As I started looking into the condition of river otters around the world, it became obvious that a lot of the information out there deals with otters in Europe and North America– I would say easily 90% of what I’ve read so far. In some ways that’s helpful, because it means that researchers have been […]
Author Archive
On a downhill slope
We otter pay attention?
Giving eels a leg to stand on
Over the past week, I’ve looked for ways for us to get directly involved with eel conservation- the good news is that those opportunities are out there; the bad news is that it took some searching to find everything I mention here, so it takes persistence to get involved. Of course, it also takes persistence […]
Crowded eels
In my last post, I mentioned some of the big issues facing eel populations around the world: habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, climate change. We’re constantly gaining information on how these problems impact eels, and we’re also getting a better sense of how to mitigate some of the challenges. Once again, I’m largely looking at those eel […]
Slipping through the cracks
This past week has been really informative for me- so many things that I didn’t know about eels, and it turns out that I’m not the only one. Although there are a large number of scientists looking into eel conservation, there are still so many unknowns about eel ecology that it can be hard to […]
A slippery subject?
I was brainstorming for this month’s topic and it seemed like it’s been a while since I have chosen something with a truly aquatic lifestyle. Plus I was thinking that it would be nice to talk about something that has at least a partial connection to the food I eat, and then I thought ‘eels.’ […]
Keeping tabs on fungi
I spent some time over the past week looking into how we can all contribute to fungi conservation- since fungal conservation doesn’t get as much attention as plant and animal conservation, there aren’t as many international organizations or projects that are seeking support. Instead, it seems like smaller, more local groups are more prevalent. And […]
No room for spores
As I mentioned in my last post, there are a number of issues facing fungi around the world. Researchers continue to look into how best to support fungi populations, but it seems like there are some patterns to effective fungi conservation– we need to know which fungi are present, we need to look at microhabitat […]
Dwindling fungi?
A brief search through the literature resulted in quite a few studies and even a few books about fungi conservation, so I feel pretty confident in saying that people are paying attention to this issue. At the same time, a lot of that effort seems to be coming from the last 20 years, so it […]
How many fungus are among us?
I’m currently teaching some introductory biology labs and we’ve begun an overview of the diversity of life on earth, starting with protists and other small organisms- my blog tends to focus on the larger organisms that you can see easily without microscopes, and I think there’s a tendency to prioritize those species over the ones […]