Beach Microbes Starving Baby Sea Turtles of Oxygen

by Vanessa Bezy, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill | February 26, 2015 12:56pm 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. The publication contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

On a small stretch of beach at Ostional in Costa Rica, hundreds of thousands of sea turtles nest simultaneously in events known as arribadas. Because there are so many eggs in the sand, nesting females frequently dig up previously laid nests, leaving the beach littered with broken eggs. But these endangered sea turtles are facing a new threat: sand microbes encouraged by the decomposing eggs.

Results from a new study we’ve published in PLOS ONE show how these sand microbes cause low levels of oxygen in the nests that interfere with the embryonic development of the sea turtles.

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Firemen give pet hamsters oxygen

29 September 2014, 11:09

US firemen used oxygen and first aid to save a family of pet hamsters caught in a mobile home blaze.

The crew, from the Lacey Fire Department in Washington state, relied on 'pet emergency pocket guides' to bring the injured rodents back to life.

Five hamsters - Oreo, Madonna and three unnamed baby hamsters - - were recovered from the blaze. Unfortunately, one of the pets later died.

Thankfully, no humans were in the trailer at the time of the fire caused by a faulty tumble drier.

The fire department later tweeted: "Yes. Our crews are trained and specially equipped to care for animals that have been rescued from a house fire."

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Size Matters for Creatures of Cold Polar Waters

July 11, 2013 — Scientists at the Universities of Liverpool, Plymouth, and Radboud, Netherlands, have challenged the view that giant animals are found in polar seas because of a superabundance of oxygen in cold water.

It is thought that giant insects and other creatures hundreds of millions of years ago evolved due to a superabundance of oxygen and that this could also explain the existence of giant sea creatures today. The new research, published in Functional Ecology, however, suggests that this may not be the case.

Survive despite low oxygen supply

The research suggests that large animals survive in polar oceans despite there being low oxygen supply. They showed that giant body sizes have an advantage in the cold conditions by being better able to regulate how much oxygen they take up.

Dr David Atkinson, from the University's of Liverpool's Institute of Integrative Biology, explains: "It is true that cold water holds more oxygen than warm water, but the speed at which it diffuses is so slow that cold water actually lowers oxygen availability.

"To understand why animals reach gigantic proportions in cold oceans, we looked at how oxygen-containing water moves over the body surfaces of animals. We noted that as water is much denser than air, it is much harder for animals to move oxygen-containing water over the body surfaces that take up this essential fuel. This is crucial as this movement prevents a thick layer of stagnant water clinging to the body and asphyxiating a water-breathing animal."

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Oxygen mystery: How marine mammals hold their breath

By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC News

Scientists say they have solved the mystery of one of the most extreme adaptations in the animal kingdom: how marine mammals store enough oxygen to hold their breath for up to an hour.

The team studied myoglobin, an oxygen-storing protein in mammals' muscles and found that, in whales and seals, it has special "non-stick" properties.

This allowed the animals to pack huge amounts of oxygen into their muscles without "clogging them up".

The findings are published in Science.

Dr Michael Berenbrink from the Institute of Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool took part in the study.

He said that scientists had long wondered how marine mammals managed to pack so much of this vital protein into their bodies.

"At high enough concentrations, [proteins] tend to stick together, so we tried to understand how seals and whales evolved higher and higher concentrations of this protein in their muscles without a loss of function," he told BBC News.

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