https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Male seahorses, fishes that belong to the Syngnathidae family, show a distinctive reproductive strategy in which males carry developing embryos in a brood pouch. Their most distinctive feature is the brood pouch on the ventral side of the male fish, into which the female fish transfers her eggs. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-male-seahorse-pouch-proteins-toxic.html Plants & Animals Tue, 20 Oct 2026 18:40:02 EDT news711726601 At first glance, it looks exactly like a seahorse. It has the same horse-shaped head tilted down from the body, the same curled, grasping tail and, in the males, a fully enclosed pouch for brooding the young. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-museum-nature-seahorses.html Evolution Mon, 03 Aug 2026 12:20:06 EDT news704976241 In mammals, males are usually stronger and more competitive than females. Males also show greater inequality in reproductive success—the number of offspring they produce—than females. In spotted hyenas, the opposite is true: Reproductive inequality is greater among females than males. The reason? Female spotted hyenas pass on their social rank and the associated privileges, such as priority access to food, to their offspring, whereas males do not. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-mothers-winners-alpha-female-lineages.html Evolution Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:50:02 EDT news704046361 The red pipefish (Notiocampus ruber) is a rare relative of seahorses and seadragons found only in Australia. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-rare-male-red-pipefish-eggs.html Plants & Animals Fri, 29 May 2026 12:20:02 EDT news699269781 Swimming among the corals of the Great Barrier Reef is a fish that could be a doppelganger for the famous Sesame Street character Mr. Snuffleupagus. This bright orange-red, hairy, long-snouted ghost pipefish is a new species that has been hiding in plain sight for years, often confused with other ghost pipefish. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-hairy-fish-species-great-barrier.html Plants & Animals Thu, 14 May 2026 09:20:04 EDT news697967512 Look up at the clouds. What do you see? A sailboat? A seahorse? Your great-aunt Rosemary? As humans, we're prone to seeing patterns where they don't actually exist. This behavior is so common there's a name for it: apophenia. But sometimes, those patterns really do exist. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Saket Navlakha specializes in finding them. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-nature-algorithm-chinese-money.html Plants & Animals Tue, 12 May 2026 09:40:07 EDT news697794232 In seahorses, it is the males who carry offspring to term. The females lay their eggs into a special brood pouch on the bellies of the males where they are fertilized by the male's sperm. In the brood pouches, embryos are provided with nutrients and oxygen from the males' bodies until the males give live birth to small seahorses (viviparity). But how does this work? https://phys.org/news/2025-11-male-pregnancy-deep-seahorses.html Plants & Animals Tue, 11 Nov 2025 09:11:04 EST news682074662 If you're reading this sentence, you might have a fish to thank. Fish were the first animals to evolve jaws. They use their jaws primarily to eat, but also for defense, as tools—such as to burrow or to crack open hard food—and even as a form of parental care: some fish carry eggs or their young in their mouths. Jaws are a trait that scientists think fueled evolution among vertebrates, including us. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-jaws-drove-fish-evolution.html Evolution Tue, 02 Sep 2025 09:14:04 EDT news676023241 Pygmy seahorses are remarkable creatures. These tiny marine vertebrates, often no bigger than two centimeters in size, are masters of camouflage, able to match the texture and color of the coral in which they live. Some species even have tiny bumps on their skin that mimic the polyps of gorgonian sea corals. Blending into the background makes them almost invisible to predators and divers trying to spot them. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-genes-pygmy-seahorse-master-disguise.html Plants & Animals Tue, 26 Aug 2025 14:40:01 EDT news675437771 Close to 5 million smuggled seahorses worth an estimated CAD$29 million were seized by authorities over a 10-year span, according to a new study that warns the scale of the trade is far larger than current data suggest. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-million-seized-seahorses-iceberg-global.html Plants & Animals Wed, 28 May 2025 09:09:04 EDT news667642141 A small team of marine scientists from the University of the Ryukyus, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Kuroshio Biological Research Foundation, has found that a worm species thought to be missing since 1957 has been appearing in photographs taken by citizen scientists for several years. