The Toucan Times

First plant to use buried leaves to catch worms found - life - 09 January 2012 - New Scientist

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:49:00 +0000

First plant to use buried leaves to catch worms found - life - 09 January 2012 - New Scientist:

Plants that catch worms underground, got to love evolution.

Screw the divers: The sad tale of Thern Da Seafood Pte Ltd.

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:10:36 +0000

Screw the divers: The sad tale of Thern Da Seafood Pte Ltd.:

Fancy some Mola Mola soup?

A few days ago, I witnessed an epic ground breaking turn around of events for the anti-shark fin movement on Facebook.

From an inciendiary status update announcing that “Screw the divers, Shark Fin and Mola Mola products to be available [in Singapore’s largest supermarket chain] by Chinese New Year” …

…to that supply company removing it’s Facebook page after being flooded with comments…

…to that that Supermarket chain (NTUC FairPrice) denouncing the supply company and announcing it would make no further orders for Shark Fin products!

THIS IS HUGE FOR SINGAPORE - another major supermarket chain, Cold Storage, already denounced shark fin in October last year.

This little controversy has boosted awareness of the anti-shark fin movement at it’s busiest time - the run up to Chinese New Year!

Read more & follow the resulting facebook group

'Hidden' hawksbill turtles found

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:06:22 +0100

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature

The findings could help explain why the species has gone undetected in the region for so long

Scientists have found hawksbill turtles “hiding” in mangrove forests of the eastern Pacific.

The team, that has been tracking the turtles for three years, also found that the critically endangered animals nested in these estuaries.

The discovery of this previously unknown sea turtle habitat was published recently in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

It could explain why the species went undetected in the region for so long.

Mangrove forests, which are unique coastal tree and shrub habitats, are also under threat. They could represent an important breeding and nesting site for the species, which was thought to depend on coral reefs.

The researchers have been tracking the turtles for three years

Alexander Gaos, a conservation scientist with San Diego State University and the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative, led the research.

He and his colleagues tracked hawksbills in four countries - El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador - using satellite tracking tags glued to the turtles’ backs.

These trackers revealed that adult hawksbill turtles in the eastern Pacific inhabited in-shore mangrove estuaries.

“For upwards of five decades sea turtle scientists thought hawksbills had [disappeared from] the eastern Pacific Ocean”, Dr Gaos told BBC Nature.

“Despite hundreds of sea turtle projects and scientists focusing efforts in the region, no one had located hawksbills.

Our findings help explain this… it’s hard to spot hawksbills in mangrove estuaries.”

Dr Gaos said that the turtles might be spending their entire lives in these “cryptic habitats”.

“Couple that with the fact that there are very few individuals left - hawksbills in the eastern Pacific are one of the world’s most endangered sea turtle populations - and it’s no wonder researchers didn’t know about them!”

The scientists worked with local fishermen and even illegal egg collectors, in order to find hawksbill turtles to fit their tags to.

They hope their revelations about the species’ habitat will inform conservation efforts.

Why the turtles were “seeking shelter” in mangroves was not clear.

The scientists think it might be a recent adaptation brought on by a lack of their more typical habitat of coral reefs in the region.

Dr Gaos said: ” We now have a better idea of where to look for them, which may help us direct research and conservation of the species, upon which their survival may ultimately depend.”

Over 1/2 of Tuna Species Facing Extinction, But Over-Fishing Them is too Profitable to Stop

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 09:26:21 +0100

Over 1/2 of Tuna Species Facing Extinction, But Over-Fishing Them is too Profitable to Stop

Komodo here we come!

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:41:54 +0100

Komodo here we come!

Mola mola! So first dive out here in Nusa Pernida (Bali) and...

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 12:16:29 +0100

Mola mola!

So first dive out here in Nusa Pernida (Bali) and what do I see… Might as well stop now.

So the Mola mola, or Oceanic Sunfish, is the heaviest bony fish in the world as well as one of the wierdest looking.

