Posts by Uzay Sezen | Nature Documentaries

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The Perilous Plight of Rainforest Epiphytes – PNAS (2024)

September 1, 2024 at 2:07 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns

Epiphytes (mosses, ferns, bromeliads and orchids) are a strikingly interesting group of non-parasitic plants prevalent in the tropics that live on the surface of other plants. They are particularly abundant and diverse in mountainous cloud forests. Epiphytes are interesting because they constitute an important part of nutrient cycle in their ecosystems capturing moisture and nutrients from the air. In the tropics they can accumulate a considerable amount of biomass within forest canopies and form a special type of micro environment […]

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Mudskippers of the Tidal Mangrove Mudflats at the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Singapore

August 9, 2024 at 10:23 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Habitats along the land-sea interphase provided the setting for evolution of vertebrate adaptations needed to move onto the land. Mangrove mudflats formed within the intertidal zone provide a fantastic array of habitat qualities that enable selection of amphibious traits. These gently sloping habitats can extend hundreds of meters between the land and the sea and are exposed to air on a regular basis following tides. The extensive root systems of the semi-aquatic mangrove trees stabilize the coasts, providing a dependable […]

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Antifreeze Proteins in Virtual Reality – Nanome (2022)

May 9, 2024 at 2:04 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

Dr. Mike Kuiper, a biomodeler at CSIRO’s Data61 explains how antifreeze proteins work in a metaverse compatible virtual reality environment enabled by Nanome. These ice structuring proteins, is a basis of survival for organisms evolved to live in very cold environments with temperatures below the freezing point of water. Essentially, these proteins can bind to the surface of ice crystals and create a surface effect leading to freezing-point depression. Bacteria, insects, fishes and many more organisms from different evolutionary backgrounds […]

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A Yellow-throated Warbler Collecting Nesting Material

May 7, 2024 at 6:41 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

In this short observation recorded on May 19th 2012 you can watch a a yellow-throated warbler (Setophaga dominica) collecting plant fibers for nest construction. This bird constructs cup-shaped nests very high up in the canopy of mature forests. As can be seen in this recording, it particularly developed a search image for collecting fibers of specific quality used in a two-layered nest architecture. Nest construction in birds is not all instinctive and has a consirable learning component. Urban birds can […]

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Cornell University Hawk Camera

January 27, 2024 at 10:42 am / Natural history, Video, webcams

Everybody is excited for the 2020 breeding season of the famous Cornell University campus hawks Big Red and her new mate Arthur. Unfortunately Big Red’s partner Ezra reportedly has died. Last year Big Red laid her first egg at about 11:38 ET on March 28th. The breeding season 2015 started with a surprise. Big Red and Ezra moved to their nest to the light pole they used in 2012. There were no longer cameras installed at this nest so some […]

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Albatross Nest Live from New Zealand

January 26, 2024 at 9:57 am / Natural history, Video, webcams

If you see a dark screen, bear in mind that it might be night time in New Zealand. Breeding season 2019 has ended happily. See y’all in 2020! We have previously relayed broadcast from Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) nest from the island of Kauai, geologically the oldest island of the Hawaiian archipelago. The webcam is operated by the Bird Lab of Cornell University. The Laysan Albatross gets its name from its Laysan breeding colony in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where […]

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Decorah Eagle Cam – Nesting Season 2024

January 24, 2024 at 1:23 am / Natural history, Video, webcams

Live feed has begun from the new nest named N2 for Decorah bald eagles. Decorah Eagles 1-28-24 HM perches on the Y, visits N1. The pair known as “Mom” and “Dad” are visiting and maintaining the nest occasionally. Established by the Raptor Resource Project in 2007 this breeding pair of Bald Eagles in Decorah, Iowa has been under intense observation. The pair became famous after the PBS Nature Documentary “American Eagle” in 2008. At one point in 2012 the viewer […]

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Eyed Click Bug (Alaus oculatus) Ovipositing

January 20, 2024 at 10:01 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Molecular Nature, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

