Biodiversity Archives - Cool Australia

The floor is lava: after 1.5 billion years in flux, here’s how a new, stronger crust set the stage for life on Earth

Author: Fabio A Capitanio, Oliver Nebel, Peter Cawood

Date: 3/12/21

The floor is lava: after 1.5 billion years in flux, here's how a new, stronger crust set the stage for life on Earth Shutterstock Fabio A Capitanio, Monash University; Oliver Nebel, Monash University, and Peter Cawood, Monash University Our planet is unique in the Solar system. It’s the onl...

Freaky ‘frankenprawns’: ancient deep sea monsters called radiodonts had incredible vision that likely drove an evolutionary arms race

Author: John Paterson

Source: The Conversation

Date: 3/12/21

The radiodont Anomalocaris, with its large stalked eyes, is considered a top predator that swam in the oceans more than 500 million years ago. Katrina Kenny, Author provided John Paterson, University of New England Deep sea animals can be the stuff of nightmares. Many inhabit the ocean’s tw...

‘WTF?’: newly discovered ghostly circles in the sky can’t be explained by current theories, and astronomers are excited

Author: Ray Norris

Source: The Conversation

Date: 2/12/20

In September 2019, my colleague Anna Kapinska gave a presentation showing interesting objects she’d found while browsing our new radio astronomical data. She had started noticing very weird shapes she couldn’t fit easily to any known type of object. Among them, labelled by Anna as WTF?, was a p...

Humans force wild animals into tight spots, or send them far from home. We calculated just how big the impact is

Author: Tim Doherty, Don Driscoll, Graeme Hays

Source: The Conversation

Date: 2/2/21

Eric Fortin/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND Tim Doherty, University of Sydney; Don Driscoll, Deakin University, and Graeme Hays, Deakin University The COVID pandemic has shown us that disruptions to the way we move around, complete daily activities and interact with each other can shatter our wellbeing. ...

$Blind shrimps, translucent snails: the 11 mysterious new species we found in potential fracking sites$

Blind shrimps, translucent snails: the 11 mysterious new species we found in potential fracking sites

Author: Jenny Davis, Daryl Nielsen, Gavin Rees, Stefanie Oberprieler

Source: The Conversation

Date: 16/2/21

There aren’t many parts of the world where you can discover a completely new assemblage of living creatures. But after sampling underground water in a remote, arid region of northern Australia, we discovered at least 11, and probably more, new species of stygofauna. Stygofauna are invertebrates t...

The mysterious existence of a leafless kauri stump, kept alive by its forest neighbours

Author: Sebastian Leuzinger, Martin Karl-Friedrich Bader

Source: The Conversation

Date: 15/2/21

Shutterstock/Ludmila Ruzickova Plants use their leaves to make food from the sun’s energy and carbon dioxide. With very few exceptions of parasitic plants, no tree is known to grow without green foliage — or to be more precise, no tree can start life without leaves or some sort of green tis...

Bees can remember human faces – and 7 other surprising facts about these important insects

Author: Meghan Miner Murray

Source: TED Ideas

Date: 21/3/21

Most people know bees for two things: their sweetness (in the form of honey) or their stings. But they’re so much more than that. Honeybees, for example, live in highly structured social groups where each bee has a role to play. Some bees are solitary and can chew holes in wood. Others can be ...

We found methane-eating bacteria living in a common Australian tree. It could be a game changer for curbing greenhouse gases

Author: Luke Jeffrey

Source: The Conversation

Date: 9/4/21

Shutterstock Trees are the Earth’s lungs – it’s well understood they drawdown and lock up vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But emerging research is showing trees can also emit methane, and it’s currently unknown just how much. This could be a major problem, given met...

Bridges, highways, scaffolds: how the amazing engineering of army ants can make us smarter creators

Author: Chris Reid, Daniele Carlesso

Source: The Conversation

Date: 20/4/21

Chris R Reid, Author provided Chris Reid, Macquarie University and Daniele Carlesso, Macquarie University Army ants (Eciton burchellii) are known for their vast foraging raids. Hundreds of thousands of ants flow like a river from their nest site, scouring the jungle as they prey on anything un...

These are the plastic items that most kill whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds

Source: The Conversation

Date: 14/12/2020

Lauren Roman, CSIRO; Britta Denise Hardesty, CSIRO; Chris Wilcox, CSIRO, and Qamar Schuyler, CSIRO How do we save whales and other marine animals from plastic in the ocean? Our new review shows reducing plastic pollution can prevent the deaths of beloved marine species. Over 700 marine species, inc...

Biodiversity

The floor is lava: after 1.5 billion years in flux, here’s how a new, stronger crust set the stage for life on Earth

Freaky ‘frankenprawns’: ancient deep sea monsters called radiodonts had incredible vision that likely drove an evolutionary arms race

‘WTF?’: newly discovered ghostly circles in the sky can’t be explained by current theories, and astronomers are excited

Humans force wild animals into tight spots, or send them far from home. We calculated just how big the impact is

Blind shrimps, translucent snails: the 11 mysterious new species we found in potential fracking sites

The mysterious existence of a leafless kauri stump, kept alive by its forest neighbours

Bees can remember human faces – and 7 other surprising facts about these important insects

We found methane-eating bacteria living in a common Australian tree. It could be a game changer for curbing greenhouse gases

Bridges, highways, scaffolds: how the amazing engineering of army ants can make us smarter creators

These are the plastic items that most kill whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds

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Biodiversity

Articles

Curious Kids: what are cells made out...

We composted ‘biodegradable’ balloons....

To all the women in science … please...

Recent News

Building the nation will be impossible...

Climate change pushed ocean temperatures...

Worried about Earth's future? Well,...