zoology
laelaps | February 13, 2009I cannot recall precisely why, but okapis were on my mind this morning. Specifically, I was wondering what had become of the first photograph ever taken of a live okapi, an illustration I had heard about but had been unable to find. I was first put on the trail of the picture when, last September, the Zoological Society of London declared that they had the first photographs ever taken of an okapi in its natural habitat.
I was immediately skeptical of this claim. Had no one ever photographed an okapi in the wild? In my efforts to find an answer to this question I stumbled across references to…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2009tags: The Blue Planet, marine life, evolution, streaming video
Thanks to one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous, I have the great pleasure to own this fascinating BBC documentary, The Blue Planet [Amazon: $38.99], about those amazing creatures that live thousands of feet beneath the waves. I think you would love this series as much as I do. Narrated by the amazing David Attenborough [8:21]
grrlscientist | February 12, 2009tags: The Blue Planet, marine life, evolution, streaming video
Thanks to one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous, I have the great pleasure to own this fascinating BBC documentary, The Blue Planet [Amazon: $38.99], about those amazing creatures that live thousands of feet beneath the waves. I think you would love this series as much as I do. Narrated by the amazing David Attenborough [10:17]
grrlscientist | February 9, 2009tags: Satomi's pygmy seahorse, Indonesian wildlife, Stephen Wong, Takako Uno, image of the day
Satomi's pygmy seahorse, endemic to Indonesia, is one of the world's tiniest seahorses. Two adults would fit head-to-head across the face of a penny and their offspring are each about the size of a 12-point apostrophe.
Image: Stephen Wong and Takako Uno/National Geographic.
At under half an inch tall (13 millimeters), Satomi's pygmy seahorse -- named after dive guide Satomi Onishi -- is a strong contender for the world's smallest seahorse. With their tails stretched out straight, two Satomi's…
laelaps | February 6, 2009The African lungfish Protopterus, from A Text-Book of Zoology.Standing before the Linnean Society in 1839, the celebrated British anatomist Richard Owen delivered a detailed description of a strange new creature. Owen called it Lepidosiren annectans, an African relative of an eel-like animal that was found by the Austrian explorer Johan Natterer in the depths of the Amazon jungle in 1837. The naturalist sent two specimens back to the Vienna Museum where they were quickly described by Leopold Fitzinger under the name Lepidosiren paradoxa.
Fitzinger considered the organisms to be "…
grrlscientist | January 28, 2009tags: film, iMax, marine life, nature, movie trailer, streaming video
Thanks to the wonder of the blogosphere, I have been invited to a screening of the new film, Under the Sea 3D on 4 February 2009 -- below the fold is an interesting interview with the filmmakers along with a teaser for you to enjoy .. By the way, do I have any NYC readers who would like to come along? It is at 7pm on 4 February and I am allowed one guest .. (creeps need not apply) [2:53]
Tell me more!
grrlscientist | December 16, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, sundial snail, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Annelise Fleddum, University of Oslo.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
Scientists sampled some 4,000 different mollusk species in Espiritu Santo. Mollusk expert Philippe Bouchet speculates that as many as 1,000 of these could be new species.
Among the finds: this sundial snail, already…
grrlscientist | December 15, 2008tags: evolution, honeyeaters, Meliphagidae, Mohoidae, birds, ornithology, birds, molecular phylogeny, extinct species, South Pacific Islands
Two nectar-feeding birds from Hawai'i, the kioea (brown-streaked, in middle) and an o'o species (lower left), looked so much like nectar specialists from the western Pacific (two species on right) that taxonomists put them all in the same honeyeater family, the Meliphagidae. All the Hawaiian birds are unfortunately extinct, but DNA evidence shows that their resemblance resulted from convergent evolution, because the Hawaiian birds were actually much…
grrlscientist | December 15, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, lobster, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Dr Tin-Yam Chan, University of Keelung.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
November 24, 2008--Even on tiny remote islands, scientists can find an impressive array of life.
During the Santo 2006 biodiversity survey in Vanuatu, 153 scientists from 20 countries fanned out across the remote South…
grrlscientist | December 9, 2008tags: evolution, biogeography, ornithology, birds, avian
Kolo Sunset.
Photo credit: Christopher E. Filardi, American Museum of Natural History
(Click on image for a larger picture).
Two of my ornithologist colleagues, Chris Filardi and Rob Moyle, published a paper in the top-tier research journal, Nature. This paper is especially exciting because it shows that oceanic islands are not necessarily the evolutionary "dead ends" that they have traditionally been portrayed to be. In fact, Chris and Rob's data show that a group of birds have actually accomplished what scientists had never…
grrlscientist | December 5, 2008tags: evolution, Phylogeny, ornithology, chemical defense, Batrachotoxin, poisonous birds, Pitohui, Ifrita, Pachycephalidae, New Guinea
The Hooded Pitohui, Pitohui dichrous,
endemic to New Guinea, is very unusual
because it has poisonous plumage and skin.
Image: John Dumbacher.
