A tale of two fishes - November 19, 2009
An endangered fish is actually two even more endangered fish, according to new research.
Although it is already listed as ‘critically endangered’ the poor old European common skate may be in an even worse state than we thought. A new paper published in Aquatic Conservation says what we thought was the skate Dipturus batis is actually two different animals.
“Morphology, genetics, and life history reveal that two distinct species have been erroneously confused since the 1920s under the single scientific name D. batis,” write Samuel Iglésias, of the French National Museum of Natural History, and colleagues.
Iglésias says the ‘common skate’ species should be split into the blue skate (provisionally D. cf. flossada) and the flapper skate (D. cf. intermedia). This is not just of academic importance.
“Revisions of incorrect synonymizations - called species resurrections - are common works for systematists, but in the present case the resurrection of D. cf. intermedia is of great conservation significance,” the authors note.
The problem is that the not-quite-so-bad state of blue skate populations has been masking the really, really bad state of the flapper. And the old ‘common skate’ is already noted as the first fish brought to the brink of extinction by commercial fishing and this confusion of blue and flapper has hamstrung those trying to conserve the species – both of which deserve independent ‘critically endangered status’ says the paper.
“The risk of extinction of these depleted species is higher than previously assessed and appears unavoidable without immediate and incisive conservation action,” Iglésias concludes.

In 1835, Darwin and his shipmates collected specimens of the Floreana mockingbird in the Galapagos Islands. Now those same specimens may help conservationists re-establish the species to the island that gives them their name.
In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s
A UN
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The brown pelican has been officially declared recovered by the US government, and the species will no longer be listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The fossils of whales and plesiosaurs may contain evidence allowing modern scientists to understand the evolution of one of the strangest creatures in the sea.
The US Congress is finally taking on the controversial idea of geoengineering — large-scale, deliberate manipulation of the climate system to counteract climate change.
The US House of Representatives yesterday passed
Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson is at the climate negotiations in Barcelona. This is his first blog post from the pre-Copenhagen meeting, cross posted from
The
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Australia’s government has been told to invest more in research on the impact climate change will have on its coastlines.

Over 200,000 square miles (520,000 sq km) of Alaskan territory could be designated ‘critical habitat’ for polar bears, under 
The world’s largest orb weaver spider has been discovered, lurking malevolently in the jungles of Africa.
NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge got underway in the Southern Hemisphere on Friday last week, with a DC-8 plane flying the first of a series of missions to measure Antarctic ice.
China’s got ample space underground to store the carbon dioxide it pumps into the sky, according to a recently publicised study by Chinese and US researchers (
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The US Geological Survey today warned that introduced species of gigantic snake “constitute an exceptional threat to the integrity of native ecosystems”.
“Fire up the B-movietron!” exlaims University of Portsmouth paleontologist Mark Whitton,
Apparently black bears, soccer moms and
Given that they occupy a position on the scientific credibility spectrum that could charitably be characterised as ‘fringe’, it is no surprise that those who deny climate change have to take their victories where they find them.

The US Chamber of Commerce has hit back at Apple, after the computer company joined the list of members who have left the group over its views on climate change.
Mere hours after a Nobel Prize was awarded for an invention that allowed the modern digital camera to come into being, a tiny example of this technology has flown into the news on the back of an albatross.
Last night Cambridge’s clown school gave the world’s best and brightest the awards they deserved. Harvard University hosted its 

First, the good news: A new report cataloguing all the known plants and animals boosts the number of species known to science to 1.9 million — a rise of 114,000 compared to a study published three years ago.
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A massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands in the Chinese province of Sichuan last year was a “once in 4,000 years” event, according to a paper published in
The edges of ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic are thinning faster than we’d thought, thanks to a surprisingly extensive network of fast-flowing and accelerating glaciers, new satellite measurements show (


All eyes are now on tomorrow's
The
The UK
The
Greenhouse gas emissions have helped reverse the Arctic's 2,000-year (at least) cooling streak, suggests a 






Global ocean surface temperatures last month were the warmest since records began in 1880, according to
Another standoff between climate scientists and those who are trying to use freedom of information laws to access their data has emerged.
The UK’s Natural History Museum has been targeted by thieves after an unusual prize: tropical bird skins.
A study in this week’s 



The US Geological Survey released an
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appears to have developed a taste for marine science. In the last week he has assisted a whale research project and taken a spin around the bottom of the world’s deepest lake, according to state news source RIA Novosti.
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How do orangutans swing through the trees? Carefully.



Last week’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake near New Zealand moved the country some 30 cm towards Australia, it was reported today
Europe’s biggest single emitter of carbon dioxide is set to get even bigger next year, likely cementing its place in the ‘dirty 30’ polluters list.
NASA has released its report of what cause the US$273 million
Officials have admitted that a tiger reserve in India no longer has any tigers. 
John Holdren, science advisor to President Barack Obama, swung by Blighty today for some tea and crumpets with the Brits. But before embarking on a
Countries like India, China, Brazil and others are focusing on per-capita emissions within a historical context. From this perspective, industrialized nations have pumped far more than their fair share of pollution into the atmosphere, which provides a limited cushion for development powered by fossil fuels. The way China runs the numbers, industrialized nations would have had to stop emitting all together two years ago. Recognizing that it will be virtually impossible to achieve parity under such terms, Bolivia has proposed the concept of a "climate debt," illustrated in this graph, which is basically the difference between what industrialized nations should be allowed to emit on a cumulative, per-capita basis and what they actually emit. 


I got to hear Al Gore speak today at the close of the 
Normally when world leaders meet at their summits these days they like to wrangle about climate change before setting a target that doesn’t go as far as many scientists think is needed. Equally normal is a storm of media coverage with various unnamed sources speculating about what is going to happen.
Just in case the world’s public were growing inured to tales of rising sea level, drought and crop failure, scientists have come up with a new reason climate change is bad. It makes sheep shrink.



The US
EU environment ministers have agreed that more urgently needs to be done to stop European biodiversity from declining further.
Jim Hansen has released a statement about his arrest 
Climate guru and NASA scientist James Hansen has been arrested after taking part in a protest against mountaintop coal mining.
A husband-and-wife team of British evolutionary biologists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, were on 19 June awarded the
The 2009 meeting of the International Whaling Commission has begun in Madeira, Portugal. Once again, participants are looking to construct a compromise between those who wish to hunt whales and those who think want to stop that sort of thing.
Biologists need to take a more nuanced view of ‘same-sex behaviour’ in animals, say the authors of a
The research that allowed an endangered butterfly to be successfully reintroduced to the UK has finally been published this week.
Alaska’s Rat Island needs a new name this week.
Pack your bags and head for the hills. The end is near. That's what you might be led to believe if you read 
The ‘White Nose Syndrome’ that has been devastating America’s bat populations since at least 2007 is “unprecedented” and could have economic and human health ramifications, a US House of Representatives hearing heard yesterday.





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