Tagged With: nature
Where have our hedgehogs gone?
by Amy Whetstone, Qualification and Skills Officer at the Society of Biology The European hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus, has long been a welcome visitor to our gardens and green spaces in the UK. Our unmistakeable spiny friends were once frequent guests to my back garden, but over the years I’ve noticed a definite decline in sightings. … Continue reading
Species of the week: Bottlenose dolphin
by Pippy Downs, a Year 11 work experience pupil from The Folkestone School for Girls Bottlenose dolphins are well known for being able to perform complex tricks. They have a friendly, permanent smile from their curved bottle like noses. Most people call them ‘dolphins’ however the scientific family name for dolphins is Delphinidae. They are … Continue reading
The peculiarities of the jellyfish nervous system
Guest post from Joseph Jebelli, a PhD student at UCL What is it like to be a jellyfish? These beautifully mesmerising creatures are so bizarre, so alien to us in so many respects that one can easily be forgiven for struggling to come up with a good answer. Biologically, jellyfish have long been thought of … Continue reading
Bad news for pollination – a decline in Britain’s larger moths
by Rebecca Nesbit ‘Moths are declining rapidly in the UK’ was, unsurprisingly, the message from the State of Britain’s Larger Moths report launched last Friday by Butterfly Conservation. In a week when the controversial topic of bees and neonicotinoids was headline news, it was interesting to hear about the fates of a different group of … Continue reading
Is panda PR a good idea?
by Rebecca Nesbit, Press Officer, Society of Biology Panda conservation is not ‘greenwash’ read the headline of BBC Nature’s thought-provoking write-up of the Biology Week debate ‘should we save the panda’. This referred to the evening’s extensive discussion about the use (and misuse) of pandas in conservation PR. Whether or not you think it is … Continue reading
bTB or not bTB? How to control it is still the question
Guest post by Catherine O’Connor, Epidemiologist for the Health Protection Services, discussing the badger cull As an epidemiologist, my job is to understand the how, what, when, where and whys of disease transmission. Though we now possess much fancier tools than those used by the father of epidemiology, John Snow (he of the Broad Street … Continue reading
Bumblebees’ gruesome parasites
Guest blog by Sive Finlay, a PhD student from Trinity College Dublin who recently won Best Biology Student at the 2012 SET awards for her undergraduate project Bee populations are in severe decline, an alarming and worrying trend when you consider their vital importance as commercial and ecological pollinators. Research and media attention often focuses … Continue reading
An American crayfish in London (and beyond!)
by Zara Gladman, PhD student at the University of Glasgow and intern at the Society of Biology In my last blog I waxed lyrical on the wonders of crayfish, those large freshwater invertebrates that grace our rivers, lochs and your M&S sandwiches. Today I’d like to discuss one of the biggest threats to aquatic biodiversity: … Continue reading
Species of the week: the crayfish
by Zara Gladman, intern at the Society of Biology My name is Zara and I’m an “astacologist”, which is a fancy way of saying that I study crayfish, lobster-like freshwater crustaceans of which there are more than 640 described species. In Australia, they go by the name of “yabby” (as in “Yabby Creek” – Home … Continue reading
A Shootful of Sugar
The xylem and phloem are two very important tissues in vascular plants: together, they form the transport system. Xylem vessels consist of dead cells which are arranged into long, hollow tubes and allow the transport of water and minerals from the roots to the leaves. Phloem vessels are alive and transport nutrients such as sucrose … Continue reading