Yay, Science! Vol. 1, Issue 2, April 2015
Scientists Confirm greenhouse Affect 3
Why are Bees Vanishing? 4
Corals Dine on Microplastics 7
What is This?! 2 Look at These Flowers! 2
Scientsit of the Month, Carl Linnaeus 2
Editor Erin Adams Photogrpahy/Images Erin Adams Rich Hatfield Christopher Colony Eric Smith David Szabo Jim E. Maragos Writers Erin Adams Thomas Sumner Allison Pearce Stevens Agnieszka Biskup
Smog Art Contest Congratulation sto Samatha Smith, 11 of Los Angeles, CA for winning this month’s smog themed art contest! Her Picture Hope(?) will be featured on the Yay, Science! website. www.YayScience.com
Graphics Erin Adams Layout and Design Erin Adams Contact Information: yayscience@gmail.com 123-456-7890 Address: Yay, Science! 1234 Learning Lane, Suite B Smartsville, CA 12345
Do you want to see your picture in Yay, Science! ? Take a picture of your work and e-mail it to yayscience@gmail.com, or send it to: Yay, Science! 1234 Learning Lane, Suite B Smartsville, CA 12345 Next Month’s theme: Water Conservation!!!
Submissions: Submissions may be sent electronically or by mail, the deadline is the 10th of the month for electronic, by mail, the 5th of the month.
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What is This?!?!?!
By: Erin Adams
The Wolffish, or Anarhichas lupus, is a salt water fish native to colder, northern waters. It has a set of teeth and up to 6 large tusks on it’s lower jaw, and canines throughout it’s worse than a shark mouth. They are dull colored solitary creatures, that hang out near the bottom, deeper than 85 fathoms, so that you never see it coming until it’s too late. They lay larvae that are sometimes without, yolks and souls. Larvae lurk on the bottom once they hatch, like their parents. They tend to grow terrifyingly fast and are particularly common in Maine. They eat shellfish and crab mostly, and other creatures like starfish and sea urchins. They only playfully nip at human flesh when they are caught sometimes. They are not endangered or of concern, even though they come with built on weapons on their lower jaws.
Look at These Flowers!
By: Erin Adams
Gloriosa Superba, also known as the Gloriosa or Flame Lily, is a red and yellow climbing flower native to tropical and southern Africa, and tropical Asia. It is perennial and can grow up to 4 meters long. It is the national flower of Zimbabwe and has been used to treat cancer, along with several other traditional medical uses. It is also extremely poisonous and can kill you if eaten, if you’re not an African Porcupine or some varieties of mole! The tubers are especially poisonous. It can also cause severe skin irritation if touched. It also can be seen growing n in Europe, Australia, and parts of America, for it’s beauty and ornamentation. Other names for it include: fire lily, gloriosa lily, glory lily, superb lily, climbing lily, and creeping lily.
By: Erin Adams
Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish Doctor, Scientist, Professor, Botanist, Naturalist, and Explorer who developed binomial nomenclature, the modern system for classifying animals and plants. He was born on May 23rd, 1707 in Rashult, Smalaland, Sweden. He grew up poor, but acquired wealthy friends who helped fund his research, writing, and education. Before binomial nomenclature, he first developed the sexual system of clafication, finding
Carl Linnaeus
that plants had different reproductive organisms. In 1737 he wrote “Genera Plantarum”, “Genera of Plants”. In 1739 he helped found the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was inspired to expand upon the 200 year old idea of classifying animals, by their characteristics, and separate them into genuses and species. Charles Darwin would use Linnaeus’s work in 1859 to support the theory of Evolution. In 1739 married his wife Sara Elisabeth. He began practicing medicine, in 1742 he began teaching medicine and botany. In 1753 he published “Species Planatarum”, “Species of Plants”, and the binomial nomenclature became common use. In 1758 “Systema Naturae”, was published, the guide for zoological nomenclature. He would send many students around the globe to bring back plants, animals, and new creatures and species to classify. In 1761 he was made a noble and became Carl Von Linne. He died in 1778, four years after
having a stroke. His son Carl inherited his collection, after his death his wife sold it to Sir James Edward Smith, who created the Linnean Society of London.