Scary! preeno: Soon there will be nothing left…

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 06:14:04 +0100

Scary!

preeno:

Soon there will be nothing left…

Down by the Sea: The World's Most Endangered Cetacean--

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:48:11 +0100

Down by the Sea: The World's Most Endangered Cetacean--:

hannahluella:

And I bet you have not even heard about it or knew it exists.

The Vaquita, endemic to the Gulf of California, only inhabiting a very small range.

The Vaquita is the smallest of the cetaceans, the females only growing to be about 5 (1.5 Meters) feet, the males 4.5 feet.

There are currently only 150 Vaquita left in the world, and there is currently not enough being done to raise awareness about this animal’s plight. On average 30 vaquita die each year in gill nets for fishing and shrimping. It is estimated that in 5 years the Vaquita will become extinct.

So yeah, just thought I’d bring this up. I myself have only vaguely been aware of the issue for the last few months.

For more information:

Save the Vaquita

An Interesting Article

Vaquita on Wikipedia

Forests fight back all over the world

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 12:30:00 +0100

Woodland density is going up after decades of decline, but concerns about deforestation remain. Andrew Marszal reports on the Great Reversal

Forest density is increasing across much of the world after decades of decline, according to a new study by scientists from the United States and Europe. The change, which is being dubbed the Great Reversal by the authors, has important, has positive implications for carbon capture and climate change.

The research, carried out by teams from the University of Helsinki and New York’s Rockefeller University, shows that forests are thickening in 45 of 68 countries, which together account for 72 per cent of global forests. Traditionally, environmentalists have focused their concern solely on the dwindling extent of forested areas, but the authors believe new evidence of more dense forest – made up of more and larger trees – could be crucial in reducing atmospheric carbon, which is linked to climate change.

Forests are often referred to as the planet’s lungs, acting as huge carbon sinks that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow and trap large amounts within their biomass and surrounding soil. In countries from Finland to Malaysia, the thickening has taken place so quickly that it has reversed the carbon losses caused by forested areas continuing to shrink during the period studied (1990-2010). In other places, including the Brazilian rainforest and parts of Africa, increasing density has partially offset the toll of deforestation caused by logging and other human activities.

With the Great Reversal, the study’s authors believe a tipping point has been reached, with countries now able to pursue policies to boost their forests’ thickness and carbon capacities dramatically. Jesse Ausubel, a director at the Rockefeller University and a co-author, said: “The enlarging forests in almost 50 nations studied may signal the start of a welcome and necessary restoration.”

Aapo Rautiainen, lead author of the report, and based at Helsinki University, said: “The reversal occurred in Europe much earlier, then a little bit later in North America, and it has now spread to certain parts of Asia. So that is a positive sign.”

He hopes policy-makers will take note: “The carbon-storage question is important as there is growing political interest in using forests as a part of climate mitigation policy…. There is a wide range of different ways you can manage forests – density is a decisive factor in carbon storage in addition to area.”

Professor Pekka Kauppi of Helsinki University, a co-author of the study, said: “People worry about forest area, and that’s quite correct. But if you want to know the carbon budget, it cannot be monitored observing only the changes in area. It is more important to observe this change in forest density.”

Commenting on the study, Mette Loyche Wilkie, co-ordinator of the UN’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 report, confirmed that in some countries “the growing stock per hectare is increasing – and so is the carbon sequestered”. She noted that a recent UN report observed this trend occurring “globally”. She added that the change was uneven, and most notable in Europe, where forests had grown in density by over 6 per cent in the past decade, and North America.

Environmentalists expressed concerns, however, that much of the increasing density is driven by huge new monoculture plantations. For example, China’s ambitious reforestation programme has added three million new hectares (nearly eight million acres) to the country’s forests every year over the past decade, but green campaigners believe this is predominantly composed of one species – eucalyptus.

Planted forests are certainly playing a major role. Every year, more than 10 million hectares of forest are planted worldwide, either on newly felled woodland or reclaimed land. Species that grow faster and taller are often preferred, even where this entails importing new species, with the effects on density not seen until these reach “middle age”.

Bustar Maitar, who works on Greenpeace’s rainforest campaign in Indonesia, expressed concerns over the loss of biodiversity, saying: “There is a carbon capture, but it’s mostly the timber plantations. Timber plantations are ecologically quite different from the forest. The solution is to stop cutting down natural forests.”

