Search Results for: ocean

But Earth’s elusive mantle is a near miss

Scientists affiliated with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) and seeking the elusive “Moho”–the boundary, which geologists refer to as the Mohorovicic discontinuity, between Earth’s brittle outer crust and its hotter, softer mantle–have created the third deepest hole ever drilled into the ocean bottom’s crust.

Scientists had hoped to drill into Earth’s mantle, but found instead that their efforts h

New report on 25 most endangered primates shows mankind’s closest living relatives under threat around the world

Mankind’s closest living relatives-the world’s apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates-face increasing peril from humans and some could soon disappear forever, according to a report released today by the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN-The World Conservation Union’s Species Survival Commission (SSC) and the International Primatological Society (IP

Despite the divergent evolutionary paths of dolphins and primates — and their vastly different brains — both have developed similar high-level cognitive abilities, says Emory University neuroscientist and behavioral biologist Lori Marino. She presented her latest findings on the evolution of and differences in brain structure between cetaceans (ocean mammals like whales and dolphins) and primates April 5 during the 14th annual Experimental Biology 2005 meeting in San Diego.

Marino&#

Dealing a new blow to the dominant evolutionary paradigm, Luiz Rocha and colleagues from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Harvard University the University of Florida and the University of Hawaii, report coral reef fish from neighboring habitats may differ more from one another than from fish thousands of miles away. An ecological speciation model for coral reef organisms may spur the development of a more synthetic treatment of speciation on land and sea.

Coral re

The warm El Niño episodes are generally accepted to be harmful to the development of cold-water anchovy populations, but favourable for abundant populations of sardine, adapted to warmer waters. IRD researchers and their Peruvian partners (1) have been studying fluctuations in pelagic fish populations in the world’s richest oceanic ecosystems for fish, the Peru-Humboldt Current system, off Peru. They showed that the traditional explanation does not always hold true. During the 1997-98 El Niño ev

Erosion and human activities are inducing large amounts of terrigenous sediment input to the southwest lagoon of New Caledonia. Such deposits can pose a threat to the lagoon’s ecological balance and biological richness. Scientists from the IRD’s Noumea centre have for several years been applying modelling techniques in order to unravel the system of current circulation and sediment transport (1). Satellite remote sensing provides reliable quantified data on the concentration of suspended matter