Wed, Jan 30, 2013
Australia's Great Barrier Reef, off Queensland's Gold Coast, is the world's largest living structure. Surprisingly rich given the relative scarceness of nutrition, it's the fruit of intricately-close and complex collaboration between many species, first-most the corals and intertwined algae which build the actual reefs on the relatively shallow oceanic bedrock, which are periodically damaged by storms but rebuild or compensated for by new colonization. Around it abound fish, crustaceans, mollusks and their predators.
Wed, Feb 6, 2013
The Namib desert was formed by sand blown est from the southern Atlantic ocean, forming ever-shifting dunes, which also cut off a narrow coastal strip, where wildlife abounds, especially breeding seals. At the land side, life is extremely specialized, to survive the scorching heat and tip into the very limited resources, such as dew from morning mist and tiny parts of rotting organism also carried from the sea by winds.
Fri, Aug 1, 2014
Steven examines the relationships between people and often creepy arthropod bugs (insects, spiders and scorpions...), more primitive then vertebrates but some 80% of animal wildlife, usually just seen as creepy. Many are problematic, verminous or voracious like locusts, whose swarms can devastate whole regions, but often kept under control best by others, like spiders or Kenyan ants. Some spread diseases, like malaria mosquitoes. Many are edible, even insects, sometimes crucial for poor people, some even culinary delicatessen like various crustaceans. Bees and butterflies are indispensable pollinators. In China the silk worm and its produce became the key commodity for commercial development and cultural cross-fertilization along the Silk Road to India, Turkestans, Persia, Arabia and Europe. Furthermore, some of their efficient anatomy and constructions, like spider webs, keep inspiring designers and engineers, colony species' semi-chaotic social structure like ant hills and bee hives inspire human organizations.
Mon, Jul 30, 2012
Steve's team visits the world's largest and most diverse ecosystem, the Amazon rain forest, whose eponymous stream and countless tributaries contain a fifth of the world's river water, enough to largely drive its own weather cycle. Its unequaled 3 million known plants and animal species lives in a multi-stores environment, in extremely complex interaction. Only a shallow soil layer contains mineral nutrients, so the huge trees need extra support roots and various symbiosis, especially with mycorrhiza, a type of fungus.
Wed, Feb 13, 2013
Steve's team investigates the Western wildlife in the Grandy Canyon, which was remarkably better helped by the reintroduction of the wolf then zoologists dared hope. Interaction with other predators proved minor. Although other prey species, like buffalo herds, are affected, the key are deer, whose unchecked grazing can undo the wood-/grass-land balance unless hunting wolves keep them in check.
Mon, Aug 6, 2012
Monterey Bay, off the south Californoan coast, has a complex ecosystem. Its waters support an exceptionally rich kelp forest, which feeds and houses many fish etcetera and gets extra nutrients because land winds causes rich sediment from the deep ocean channel to be lifted by currents. Sea urchins are the only species voracious enough, eating stems too, to destroy kelp long-term. Sea otters control urchins, except when human hunting eliminated them and thus the whole ecosystem, which returned when they did.
Wed, Jan 23, 2013
Canada's coastal forests, stretching along the Pacific from the US border north and way into Alaska, bound by mountains, are among the richest biotopes. A hectare there supports more plants then in any rain-forest, the waters feed exceptionally rich fish schools, especially hearings, attracting scores of predators, often migrating, even humpback whales. On land, the lordly predators are bears, eagles and wolves.
Wed, Feb 20, 2013
Steve's team investigates the world's largest, yet still largely badly studied biotope by far: the deep ocean parts. For more life then expected dwells at different levels, even the dark where many generate their own light, mostly feeding on a long recycling chain of food grown under sunlight and decomposing at sea. However exceptionally rich wildlife concentrations are found in the most inhospitable parts of the sea surface, toxic zones around volcanic eruptions, where specialized bacteria form the part of a surreal food chain.
Wed, Feb 27, 2013
Steve's team investigates Australia's Red Centre, a huge, hot desert colored by iron ore. Its wildlife mainly stems from before tectonic drift made the once lush freest-covered continent dry up but adapted remarkably well and originally, with iconic species like the extremely numerous red kangaroos, and a remarkably abundance of reptilians. Key to the food-chain however are insects, notably termites, which are capable to digest the specialized, drought-resistant grass which constitutes the only relatively abundant vegetation and is rejuvenated by frequent fires.
Mon, Jul 23, 2012
The Serengeti in East Africa is the textbook example of a vast grassland, site of annual migrations, with wildebeest, lion, elephant and crocodile as iconic species. Howver its geological situation is rather unique, a hard layer of petrified voltaic ash largely restricting growth to favor grasses, as do fires, but half of those are men-made by tribal herdsmen.