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Scientists confirm greenhouse effect of human’s CO2 Although it had been assumed, data now firmly link warming to CO2 rise from human activities BY THOMAS SUMNER And Agnieszka Biskup, Originally Published in Student Science, March 1, 2015
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For the first time, scientists have shown a direct link between rising levels of carbon dioxide — or CO2 — in Earth’s atmosphere and an increase in how much solar energy warms the ground. The finding supports a key theory about what’s behind the recent worldwide warming of Earth’s climate. It links a measurable share of that warming to human activities that release CO2. These include the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) for heating, power and transportation. CO2 is known as a greenhouse gas. By that, scientists mean that this gas allows the sun’s visible light to pass through. But when that light hits Earth’s surface, it can be transformed to heat (infrared light). CO2 now traps that heat (like a greenhouse window) and holds much of it within the lower atmosphere — right down to Earth’s surface. Daniel Feldman is a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It’s a Department of Energy research center in Berkeley, Calif. He and his colleagues sought to uncover how large the effect of recent increases in CO2 have been on Earth’s near-surface warming. To do that, they monitored the sunlight hitting two sites on cloudless days. One was in Alaska, the other in Oklahoma. CO2 absorbs some wavelengths of the infrared light now being radiated from Earth’s surface. Then it releases very specific wavelengths of this infrared light. This infrared radiation goes in all directions — including back to Earth’s surface. Knowing this, the researchers could look at the wavelengths of infrared light and, like a fingerprint, link it to what share was from a CO2 buildup in the air, and what share was due to other things, such as water vapor. Feldman’s group reviewed more than 10 years of near-daily observations of sunlight and temperature for the two locations. After sifting through these data, the team showed that a rise in CO2 levels of 22 parts per million in air boosted the amount of the sun’s heat on the
ground by 0.2 watts per square meter. That’s an increase of about 10 percent. The researchers say their results agree with predictions of CO2-driven warming created by computer models. Those models have been used to forecast future climate conditions. Feldman’s team reported its findings online February 25. They appear in the journal Nature.
“We’ve always had some greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Solomon says. “But because we’ve burned a lot of fossil fuels and deforested parts of the planet, we’ve increased the amount of greenhouse gases, and as a result have changed the temperature of the planet.”
Earth’s atmosphere works something like a giant glass greenhouse. As the sun’s rays enter our atmosphere, most continue right down to the planet’s surface. As they hit the soil and surface waters, those rays release much of their energy as heat. Some of the heat then radiates back out into space. However, certain gases in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor, work like a blanket to retain much of that heat. This helps to warm our atmosphere. The gases do this by absorbing the heat and radiating it back to Earth’s surface. These gases are nicknamed “greenhouse gases” because of their heat-trapping effect. Without the “greenhouse effect,” Earth would be too cold to support most forms of life. But there can be too much of a good thing. Carbon dioxide is released when we use fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas. We burn these fuels, made from the ancient remains of plants and animals, to run electricity-generating plants that power factories, homes and schools. Products of these fossil fuels, such as gasoline and diesel fuel, power most of the engines that drive cars, airplanes and ships. By examining air bubbles in ice cores taken from Antarctica, scientists can go back and calculate what the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been throughout the last 650,000 years. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been climbing to where today it is 30 percent greater than 650,000 years ago. That rise in carbon dioxide “is essentially entirely due to the burning of fuels,” Susan Solomon says. She’s a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Boulder, Colo., and studies factors that affect climate. Humans have further increased the levels of greenhouse gases in the air by changing the landscape. Plants take up carbon dioxide to make food in a process called photosynthesis. Once cut down, they can no longer take in carbon dioxide, and this gas begins building up in the air instead of fueling the growth of plants. So by cutting down trees and forests for farmland and other human uses, more carbon dioxide is also added into the atmosphere.
carbon dioxide:
Can you define these words? fossil fuels: global warming: greenhouse gas: infrared light: parts per million: radiation (in physics): solar:
watt:
wavelength:
Why are Bees Vanishing? Scientists find a combination of threats may explain declining honeybee populations BY ALISON PEARCE STEVENS,
Originally published in Student Science, January 10, 2014
The post office is buzzing as package after package of honeybees await delivery to their new homes. The tiny hooked feet of some worker bees cling to the screens on the sides of each wooden case. Other worker bees huddle around a small central cage containing their queen. Sorting and delivering packages of live honeybees isn’t the favorite task of postal workers. Still, it is a job they have to handle more and more often. That’s because beekeepers in the United States and Europe have been losing bees to a mysterious condition known as colony collapse disorder, or CCD. Each mail-order package contains the seed of a new honeybee colony to replace one that has vanished. “The bees appear fine in the fall,” says Michael Breed, a honeybee researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “Then by mid-spring they’re simply gone.”
