Divers usually get to the point where, after hunting all kinds of different critters, they pick their personal “obsession”. Whether these are Cephalopods, Crustaceans, Gobies, Nudibranchs or Frogfishes – so my weak spot have always been Seahorses. Here in Lembeh, we can find up to six different species on one dive!
Endemism means that specific species of plants or animals live only in a particular location, which normally is quite small. An animal or plant doing that is an endemic. For birdwatchers and other wild life watchers endemism is a major issue, as many endemics are rare, hard to find and per Read more…
Survival in nature can be quite easy. Enough defenses invested, and one can make it quite safely through life. Examples are whales, roses and poison arrow frogs, investing in size, structures or chemistry in order to deter predators. The problem with these strategies is that they are costly, diverting energetic Read more…
In contrast to plant material, meat and other animal products are very rare in nature. The ratio of meat to plants would be in the permilles, or even lower. Mainly that will be because plant matter mostly is bad food, while animal matter has all the nutrients in all the Read more…
There are two main types of reproductive patterns in nature. One is the one we most likely find the “normal” one, with animals reproducing several times during their life time, and not exhausting themselves totally in the process (yeahyeah, I know, parents with small kids might beg to differ, but Read more…
One of the questions biologists try to answer is the presence of variance among individuals in populations. Why would variance in genetic composition or looks even be an issue? To make a long story short, it is not to far stretched to interpret natural selection as leading to evolution favoring a specific Read more…
Sponges are common and important inhabitants on reefs, as well as elsewhere in oceans. They play an important role in maintaining water quality, as they filter large amounts of water, from several to many times their own body volume, every day, cleaning the water from small particles and bacteria. Sponges Read more…
Courtship is ubiquitous in nature, sometimes to the point that we often do not connect specific behaviors to courtship. Few people wake up in the morning and think of the morning choir of birds as a desperate signal for persuading female birds to mate, and few divers would consider the Read more…
Why are sea horse females so virtous? When meeting a male of their liking, the female sea horses will keep the male at bay for several days. requiring him to go through quite an elaborate courtship cycle before mating with him. Googling ”sex-on-first-date” will give you an amazing amount of Read more…
As all of you bothering to read this blogg probably already knows, frogfish are devious scam artists seemingly having their global head quarters here in Lembeh. Frogfish use a dorsal fin ray modified to being a fishing rod with an attached lure to deceive unsuspecting small fish to believe that Read more…