Category: Nature - Page 2

Weird and wonderful species adapted to their hostile habitats

By Amy Whetstone, Qualifications and Skills Officer at the Society of Biology The yeti crab and axolotl are two bizarre but brilliant species that are rarely in the limelight, but I believe deserve to be. So broaden your animal lexicon and spread the word about these peculiar aquatic species, who have adapted to cope in the harsh and inhospitable conditions they inhabit. Yeti crab, Kiwa hirsuta. This pale eerie-looking crab is so named because of its long hairy arms. It has good reason, however, for its strange appearance, not least the inhospitable environment in which it lives. The yeti crab was first discovered in 2005 at a depth of over 2200 meters which explains it pale appearance; no sunlight penetrates this depth so there is no need for fancy colours. So deep in fact that it can only be reached by using an unmanned submersible. The next…

Is panda PR a good idea?

by Rebecca Nesbit, Press Officer, Society of Biology Panda conservation is not ‘greenwash’ read the headline of BBC Nature’s thought-provoking write-up of the Biology Week debate ‘should we save the panda’. This referred to the evening’s extensive discussion about the use (and misuse) of pandas in conservation PR. Whether or not you think it is important to make popular animals a conservation priority, the belief that pandas attract more conservation resources than they use is a common reason for voting that we should indeed save the panda. As poster boys, charismatic species can attract money and increase the profile of conservation (and conservation organisations). It is surprisingly complicated to determine whether, overall, the panda brings in more money for conservation than it uses. Zoos raise money for conservation in the wild, but would people who paid for entry into a zoo still come if there were no pandas to…

Podcast: should we save the panda?

by Rebecca Nesbit With just five days to go until the Biology Week debate, ‘Do we need pandas? Choosing which species to save’, the votes on the Society of Biology website poll are swinging in favour of the panda. To help me decide which way to vote, I produced this podcast in which I interview three conservationists about conservation and the choices we make – everything from controlling non-native species to protecting them. I will be live tweeting as @Society_Biology from the event on Monday night using the hashtag #pandadebate and will be taking questions to put to the panel. If you have any questions in advance, please add them to the comments below. I’d also be very interested to hear your views on any of the issues I raised in the podcast, and those debated under my last blog post. My podcast guests were: Mark Avery, Zara Gladman and Matthew Hatchwell

bTB or not bTB? How to control it is still the question

Guest post by Catherine O’Connor, Epidemiologist for the Health Protection Services, discussing the badger cull As an epidemiologist, my job is to understand the how, what, when, where and whys of disease transmission. Though we now possess much fancier tools than those used by the father of epidemiology, John Snow (he of the Broad Street pump and cholera fame), it is by tackling these age-old questions that we attempt to understand and ultimately eradicate disease. But sometimes it’s not as easy as just removing a pump-handle. For humans we have two main methods of controlling infectious diseases, either we protect the susceptible individuals or we quarantine infected individuals. Often methods are used in combination for maximum effect. For animals, we have one additional control measure in our repertoire: culling. Culling animals is used not just to control disease (enzootic and zoonotic) but also to reduce human-animal conflicts…

Bumblebees’ gruesome parasites

Guest blog by Sive Finlay, a PhD student from Trinity College Dublin who recently won Best Biology Student at the 2012 SET awards for her undergraduate project Bee populations are in severe decline, an alarming and worrying trend when you consider their vital importance as commercial and ecological pollinators. Research and media attention often focuses on afflictions of honeybees such as the Varroa mite and colony collapse disorder. However, parasites are also major contributors to the plight of the bumble bee. Bumble bee queens spend 6-9 months in diapause, a hibernation-like state which allows them to survive harsh winter weather. My research demonstrated that queens have reduced immune function during this time, leaving them vulnerable to infections and parasitic attack. Sphaerularia is a common yet poorly studied nematode which is found primarily in the Northern hemisphere, infecting up to 50% of queen bumble bees in some areas. Adult female Sphaerularia present in…

Species of the week: the crayfish

My name is Zara and I’m an “astacologist”, which is a fancy way of saying that I study crayfish, lobster-like freshwater crustaceans of which there are more than 640 described species. In Australia, they go by the name of “yabby” (as in “Yabby Creek” – Home and Away fans will understand). In the American South, they’re called “crawfish” (Elvis Presley sang a rather catchy song about them in the film King Creole). In other parts of the world, they’re known as “crawdads” or “mudbugs”. Crayfish are a fantastically diverse group, ranging in size from the tiny (2.5 cm) swamp crayfish (Tenuibranchiurus glypticus) of Australia to the giant Tasmanian crayfish (Astacopsis gouldi), which grows to over 80 cm and can weigh a whopping 5 kilograms! Crayfish are also diverse in their choice of habitat, surviving in rivers, lakes and even caves. And they’re not fussy eaters either,…