Scientists now suspect all three — parasites, pesticides and infections — combine to deliver a triple whammy.
Breed has been working with these insects for 35 years. He has always ordered a few new bee colonies each spring. But since CCD began affecting the bees, he has had to order more and more each year. Before 2005, he never had a colony of bees simply disappear. Lately, it seems to happen all of the time. And when his colonies collapse, so do those maintained by neighboring beekeepers. The Northern Colorado Beekeepers Association now trucks in hundreds of packages of bees each spring to replace those that have vanished. Across the United States, up to one-third of the colonies kept by commercial beekeepers collapse each year, according to government surveys. Exactly what’s causing CCD remains a mystery. Among the early suspects: parasites that infiltrate the hives, especially the bloodsucking Varroa (Vuh ROW uh) mite. Later, some scientists found evidence that assigned the blame to certain pesticides. Other biologists have linked the problem to infections, including some caused by viruses. Scientists now suspect all three — parasites, pesticides and infections — combine to deliver a triple whammy. Pesticides first may weaken the bees. That leaves the insects too weak to survive diseases and pests that otherwise would not kill them.
Earth’s changing climate worsens things, Breed notes. A changing climate can bring droughts or flooding that affect the availability of flowers on which bees depend. This makes bees more vulnerable than ever. Even these threats may not capture the whole picture. Worker bees do many jobs in the hive: Nurse bees tend larvae. Forager bees gather food. A small number of guard bees protect the hive entrance from honey thieves. And some bees patrol the hive, scouting for sick and dying bees. These “undertaker” bees cart off the dead, dropping their bodies outside the hive. If the insects were just becoming deathly ill, beekeepers should find the evidence near the hive. The bees wouldn’t just vanish. But they have been.
Too much ‘noise’
Another explanation for the collapse of so many colonies is that the bees are getting lost. Christopher Connolly thinks they may be forgetting their way home. A neuroscientist at the University of Dundee in Scotland, Connolly studies bee brains. Connolly is especially interested in how pesticides affect those wee brains. Honeybees can encounter pesticides in different places. People treat hives where bees live with chemicals to kill insects and other pests.
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Even the sugary corn syrup many beekeepers feed their bees over winter can contain traces of the pesticides that farmers had applied to growing corn. In most cases, bees contact only tiny amounts of these poisons. Normally these exposures would be too small to kill them. Still, even tiny amounts will move throughout a bee’s body. About one-third will reach its brain. And that may be enough to confuse the bee, Connolly says. The part of the bee brain responsible for learning and memory is called the mushroom body (named for its mushroom-like shape). When cells here receive information — about the location or scent of a flower, for instance — they “talk” to other cells. It’s through these chemical conversations in its brain that a bee learns a flowery scent means nectar is available. Or it may learn that a certain landmark means home is close by. The bee responds by zooming in on its target. Of course, the brain chatters using not sounds but chemical signals. Chemical messengers shuttle back and forth to relay these signals. Scientists refer to these messenger chemicals as neurotransmitters. They’re the “language” by which one nerve cell in the brain talks to a neighbor. Once a message has been received, an enzyme between the nerve cells gobbles up the neurotransmitter. That way the cells won’t have to “listen” to an old message. Connolly set out to discover how pesticides affect those conversations between brain cells. Where the message gets lost He started the study by selecting three common pesticides: one used to kill Varroa mites, and two known as neonicotinoids (Nee oh NICK uh tin oydz). Farmers and gardeners often use these last two, called neonics for short. One reason: They are less toxic to people than many other pesticides are. Connolly then removed the brains from honeybees and bumblebees and put those brains in a watery bath. He inserted a tiny, needlelike probe into a cell in the mushroom body of each brain. This probe recorded electrical signals. Electrical pulses emerge every time a nerve cell receives a message from its neighbor. The cell then prepares to relay that information to the next cell. (It’s a bit like the game of “telephone,” where children pass along a message with a whisper. Only in this case, the nerve cells share their message by releasing a messenger chemical.) Each electrical pulse Connolly detected indicated that the probed cell was chatting with a neighbor. He then tested each of the three pesticides individually, adding a small amount to a bee brain’s bath. With the neonics, he exposed each bee’s brain cells to about as much as the insect might encounter while foraging on plants treated with the pesticide. And the tests showed that even very low levels of neonics caused the brain cells to become overly chatty. It’s as if all the cells in the brain decided to talk at once, Connolly explains. Just as you might miss information directed at you in the midst of a noisy crowd, the bee’s brain cells might miss
an important message about the location of food or a landmark. The pesticide used in beehives to kill mites only made the problem worse. It stopped the enzymes from doing their job. So not only did mushroom-body cells find themselves in the midst of endless crosstalk, but the enzymes did nothing to hush the old messages. That made the bee’s brain even noisier. Amidst that racket, a bee could miss important information, Connolly thinks. Similar to the way a distracted driver may miss a turn, these bees may miss landmarks pointing the way home. And this, the scientist says, could explain the mysterious disappearance of entire colonies of honeybees. One by one, bees get forever lost. And every lost bee is one more that fails to bring food home to its colony.
