Today, we are continuing our precarious climb along the ever-changing tree of life. Once I survive the three weeks of full-time lectures, we’ll make things a little more diverse on here again. There are quite a few exciting things I want to talk about, but my brain is refusing to do more than chew up…
DetailsToday, we are going to talk about one of my favorite animals: corals. Yep, I said animal. Those plant-looking things are definitely animals. It’s even weirder than that, though. Let’s dive in. Let’s quickly orient ourselves where we are on the tree of life. In the kingdom of the animals, the so-called Animalia, the Ctenophora…
DetailsI hadn’t planned another detour from our biodiversity series this week, but after spending a day watching propaganda from both sides on the state of fish populations and fisheries, I couldn’t help but talk about sustainable fisheries. Next semester, I’m taking a class on population dynamics, and as the teacher agrees that three weeks of…
DetailsToday, things are getting more and more colorful with sea jellies of all shapes and forms, with rainbow-light sea combs, and more. Sea jellies are usually called jellyfish, though they are far from fish, and sea combs are usually called comb jellies, though they aren’t jellies. Oh, the fun naming of taxonomy. Until very recently,…
DetailsAre sponges the oldest animals? What kind of sponge is that squarepanted yellow idiot with the pineapple? Are the inner skins of sponges made up of sperm? From SpongeBob to nature, we’re talking sponges today.
DetailsHow do you offset your carbon footprint? You plant trees. Right? Well, as we established in the episode on primary production, trees are actually not the major player when it comes to carbon offsetting. For that, we need to look at underwater “forests.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we shouldn’t save the trees.…
DetailsToday, I will attempt to convince all of us that plankton is cool and worth our attention. We’ll talk about what plankton is and why it’s so important for our climate. Plankton is cool. There, you can quote me on that. That established, I’m also pretty fed up with plankton. I’m more than half-way through…
DetailsYou would not exist without viruses. I cover the very basics of life and the not-so-alive viruses.
DetailsWhere did life originally come from? How did we get from rocks and gas to living animals and human beings? No one really knows but today, we’ll get closer to the answer of the origins of life.
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