wrong turn on the way to South Africa.
- Joseph Milton
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Letter |
The trophic fingerprint of marine fisheries
The health of marine ecosystems is traditionally assessed by measuring the mean trophic level (MTL) of fishery catches. These authors model catch MTL and actual ecosystem MTL, and show that the former is not a good measure of the latter. They then show that MTLs have actually been increasing in recent years, but that fisheries are still at risk of collapse because all trophic levels have been similarly affected.
- Trevor A. Branch
- , Reg Watson
- & Sean R. Tracey
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News |
Oil spill's toxic trade-off
Dispersed oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster could be more dangerous to wildlife than reports suggest.
- Richard A. Lovett
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News |
Bluefin tuna regulators under pressure
Investigation into fishing industry reveals a decade of violations.
- Anjali Nayar
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News |
Oil spill cruise finds field of dead coral
Scientific expedition assesses deep-sea damage in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Mark Schrope
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Research Highlights |
Ecology: Brave fish forage more
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Article
| Open AccessGenomic and functional adaptation in surface ocean planktonic prokaryotes
Using newly derived genome sequences of 137 marine microbial isolates as well as previously obtained genome and metagenome data, this study presents a functional analysis of picoplankton residing in the ocean's surface layer.
- Shibu Yooseph
- , Kenneth H. Nealson
- & J. Craig Venter
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News |
Underwater robot can follow marine organisms over record distances
Versatile vehicle can spend months studying ocean ecology.
- Sandeep Ravindran