Disappearing scent trail
As if pesticides, parasites and infections weren’t enough, honeybees face another serious threat. Experts from the University of Southampton, England, discovered that air pollution from cars and trucks can erase the scent that bees follow to find food. Foraging honeybees locate most flowers by smell. In fact, that’s why flowers smell good — not for our enjoyment, but to help lure pollinators. Each flower’s scent is a complex mix of released chemicals. Honeybees use the whole mix of odors to find a preferred type of flower. When some share of the chemicals disappear, bees no longer recognize what is left of the starting scent. It’s like trying to recognize the smell of a pepperoni pizza just from its dough. As a result, the trail that bees had been following to locate food vanishes. Pollution from cars and trucks can partially erase a flower’s scent, Robbie Girling and his team now show. They traced the problem to diesel exhaust. Their new findings appeared Oct. 3 in the journal Scientific Reports. With bees no longer able to recognize a flower’s scent, they may miss food. This can leave a colony hungry, they conclude — even if the nectar foragers do make it home.
More than just honey
Losing honeybees means more than just a world without honey. These insects play a major role in producing all kinds of foods, including berries, apples, almonds, melons, kiwis, cashews and cucumbers. That’s because honeybees move pollen between flowers. This fertilizes plants. Without this pollination, many plants won’t produce fruit. Bees also pollinate crops used to feed livestock. Fewer bees could mean less of many different foods at the grocery store. Pollination is so important that many farmers rent bees. Once crops start blooming, beekeepers truck in commercial hives to let the bees do their work. In agricultural states such as California, vanishing honeybee colonies may pose a serious threat to crop fertilization and the food supply. However, research by Rachael Winfree suggests that disappearing honeybees might not hurt all farmers equally. An ecologist, she works at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. In N.J., farmland is often located near habitats that support other wild pollinators.
Fruit plants visited by a diverse mix of pollinators produce more fruit than those visited by just a few species, Winfree has found. Particularly important are wild bees. These are the natives that beekeepers can’t control. Some wild bees will pollinate flowers that honeybees can’t. A bumblebee’s vibrating belly, for example, does a better job than honeybees of pollinating cherry tomatoes. Nor are bees the only pollinators. Some moths, bats and other critters help move pollen as well.
