The Thermal Tolerance of a Large Tropical Freshwater Shrimp

Published May 29, 2014

This big shrimp can take the heat of more-than-maximal-projected global warming… Read More

Twenty-three Climate Models Can’t Be Wrong … Or Can They? (27 May 2014)
It may be hard to believe, but they can be wrong. And in the words of the authors of this study, “maybe the time has come to correct this modeling Babel and to seek a consensus climate model by developing methods which will combine ingredients from several models or a supermodel made up of a network of different models”… Read More

Carbon Sequestration in Desert Ecosystems (27 May 2014)
There’s much more “C” in them than meets the eye, as the results of this study “provide direct evidence that CO2 fertilization substantially increases ecosystem C storage and that arid ecosystems are significant, previously unrecognized, sinks for atmospheric CO2 that must be accounted for in efforts to constrain terrestrial and global C cycles”… Read More

How Intertidal Gastropods Deal with Acidified Seawater (28 May 2014)
“Both the migration of gastropods out of acidified waters and retraction into their shells serves to reduce exposure time to acidified waters and may reduce the impact of this stressor on their populations,” while “the stronger response to acidification of gastropods from populations previously exposed to this stressor suggests that the response may be learned, inherited or induced over multiple exposures,” adding “to growing evidence that estuarine organisms may exhibit considerable physiological and behavior adaptive capacity to acidification”… Read More

Frogs Facing Double Trouble: Can They Rise to the Challenge? (28 May 2014)
Results of this study “provide strong evidence for simultaneous adaptation to acidic pH and increased invertebrate predator pressure in acidified ponds, whereby changes in the abiotic environment (pH) increase strength of selection via biotic interactions (predation),” which is good news for the frogs!… Read More

Surviving Coral Bleaching (28 May 2014)
How has the Great Barrier Reef been doing lately? It is recovering well from a 2002 bleaching event such that “calcification rates recovered from the effects of severe bleaching within 4 years and have not continued to decline”… Read More

Modeling Rainfall Over Burkina Faso (28 May 2014)
Five regional climate models give it their best shot, but shortcomings still persist… Read More