By: Dana Sackett Each year brings new discoveries of organisms we had no idea we shared the Earth with.  Some of these discoveries, particularly those in the aquatic environment (though I may be a bit bias), can leave people scratching their heads in wonder.  In 2001, an international project called the All Species Inventory was…

I’ve spent this winter paying attention. I’m learning the names of the birds in the bamboo grove behind my office, where the spotted salamanders hide, where the white-tail deer scrape the ground, where the oyster mushrooms grow. I grew up in almost-urban New Jersey, and my “natural literacy” began and ended with cardinal, blue jay,…

By: Dana Sackett When a specific trait about an animal makes it more likely to survive and produce offspring, that trait will get passed on to the next generation becoming more frequent in successive generations than those traits that do not help individuals survive and reproduce. For example, if being able to swim away from…

By: Dana Sackett, PhD Recent research has found that fish may be more important to the ocean carbon cycle than previously predicted.  A compound called calcium carbonate, which is the main ingredient in the shells of marine organisms (coral reefs, oysters, clams, sea urchins, some plankton), is predicted to become more and more limited to…