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Accordion Iguanas: How Marine Iguanas Shrink and Grow to Survive El Niño

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Accordion Iguanas: How Marine Iguanas Shrink and Grow to Survive El Niño Charlotte Fowler, Biology Student at Christopher Newport University  Marine Iguanas are actually shrinking in response to the extreme environmental effects caused by El Nino storms! El Nino is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. El Niño is the “warm phase” of a larger phenomenon called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) . La Niña, the “cool phase” of ENSO, is a pattern that describes the unusual cooling of the region’s surface waters. Marine Iguanas dwell in the Galapagos Islands which is located in the Pacific Ocean, close to South America. This image above shows clearly the effects of El Nino weather conditions on the water temperature and bordering land environments. Because of the warming of surface waters during the El Nino phase, marine nutrient levels drop significantly and the algae begin to die. This is the marine iguanas main food...
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Shifting Baselines: Considering the Loss Before the Loss

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  Shifting Baselines: Considering the Loss Before the Loss Charlotte Fowler,   Biology  Student at Christopher Newport University Shifting Baseline Syndrome      Shifting baselines was a theory first made by scientists exploring urban children's perception of nature. In the same year, Daniel Pauly officially devised the term 'shifting baselines' to help prove how people are inaccurately perceiving the condition of the environment and nature.      The human race is reestablishing (shifting) their standard 'baseline' in each new generation. People use the image they obtained at the beginning of their conscious lives as what they accept as normal. They do not take into account anything that may have happened before their time. This is often referred to as generational amnesia which involves a loss of information without being aware of the loss. As Pauly explained in his TED Talk, "we are readjusting downwards." In the following section of t...
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When Life Got Complex: The Cambrian Explosion

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When Life Got Complex The Cambrian Explosion                                Charlotte Fowler, Biology Student at Christopher Newport University Many, many years ago, before dinosaurs roamed there was a vast sea full of single-celled creatures and free floating organisms. Until one day, quite out of the blue, a mass diversification of organisms appeared and scientists are still trying to figure out why.  Oxygen Theory   The earliest theory is that the Cambrian explosion was a consequence of many small, complex environmental changes that triggered evolutionary development, including the environment change of a sudden rise of oxygen levels in the ocean. Metabolization with oxygen produces much more efficient energy as animals rely on this controlled combustion to utilize the energy needed for muscle movement, nervous system, the building of hard bone structure like exoskeletons and teeth. Th...
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