I have been in love with New Guinea since I first read about it as a kid. Everything about this tropical island is exotic and fascinating to me, from the large numbers of endemic bird and plant species to the tremendous number of spoken languages -- more than anywhere else on the planet. So I was immediately…
grrlscientist | December 3, 2008tags: Indonesian Mimetic Octopus, invertebrates, behavior, streaming video
This fascinating creature was discovered in 1998 off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the mimic octopus is the first known species to take on the characteristics of multiple species. This octopus is able to copy the physical likeness and movement of more than fifteen different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. This animal is so intelligent that it is able to discern which dangerous sea creature to…
grrlscientist | November 8, 2008tags: Lepidodactylus buleli, new species discovered, Vanuatu gecko, reptiles, Ivan Ineich, Natural History Museum Paris France
French scientist, Ivan Ineich, displays a never-before-seen species of gecko at France's Natural History Museum in Paris. This gecko, formally described with the Latin name, Lepidodactylus buleli, was born in Paris from an egg that was removed from the rainforest canopy on the west coast of Espiritu Santo, one of the larger islands of the Vanuatu Archipelago, east of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean.
IMAGE: Francois Mori (AP Photo) [larger view].
According…
laelaps | October 31, 2008
This past February I wrote about a new giant sengi (or elephant shrew) described in the Journal of Zoology. When attempts to capture live animals failed, researchers used camera traps to get a better look at these previously undescribed creatures. A new paper in the Journal of Mammalogy has announced the discovery of another (although smaller) species of elephant shrew, but it wasn't so easy to spot.
The new species of sengi (bottom, EPI), compared with Elephantulus edwardii (EED), and E. rupestris (ERU). From Smit et al., 2008.In the Western and Northern Cape Provinces of South Africa,…
grrlscientist | October 17, 2008tags: Tiktaalik rosea, sarcopterygian, fishibian, fishapods, transitional fossil, evolution, vertebrate terrestriality, vertebrate evolution
A new study on the internal anatomy of the skull of the extraordinary fish, Tiktaalik roseae, which lived 375 million years ago, provides more evidence of how vertebrate life transitioned from water to land. The head showed changes from more primitive fish that helped adapt to the new feeding and breathing conditions presented by a terrestrial environment, scientists said.
Image: Ted Daeschler, Academy of Natural Sciences [larger view].
A paper was…
grrlscientist | October 12, 2008tags: Seattle Washington, Biology Department Greenhouse, University of Washington, poison dart frogs, Dendrobates, Dendrobatidae
Captive-bred Dyeing Poison Dart frog, Dendrobates tinctorius, from the Guianas of northeastern South America.
Image: GrrlScientist 29 September 2008 [larger view].
This is part two of my UW Biology Department greenhouse photoessay. In part one, I showed you seedpods and a lot of flowers (some of which need to be identified), but in this, the second and last part, I am focusing on The Surprise I kept telling you about. As you can see, the surprise discovery I…
grrlscientist | September 18, 2008tags: ratite, tinamous, evolution, biogeography, phylogenomics, convergence, flightlessness, Paleognath, homoplasy, vicariance
White-throated Tinamou, Tinamus guttatus.
Image: Wikipedia.
New research suggests the ostriches, emus, rheas and other flightless birds known as ratites have lost the ability to fly many times, rather than just once, as long thought. Further, the ratites appear to form a group with the tinamous, a group of birds that can fly, while the ostriches are set apart as the "sister group" -- the closest relatives.
Birds are divided into two groups based on jawbone…
grrlscientist | September 11, 2008tags: Okapi, Okapia johnstoni, camera trap, zoology, rare mammals, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo rainforest, African Wildlife, Zoological Society of London
This undated image provided by the Zoological Society of London, Thursday, 11 September 2008, shows an okapi, Okapia johnstoni, in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo proving that the species is still surviving there despite more than one decade of civil conflict. The Zoological Society of London says cameras set up in Congo have snapped the first photos of the rare okapi roaming wild. Okapi have…
grrlscientist | August 17, 2008tags: new bird species, African forest robin, Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, Gamba Complex, Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, ornithology, birds, avian, Smithsonian, researchblogging.org
A male specimen of the newly-discovered olive-backed forest robin, Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, is carefully examined in the hand of Brian Schmidt, the Smithsonian ornithologist who discovered the species.
Image: Brian Schmidt.
A new species of bird has been identified by ornithologists from the Smithsonian Institution. The bird, which was first discovered in Gabon, a small country in Africa, was unknown to the…
laelaps | August 15, 2008Remember that freezer chock full o' Bigfoot I mentioned yesterday? Well today the men who claim to have found the body of the sought after mythical beast held a press conference in which the results from the first round of DNA testing were presented. Of the three samples tested one came back inconclusive, one had "traces of human DNA," and a third had "traces of opossum DNA" according to news reports. The actual body, first seen in shadowy and low-resolution images this week, was not presented.
A second round of DNA tests have been promised, but maybe it's just a stalling tactic. While the…