associationdaa.blogg.se

Recent, massive blooms of billions of jellyfish have clogged power plants, decimated fisheries, and caused millions of dollars of damage. More than a decade ago, Juli Berwald left a career in ocean science to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas, but jellyfish drew her back to the sea. Yet until recently, jellyfish were largely ignored by science, and they remain among the most poorly understood of ocean dwellers. Made of roughly 95 percent water, some jellies are barely perceptible virtuosos of disguise, while others glow with a luminescence that has revolutionized biotechnology. Their sting-microscopic spears that pierce with five million times the acceleration of gravity-is the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom. They make a venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. Berwald's engaging account of these delicate, often ignored creatures shows how much they matter to our oceans' future." - New York Times Book Review

is a significant part of the environmental story.

"Witty, insightful.The story of jellyfish. It was gradually refined into the sleek locomotion we know today."A book full of wonders" -Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk That seems to have evolved as a consequence of cephalopods in the Cambrian period (541 million to 485 million years ago) jerking their bodies back into the shell and thus expelling water. In this adapt-or-die world, the crucial innovation proved to be jet propulsion. And so began an arms race between the shelled krakens and the bony upstarts: fish evolved teeth to crack the shells of their prey, while those prey thickened their protective shells. Through her words, we learn how evolution of a buoyant shell gave ammonites, nautiluses and their early kin the ability to rise off the sea floor and become fearsome predators, only to find themselves prey to jawed fish. Staaf compares how both the “terrible lizards” and the “head-footed” cephalopods evolved, diversified and ate their way through their ancestors, then mostly perished in the hostile conditions at the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago. Anyone beguiled by dinosaurs will probably find Squid Empire irresistible.