Biology Bytes
oceans
How Oxygen Helped Life to Flourish
About 4.5 billion years ago, our planet formed. Around a billion years later, the first life forms appeared, which were mostly single-celled microbes, and this is pretty much how life was on our planet for billions of years. Then, about 540 million years ago (or some three billion years after those microbes first appeared), multicellular … Continue reading
Millions of Dead Sea Stars
I hesitated writing about this story because researchers really do not seem to know at all what is causing this catastrophe, yet, but doing science is primarily about solving mysteries – it’s really part of the scientific process. What exactly is the story? As you may have heard, potentially millions of sea stars (also known … Continue reading
Shell-Swept Beaches: What’s the Cost?
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
Biology Bytes: The Books
The Biology Bytes blog was inspired by the publication of two separate books by the same author. If you enjoy reading about the fascinating critters and plants that are all around us, or the latest developments in stem cell research or modern medicine in general, or have simply been enjoying reading the wide variety of … Continue reading
Invasion of the Jellyfish
In recent years, the number of jellyfish “blooms” (large groups of jellyfish congregating in a relatively small area) appears to be increasing, and these blooms impact both local marine ecosystems and human life as well. This is clear by the many news stories jellyfish blooms have featured in lately, including killing thousands of farmed salmon, … Continue reading
Fish Found with Skin Cancer
While we’ve made a lot of progress in better understanding cancer, a lot of it is still a bit of a mystery. For example, other animals don’t get the same types of cancer that humans get. We don’t really understand why this is. More specifically, fish have never been found to have skin cancer in … Continue reading