Tags: Biodiversity

Parasitic 'Dementor' Wasp Leaves Prey Without Free Will

You may think a wasp that can zombify its prey with venom in order to eat it alive sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but it's actually the stuff of biodiversity. Called the dementor wasp, this terrifying insect was just discovered last year-along with 138 other new species-in the Greater Mekong Region of Asia, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) reports today.

Port of Los Angeles Reveals a New Resident of the City—A Roly Poly Pillbug Species

On the mother of all class field trips, a new species of marine roly poly pillbug was discovered, Los Angeles researchers from the county Natural History Museum confirm. The discovery was made as an invertebrate zoology lab course from Loyola Marymount University taught by researcher Dean Pentcheff of the museum explored a small, dirty, rocky beach at the southernmost tip of the city-less than a mile from the busiest port in America.

AS GLOBAL TEMPERATURES RISE, SPECIES MAY PLUMMET

As if submersion of coastal communities by rising sea levels weren’t bad enough, scientists have recently added another frightening repercussion to climate change: the loss of species. Scientists are still quibbling over the number of species that may perish with rising temperatures, some claiming zero while others predicting a whopping 54%. In an effort to refine the predictions, Marc Urban, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, has crunched the numbers, and although his results don’t spell the end for over half the world’s species, the numbers are still frightening.
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