Global warming threat to coral reefs: Can some species adapt?

Coral reefs are among the ecosystems most severely threatened by global warming, but hopeful new evidence has emerged that some coral species may be able to adapt to warmer oceans.

In a study published in the journal PLoS One, an international team of researchers reports that coral populations which unexpectedly survived a massive bleaching event in 2010 in South-East Asian waters had previously experienced severe bleaching during an event in 1998.

New ocean acidification study shows added danger to already struggling reefs

Rosenstiel School scientists illustrate threat of increased carbon dioxide to coral reproduction

A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science suggests that over the next century recruitment of new corals could drop by 73 per cent, as rising CO₂ levels turn the oceans more acidic. The research findings reveal a new danger to the already threatened Caribbean and Florida reef Elkhorn corals

Worst coral death strikes at SE Asia

International marine scientists say that a huge coral death which has struck Southeast Asian and Indian Ocean reefs over recent months has highlighted the urgency of controlling global carbon emissions.

Many reefs are dead or dying across the Indian Ocean and into the Coral Triangle following a bleaching event that extends from the Seychelles in the west to Sulawesi and the Philippines in the east and include reefs in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and many sites in western and eastern Indonesia.

New monitor lizard discovered in Indonesia

Varanus obor, the Sago monitor, or Torch monitor lizard.A newly discovered species of monitor lizard, a close relative of the Komodo dragon, was reported in the journal Zootaxa this week by a professor at UC Santa Barbara and a researcher from Finland.

Sam Sweet, a professor in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UCSB, and Valter Weijola, a graduate student at Abo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, are the first to describe the distinctive lizard, which lives in the Moluccan islands of east Indonesia. Sweet is an authority on monitor lizard biology.

Commercial fishing estimated to kill millions of sea turtles

The number of sea turtles inadvertently snared by commercial fishing gear over the past 20 years may reach into the millions, according to the first peer-reviewed study to compile sea turtle bycatch data from gillnet, trawl and longline fisheries worldwide.

The study, which was published online April 6 in the journal Conservation Letters, analyzed data compiled from peer-reviewed papers, government reports, technical reports, and symposia proceedings published between 1990 and 2008. All data were based on direct onboard observations or interviews with fishermen. The study did not include data from recreational fishing.

Seabed biodiversity in oxygen minimum zones

Abundant populations of the deep-sea spider crab Encephaloides armstrongi from c. 1,000 m (lower boundary OMZ) in the Gulf of Oman and the dead bodies of large upper-ocean jellyfish (Crambionella orsini) which can occur in plague proportions in the Gulf of Oman.
Credit: NOCS/NERCSome regions of the deep ocean floor support abundant populations of organisms, despite being overlain by water that contains very little oxygen, according to an international study led by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. But global warming is likely to exacerbate oxygen depletion and thereby reduce biodiversity in these regions, they warn.

The sunlit surface waters tend to be well oxygenated as a result of their connection with the atmosphere. Here, tiny marine algae called phytoplankton thrive. When they die and sink, they are degraded by bacteria, using oxygen from the water column.

Octopus: A Convincing Mimic

Scientists report octopus imitating flounder in the Atlantic. Remarkable strategy evolved to avoid predators.

On the open sand plains of the Caribbean seafloor, where soft-bodied animals are routinely exposed to predators, camouflage can be key to survival. Perhaps no group of animals is quite as adept at blending in with its surroundings as cephalopods, who along with relatives the cuttlefish and squid, have evolved a unique skin system that can instantaneously change their appearance.

New insights into helping marine species cope with climate change

Move, adapt or die. Those are the options marine plants and animals have in the face of climate change, said Stanford biologist Steve Palumbi, who has been exploring how to help them go with the first two options, rather than the third. He's come up with some surprising answers.

Palumbi will be discussing the results of his research in two talks at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

Tool use in Veined Octopus

Museum Victoria’s Julian Finn and Mark Norman have recorded the first case of tool use – sophisticated behaviour generally limited to mammals and birds – in an invertebrate.

The Veined Octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, uses foreign objects for shelter, which is common in octopuses and is not itself considered tool use. However the Veined Octopus goes a step further and prepares, manipulates and carries coconut shells up to 20 metres to reassemble its shelter elsewhere.