News
20 October 2014
A longstanding question among scientists is whether evolution is predictable. A team of researchers from UC Santa Barbara may have found a preliminary answer. The genetic underpinnings of complex traits in cephalopods may in fact be predictable because they evolved in the same way in two distinct...
14 October 2014
Oil platforms off the Southern California coast are some of the world’s most productive marine fish habitats, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings could have important policy implications for the decommissioning and...
8 October 2014
Is life in the oceans changing over the years? Are humans causing long-term declines in ocean biodiversity with climate change, fishing and other impacts?
At present, scientists are unable to answer these questions because little data exist for many marine organisms, and the small amount of...
22 September 2014
When famed ocean explorer Robert Ballad and his research team were exploring the complex seamounts off the British Virgin Islands earlier this month from their ship, E/V Nautilus, a group of Santa Barbara elementary school students was right there with them. Virtually.
Thanks to a 24/7 satellite...
12 September 2014
With a handful of motivated undergrads serving as his assistants, UC Santa Barbara marine scientist Craig Carlson spent part of his summer at sea on the South Pacific, leading the biogeochemical component of a multidisciplinary research cruise aboard the RV Kilo Moana.
For Carlson, professor and...
28 August 2014
Most of North America’s megafauna — mastodons, short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats and American camels and horses — disappeared close to 13,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene period. The cause of this massive extinction has long been debated by scientists who, until...
31 July 2014
In the high-tech world of science, researchers sometimes need to get back to basics. UC Santa Barbara’s Douglas McCauley did just that to study the impacts of the bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) on coral reef ecosystems at two remote locations in the central Pacific Ocean.
Using direct...
31 July 2014
Sometimes in order to plan for the future, you have to look to the past. That is what more than two dozen scientists from across the United States did when they met at UC Santa Barbara two years ago to participate in the Channel Islands Bio-cultural Diversity Working Group.
The group’s goal was to...
28 July 2014
The Earth’s current biodiversity — the product of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary trial and error — is vital to sustaining human life. This rich accumulation has reached a tipping point and is now shrinking rapidly.
New research conducted by an international team of scientists that includes UC...
23 July 2014
The drought that has the entire country in its grip is affecting more than the color of people’s lawns. It may also be responsible for the proliferation of a heat-loving amoeba commonly found in warm freshwater bodies, such as lakes, rivers and hot springs, which the drought has made warmer than...