Other bees not safe from pollution
The world is home to more than 20,000 species of bees. North America alone boasts about 4,000. Those species of native bees all pollinate plants. However, none of the world’s seven honeybee species come from North America. Those now found there originally came from Europe: Settlers brought them in the 1600s to guarantee a source of wax and honey. Of course, native bees face pesticides, diseases and other pressures too. The fate of these wild bees remains largely unknown. Certainly, many native bees encounter widely used pesticides, including neonicotinoids. If bumblebees reflect the risks faced by North America’s other native bees, then “many species might be declining,” Winfree says. In June, for instance, bumblebees rained out of flowering trees at a parking lot in Wilsonville, Ore. Rich Hatfield investigated. He’s a biologist with the Xerces (ZER sees) Society. His group is dedicated to protecting bees and their relatives. What Hatfield found shocked him. “I walked into a parking lot littered with dead bodies,” he recalls. The trees had been sprayed with a neonicotinoid pesticide, he learned. Hatfield estimates that more than 50,000 bumblebees died in just this one incident. That’s as many bees as live in about 300 colonies, he says. Bumblebees are even more susceptible to neonics than honeybees, Connolly has found. That likely explains why only bumblebees died in the Wilsonville incident. Still, all bee brains have mushroom bodies with cells that can be overwhelmed by the noise induced by neonics. These pesticides represent just a small share of the many types sprayed on crops, flowers and other plants. Even chemicals not intended for plant use can harm bees if flowering plants are located nearby. In September, for example, several honeybee colonies died in Minneapolis, Minn., after being exposed to the pesticide fipronil. Experts at the University of Minnesota believe the chemical was applied to the foundation of a building. The chemical appears to have tainted nearby plants that had been blooming. How such chemicals affect bumblebees and other native bees remains unknown, says Connolly. How harmful other chemicals might be to their brains may vary widely, he says. The vast majority of native bees are solitary. That makes them harder to study. Yet scientists know that even solitary bees navigate. They need to remember where the best food is. Females need to find their nests so that they can feed their young. Lost or confused native bees may mean fewer and fewer bees over time.
Recommendations
While scientists search for pesticides that are safe for wildlife, people and bees, the rest of us can support bees at home — even in the middle of a city. All four researchers suggest planting native flowers and leaving untended areas in our yards and gardens. Native bees readily nest in such areas. That helps ensure more pollinators will be around the next year. The experts all recommend avoiding the use of pesticides around our homes. The best way to do this is by using integrated pest management. This approach can be effective and good for the environment. (Click on the explainer box above to learn more.) Pesticides won’t go away completely. They ensure that pests won’t destroy the crops on which people depend for food. But, “killing bees and other insects is not justified just to have pretty flowers,” Connolly argues. Allowing insects to eat our garden plants can provide them with a lifeline. And that lifeline might also extend to us, if it helps protect the pollinators on which our food supply depends. Pesticides are designed to kill particular classes of organisms. Most target a narrow range of species of insects, mites or nematodes. That doesn’t mean they can’t, however, also poison other critters, including bees or even people. Pesticides sold for use around the home tend to be relatively nontoxic or are mixed in concentrations that are not overly strong. They should be relatively safe around people, at least when used as directed. But kids are smaller than adults. That means it takes a smaller dose of pesticide to have an effect inside a child’s body. And even low levels of pesticides can cause behavioral problems, trouble concentrating or even cancer, notes the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). That presents a concern, because kids are exposed to a wide variety of pesticides every day, the AAP finds. Shoes track these chemicals into our homes. The wind spreads them beyond the field or garden. Some bug or rodent killers are even designed for use in homes. And traces of pesticides may even taint foods. That’s why the AAP recommends taking steps to reduce pesticide exposure. One way is to eat organic foods. Another is to switch to integrated pest management, or IPM. This takes a natural approach to pest control. For instance, gardeners or farmers may release ladybugs or other natural predators onto their plants. There, the good bugs munch on the pests. Or growers can plant things that attract birds and other predatory species. Examples include plants that produce yummy berries and seeds, or that provide protective cover for natural predators. This can control pests naturally. They patrol a yard or field snacking on bad bugs other animals that may pose a threat to plants. Recently, some crop scientists found that certain species of plants naturally produce vapors that act as chemical distress calls. Various insects and other predatory animals have learned that these scents signal a plant is under attack by a pest. Often a predator will find those pests yummy. Plants that do this recruit their own saviors.
People can choosecrops or garden plants whose roots exude weed killers, like certain grasses and garden shrubs. Botanists refer to this type of chemical defense as allelopathy (Ah LEE lo path ee). IPM practices allow the use of chemical pesticides, but only as a last resort. So consider allowing a few weeds in the lawn (or hand-pulling them). Seal cracks around the house to keep spiders, crickets, mice and other pests outside. And fix leaky pipes to dry up the water that lures many pests into a building. Taking such IPM steps can minimize any need for pesticides. That leads to a safer environment for people, pets and welcomed wildlife, including bees.
Can you define these words?
colony:
enzyme: genus (genera): herbicide: honeybee: insecticide: mite: mushroom body: neonicotinoids:
All four researchers suggest planting native flowers and leaving untended areas in our yards and gardens. Native bees readily nest in such areas. That helps ensure more pollinators will be around the next year. The experts all recommend avoiding the use of pesticides around our homes. The best way to do this is by using integrated pest management. This approach can be effective and good for the environment.
neuroscience: neurotransmitter: pesticide: pollinate: pollinator:
“killing bees and other insects is not justified just to have pretty flowers,” Connolly argues.