Though the study, entitled A National and International Analysis of Changing Forest Density, does not itself consider biodiversity, the authors concede there is a balance to be struck. “Almost always there are trade-offs. Harmonising with other goals for forests is always difficult,” says Professor Kauppi. “They have to serve many purposes – whether it’s beauty, like the English countryside where the important priority is the landscape, or biodiversity, or protection, there are many things. It always has to be balanced, but the carbon budget is important.”

The report’s lead author, Mr Rautiainen, added: “In some regions, of course, the emphasis on monoculture plantations is very important, but there are also possibilities of managing semi-natural or natural forests. You can’t directly infer worsening or improving biodiversity from forest density.”

While for much of the world thickening forests are a new phenomenon, in Europe this has been occurring since the Second World War. According to a German study in the Forest Policy and Economics journal in 2006, forest density has almost doubled in Western Europe over that time, primarily because of modern, intensive forest management, and the spectacular growth of major plantations.

In the rest of the world, where the thickening trend is only now emerging, the increase is slower, currently at around 1 per cent each decade in South America and parts of Asia and Africa. However, in a country the size of Brazil, which has more than 500 million hectares of already dense forest, even a small shift means millions of additional tons of carbon are trapped in the remaining rainforest.

The authors believe the change is also being wrought by other, less divisive factors, including more sustainable government forestry practices. Concerns over desertification and soil and water protection, together with policies favouring wildlife conservation and forests as recreational spaces, are prompting better woodland management, which allows existing forest to grow thicker in many countries.

There has also been a major expansion of forest-conservation schemes, with 94 million hectares of global forest placed under legal protection since 1990. “If you have a big area of conserved forest you will probably end up with increased density because of conservation alone, because when the forest is not utilised for wood then the trees can grow and become bigger,” said Mr Rautiainen. “That is also a part of the increasing density picture, along with the introduction of plantations and the management of other forests.”

And in poorer countries economic development has brought changes such as the diminishing use of wood as a household fuel – which exerts a heavy burden on forest resources, and results in shorter rotations of timber crops. Academics have long predicted, based on precedents in the rich world, that a host of such changes – which include the arrival of modern agricultural methods and rising living standards – would reduce encroachment on forests. This study offers early indications that these predictions are coming true, at least in certain regions.

Bizarrely, even some polluting human activities may also be boosting growth. Ms Wilkie said that UN studies suggest “there may also be some increase in the growth rates (and carbon uptake) due to changes in the atmospheric composition or the climate in some countries”. According to one study in Nature Geoscience, increased emissions of carbon dioxide and airborne nitrogen may have helped recent tree growth in Europe through increasing fertility, though the effect is uncertain.

Clearly there remain major concerns for environmentalists. Although the report says that the area covered by trees has expanded in Europe over the past decade by 2 per cent, and marginally in North America, deforestation continued globally at a pace of 13 million hectares every year in the past decade.

In Indonesia, rampant exploitation means the rainforest is getting smaller and thinner every year, while environmentalists have little faith in the government’s new moratorium on logging, which began on 20 May. There are concerns, too, over a loosening of regulations on logging in the Brazilian Amazon last month.

Things are not always as they seem in the world of global forestry. Last week, at an international summit that his country is hosting on rainforest sustainability, President Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville announced an initiative to plant one million hectares of trees by 2020. But The Independent on Sunday has received a memo from Global Witness suggesting that the country “has already marked out approximately 80 per cent of its forests for industrial-scale logging”.

The debate over the benefits of the trend to thicker forests comes as UN World Environment Day, which is marked today, launches a series of events to celebrate the value of the world’s forests. Announcements gave no indication of whether the word “forests” included plantations.

“With so much bad news available on World Environment Day, we are pleased to report that, of 68 nations studied, forest area is expanding in 45, and density is also increasing in 45,” said Professor Kauppi.

The study is published by the online, peer-reviewed journal PLoS One.

