As I have mentioned before, habitat fragmentation is one of the primary issues facing species around the world today- while it is far too big a topic to tackle in its entirety during one month’s posts, I think that investigating a few of its manifestations is manageable. I also think it’s necessary, since we have […]
Author Archive
Why didn’t the beetle cross the road?
Can you get there from here?
This month I’ll be focusing on one part of a very big issue- habitat fragmentation, in all of its forms, is a huge problem for species around the world and the ecosystem services they provide. Some species require a certain amount of territory for their home ranges, and habitat fragmentation may leave them unable to […]
Going on the offensive for sharks
Over the past few posts, hopefully you have gotten a sense of how a combination of increasing demand and general prejudice has led to massive overexploitation of shark populations around the world- some of the information I have passed along is pretty bleak. But I don’t want you to think that it’s all doom and […]
Where the wild sharks are
My last post presented a pretty bleak view of current shark populations and the challenges they face, so this week I want to focus on the ways that researchers are trying to understand the most important aspects of shark conservation- sometimes the strategies they propose aren’t effective, but still lead to improved shark knowledge and […]
Peril in the high seas
When I sat down to read about shark declines around the world, I had thought I was prepared for the numbers I was about to encounter: it’s very bad, we know this now, time to reserve the trend. But as I became more and more depressed about the current situation of shark species, I realized […]
Fins on patrol
Maybe I was inspired by the Discovery Channel last month, or maybe it’s due to how many I see when I’m on the Louisiana coast doing field work, but this month I’ve decided to look more closely at the plight of sharks in the world’s oceans (and maybe this is just an attempt to face […]
Helping fireflies glow
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent some time looking into firefly research and conservation around the world- some aspects of it were considerably more challenging to dig up than others, but I think that I have a much better sense of what it means to be a firefly and the roles that these insects […]
Lights out
In my last post, I mentioned some of the challenges facing firefly populations around the world, including habitat loss and pollution, and this week I wanted to get a better sense of our options for halting population declines and making a human-dominated landscape more firefly-friendly. To be honest, I was kind of hoping to find […]
The life aquatic (and semi-aquatic and terrestrial) of fireflies
My foray into firefly ecology over the past week has been fascinating on a number of levels- clearly in my previous ideas about fireflies, I had far too simple a concept of what these insects were: fireflies are more diverse, more widespread, and more sophisticated than I had ever imagined. They are also more indicative […]
A bright future for fireflies?
My appreciation for most insects was late in developing- I very much recognize their contributions to world ecosystems today and am aware that they are integral to so many of the ecological processes we depend upon (like pollination and decomposition), but that wasn’t always the case. Now I have a better understanding of how many […]