News
23 January 2019
In the animal kingdom, food access is among the biggest drivers of habitat preference. It influences, among other things, how animals interact, where they roam and the amount of energy they expend to maintain their access to food. But how do different members of ecologically similar species manage...
23 January 2019
An animal’s evolution is not only a matter of adapting to external conditions, or what’s “out there.” Oftentimes, what’s inside is equally important.
Now, an international team of scientists, including two at UC Santa Barbara, has set out to better understand the genetic history of organs...
26 March 2018
Healthier fish stocks. Higher catches. Profits from fishing. Is there a way to achieve these holy grails of commercial fisheries without harming endangered species that are caught incidentally?
A new UC Santa Barbara-led study has found that may indeed be possible about half the time. According...
15 March 2018
When British naturalist Charles Darwin traveled to the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he took notice of the giant kelp forests ringing the islands. He believed that if those forests were destroyed, a significant number of species would be lost. These underwater ecosystems, Darwin believed, could be...
6 March 2018
The Asian tiger mosquito — carrier of such diseases as dengue, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya and Zika — appears to have vanished from Palmyra.
Not native to the small atoll 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, Aedes albopict likely came to Palmyra during World War II, when the United...
5 March 2018
UC Santa Barbara ecologist Douglas McCauley has been selected a 2018 early career fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). An assistant professor in UCSB’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology (EEMB) and director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative, McCauley is one of seven ESA...
28 February 2018
The global fishing fleet is so big it can be seen from space. Really.
Fishing activity now covers at least 55 percent of the world’s oceans — four times the land area covered by agriculture — and can now be monitored, in near real time, to the level of individual vessels. In fact, 70,000 vessels...
26 February 2018
As a beach-loving 12-year-old, Jeff Elings found a shark egg in the sand and brought it home. With help from his mom Betty, he put it into an aquarium and nurtured it with a daily supply of ocean water. Then it hatched.
Thinking quickly of nearby UC Santa Barbara and its teaching aquarium, the...
1 February 2018
Can targeted conservation facilitate recovery of intertwined species?
The Recovery...
17 January 2018
Situated between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the coastal plain to the north and the unique Northern Channel Islands archipelago to the south, the coastal zone of Southern California near Santa Barbara is especially alluring.
A new children’s book, “The Golden Forest” (Muddy Boots, 2017), delves...