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-worm-species-thought-photos-pygmy.html Plants & Animals Sun, 17 Nov 2024 10:40:01 EST news650889168 A study published April 25, in the journal Science provides the strongest evidence to date that not only is nature conservation successful, but that scaling conservation interventions up would be transformational for halting and reversing biodiversity loss—a crisis that can lead to ecosystem collapses and a planet less able to support life—and reducing the effects of climate change. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-kind-actions-effective-halting-reversing.html Ecology Thu, 25 Apr 2024 14:00:01 EDT news633253850 For the first time, scientists have mapped the reproductive strategies and life cycle of an endangered coral species, offering hope it can be clawed back from the path to extinction. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-sex-life-coral-clawing-path.html Plants & Animals Wed, 20 Sep 2023 17:00:01 EDT news614444639 A trio of marine scientists from Brown University, the Inter-University of Marine Science and the Rochester Institute of Technology has found that the seahorse has two elastic tendons that allows it to lift its head and suck in prey at very high speed. In their study, reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Corrine Avidan, Steven Day and Roi Holzman studied seahorses as they fed to learn more about how they are able to capture prey so quickly. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-seahorse-tendons-prey-high.html Plants & Animals Wed, 12 Apr 2023 11:00:54 EDT news600516046 Seagrasses are flowering plants that form dense underwater meadows in coastal waters worldwide, from the frigid seas of the Arctic to the warm shallows of the Caribbean. These meadows provide a refuge for young fish, food for grazing sea turtles and manatees, and help to slow climate change by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere up to 35 times faster than rainforests. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-tropical-seagrass-meadows-sand-factories.html Earth Sciences Fri, 17 Feb 2023 11:53:03 EST news595857181 The CT-scanned skull of a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish, pulled from a coal mine in England more than a century ago, has revealed the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-million-year-old-fish-earliest-fossilized-brain.html Evolution Wed, 01 Feb 2023 11:00:07 EST news594454416 In seahorses and pipefish, it is the male that gets pregnant and gives birth. Seahorse fathers incubate their developing embryos in a pouch located on their tail. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-seahorse-fathers-birth-unique.html Plants & Animals Fri, 02 Sep 2022 10:50:51 EDT news581334645 Seagrasses cover shallow coastal regions of temperate and tropical seas worldwide. Seagrass meadows form the basis of an essential ecosystem that is home to numerous animals, including endangered species of sea turtles, seahorses, and fishes. They also protect the coasts from erosion and sequester millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. But seagrass meadows also emit greenhouse gasses, especially methane, which has a much stronger effect on our climate than carbon dioxide. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-dead-alive-seagrasses-methane-die-off.html Environment Mon, 14 Feb 2022 15:00:01 EST news564060144 Seagrasses cover large swathes of shallow coastal seas, where they provide a vital habitat. They also remove large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store it in the ecosystem. However, seagrasses need nutrients to thrive, particularly nitrogen. Up to now, researchers have assumed that the plants take up the nitrogen primarily from the surrounding seawater and sediment. However, in many of the regions where seagrasses are most successful there is little nitrogen to be found. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen now show that seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea lives in symbiosis with bacteria that reside in their roots and provide the nitrogen necessary for growth. Such symbioses were previously only known from land plants. The study was published in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-natural-co2-sink-symbiotic-bacteria.html Ecology Wed, 03 Nov 2021 12:00:02 EDT news555152185 Seahorses are not exactly Olympic swimmers—in fact, they're considered to be particularly poor swimmers. Despite being relatively slow, however, they are adept at preying on small, quick-moving animals. In a new study conducted at Tel Aviv University, researchers have succeeded in characterizing the incredible preying capability of seahorses, discovering that they can move their head up at the incredible speed of 0.002 seconds. The rapid head movement is accompanied by a powerful flow of water that snags their prey right into the seahorse's mouth. How was this spring mechanism formed? When did it develop? The researchers hope the recent study will lead to further studies designed to help solve the riddle of spring fish. https://phys.org/news/2021-10-seahorses-terrible-swimmers-great-predators.html Plants & Animals Tue, 05 Oct 2021 07:25:01 EDT news552637495 Citizen scientist