You've no doubt heard of the butterfly effect. Well, Gareth Lawson of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has his own version: the sea butterfly effect. As carbon ...

The coastal waters off the U.S. west coast have elevated levels of carbon dioxide, due to emissions of this gas by human industry and agriculture. This is linked to dissolution of the shells of a type ...

The thecosomes are a group of planktonic pteropods with thin, 1 mm-sized aragonitic shells, which are known to possess a unique helical microstructure consisting of interlocking nanofibres. Here we ...

The pteropod, or "sea butterfly", is a tiny sea creature about the size of a small pea. Pteropods are eaten by organisms ranging in size from tiny krill to whales. This pterapod shell dissolved over ...

The shelled sea butterfly Hyalocylis striata can be found in the warm surface waters of the ocean around the world. © Karen Osborn The chemistry of the ocean is ...

Ocean acidification has taken up an unlikely mascot: the shelled pteropod. While “charismatic megafauna,” the large creatures that pull at our heartstrings, are typically the face of environmental ...

Climate change is often treated like something that won’t be harmful for many decades. The truth is that we’re already feeling the effects of greenhouse gas emissions—and they’ll become more and more ...

Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research Pteropods or sea snails, also called sea angels, produce chemical deterrents to ward off predators, and some species of ...

Pteropods or sea snails, also called sea angels, produce chemical deterrents to ward off predators, and some species of amphipods take advantage of this by carrying pteropods piggyback to gain ...