Press Releases NIOZ
04/07/2013 12:23
Archaea do not rule the deep biosphere
A large fraction of microbial life is living kilometers deep inside the Earth. The majority of these microbes were thought not to be bacteria but archaea, based on the abundant presence of their membrane lipids. Sabine Lengger of the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research found, however, that these lipids are poor indicators for living cells and that the amount of living archaeal biomass in the deep biosphere has been vastly overestimated. Lengger will defend her thesis on July 11th at Utrecht University.01/07/2013 13:26
Mussel beds are ‘as strong as steel’
Mussel beds are not an ‘at random’ collection of mussels, but mussels form a pattern that looks like the way molecules and atoms are arranged in materials like bronze, steel or polymers like rubber. A team consisting of ecologists and mathematicians from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Utrecht University, and Leiden University, reveal their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) of July 1st.30/06/2013 11:49
Extinction Australian megafauna caused vegetation change
About 45,000 years ago, the extinction of large animals in Australia was followed by abrupt changes in vegetation as well as by substantial forest fires, and not the other way around. This is the result of a study of researchers from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, together with Australian colleagues. Their findings appear online in the journal Nature Geoscience of June 30.Read more … Extinction Australian megafauna caused vegetation change
Why are gull chicks murdered especially on Sundays? How does man influence the size of gull populations? These and many other questions are answered in the doctoral thesis of Kees Camphuysen from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research NIOZ. Camphuysen will defend his thesis at the University of Groningen on 21 June.12/06/2013 13:47
Response of ocean plankton to ‘global warming’
In 2010, Canadian scientists suggested in Nature, that the amount of microalgal plankton in the ocean has decreased by 40 percent over the last century. This decrease was attributed to global warming. Dutch oceanographers of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research NIOZ, the VU University and the Groningen University, have now presented results with a quite different outcome, in PLOS ONE of June 12th.
“We cracked the DNA-code of a giant algae virus; this is the first algae virus that belongs to the ‘Giant Viruses’”, concludes prof. Dr Corina Brussaard of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Amsterdam in the 10 June issue of the journal PNAS. Until now the few known giant viruses all had an animal host, but now it appears that giant viruses with a plant host also exist.05/06/2013 09:32
Red knot survives thanks to poisonous preys
It may seem wise to avoid eating poisonous food. But what if there is no other food available? The red knot, a small shorebird feeding on molluscs, faces this problem when it winters on the Mauritanian mudflats off the African west coast.30/05/2013 09:00
Dr Corina Brussaard of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) has been appointed Special Professor of Viral Ecology at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She will deliver her inaugural lecture on Friday 7 June.
“Even intensively grazed seagrasses provide important coastal protection services, by reducing coastal erosion due to wave action”, concluded Marjolijn Christianen and Jim van Belzen in their article in the journal PLOS ONE of May 28. In contrast to the current assumption, seagrass roots play a substantial role in stabilizing coastal sediments, thereby decreasing coastal erosion. This conclusion has an important impact for the role of seagrass fields, protecting coastal areas by increasing waves, due to climate change.
The tectonic opening of the Tasmanian strait between Australia and Antarctica was a contributory factor to the earth beginning to cool down 49 million years ago. This is the result of a study carried out by an international research team led by paleoclimatologists from Utrecht University. With this cooling, the then ice-free greenhouse world eventually changed into the ice capped earth we know today. The results of the study will be published on May 27 in the leading scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).