Distribution of marine protected areas under review The hundred or so marine protected areas created since the 1960s are turning out to be inadequate for the protection of turtles and marine mammals. An international survey including French researchers has shown that the animals’ favorite areas, especially off North Africa and at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, are not covered by this network, which mainly stretches along the Mediterranean’s northern Digital simulation of the elastic door of the trap shores. Even though it makes up less than 1% of the total area of the when it opens. world’s oceans, the Mediterranean is home to 4-18% of the world’s marine species. An aquatic carnivorous plant Current Biology June 2011 with an ultra-fast trap What is the secret of the bladderwort, an aquatic carnivorous plant whose trap, the fastest in the world, closes in less than a millisecond? According to CNRS physicists, this amazing performance can be summed up in one word: elasticity. When the prey is captured, the curvature of the trap ‘door’ reverses. The elastic energy accumulated by the plant is thus released almost instantaneously, causing a suction effect at an acceleration 600 times that of gravity and leaving the prey with no chance to escape! Proceedings B of the Royal Society February 2011 Colony of King Penguins on Ile de la Possession in the Crozet Islands. Flipper-banding hinders King Penguins -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Banding campaigns to monitor penguin population dynamics have a significant impact on the birds. A study by French and Norwegian researchers reveals that the survival rate of banded King Penguins is 16% lower on average than that of their unbanded counterparts, while they produce 39% fewer chicks over a period of ten years. For anatomical reasons, penguins cannot be banded on their legs, unlike other birds, and so the bands are fixed to their flippers, causing hydrodynamic drag when they swim. To obtain these findings, the researchers used electronic tagging to monitor a population of one hundred King Penguins, of which only half were banded, on Ile de la Possession in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories. Applying the precautionary principle, French researchers have stopped banding penguins since the 1990s. Earlier scientific data, which mostly comes from banding, should therefore be viewed with caution. Nature January 2011 19 2011 A year at CNRS
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