Red-bellied short-necked turtle on Flickr.
Disco turtle has moves!
Petridish.org: Crowdfunded science
Calling all armchair scientists! Petridish.org is a new site that allows you to help fund a science project, then follow along with the project team as it progresses. As with the successful site Kickstarter, which funds arts-related projects, backers reap a multitude of project-related rewards that range from updates and photographs of research in progress, to stones from far-away countries, even the possibility of naming a new species.
(via crookedindifference)
New Shark Species Discovered in the Galapagos
by Adam Mann
Scientists conducting deep-sea dives around the Galapagos Islands have identified a new species of shark. Part of a family known as a catsharks, the new species is about 1.3 feet long, roughly the same size as a typical housecat.
Catsharks (also sometimes known as dogfishes) are one of the largest families of sharks. The new species — named Bythaelurus giddingsi – was identified from seven specimens during two submersible treks in 1995 and 1998. Researchers have suggested the Galapagos Catshark as the common name of the new species.
The seven specimens were taken to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where scientists compared them to other known catsharks. B. giddingsi individuals are chocolate-brown and have pale, leopard-like spots randomly distributed on their body. This distinguishes from other closely related species, which are typically dusky or possess a straight line of spots.
The arrangement of spots on each Galapagos Catshark appears to be unique, with most individual sharks having an identifying spot on one side that is smaller, larger, or differently shaped than the opposite-side spot…
(read more: Wired Science) (Image: California Academy of Sciences)
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* thanks to naturestudies for posting this story and letting us know about it!
Hummingbird ‘snores’ in its sleep
Most people have never seen a hummingbird sit still, not to mention snooze. Watch the video.
Un Corteza Amarillo impresionante en medio del verano en Costa Rica.
A stunning Corteza Amarillo in the middle of summer in Costa Rica.
Can we calculate the true cost of a manta ray?
By externalizing the costs of human industry, we’ve pushed the world’s coral reefs to the brink of extinction. It’s past time to put a price tag on the infinite value of biodiversity.
Earth has 8.7 million species… but we’ve hardly met any of them
From BBC News:
The natural world contains about 8.7 million species, according to a new estimate described by scientists as the most accurate ever.
But the vast majority have not been identified - and cataloguing them all could take more than 1,000 years.
The number comes from studying relationships between the branches and leaves of the “family tree of life”.
The team warns in the journal PLoS Biology that many species will become extinct before they can be studied.
Although the number of species on the planet might seem an obvious figure to know, a way to calculate it with confidence has been elusive.
In a commentary also carried in PLoS Biology, former Royal Society president Lord (Robert) May observes: “It is a remarkable testament to humanity’s narcissism that we know the number of books in the US Library of Congress on 1 February 2011 was 22,194,656, but cannot tell you - to within an order of magnitude - how many distinct species of plants and animals we share our world with.”
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About 1.2 million species have been formally described, the vast majority from the land rather than the oceans.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Graphic credit: The Independent)
