News by Subject Biology

New research by the University of Plymouth represents one of the first studies to examine the effectiveness of targeted lionfish removals from both an ecological and a socio-economic perspective.

Scientists have developed a new way to model and map the health of coral reef ecosystems using data collected on the Global Reef Expedition. This innovative method, presented today at the International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS), can determine which natural and anthropogenic factors are most likely to lead to persistently vibrant coral and fish communities. Their findings can help scientists identify the reefs most likely to survive in a changing world.

For more than a century, researchers have relied on flat sketches of sharks' digestive systems to discern how they function -- and how what they eat and excrete impacts other species in the ocean. Now, researchers have produced a series of high-resolution, 3D scans of intestines from nearly three dozen shark species that will advance the understanding of how sharks eat and digest their food.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba find that the combined effects of ocean warming and acidification in temperate marine ecosystems are resulting in a loss of kelp habitat and a shift to a simple turf-dominated ecosystem. Such changes will lead to a loss of the ecosystem services provided by productive macroalgal forests or tropicalized coral-dominated reefs. These results highlight the need for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

What happens when climate change affects the abundance and distribution of fish? Fishers and fishing communities in the Northeast United States have adapted to those changes in three specific ways, according to new research published in Frontiers in Marine Science.

Until now, fisheries have set catch levels a year in advance. Long-term influences such as changes in water temperatures are not taken into account. In an international project, researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon have now developed a computational model that can estimate the future of cod a full ten years in advance - taking into both account fishing and climate. The fishing industry has a completely new planning tool at its disposal. The study was published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment.

A vast seabird colony on Ascension Island creates a "halo" in which fewer fish live, new research shows.

Microscopic scales covering a shark's body--dermal denticles--from fossil and modern reefs show how shark communities have changed since humans arrived on the scene.