Impact of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on Coral Communities Is Deeper and Broader than Predicted

Credit: Fisher lab, Penn State UniversityA new discovery of two additional coral communities showing signs of damage from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill expands the impact footprint of the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery was made by a team led by Charles Fisher, professor of biology at Penn State University. A paper describing this work and additional impacts of human activity on corals in the Gulf of Mexico will be published during the last week of July 2014 in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The footprint of the impact of the spill on coral communities is both deeper and wider than previous data indicated," said Fisher. "This study very clearly shows that multiple coral communities, up to 22 kilometres from the spill site and at depths over 1800 meters, were impacted by the spill."

Alaska Wood Frogs: Surviving Sub-Zero Winter

An Alaska wood frog creates a hibernaculum from duff and leaf litter in a spruce forest on the Fairbanks campus in preparation for the long winter freeze.Repeated freezing and thawing might not be good for the average steak, but each fall it might help wood frogs prepare to survive Alaska’s winter cold.

“Alaska wood frogs spend more time freezing and thawing outside than a steak does in your freezer, and the frog comes back to life in the spring in better shape than the steak,” said Don Larson, University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student and lead author on a recent paper demonstrating that freeze tolerance in Alaska wood frogs is more extreme than previously thought.

Although wood frogs are well-studied freeze-tolerant amphibians, Larson’s research is believed to be the first to examine the frogs under natural conditions.