EcoWorldly

Perhaps fewer than 5,000 Komodo dragons remain in the wild - victims of poaching, human encroachment, and loss of prey due to human hunting.

Wild Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) inhabit Komodo National Park in the center of Indonesia’s archipelago. The park is comprised of the islands of Komodo, Pada, and Rinca. The limited range of the Komodo dragon makes this species vulnerable to extinction.

To help raise awareness for these large and lovely lizards, here are 11 things you didn’t know about Komodo dragons — and a compilation of adorable photos! Enjoy!
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This week in the journal Nature scientists give the most comprehensive view of thinning ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica to date.

Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of Bristol analyzed 50 million satellite measurements (from NASA) to show the massive ice loss on these polar giants.

The result are surprising, even to the scientists.
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Phobos– the largest and innermost moon of Mars. Note the large crater shown in the lower right, known as ‘Sickney’.

The proposed experiment is called LIFE -Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment–and will be placed aboard Phobos-Grunt, a joint Russian-American mission to Phobos, the largest (and innermost) of Mars’s two moons (the smaller being Deimos). If all goes according to plan, it will be the first time living creatures from Earth will be sent intentionally beyond our Earth - Moon system.

The samples to be sent include four species of bacteria: Deinococcus radiodurans (a radiation resistant bacterium), along with three species of Archea (ancient, bacterial, life forms also known as “extremophiles” due to their ability to thrive in ultra-harsh conditions), several tardigrades (”water bears” - tiny, eight-limbed invertebrates known for their ability to repair their DNA), numerous yeast spores, seeds from the mouse-eared, cress plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and a soil sample from Israel’s Negev desert.

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Wildlife experts fear that the spread of an AIDS-like virus could force already threatened koalas into extinction.

Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations are in serious decline - victims of habitat loss, domestic dog predation, vehicular deaths, and bushfires.

Sadly, a new and deadly danger is facing the iconic koala: The koala retrovirus.

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Scientists have discovered that sunspots are not the only thing from the Sun that have a significant and varied impact on the Earth.

There is a “solar cycle” of approximately 11 years. Variation of the Sun’s impact on the Earth during those 11 years is generally thought to be due to sunspots. The Sun also shoots high-speed winds at the Earth, however, and scientists have just discovered that these super winds significantly affect the Earth in several ways.

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Charles Darwin, 1879

In this the 150th anniversary year of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (and the 200th anniversary year of his birth), it is worth returning to that era of profound discovery and re-examining some of the controversies and earlier evolutionary theories begotten in the years just preceding its publication.

Today (and ever since Origin), the core, controversial idea of evolution tends to be rather simplistically summed up as: “We are descended from apes”. Of course, Darwinism, as it came to be called, was far more than this simplistic distillation. Even still, Darwin’s description of evolution as “descent with modification”, as well as his positing of vast geologic time scales, the agencies of natural and sexual selection, and a common ancestry to all living creatures, were not the fundamental, conceptual causes of the controversies.

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A team of biologists and filmmakers have discovered new species of rats, spiders, fish and frogs on a recent expedition deep inside the jungle of Papua New Guinea.  The team discovered many exotic creatures, including a ginormous rat, while filming the BBC’s Lost Land of the Volcano.   Read the rest of this entry »

In a heartbreaking setback to Sumatran rhino conservation, the Cincinnati Zoo’s beloved Emi has died.

Emi the Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) was the heart of the world’s only successful captive breeding program for the critically endangered species.

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Despite the world’s dwindling frog populations, the demand for frog meat is increasing. Should a sustainable approach to wild frog harvesting be considered or could frog farming be a viable alternative to harvesting wild frogs?

A study out late last year points out that the overharvesting of wild frog populations for food is contributing to the decline of these important amphibians. Since this worldwide appetite for frog meat shows no signs of slowing down, the authors introduce their idea for sustainable wild frog harvesting as an alternative to unsuccessful attempts at commercial frog farming.

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Texas A&M professor and world-leading cave researcher, Tom Iliffe, and others discovered numerous new species in an underwater cave a mile long in the Canary Islands recently. The cave was in Lanzarote off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean. One of the species might be one of the oldest crustaceans in the world. It might be about 200 millions years old, from the time of dinosaurs.
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