News by Subject Agriculture

Researchers examined the outcome of an entangled bottlenose dolphin calf with monofilament fishing line wrapped tightly around its upper jaw. It was successfully disentangled and immediately released it back into its natural habitat. Surviving only two years, results showed long-term severe damage due to this entanglement including emaciation. There are about 1,000 bottlenose dolphins that live in the Indian River Lagoon, which also is a very popular location for recreational fishing.

Clean-up devices that collect waste from the ocean surface won't solve the plastic pollution problem, a new study shows.

Some prey species can escape from inside a predator after a successful attack. Kobe University ecologist Sugiura Shinji has found that the aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuata can actively escape from the vent of the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus via the digestive system. This is the first time that research has documented the active escape of prey from the body of a predator after being eaten.

A team of researchers, led by Simon Brandl and Jacob Johansen, recently studied cryptobenthic reef fishes in the Arabian Gulf and the Sea of Oman and found that the more thermally extreme coral reef habitat in the Arabian Gulf adversely impacted the diversity and productivity of these important fishes.

Metabarcoding allows scientists to extract DNA from the environment, in order to rapidly detect species inhabiting a particular habitat. While the method is a great tool that facilitates conservation activities, few studies have looked into its applicability in monitoring species' populations and their genetic diversity, which could actually be critical to assess negative trends early on. The potential of the method is confirmed in a new study, published in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Metabarcoding & Metagenomics.

The first landmark study using next-generation technology to comprehensively examine contaminants in oysters in Myanmar reveals alarming findings: the widespread presence of human bacterial pathogens and human-derived microdebris materials, including plastics, kerosene, paint, talc and milk supplement powders.

Researchers have advanced a new way to see into the ocean's depths, establishing an approach to detect algae and measure key properties using light. A paper published in Applied Optics reports using a laser-based tool, lidar, to collect these measurements far deeper than has been typically possible using satellites.