volunteers known as the "storm squad" collected seagrass fragments to successfully rehabilitate populations of NSW's endangered Posidonia australis. https://phys.org/news/2021-09-citizen-scientists-nsw-endangered-seagrass.html Plants & Animals Thu, 09 Sep 2021 09:04:57 EDT news550397094 Seadragons (Phyllopetryx taeniolatus) live off the coast in western and southern Australia. An international team involving evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz has now found the genetic basis for some external characteristics of the seadragon, like its lack of teeth and its distinct leaf-like appendages. The team also localized the sex-determination gene in the seadragon genome. The study will be published in Science Advances on 18 August 2021. https://phys.org/news/2021-08-mystery-seadragon.html Evolution Wed, 18 Aug 2021 14:00:07 EDT news548509534 Scientists have long known that frogs are oddballs when it comes to teeth. Some have tiny teeth on their upper jaws and the roof of their mouths while others sport fanglike structures. Some species are completely toothless. And only one frog, out of the more-than 7,000 species, has true teeth on both upper and lower jaws. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-tooth-evolution-frogs-lost-teeth.html Evolution Tue, 01 Jun 2021 13:41:05 EDT news541773658 Spanning six years and seven seagrass meadows along the California coast, a paper published today from the University of California, Davis, is the most extensive study yet of how seagrasses can buffer ocean acidification. https://phys.org/news/2021-03-seagrasses-clock-ocean-acidification.html Ecology Wed, 31 Mar 2021 12:58:31 EDT news536414308 Seahorses are extremely poor swimmers. Surprisingly, however, they can be found in all of the world's oceans. On the basis of almost 360 different seahorse genomes, a group of researchers studied how these special fish were able to spread so suc-cessfully worldwide. Based on an evolutionary tree of 21 species it was possible to reconstruct the dispersal routes of seahorses worldwide and to explain where and when new species emerged. The international research collaboration involving the research team led by evolutionary biologist Professor Axel Meyer at the University of Konstanz and researchers from China and Singapore was able to identify factors that led to the success of the seahorse from a developmental biology perspective: its quickness to adapt by, for example, repeatedly evolving spines in the skin and its fast genetic rates of evolution. The results will be published on 17 February 2021 in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-sessile-seahorses-speciated-dispersed-world.html Evolution Wed, 17 Feb 2021 09:18:50 EST news532775927 A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin has explored the role of factors in embryonic development that do not alter the sequence of DNA, but only epigenetically modify its "packaging". In the scientific journal Nature, they describe how regulatory mechanisms contribute to the formation of different tissues and organs in early mouse embryos. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-epigenetics-cell-diversity-embryo.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 30 Jul 2020 07:13:19 EDT news515311996 Adult crown-of-thorns starfish pose one of the greatest threats to the Great Barrier Reef due to their coral diet. Marine life, including fish, crabs, seahorses, and turtles, depend on coral as a food source, as well as for shelter. No coral means no smaller creatures. This has a domino effect, ultimately decimating the food chain and ecosystem. Learning more about this starfish is crucial for efforts to save the Reef. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-habits-baby-predator-starfish-revealed.html Plants & Animals Tue, 21 Jul 2020 11:26:23 EDT news514549578 New research by Dr. Camilla Whittington and her team at the University of Sydney has found male seahorses transport nutrients to their developing babies during pregnancy. This discovery provides an opportunity for further comparative evolutionary research. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-daddy-male-seahorses-nutrients-embryos.html Plants & Animals Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:55:39 EDT news513849336 An international research team has discovered a new pygmy seahorse species in Sodwana Bay in South Africa, the first of its kind to be found in the waters around the continent. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-africa-pygmy-seahorse-species.html Plants & Animals Wed, 20 May 2020 09:15:46 EDT news509184943 The direction of ocean currents can determine the direction of gene flow in rafting species, but this depends on species traits that allow for rafting propensity. This is according to a City College of New York study focusing on seahorse and pipefish species. And it could explain how high genetic diversity can contribute to extinction in small populations. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-seahorse-pipefish-window-marine-genetic.html Plants & Animals Sat, 09 May 2020 04:47:08 EDT news508218424