Conservation Science

"From Florida's key deer to Hawaii's monk seals, some of our most amazing creatures could be doomed as the oceans swallow up their last habitat and nesting sites," said Shaye Wolf, the center's climate science director. "If we don't move fast to cut carbon pollution and protect ecosystems, climate chaos could do tremendous damage to our web of life," she said. "Federal wildlife officials have to step up efforts to protect America's endangered species from the deadly threat of rising seas."

It has been more than two years since the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster hammered the Gulf of Mexico with an unprecedented 200 million gallons of crude oil, but we are still seeing the effects today. Coast Guard officials have confirmed that an oil slick found in the Gulf last week matched oil from the spill two years ago.

Mark Elbroch has contributed to puma research in Idaho, Colorado, California, Wyoming, and Chile, and lots of other carnivores along the way. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Davis, where his dissertation research focused on puma ecology in Patagonia in the presence of endangered humeul deer. He has authored/coauthored 10 books on natural history and numerous scientific articles published in peer-review journals. Mark is currently a Project Leader for Panthera, a US-based non-profit that conducts science to promote wild cat conservation worldwide.

There’s a great interview of anthropologist David Howes in the 14 September 2103 NewScientist (subscription access) about the role of synesthesia in marketing products. Synestesia—the sense of mixing senses (experiencing color as a flavor, for example) is often portrayed as a special sense that all of us dabble in, but a select odd few (the Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov, for example) experience in its fullness.

“The assumption has been that males and females associate to mate, period,” Elbroch said. “Yet I’m seeing video after video of adult males and females sharing a carcass. We’ve had seven cats at once at a kill site—a male, two females, and four kittens.” He punched up a video of them. They looked like an American lion pride. Read more

A group of students from the University of Maine-Machias made a bittersweet discovery this week. They found an Asian shore crab on Great Wass Island in Beals, the northernmost point where the crab has been sighted. The excitement of their discovery was tinged with disappointment, however, because the Asian shore crab is an invasive species that threatens Maine’s coastal ecosystem.

New NOAA-led research on tagged humpback whales in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary reveals a variety of previously unknown feeding techniques along the seafloor. Rather than a single bottom feeding behavior, the whales show three distinct feeding approaches: simple side-rolls, side-roll inversions, and repetitive scooping.

Songbirds comprise a large amount of biodiversity in any ecosystem and in any habitat. They're also important indicators of changes to that habitat. But many songbird species migrate hundreds or thousands of miles, creating a challenge for scientists who are eager to learn more about these extraordinary creatures.

The morning air smells of balsam and wet duff as Adrienne Leppold sets out on a narrow trail to check the mist nets she set up before dawn to capture birds in a patch of forest in Orono. A great-crested flycatcher cries “wheep, WHEEP,” one of a dozen or so species calling and singing in the trees. Leppold doesn’t pause, however, to scan the branches. She makes a beeline for the nets, followed by three students she’s teaching the precise and delicate art of banding birds.