Retreating rainforests

The news from scientists that forests across the world are thickening is certainly welcome. There has been little for environmentalists to celebrate with regard to the rainforest since the birth of the green movement. There is no doubt the pressure applied by activists and a concerned public has contributed to the reversal in forest density decline. However, today’s news does not mean the problem of retreating rainforests – due to, for example, unsustainable logging – just disappears. It is essential we do not ease off.

Governments, particularly in poorer countries, remain under intense pressure to tap into the lucrative rewards offered by resource-rich ancient forests. Some countries will be more able to withstand this than others. Where major concessions are granted, there will continue to be disastrous implications for biodiversity and degradation, as well as indigenous populations.

Plantations may bring benefits as well as dangers, but are no substitute for the sustainable management and conservation of natural forest.

Gathering information on the consequences of forest exploitation is expensive – for swathes of the Congo basin there exists no information. But what this Helsinki-Rockefeller study does demonstrate is that, with greater awareness of forest density, forests can be managed to ensure they remain fertile and absorb more carbon dioxide. This can make an enormous contribution to the battle against climate change.

animalworld: ASIAN WEAVER ANT (Oecophylla smaragdina) ©Thomas...

Tue, 31 May 2011 16:15:39 +0100

animalworld:

ASIAN WEAVER ANT (Oecophylla smaragdina) ©Thomas Endlein

An Asian weaver ant holding a 500 milligram weight in its jaws, has been named the overall winner of the inaugural Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) science photo competition.

The winning image was taken by Thomas Endlein from the University of Cambridge, who was investigating how ants and other insects’ feet can stick to surfaces.

Asian Weaver ants can carry weights of more than 100 times their own body weight whilst upside down on a smooth surface.

Research has revealed how they cope with the conflict of sticking to a surface but not getting stuck. “Ants can change the size and shape of the pads on their feet depending on the load they are carrying,” said Dr Endlein. “If they have to carry heavy loads they increase the contact area, and when they need to run they decrease it.”

Dr Endlein added that as well as shedding light on ants’ seemingly gravity-defying feats, the research could help scientists develop better glues.

Fact Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7277169/Weight-lifting-ant-wins-competition.html

Other photos you may like:

Ants lifting Chili Peppers

Leaf-cutter Ants

Honeypot Ants

theanimalblog: (by Doug Wheller)

Sun, 29 May 2011 02:24:56 +0100

theanimalblog:

(by Doug Wheller)

Now that is one huge fish! The Mekong giant catfish is perhaps...

Sat, 28 May 2011 13:20:29 +0100

Now that is one huge fish!

The Mekong giant catfish is perhaps the most interesting and most threatened species in the Mekong river. For this reason conservationists have chosen it as a sort of “flagship” species to promote conservation on the Mekong.With recorded sizes of up to 10.5ft (3.2m) and 660lb (300kg), the Mekong’s giant catfish currently holds the Guinness Book of World Record’s position for the world’s largest freshwater fish. Although research projects are currently ongoing, relatively little is known about this species. Historically, the fish had a natural range that reached from the lower Mekong in Vietnam (above the tidally influenced brackish water of the river’s delta) all the way to the northern reaches of the river in the Yunnan province of China, spanning almost the entire 4,800 km length of the river. Due to threats, this species no longer inhabits the majority of its original habitat; it is now believed to only exist in small, isolated populations in the middle Mekong region.Fish congregate during the beginning of the rainy season and migrate upstream to spawn.They live primarily in the main channel of the river, where the water depth is over 10mwhile researchers, fishermen and officials have found this species in the Tonle Sap river and lake in Cambodia, a UNESCO Biosphere reserve. In the past, fishermen have reported the fish in a number of the Mekong’s tributaries; today, however, essentially no sightings are reported outside of the main Mekong river channel and the Tonle Sap region.

In infancy, this species feeds on zooplankton in the river and is known to be cannibalistic.After approximately one year, the fish becomes herbivorous, feeding on filamentous algae, probably ingesting larvae and periphyton accidentally. The fish likely obtains its food from algae growing on submerged rocky surfaces, as it does not have any sort of dentition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekong_giant_catfish

WHERE THERE BE FINS: Vertical Migrations of the Thresher Shark

Sat, 28 May 2011 10:22:26 +0100

WHERE THERE BE FINS: Vertical Migrations of the Thresher Shark:

wheretherebefins:

Many species in the oceans display diel vertical migration (i.e. migration over a daily cycle up and down in the water column). Acoustic tracking of Big eye Threshers by Nakano et al (2003) was used to determine their daily movements vertically and horizontally.

