Do you like to bird watch using your backyard bird feeder? Or maybe you have fun going bug hunting at a local nature preserve. However you enjoy taking in the natural world around you, there may be a way you can help scientists with important research at the same time! It’s thanks to citizen science, … Continue reading
When you’re vacationing on a beach, it might seem like a harmless act to pick up a shell and take it home with you as a souvenir. Especially if there are a lot of shells on the beach – how could taking one, or just a few, be a bad thing? But a recently published … Continue reading
Over the past few years, amphibians have been hit hard on a global scale. (Amphibians include frogs, toads, salamanders, and the lesser-known caecilians, which are tropical, limbless, worm-like critters.) A few months ago, I wrote a post about the chytrid fungus, which may have already caused 125 to 500 amphibian species to become extinct. Another … Continue reading
Why do we have to visibly age as we get older? It might sound like a silly question – the terms “aging” and “growing old” are virtually synonymous – but for many organisms on the planet, this question actually does not need to be asked. Earlier this week, a paper was published in the journal … Continue reading
A chytrid fungus has been ravaging amphibian populations worldwide for years, and the situation has only been getting worse. (Amphibians include frogs, toads, salamanders, and the lesser-known caecilians, which are tropical, limbless, worm-like critters.) Identified in 1998 as parasitizing and killing amphibians, the chytrid fungus species Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (“Bd” for short) grows within the infected … Continue reading
If you’ve ever gone tadpole hunting, you may have seen some frog or toad eggs sitting in the water. Often they’ll be clinging to a piece of vegetation, or something else, to keep them from drifting far. The parents usually abandon the eggs shortly after they’re laid, and the eggs sit and develop, basically alone, … Continue reading