Scientists discover the largest fish breeding colony to date in the Antarctic and explore how the nests affect the surrounding ecosystem. Continue reading Huge Icefish Nesting Site Shapes the Local Ecosystem
Manasvi Verma, 1st year PhD student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program at Harvard Medical School. Jovana Andrejevic is a fifth-year Applied Physics Ph.D. student in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. cover Image by Vlad Vasnetsov from Pixabay. This biography is part of our “Picture a Scientist” initiative. To learn more about the amazing men and women who paved … Continue reading John Dabiri: The oceanic adventures of a bioengineer
Zebrafish shed insight into how the brain responds to social isolation: their neuronal gene activity changes depending on how many others are around them. Continue reading The Effect of Social Isolation on the Zebrafish Brain
by Jessica Schifffigures by Rebecca Senft Under the waves and in the ocean, climate change is like a persistent third wheel. Akin to that friend who always insists on tagging along on your dates, his/her/their presence makes it difficult for you and your significant other to have alone time. In the ocean, climate change continually prevents the seduction and reproductive success of all kinds of … Continue reading Climate Change: The Ocean’s “Mood Killer”
When you read a research article, what you see is a finished product. Behind that finished product are countless hours, weeks, months, and likely years of time and effort that went into making that published article. Not only do the experiments take time, but so does setting up and troubleshooting all of the techniques that were used. In science, things rarely work the first time … Continue reading Just Keep Swimming
AquaBounty, a Massachusetts-based company, began growing genetically modified (GM) salmon nearly three decades ago. However, it wasn’t until 2015 that the FDA approved the fish for human consumption. Health Canada made the same decision in 2016. While a current law prevents US sales until a labeling system is established, Canada has imported roughly 5 tons of the GM salmon since May 2016. Although the fish sell unlabeled, Canadians appear to be embracing the next frontier in aquaculture. Continue reading Canadians bringing genetically modified salmon to their tables
Scientists may have found an explanation for why the first amphibious fish moved from water to land. On a small island in the South Pacific Ocean, four species of blennies spend half their time in water and half on land. To test whether predation could be driving the transition to land, researchers created blenny mimics and dispersed them throughout the blennies’ habitats. They found that the aquatic mimics were attacked at a much higher frequency than the terrestrial mimics were, making predation a viable cause for the water-to-land transition. Continue reading Scientists show predators could drive fish to colonize land