On a quiet stretch of seafloor off southern Japan, a small pufferfish spends days carving a perfect circle into the sand – ridges, valleys, and a tidy nursery in the middle. Divers once called them ocean crop circles, beautiful and baffling, until cameras caught the artist in the act. The discovery didn’t just solve a ...
Sharks, rays, and other chondrichthyans have evolved a remarkable range of reproductive strategies, allowing them to thrive for hundreds of millions of years. Two particularly unusual methods—facultative parthenogenesis and multiple embryos per egg case (MEPE)—may provide key survival advantages, though scientists are still investigating their evolutionary benefits. Facultative Parthenogenesis: Reproduction Without Males Facultative parthenogenesis allows ...
Hundreds of miles from the nearest sunlight, in waters so cold and pressurized they would crush a submarine, life still finds a way to glow, grasp, and devour. The deep sea was once dismissed as a barren void, but over the past few decades, robotic submersibles and deep-diving cameras have revealed a world stranger ...
A new diver-operated microscope is revolutionizing coral research by allowing scientists to observe photosynthesis and microalgae behavior directly in the ocean. Developed by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Benthic Underwater Microscope Imaging PAM (BUMP) offers unprecedented access to coral bleaching and how they respond to environmental stress. A Technological Leap for Coral ...
It is amazing that some animals can stay underwater for hours or even months without breathing, even though their bodies are not designed to do so. Fish get oxygen from water through their gills, but marine animals that breathe air need to make amazing changes to their bodies and behavior to live in the deep. ...
In a remarkable discovery, scientists have found that certain deep-sea spiders are not predators or scavengers as once believed, but microbial farmers. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that these spiders cultivate and consume methane-oxidizing bacteria that grow directly on their exoskeletons. This newly described symbiosis offers a ...
New research has revealed that biofluorescence in marine fishes is far more ancient and widespread than previously believed. Studies show that this glowing trait has evolved independently more than 100 times over the past 112 million years. Led by scientists from the American Museum of Natural History, the findings highlight the evolutionary significance of biofluorescence ...
Beneath Bermuda’s bustling cities and sun-kissed beaches lies an undiscovered world full of evolutionary mysteries. Scientists have discovered Tetragoniceps bermudensis, a newly identified species of copepod, in the limestone caves of the Walsingham system, which are part of a complex cave system within Bermuda’s limestone mountains. This tiny crustacean, measuring only a few millimeters, is ...
Far beneath the ocean’s sunlit surface, in crushing darkness and near-freezing temperatures, lurks a creature once thought to be a rarity of the deep. Alicella gigantea, the world’s largest amphipod, a shrimp-like crustacean that grows up to 34 cm (13.4 inches) long has long been considered an elusive oddity. But groundbreaking new research reveals this ...
For decades, sharks were seen as silent hunters. A groundbreaking discovery reveals they’ve been “speaking” all along and the recordings will surprise you. Breaking the Silence: Sharks’ Unexpected Vocalization In a major breakthrough in marine biology, researchers have, for the first time, recorded sharks intentionally producing sounds challenging the long-standing belief that these creatures are ...
