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 When we think of wildlife trafficking, we might think of rhino horns or baby orangutans sold as pets—but the smuggling of sea creatures, a less well-known crime, is just as damaging to marine ecosystems. Unfortunately, many commonly smuggled marine wildlife items, like shark fins, can be hidden in baggage or parcels and carried across borders with relative ease, without being detected. To get around this, scientists used AI to develop an algorithm that can detect samples of commonly trafficked sea creatures—shark fins, seahorses, and sea cucumber—with 92% accuracy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ai-smuggled-seahorses-shark-fins.html Ecology Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:00:02 EDT news699811861 When an asteroid struck Earth about 66 million years ago, it ended the age of dinosaurs and transformed life across the planet. The effects of that catastrophe are visible in the fossil record on land, but scientists know far less about what happened to fishes in the seas during the first few million years after the extinction. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fossil-fishes-reveal-chapter-marine.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:20:03 EDT news699796021 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 Bottom trawlers extract one-quarter of the world's fisheries catches by weight and raise significant ecological, economic and social concerns. Given that, you'd think there would be an answer to basic questions in fisheries: how many fish species are being caught, and what are they? https://phys.org/news/2026-05-bottom-trawling-oceans-wildlife.html Ecology Wed, 13 May 2026 12:13:45 EDT news697893182 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 More than 3,000 fish species have been caught in bottom trawls, with estimates suggesting the true number could be nearly double, according to the world's first global inventory. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-reveals-bottom-trawling-thousands-fish.html Ecology Wed, 08 Apr 2026 20:50:01 EDT news694848002 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 A conservation project led by UNSW scientists is rebuilding lost underwater pastures within the city's harbor—and at the same time helping to recover an endangered seahorse population. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-baby-boom-seahorse-hotels-boost.html Ecology Thu, 24 Jul 2025 06:56:05 EDT news672558962 South Australian beaches have been awash with foamy, discolored water and dead marine life for months. The problem hasn't gone away; it has spread. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-underwater-bushfire-south-australia-marine.html Ecology Sun, 15 Jun 2025 11:40:01 EDT news669033209 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 The Trump administration claims to be rooting out "gender ideology extremism" and "restoring biological truth" in the United States. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-radical-unscientific-theory-sex-gender.html Social Sciences Tue, 29 Apr 2025 18:50:01 EDT news665149350 Marine scientists are calling for beachgoers who find weedy seadragons washed up on the shore to photograph them and send details to researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). https://phys.org/news/2025-03-wild-weather-linked-weedy-seadragon.html Plants & Animals Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:57:05 EDT news661510622 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 When people talk about animal parents, often they are thinking about mothers. But the role of fathers in the animal kingdom is fascinating—and can tell us a lot about ourselves. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-fathers-animal-kingdom-humans.html Evolution Wed, 03 Jul 2024 12:34:03 EDT news639228841 To work in nature conservation is to battle a headwind of bad news. When the overwhelming picture indicates the natural world is in decline, is there any room for optimism? Well, our new global study has some good news: we provide the strongest evidence to date that nature conservation efforts are not only effective, but that when they do work, they often really work. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-nature.html Ecology Fri, 26 Apr 2024 08:33:05 EDT news633339181 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 More than a decade ago, Leslee Matsushige traveled to Australia to "study seadragons in the wild." https://phys.org/news/2024-04-year-seadragons-debut-california-aquarium.html Plants & Animals Wed, 03 Apr 2024 10:58:43 EDT news631360719 Thanks to diligent observers, seahorses, those enigmatic and charismatic fish, are not only being discovered in new habitats and expanded geographic ranges, they are also being found at new ocean depths. While their capacity for male pregnancy has long fascinated people, new information on sex ratio and pregnancy seasonality has been discovered by, well, you. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-citizen-scientists-contribute-vital-seahorse.html Plants & Animals Mon, 25 Mar 2024 12:56:47 EDT news630590159 If you've ever watched a natural history program on TV, you've probably seen animals performing a wide variety of behaviors to get the attention of the opposite sex. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-male-pregnancy-weird-courtship-wiggles.html Plants & Animals Mon, 08 Jan 2024 12:18:14 EST news623938692 Seahorses are considered fabled creatures by many; something that only exists in old mythical tales of the ocean. But these curious animals really exist—and they're not the only members of the Syngnathidae family of fishes. Other syngnathids are pipefish, pygmy pipehorses and seadragons, and all are enchanting. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-tiny-mysterious-sub-saharan-africa-seahorses.html Plants & Animals Wed, 25 Oct 2023 12:52:04 EDT news617457122 Vital coastal habitat was destroyed in the devastating floods that hit New South Wales in 2021 and 2022. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-sex-life-discovery-ivf-endangered.html Plants & Animals Sat, 23 Sep 2023 12:10:01 EDT news614516979 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 Neil Lynch started his Saturday morning like any other: He stopped his car at Belleair Beach, griped about the hourly parking fee and set off on a 5-mile walk. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-gulf-mexico-hot-hurricanes-wildlife.html Earth Sciences Wed, 16 Aug 2023 14:10:01 EDT news611409912 Teleost fish encompass a diverse group, among which seahorses display a unique morphology. The characteristic spines and brood pouch seen in seahorses feature distinctive epithelial cells—called flame cone cells—covered by a mucous cap. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-gene-conferring-function-seahorse-brood.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:39:03 EDT news609410342