The health of dolphin populations worldwide depends on sustained access to robust food sources. A new report by UC Santa Barbara researchers and colleagues at UC San Diego and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looks at three different dolphin species, studying what they eat and how they divide ocean resources and space — important information for conservation and management. The team’s findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE.
North Carolina State University researchers have received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop and test a system that would reduce populations of invasive mice on islands to help conserve threatened seabird populations. ... The project will also delve into community engagement and education efforts on gene drive systems, with NC State’s Jason Delborne, an associate professor of forestry and environmental resources, leading that effort.
Rather than conduct an aquatic roll call with nets to know which fish reside in a particular body of water, scientists can now use DNA fragments suspended in water to catalog invasive or native species. The research from Cornell, the University of Notre Dame and Hawaii Pacific University was published July 14 in Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Read more
Natalya Gallo is a PhD candidate in biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD and is an NSF graduate research fellow and a fellow of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. Her dissertation...
Samantha Alger is an Environmental Scientist/Pollinator Specialist at Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB) and a Research Affiliate in the Plant and Soil Science Department at the University of Vermont. She currently works to improve the...
Joan Dudney is an Assistant Professor of Global Change Ecology at the Bren School and the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Research in the Landscapes of Change (LOC) Lab is focused on...
Reducing the complexity of research on ocean ecosystems does not mean dumbing down your science, it means delivering science in a series of short chapters. If you can get the readers hooked, and don’t confuse them, you can tell a complex story. But that takes work and training that many scientists don’t have, writes Fellow Linwood Pendleton.
Researchers have revealed that declining plant diversity — from habitat loss, human use, and other environmental pressures — causes plants to flower earlier, and that the effects of diversity loss on the timing of flowering are similar in magnitude to the effects of global warming. The finding could have a powerful influence on the way scientists study ecosystem changes and measure the effects of global warming. Read more
Mark Elbroch, who leads the Teton Cougar Project, was bestowed with the Craighead Conservation Award, which has gone out to the likes of Steve Kilpatrick, Bruce Smith, Franz Camenzind, and Debra and Susan Patla. Read more
Well-regulated and well-managed marine protected areas (MPAs) established in biologically significant places benefit marine wildlife [1]. One lingering question, however, has been about the value of MPAs for conserving highly-mobile species, like sharks, that move easily across their boundaries. Robust shark populations are necessary to keep marine ecosystems healthy, and many shark populations are threatened by shark finning.
