Science – Page 48 – Southern Fried Science

“Sharks create oxygen”: A scientific perspective

February 10, 2012 David Shiffman 14 Comments

I want to apologize to our regular readers for stating something that should be incredibly obvious. Sharks in in no way connected to the global supply of atmospheric oxygen. If every single species of shark went extinct, there would be a variety of negative ecological effects, but a reduction in the global supply of atmospheric oxygen would not be among them. There is not a shred of scientific evidence supporting the idea that the loss of sharks would affect our oxygen supply- not a single scientific paper, not a single technical report. I’ve attended a dozen scientific conferences focusing on marine ecology or shark biology (including three international conferences) and I’ve never seen or heard of anyone presenting or even discussing this. To the best of my knowledge, not a single person who has authored a scientific paper or technical report supports this idea. Despite the complete lack of any kind of credible evidence, and despite many recent blog posts thoroughly debunking it (see here here here here here here and here ), this pseudoscience just won’t die.

The premise of the sharks and oxygen claim is as follows:

The Ocean Question: What ocean issues would you like to see discussed more this year?

February 10, 2012February 10, 2012 Andrew Thaler 11 Comments

Conservation, Science

This year, during Science Online 2012 I asked 8 marine scientists and ocean advocates the following question: What issues in marine science and conservation would you like to see discussed more in the coming year? The responses ranged from protecting coral reefs to developing better bioinformatic tools. Watch their answers below. httpv://youtu.be/2AhPV5L3LnU

If fish evolved on land, where did they all go? Evolution and Biodiversity in the Ocean

February 8, 2012February 9, 2012 Andrew Thaler 9 Comments

Science

This ray-finned fish was my dinner last night. Photo by Andrew David Thaler

When Carl Sagan described our planet as a “pale blue dot” he was invoking the fact that, despite being called Earth, our world is mostly Ocean. The surface of the Earth is a little more than 70% water and the ocean accounts for 98-99% of our total biosphere–the volume of the planet that can support life. Most contemporary theories point to ocean ecosystems–like deep-sea hydrothermal vents–as the launching point for the emergence and evolution of life. Ocean processes dominate biological interactions, even among unwitting terrestrial actors. A new paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, revisits an old debate about the ocean biodiversity and challenges the notion the ray-finned fishes have a marine origin.

In Why are there so few fish in the sea? the authors begin with the seemingly innocuous question–why are there so many more species in terrestrial environments than in marine environments? From there, they look at species counts, phylogenetic relationships, and diversification rates to determine the ancestral state of the most recent common ancestor of one fish class, Actinopterygii, the ray-finned fish. What they found was that, despite the vastly smaller habitat available for freshwater fish, the number of actinopterygian species found those ecosystems was roughly equivalent to the number of species found in marine systems. In both systems, the dominant groups are relative newcomers on the evolutionary stage, with superorder-level radiations happening between 111 – 150 million years ago. Most surprising, the authors discovered that the most recent common ancestor of actinopterygians may have been a freshwater, not marine, fish. Ray-finned fishes may have invaded the ocean from lakes and rivers.

This is what a Marine Invertebrate Zoology class looks like.

February 7, 2012February 7, 2012 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Popular Culture, Science

The last few weeks have seen a groundswell of support for Kevin Zelnio’s #IamScience movement, what began as a single, incredibly heartfelt post and twitter hashtag evolved into a series of personal reflections, a somber music video, and a tumbler and Facebook page, all with the unifying message that there is no traditional path through science, only … Read More “This is what a Marine Invertebrate Zoology class looks like.” »

How to live-tweet a conference: A guide for conference organizers and twitter users

January 17, 2012January 17, 2012 David Shiffman 8 Comments

Science

Attending scientific conferences is one of my favorite parts of my job. I get to travel to interesting places (and Mobile, Alabama), catch up with colleagues, learn about what smart people all over the world are up to, and get feedback on my own research from those smart people. Conferences help me to learn about the world, network with people in my field, and become a better scientist. To date, I’ve attended 13 conferences (including 3 international ones), and I learn something new at each one.

There are a lot of non-scientists in the world who care about many of the issues discussed at scientific conferences, issues like climate change, endangered species, overfishing, and cool new discoveries about sharks. The overwhelming majority of these non-scientists lack the resources or the time to attend conferences, and many might not even know that they’re happening. In many cases, increased public awareness of a conservation issue is exactly what’s needed to help fix the problem. If the interested public can’t attend conferences and the mainstream media doesn’t typically cover them, how can we get the word out?

Image courtesy twitter.com, used with permission

Part of the answer is social media, the so-called Web 2.0 technologies that simultaneously make it easier than ever before in human history for people to share information with the world (without traditional gatekeepers like the mainstream media), and make it easier than ever before in human history for people to find information about topics they care about. One social media tool that lends itself particularly well to sharing information from a conference is twitter, and live-tweeting conferences is a growing trend. For the purpose of this post, I define live-tweeting (henceforth simply “tweeting”) as simply tweeting about conference presentations and events. This tweeting can take place during the actual conference presentation (in several cases, I’ve been able to relay a question to a presenter from one of my twitter followers during the official question and answer period associated with a presentation), but doesn’t necessarily have to be. At one conference, I simply took notes on talks and tweeted about them later- the only disadvantages of this strategy are that you can’t relay questions from your followers to the presenters and you may be discussing the same topic at a different time as other twitter users.

