possums, predators, and biocontrol

Australian brush-tailed possum, Trichosurus vulpecula

Featured image from https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/native-animals/native-animal-facts/brush-tailed-possum   Recently I shared this Spinoff article about extinction on Twitter, & tagged the Science Learning Hub as the NZ focus makes the article a good fit with their mahi supporting student learning. But I was somewhat surprised to have someone else pop up saying that they wouldn’t read it because, […]

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poor little pangolins – driven to destruction by human greed & stupidity (redux)

When I wrote this, 5 years ago, pangolins were in deep strife due to human greed & stupidity (plus a side order of habitat destruction). I saw this bittersweet video on Twitter today, & thought I’d repost my original article, since nothing has changed. Baby Pangolin ❤️ pic.twitter.com/DyuRU6OwYm — Sunlit Rain (@Earthlings10m) February 12, 2023 […]

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crabs, carcinization, and crappy headlines

This is a post of two parts: the interesting tale of convergence involving crab-like creatures, and the very poor – nay, crappy (because I like the alliteration) – headline on a popular article about it. Part 1: the history of carcinization in crustaceans, described in this 2017 paper in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society […]

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is it a shrimp? is it a prawn? no – it’s Super Crayfish! (revisited)

I wrote this post a couple of years ago, but I think it’s worth revisiting it. Why? Because these crayfish are in the news again – apparently they’ve “taken over” a Belgian cemetery (or, more correctly, the waterways in that cemetery). Local scientists believe that someone must have had the crustaceans in a home aquarium […]

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a fishy story: midas cichlids in nicaraguan lakes

https://pixabay.com/photos/astronotus-fish-cichlid-aquarium-3528098/

Midas cichlids (Amphilophus spp.) are a popular aquarium fish, but in the wild they’re found in South America, ranging from Nicaragua to Costa Rica. The 2018 Schol Bio paper included a really interesting question about a Nicaraguan ‘species complex‘ of these fish, based on a paper in Nature Communications. and a monograph in Cuadernos de […]

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