Threshers were first thought to…

curiositycounts: Scientists unveil the most complete map of the...

Fri, 27 May 2011 15:56:14 +0100

curiositycounts:

Scientists unveil the most complete map of the universe ever created, depicting 95% of the night sky and color-coded for distance

A Chromodoris coi that I shot in Tioman flaring its mantle....

Sat, 21 May 2011 20:47:00 +0100

A Chromodoris coi that I shot in Tioman flaring its mantle. There seems to be no real concensus on what the purpose of this behavior is.

http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/mantflap

"The Guardian" - Malaysia and Indonesia bolster defence of palm oil industry to west

Sat, 21 May 2011 20:24:31 +0100

Countries form European Palm Oil Council in attempt to counter criticism of industry’s environmental record

Palm oil seeds are loaded onto a truck in Serba Jadi, Indonesia. Photograph: Sutanta Aditya/AFP/Getty Images

Malaysia and Indonesia, which together account for about 90% of the world’s palm oil production, have launched a joint PR offensive to defend the industry’s environmental record.

Late last week, ministers from the two countries agreed to finalise plans for a European Palm Oil Council (EPOC) by the end of this year, to defend the trade of palm oil to the European Union and counter the “anti-palm oil campaign”. The industry has been accused by environmental groups of destroying biodiversity and causing social conflicts, deforestation and climate change.

In a joint communique, the countries said: “This body will provide the industry [with] a collective platform to represent both countries on public debates that relate to palm oil issues such as sustainability, energysecurity, public health, address NGOs’ anti palm-oil campaigns, non-aligned lobby groups, media, journalists and feedbacks of Members of the European Parliament.”

In another move to promote palm oil to the western market, Bernard Dompok, minister of plantation industries and commodities in Malaysia and Dr Suswono Asyraf, minister of agriculture in Indonesia, will visit Washington DC next week. They will discuss barriers to palm oil trade with the US secretaries of agriculture and energy, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US secretary of commerce and US-ASEAN business.

Dompok told the Borneo Post the initiative was “a continuation of a similar mission to the EU in November 2010”.

“When we were doing our joint mission, we met some members of parliament who didn’t know what an oil palm tree looks like. I think we should really work together and talk to them as a team,” he said.

Critics are sceptical the new push will quell the fears related to palm oil production. Friends of the Earth’s biofuels campaigner, Kenneth Richter, said: “No amount of PR will alter the facts about palm oil. The UN says it’s one of the leading drivers of deforestation in south-east Asia – trashing rainforest and wildlife. Just last month evidence surfaced that IOI – one of the biggest Malaysian palm oil producers – is involved in illegal deforestation and land rights conflicts.”

Gurmit Singh, founder of the centre for environment, technology and development, Malaysia (CETDEM), an environmental NGO, said: “The truth is, both sides are over-generalising – the palm oil industry as well as the NGOs in the north. NGOs need to be careful not to tar all palm oil producers with the same brush – not all palm oil plantations have caused deforestation and loss of biodiversity.

“What is needed is not more pro- or anti-palm oil PR, but accountability and transparency and an effective chain of custody for palm oil. Everyone – NGOs, palm oil producers and the media – has the responsibility to report the truth and ultimately the consumer will decide.”

Thinking Blue...: Hong Kong bans trawling

Sat, 21 May 2011 19:53:09 +0100

Thinking Blue...: Hong Kong bans trawling:

youknowicanspeakwhale:

Hong Kong took an important step this Friday towards restoring it’s seriously depleted waters and protecting it’s marine natural heritage. After more than 5 years of pressure from environmental groups such as WWF the Chinese province banned the use of bottom and mid-water trawling and created a…

take-nothing-but-photos: Geckos…the ultimate free...

