this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Biodiversity

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Welcome to c/Biodiversity @ Mander.xyz!

A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.



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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.

Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Scientists have solved the mystery of why tens of thousands of octopuses cluster on the foothills of a giant underwater mountain, two miles down off the coast of California.

Temperature probes showed the water bathing the eggs ranged from 5C to 10C (40-50F), while less than a metre away it dropped to a frigid 1.6C.Revisiting individual nests, the team saw that rather than taking a decade or longer to hatch, as would happen in the very cold deep sea, baby octopuses emerge from their cosy nests after less than two years, dramatically boosting their chances of survival.

Based on photographs covering a small portion of the site, Barry and colleagues estimate the entire 333-hectare (823-acre) garden contains more than 20,000 octopuses, the largest aggregation scientists have found.

These and other scavengers – including fish, shrimp, sea stars and snails – form a thriving ecosystem sustained by the dead octopuses.

A short way off, in similar areas of rocky seabed, animal life is far less dense.Mysteries remain, including how far the octopuses migrate to the nest sites and whether, like salmon, they return to the spot where they were born.

But while this octopus garden is protected within the Monterey Bay national marine sanctuary, other sites may be vulnerable to trawling and deep-sea mining.


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