Presented below is a guide for conference organizers to promote conference tweeting, and a guide for interested twitter users to use the tool to maximum effect. The guide is with specific reference to getting important information from a conference to the interested non-scientist not-present-at-the-conference public. There are many other goals for conference tweeting (taking notes on a conference primarily for personal use, sharing important technical information with colleagues in your field, etc), and the strategies and suggestions below may not be appropriate for these goals.

New app: Learn about great white sharks while supporting research

January 11, 2012 David Shiffman 4 Comments

Science

Earlier today, the Marine Conservation Science Institute launched a new iPhone and iPad app focusing on great white sharks. The app, called Expedition White Shark , includes numerous features that let users learn more about these amazing animals.

A game (called “Shark Life”) lets you learn about the life history of great white sharks by controlling a virtual baby great white. Users explore the marine environment near Southern California white eating fish and avoiding threats like gillnets and pollution.

A “news” interface lets you keep up to date on some of the latest exciting discoveries the Marine CSI team makes, and you can learn more about great whites from the “facts” tab. The app also includes numerous photos and videos of great whites and the research team in action.The coolest feature this app contains, however, is the ability to track satellite-tagged great whites.

Updates from the Deep: New and Noteworthy in Hydrothermal Vent Research

January 10, 2012January 12, 2012 Andrew Thaler 7 Comments

Conservation, Science

From hairy-chested yeti crabs to the deepest known fields, hydrothermal vents have been enjoying a bit of science celebrity in the last few weeks. Beneath the headlines, there has been an eruption of vent-related research published in the scientific literature and some exciting new expeditions just left port.

The Discovery of New Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Communities in the Southern Ocean and Implications for Biogeography

'Hoff' crabs in paradise. Image from ChEss Southern Ocean Consortium

The exhaustive author list on this paper reads like a who’s who in hydrothermal vent biogeography. This is the paper that introduced “the Hoff” crab to the world, but the findings are far more significant. Hydrothermal vent systems are sorted into biogeographic provinces, with different regions supporting different communities. The iconic giant tube worms dominate the eastern Pacific, while the western Pacific (prominently featured in Deep Fried Sea) plays host to fist sized snails, and the Atlantic features shrimp as its dominant species. There are several missing gaps in our understanding of how these qualitatively different communities are connected – the Southern Ocean, the south Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the Cayman Trough, among others. Filling in these gaps in our knowledge can help us understand the history and evolution of hydrothermal vent ecosystems.

What hybrid sharks mean (and don’t mean) for climate change and evolution: fact-checking the media coverage

January 6, 2012January 6, 2012 David Shiffman 37 Comments

Conservation, Science

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Photo credit: study author Pascal Geraghty, New South Wales Department of Primary Industry

Last week, a team of 10 Australian scientists announced that they had found the world’s first “shark hybrids”, offspring of individuals from two different shark species which had interbred. During a routine survey of Australian marine life, 57 sharks were found that physically resembled one species of shark, but had genetic markers inconsistent with that species. Subsequent genetic investigation revealed that these 57 animals were hybrids between common blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) and Australian blacktip sharks (C. tilstoni).

Some of these hybrids were “F1″, meaning that one parents was a common blacktip and one was an Australian blacktip. Others were “B+”(backcrossed), which means that one parent was a common blacktip/Australian blacktip hybrid, and the other was a “purebreed” of one of those two species. According to the study’s lead author, Dr. Jess Morgan of the University of Queensland, “our genetic marker tells us that these hybrids are ‘at least’ F1, and that these animals are reproductively viable and can produce an F2…the hybrids may be generations past F2 but the existing genetic markers can’t distinguish how many generations past the second cross have occurred.”

That sinking feeling: Hog lagoons, superbugs, and the proliferation of antibiotics in livestock

January 2, 2012January 2, 2012 Andrew Thaler 9 Comments

Science

From here, it looks like such a lovely pond. Photo by Andrew David Thaler

The murky brown water was still, reflecting, perfectly, the drifting clouds above. Had I not known what it was, an acre-wide manmade pond almost a dozen feet deep filled to the brim with hog feces, I might be tempted to describe it as “beautiful”. Hog lagoons like this are a common sight in North Carolina, though their use is in decline. My lab group arrived at this particular lagoon to take microbial samples, fungi in this case, from the steaming cauldron of organic waste: an ideal culture medium. Carefully, we loaded a small skiff and rowed out into the stink. Near the center, we gingerly dipped our sampling vials, affixed to the end of an old fishing pole, into the dense fluid. It was then that we noticed the rising waterline, the slow trickle at the stern, the shift in balance. We locked the oars and rowed, frantically, towards shore. Our labmates on shore had, thankfully, tied a line to the bow before we departed. The skiff’s gunwales were creeping closer and closer to the water. We were sinking. We were sinking in a lake of pig shit.

The Connected Professor

January 2, 2012December 31, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Science

Here at SFS, we seem to have an affinity for cyborgs. I recently had a dream in which I envisioned my future as such a creature. I had aged, achieved a professorship, and was teaching an introductory geography class. Contrary to the current classroom, however, there was not a learned scholar standing in front of pupils transferring information from my brain to theirs through lecture and leading discussions. Instead, there was a flurry of multimedia flying around the room and the “lecture” was really a snippet of a semester-long conversation involving the entire class intended to immerse them in geographic thinking, in and out of class. My thoughts and the in-person conversation was immediately digitized and encoded to be connected to parallel tweets, emails, blogs, and other online content.

Read More “The Connected Professor” »