On May 26th 2012, this click beetle began laying her eggs on a log along the Orange trail of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens, GA. These beetles are quite noticeable due to their large size and distinctive eye patterns on their pronotum. At the beginning of the video (while she is stationary), you can see some very tiny red mites walking across her body. She wondered around on a downed tree and assessed possible egg laying sites. […]

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Chase Tag Championship and the Evolutionary Dynamics of Predator Prey Interaction

November 4, 2023 at 11:10 am / Evolution, Human Nature, Video

Playing chase is arguably one of the oldest in the game repertoire of human and non-human mammals. Chase Tag Championship is a sport event that has its roots in the parkour movement. Here, we see a fantastically beautiful demonstration of performance and human agility with fairly clear rules. Of course, biologically speaking there’s also a quite interesting story in terms of evolution of the predator-prey dynamics in the game. In the anatomy of a hunt researchers have shown that predators […]

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Can Money Stop Deforestation? – The Economist (2023)

September 29, 2023 at 12:08 pm / Global Patterns, Human Nature, Video

In the 1980’s due to governmental policies favoring agriculture, the landcover of tropical rainforests decreased from 75 % (in the 1940s) down to 21 % in Costa Rica. Many tropical countries followed suit. The world’s largest rainforest the Amazon also experienced decades of deforestation. Money clearly drives deforestation. But can it also help save the forests? The promise of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is fairly straightforward: Forest owners keep their standing vegetation intact and in return […]

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From rainforest to charcoal | DW Documentary (2019)

September 28, 2023 at 8:21 am / Ecological Documentaries, Human Nature, Video

Charcoal production takes a heavy toll on African forests. For instance in Mozambic, the economical drive is so intense that even valuable food trees providing monetary income such as the cashew trees (Anacardium occidentale) are harvested. In 2019 an investigative journalism revealed that Europe has been burning American trees as biomass for power generation. Something similar is sinisterly happening in European charcoal market as the investigative journalism of Deutsche Welle finds out. Europeans consume approximately 800,000 tons of charcoal for […]

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Cannonball Tree – Couroupita guianensis (Lecythidaceae) – Singapore Botanical Gardens

June 28, 2023 at 9:59 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Filmed on location at the Singapore Botanical Gardens on Nov 22nd 2016. The cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis) from the Lecythidaceae (Brazil nut family) family is native to Neotropical forests. Its flowers are adapted for bat pollination possibly from an ancestral state of euglossine bee pollination. Here far away from its natural home, the flowers are being visited by stingless Meliponini bees. The flowers produce impressive levels of fragrance but yield no nectar. Therefore the reward for its visitors comes in […]

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How El Niño and La Niña Cause Extreme Weather – The Economist (2023)

June 1, 2023 at 4:47 pm / Global Patterns, Video

El Niño and La Niña are opposite states of one of Earth’s most important climate processes together constituting the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It can lead to devastating weather events all over the world. But how does it work, what kinds of extreme weather does it cause and how is global warming affecting it? The ENSO observed during the 1997/1998 period was a legendary one. It appears 2023/2024 could be another significant ENSO event. Since 1950 the amplitudes […]

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FAST: The World’s Largest Telescope | China Icons (2016)

June 1, 2023 at 1:48 pm / Cosmological, Video

Large scale project management is in the tradition of China. Construction of impressively large Junk ships in dry dock environment, the terra cotta army with uniquely sculpted soldiers and the Grand Canal is just a few examples among many. Large projects also require risk management skills enabling adapting to inevitable series of changes as the timeline advances. Yet, here we see another recent marvel proudly created by the Chinese. The Five-Hundred-Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, known as FAST had been constructed […]

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Drone Footage of the Geldingadalur Volcano, Iceland – Olivier Grunewald (2021)

May 12, 2023 at 11:38 am / Evolution, Global Patterns

The drone footage by Olivier Grunewald shows the crater filling up and forming a short lived lava lake like the one that was present in the crater of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or that of Erta Alé in Ethiopia. Subsequently. the lava begins to cascade at high speed through an opening in the walls of the crater. The surface of the lava lake experiences bubbly explosions releasing hot gasses similar to Bembow and Marum craters […]

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