Spanning six years and seven seagrass meadows along the California coast, a paper published today from the University of California, Davis, is the most extensive study yet of how seagrasses can buffer ocean acidification.

The loss of seagrass in the waters around the UK is much higher than previously estimated. A new study published in Frontiers in Plant Science concludes that, with high certainty, at least 44% of the UK's seagrasses have been lost since 1936, of which 39% has been since the 1980s. This study is one of the first of its kind to bring together seagrass data from diverse sources and give a systematic estimate of the current and historic extent of seagrass, as well as seagrass loss in the UK.

Seahorses are extremely poor swimmers. Surprisingly, however, they can be found in all of the world's oceans. On the basis of almost 360 different seahorse genomes, a group of researchers studied how these special fish were able to spread so suc-cessfully worldwide. Based on an evolutionary tree of 21 species it was possible to reconstruct the dispersal routes of seahorses worldwide and to explain where and when new species emerged. The international research collaboration involving the […]

Seahorses epitomize the exuberance of evolution. They have the unique characteristic of male pregnancy, which includes the carrying of many embryos in a brood pouch that incubates and nourishes the embryos, similar to the mammalian placenta.

This past year, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added 213 plant and animal species to the tree of life, providing deeper insight into the rich biodiversity of our planet and helping to inform global conservation strategies. The new species include 101 ants, 22 crickets, 15 fishes, 11 geckos, 11 sea slugs, 11 flowering plants, eight beetles, eight fossil echinoderms, seven spiders, five snakes, two skinks, two aphids, two eels, one moss, one frog, one fossil amphibian, one […]