by Jay Krithivas | Dec 14, 2023 | News Briefs
By: Jay Krithivas, Hannah Appiah-Madson, and Dan Distel The ocean is home to a staggering amount of biodiversity. Among the 33 currently accepted branches on the tree of animal life, 15 are entirely marine, while only one is exclusively terrestrial. Currently,...
by Ryan Pianka | Nov 30, 2023 | News Briefs, Research
We all know that protein is essential to life and that our muscles, vital organs, and enzymes—the tiny molecular machines that drive life’s processes—are all made of protein. In fact, your body contains about 20,000 different proteins, each with its own unique...
by Ryan Pianka | Oct 31, 2023 | In the field, News Briefs
Behold the mighty Bobbit worm, striking from the seafloor! Image Credit: Daniel Kwok CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 It’s October again and that means one thing: it’s the time of year for ghosts, goblins, and spooky monsters. Fantastical creatures like these might make the real world...
by Dan Distel | Oct 12, 2023 | In the field, In the lab, News Briefs, Research
Did you know that 75–90% of the estimated 1–2 million species living in the world’s ocean remain undiscovered and undescribed? Together, these species constitute the ocean’s taxonomic dark matter—the critical portion of life’s diversity hidden beneath the waves. To...
by Dan Distel | Sep 30, 2023 | In the field, In the lab, News Briefs, Research
Staghorn corals (Acropora cervicornis) were once among the most dominant reef-building corals in the Caribbean. However, starting in the mid-1980s, these iconic corals began a steep decline. Due to climate change and a mysterious bacterial plague known as “white band...