News by Subject Agriculture

Recent studies show that, in the future, the mercury concentration of fish in Finnish Lapland can shift closer to the level found in lakes located below the Arctic Circle. According to researchers, mercury content should be increasingly carefully investigated and monitored in fish and food webs, as the climate and land use change.

Researchers at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science reveal that intensification of major oyster disease was due to evolving parasite, not just drought as previously thought.

Over the past 35 years, there have been large shifts in the distributions of many dragonfly species in Germany. Those of standing water habitats have declined, probably due to loss of habitat. Running-water species and warm-adapted species have benefited from improved water quality and warmer temperatures. This was found by a team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). The study highlights the importance of citizen science and natural history societies for long-term data collection.

The depths of the Black Sea store comparatively large amounts of organic carbon. A research team led by scientists from the University of Oldenburg, Germany, has now presented a new hypothesis as to why organic compounds accumulate in this semi-enclosed sea and other oxygen-depleted waters. Reactions with hydrogen sulfide play an important role in stabilizing carbon compounds, the researchers posit in the scientific journal Science Advances. This negative feedback in the climate system could counteract global warming over geological periods.

Once thought to be extinct, lobe-finned coelacanths are enormous fish that live deep in the ocean. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on June 17 have evidence that, in addition to their impressive size, coelacanths also can live for an impressively long time--perhaps nearly a century.

Weddell seals, the southernmost born mammal, are known as champion divers. But they don't begin life that way. Cal Poly researchers examined the development of diving behavior in Weddell seal pups and found that they time their dives with their mother but likely do not learn to forage at that time. Instead, they focus their early efforts on learning to swim and navigate under the sea ice.

SUTD-led research has demonstrated a technology that allows users with camera phones to track the health of aquatic microorganisms -- assessing water quality and drinkability in the process.