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Corals Dine on Microplastics Scientists discover tiny pieces of plastic deep within the bodies of corals BY ALISON PEARCE STEVENS, Originally Published in Student Science, March 18, 2015 Plastic trash is washing off of land and into the seas. And that pollution may be harming some of the ocean’s most important habitats: coral reefs. That’s the conclusion of a new Australian study. Coral reefs are the most biologically diverse habitats in the ocean. Their nooks and crannies provide shelter for thousands of species of animals, both big and small. That huge variety of reef organisms also provides food for a wide range of other critters. If the corals die, though, lots of those other species will have trouble surviving. The new study raises concerns about the survival of some coral species — and the complex ecosystems that depend on them. The animals that build reefs are called polyps. Coral polyps are small. Their soft bodies also lack a hard outer covering to protect them from potential predators. So the polyps make their own protective home out of calcium carbonate. Coral polyps continually add to these homes. And over time, communities of millions of polyps craft the large, rocky apartment complexes that we know as reefs. Polyps hide in their homes by day. At night, they extend their arm-like appendages out to snatch small snacks, usually plankton, from the water. Those snacks are truly tiny — a mere 400 micrometers (0.016 inch) in diameter or less, notes Mia Hoogenboom. She is a marine biologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Unfortunately, she points out, scientists are finding more and more bits of plastics in the ocean ecosystem. Those microplastic pieces are less than 5 millimeters (0.2 inch) in size. That makes many just the right size for corals to gobble up. Hoogenboom’s team lives and works near the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral system. It stretches across more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) of Australia’s northeast coast. It’s also home to the greatest diversity of species in the world. But that biodiversity could be at risk from plastics. Hoogenboom and her co-workers wanted to find out how plastics might be affecting those reef corals.
Food or plastic?
Corals get some energy from single-celled algae that live amidst the corals’ tissues. These algae produce their energy through photosynthesis. But corals also must eat plankton and other foods to obtain certain vital nutrients important for growth and reproduction. So Hoogenboom’s team started its investigation by probing whether corals might be mistaking plastics for food. This is a concern because many other marine animals make that error. The team brought pieces of one type of coral into their lab. The species is known as brain coral because its round shape and fold-like pattern make it resemble the human brain. Then
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the researchers shredded a blue ice cream tub made of polypropylene (PAAH-lee-PRO-pihleen). This is one of the plastics most commonly found in the ocean. The scientists added the plastic microbits to the water in which the corals were being kept. Two days later, the researchers examined the polyps’ stomachs. One out of every five of the coral animals had eaten plastic. What’s more, pieces of the blue plastic had gotten stuck deep in the animals’ stomachs. That suggests the polyps cannot get rid of the plastic once it is swallowed, says Hoogenboom. Next, the researchers added a precise amount of microplastics to the corals’ water. Twelve hours later, the scientists measured how much had disappeared. This showed the polyps had eaten microplastic bits at the same rate they
Can you define these words?
algae:
biodiversity: calcium carbonate: coral: ecosystem: habitat: marine: marine biologist:
normally eat plankton. None of this matters if microplastics are not polluting the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. So the final step by Hoogenboom’s group was to sample water at various reef sites. And at each one, they found bits of plastic that had broken off of larger pieces of packaging or items used in fishing. So corals definitely are at risk of eating plastic, the researchers conclude. The Australian team published its findings online February 4 in Marine Biology. It’s an interesting study, says Stephanie Wright. A marine biologist at the University of Exeter in England, she was not involved with the study. The new study did not give corals a choice of foods, she points out. They could only eat microplastics. Future steps should look at how easily corals ignore plastic when true food is around. But, she notes, the study does add to a growing body of knowledge about the risks that microplastics in the sea may pose.
Unfortunately, she points out, scientists are finding more and more bits of plastics in the ocean ecosystem.
microplastic: photosynthesis: polutant: polypropolene: reef: species: tissue: predator:
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Oceans Word Search
Find these words in the puzzle above: ocean
tide
beach
coral coast eel whale
fish
shark
algae kelp dolphin anemone octopus crab
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