Ecology & Zoology

Extinct Passenger Pigeon Gets A New Place On The Phylogenetic Tree

Evolutionary detectives have used century-old bits of DNA from museum specimens to find a place for the extinct passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, in the family tree of pigeons and doves, identifying for the first time this unique bird's closes ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 6 2010 - 11:27am

The Most Mediagenic Squid

Humboldt squid: news when you see 'em, news when you don't. Now, the mystery deepens: It seems the Humboldt squid, the locusts of the ocean, have vanished from the Pacific north of California this year. ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Oct 6 2010 - 2:00pm

Herd Immunity For Plants- How GMOs Can Save Agriculture

"Anti-science" or "cautious"... how you regard skeptics of positions that are ethically or scientifically subjective is often a matter of how you already believe.   If you are a Republican concerned about the ethical implications of hum ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Oct 8 2010 - 1:38pm

Feliz Dia de los Pulpos!

Octopus Day 2010 finds me in La Paz, Mexico, eating a homemade corn tortilla with Oaxacan cheese. It is extremely delicious. After the trip to Madagascar, where I found that dairy is just not part of the culture, it pleases my lactophilic sensibilities to ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Oct 8 2010 - 6:35pm

Squid Unavailable, Presumed to be Celebrating

Today is the last of the International Cephalopod Awareness Days: Squid Day! Naturally Squid-A-Day is feeling very festive. Sorry I missed Day Two--yesterday was the first day of the squid workshop and I was exceedingly occupied. Fittingly enough, today wa ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Oct 11 2010 - 12:35am

Squid Egg Masses Are 100% Awesome

Well! The last day of the squid fertilization workshop was just as exciting, in its own way, as Sunday's fishing excusion.     The workshop's dozen participants hail from Mexico, Peru, Brazil, USA, Germany, Russia, and Spain. But our passion for ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Oct 13 2010 - 1:54pm

Chivalrous Squid?

"Male of Dosidicus are gentlesquid." That was today's last hypothesis. In fact, it was the very last sentence of the last slide of the last talk of the first day of the 5th International Symposium on Pacific Squid. It was announced by the ve ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Oct 14 2010 - 1:01am

Squid snot and other trivia

Fun facts from the second day* of the Fifth International Symposium on Pacific Squids: 1. Which cephalopod has the smallest babies? 2. Mucus is often used for protection, like the stuff in our noses, which collects bacteria and dust that would otherwise be ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Oct 15 2010 - 9:07am

Squid trivia answers

Here are the answers to yesterday's questions: 1. The two contenders for World's Smallest Baby Cephalopod are ommastrephid squid (the family that includes Humboldt squid) and argonaut octopuses. Both groups have paralarvae that hatch at less than ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Oct 16 2010 - 8:04am

Are Squid Fisheries Intrinsically Sustainable?

The Squid Symposium ended on Friday, and on Saturday those of us who were still here in La Paz took a day trip to Isla Espiritu Santo, a gorgeous island where we snorkled in bath-warm seawater with sea lions, pufferfish, and other natural wonders. Various ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Oct 17 2010 - 2:17pm