Oceanic Connections

Meet some of the people featured in the November 2019 issue of The Scientist.

For centuries, painters and poets have looked to the ocean for insight. Researchers, too, have found their muse in the Earth’s salty realm.

Take a break from the bench to puzzle and peruse.

Interspecies adoptions are rare, but it’s not the first time this population of dolphins in French Polynesia has attempted it.

Insects in the soil are difficult to monitor, but listening in on the noises they make could help farmers detect pest infestations and improve estimates of biodiversity.

MRI scans from more than 800 incarcerated men pinpoint distinct structural features of people who have committed homicide, compared with those who carried out other crimes.

Insulating tundra soil with snow increased the abundance of microbial species involved in carbon dioxide and methane release.

The Yale biologist says that organisms’ behavior, physiology, and morphology engage in a constant “evolutionary dance.”

Marine photographers are helping scientists to document the diversity of coral reefs before the imperiled ecosystems disappear.

Most know Rachel Carson for her work on the dangers of chemical pollutants, but the writer’s earlier prose took readers on a tour of a mysterious underwater world.

Reef mantas in Indonesia exhibit social preferences and form distinct social groups.

Neural activity associated with the meaning of words is independent of whether those words are read or listened to, a study finds.

Cable bacteria can live in stirred-up sediments by associating with structures built by Chaetopterus variopedatus.

Will the study of interactions between living things ever mirror the fundamental nature of physics and mathematics?

A full description of the lifecycle of Karenia brevis could lead to improved monitoring, prediction, and mitigation of the harmful algal blooms it regularly causes.

Integrating a specialized histone into large segments of transgenic DNA enables centromere formation.

To help create better conservation and management plans, researchers are measuring how marine organisms move between habitats and populations.

How bacterial filaments ferry electrons through marine sediment

From regulating each other’s gene expression to encoding different parts of the same proteins, the two genome types in every eukaryotic cell are far from independent.

A love of music and science led the marine biologist to discover that whales sing songs, a discovery that he’s since used to convince the world the animals are worth saving.

Recruiting an epigenetic instigator of centromere formation into large segments of cloned DNA facilitates their transformation into artificial chromosomes.

Finding new tenants for former drug development sites isn’t always easy. But a new, thriving industry has materialized to do just that.