White blood cell chasing bacteria
Video: Newly discovered eel a “living fossil” →
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You are what you eat!
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A polar bear’s guard hair. Polar bears have hollow hairs that insulate their bodies and keep them warm in freezing temperatures. (Source)
Species count put at 8.7 million-By Richard Black
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.
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Why the Virginia earthquake shook the entire East Coast
“The crust is different in the East than in the West,” U.S. Geological Survey earthquake geologist David Schwartz told LiveScience. “It’s older and colder and denser, and as a result, seismic waves travel much farther in the east than in the west.”
Global warming may cause higher loss of biodiversity than previously thought.
If temperatures continue to rise to the ranges predicted by the IPCC reports, habitat change will be occurring at a much faster pace than species can adapt to it. This means that they will have only a few options:
- Get lucky and somehow deal with it.
- Move to a nearby, more reasonable habitat (e.g. higher altitude)
- Go extinct
A new study out of Germany says that as many as 80% of genetic variation could disappear as a result of the anticipated temperature changes. All the white branches that you see in the tree of life above are species who have no viable adaptive mechanism or no nearby habitat … and could therefore disappear.
It’s more than polar bears, folks. This is on us.
(via ScienceDaily)
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