Sat, 21 May 2011 11:08:12 +0100

take-nothing-but-photos:

Geckos…the ultimate free climbers!

Well we know about Van der Waals forces right? :) So for any of you who have forgotten it involves very weak attractive and repulsive bonds.

So what does that mean? That means geckos can walk UPSIDE DOWN ON GLASS! That is bad ass!

Here’s the Wikipedia bit:

The toes of the gecko have a special adaptation that allows them to adhere to most surfaces without the use of liquids or surface tension. The spatula tippedsetae on gecko footpads demonstrate that the attractive forces that hold geckos to surfaces are van der Waals interactions between the finely divided setae and the surfaces themselves, although a more recent study suggests that water molecules of roughly monolayer thickness (present on virtually all natural surfaces) also play a role.

These van der Waals interactions involve no fluids; in theory, a boot made of synthetic setae would adhere as easily to the surface of the International Space Station as it would to a living room wall, although adhesion varies with humidity and is dramatically reduced under water, suggesting a contribution from capillarity.The setae on the feet of geckos are also self cleaning and will usually remove any clogging dirt within a few steps.Teflon, which has very low van der Waals forces, is the only known surface to which a gecko cannot stick.

Geckos’ toes seem to be “double jointed”, but this is a misnomer. Their toes actually bend in the opposite direction from our fingers and toes. This allows them to overcome the van der Waals force by peeling their toes off surfaces from the tips inward. In essence, this peeling action alters the angle of incidence between millions of individual setae and the surface, reducing the Van der Waals force. Geckos’ toes operate well below their full attractive capabilities for most of the time. This is because there is a great margin for error depending upon the roughness of the surface, and therefore the number of setae in contact with that surface.

Use of small van der Waals attraction force requires very large surface areas: every square millimeter of a gecko’s footpad contains about 14,000 hair-like setae. Each seta has a diameter of 5 micrometers. Human hair varies from 18 to 180 micrometers, so a human hair could hold between 3 and 36 setae. Each seta is in turn tipped with between 100 and 1,000 spatulae. Each spatula is 0.2 micrometer long (one five-millionth of a meter), or just below the wavelength of visible light.

NatGeo - See-Through Frog, Other "Lost" Species Found

Sat, 21 May 2011 09:52:00 +0100

NatGeo - See-Through Frog, Other "Lost" Species Found:

A see-through frog, pretty awesome!

Bursting with eggs, a pregnant frog with see-through skin is one of five “lost”amphibian species recently rediscovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

First described in 1950, Hyperolius leucotaenius was recently found on the banks of the Elila River in southeastern DRC.

The status of the five species, first described between 1950 and 1952, was a mystery until they were rediscovered during the recent field expeditions, which took place between 2009 to 2011.

“Like most of the ‘lost’ amphibian species, they simply hadn’t been seen for many decades, and their status was completely unknown,” expedition leader Eli Greenbaum, a biologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, said by email.

The DRC expeditions were inspired by Conservation International and theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2010 effort to rediscover a hundred “lost” amphibian species around the world (see pictures).

That unprecedented effort focused primarily on finding ten species of high scientific and aesthetic value. Ultimately, scientists on that project spotted only 15 “lost” species, and just one from their most wanted list.

The newly announced discovery of the DRC frogs “is good news,” according to Greenbaum, whose work was partially funded by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

“My team’s discoveries confirm that those jungles have been poorly explored,” he said in a statement. “There is a lot of biodiversity there, and it’s not too late to redouble our efforts at conservation.”

take-nothing-but-photos: Indonesia finally signs forestry...

Sat, 21 May 2011 09:49:43 +0100

take-nothing-but-photos:

Indonesia finally signs forestry logging moratorium

JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Thursday signed a decree authorising a two-year moratorium on new logging concessions, under a billion-dollar climate deal with Norway.

“He signed it this morning,” Agus Purnomo, presidential advisor on climate change, told AFP.

No details were immediately released about how the controversial moratorium would work in the massive archipelago, which is home to some of the world’s last tracts of pristine jungle.

Indonesia is often cited as the world’s third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, mainly as a result of clearing forests for pulp or to make way for oil palm plantations.