Image Credit: Flickr.com.

How Amoeboid Architects Build Some of the Ocean’s Most Intricate Homes

7/3/2024 - By Joanna Klein. Xenophyophores can craft multichambered compounds that resemble morel mushrooms. EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT THE OCEAN’S flashier builders—the corals that sculpt reefs, the mollusks that spin up perfect pearls. But thousands of feet down, underappreciated creatures called xenophyophores work hard to build themselves some of the most fascinating homes on… SEE MORE
Scientists study shipwreck sites to better understand ecological processes like succession, zonation, connectivity, energy flow, disturbance, and degradation. In the future, shipwrecks may provide opportunities to establish a global monitoring network for studying these processes in aquatic environments. Illustration by Alex Boersma.

Scientists Study Shipwrecks to Understand Underwater Ecology

1/28/2024 - By coastalscience.noaa.gov. In a newly published paper in BioScience, NCCOS scientists collaborated with an international team of ecologists and archaeologists to describe how shipwrecks provide a unique opportunity to study complex ecological processes. The synthesis focuses on a range of fundamental ecological functions and processes and how they manifest on and around shipwrecks.… SEE MORE