Articles by Alex Taylor - Page 32

As well as being a foundation for food webs and supporting a diverse array of species, coral reefs play an important role in protecting the shoreline from storms and surge water.

The great whales, like blue, sperm, grey and right whales, are slowly making a comeback. There are now more than a million sperm whales and tens of thousands of grey whales.

Until very recently it was believed that evolutionary processes only happened over very long periods of time, but these findings indicate that the presence of a non-native predator can induce a process of rapid evolutionary change in a native species.

The Emperor Penguin is currently under consideration for inclusion under the US Endangered Species Act, and listing the species as endangered would reflect the seriousness of the threats it faces and the potential impact of its decline on the Antarctic ecosystem.

It is hoped that Bio-Boundaries could be used for other large predators and territorial species that are under threat from conflict with our ever-increasing human population.

When their numbers are depleted it will take a long time for populations to recover. Better education on the consequences of purchasing Nautilus shells, more research and better regulation appears to be essential for their survival. We can only hope that it is not too late.

Scientists believed that koalas hugged trees because that is where they eat and sleep but, as acacia leaves are inedible to the koala, they were actually leaving eucalyptus trees and hugging acacia trees in order to cool down.

Research discovered that selective logging and wildfires resulted in an annual loss of 54 billion tonnes of carbon from the Brazilian Amazon in 2010. This is the equivalent of 40% of the yearly carbon loss from deforestation.

New research indicates that large numbers of these birds in the Galapagos has fallen in the past 20 years, because they have stopped breeding.