When Academy curators Terry Gosliner and Luiz Rocha traveled to Saudi Arabia this spring to study marine life in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the contrast awaiting them couldn’t have been starker. Beyond the enclosed campus of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), about an hour north of Jeddah, stretched a parched terrestrial landscape with daytime temperatures hovering near 105 degrees. But once the researchers boarded the 80-foot-long catamaran, they soon ventured into a rich underwater landscape teeming with life.

For the two-part, KAUST-sponsored expedition, Gosliner, Rocha, and a team of 15 international scientists spent two weeks documenting fish diversity in the Red Sea. On the second two-week portion, Rocha and five other researchers continued to explore tropical reefs within the Gulf of Aden, in the territorial waters offshore from Oman. The invitation to collaborate on this general, comprehensive survey arose from Rocha’s participation at a 2012 KAUST conference organized by Michael Berumen that produced a research paper coauthored by Rocha, Berumen,  Brian Bowen, an associate researcher at the University of Hawaii, Joseph DiBattista, a post-doctoral fellow at KAUST, and Michelle Gaither, a post-doctoral fellow at the Academy.

“The sand dunes and rugged mountains along the Saudi coastline reminded me of Baja, California,” says Gosliner. “And the Red Sea’s narrow body of water, caused by tectonic activity and fault lines, is not unlike the Sea of Cortez,” he adds. “That said, the Red Sea has unique features that make it very interesting from a scientific perspective.”

The Arabian Peninsula, wedged between Northeastern Africa and Asia, is bordered by oceans and seas on three sides. The Red Sea, along its western coastline, has a very small, shallow connection with the Indian Ocean. “Because of this geographic separation, it has a lot of unique species,” says Rocha. “There is a lot of endemism in the Red Sea.”

Coastal Oman, at the southeastern end of the peninsula, is open to the Indian Ocean. “It also has many unique species,” says Rocha, “but for a different reason.” The sea is more affected by upwelling that does not impact marine habitats in the rest of the Indian Ocean. Upwelling, caused by wind blowing from coast to ocean, pushes away warm waters on the ocean’s surface. Cold water rises from below to fill the gap.

“You won’t find coral reefs in these conditions—they can’t thrive in cold temperatures,” says Rocha. “Not only is this fauna unique, but the tropical reefs in the Western Indian Ocean are the least known in the world.”

The researchers brought back 350 specimens of nudibranchs and fish for morphological and genetic analysis. The new specimens fill a surprising gap in the Academy’s renowned fish collection.

“We have 250,000 jars of fish at the Academy, about 3 million specimens and 11,000 species,” says Rocha. “Almost everything we brought back is new to the collection. We had very few fish from Oman.”

Another surprise was Gosliner’s assessment of the leading environmental threat to sustaining the region’s biodiversity. “This is an active zone of human activity,” he explains. “To the north, it’s a major shipping corridor through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. In the south, you have the Somali pirates.”

And the source of the most severe harm to the ocean biome?

“Overfishing,” says Gosliner. “That has greater impact than all the other activities put together.”

Last but not least: How did the Red Sea get its unusual name? According to Gosliner, a leading theory is that periodic outbreaks of algal blooms caused by dinoflagellates temporarily changed the water’s color.

“When early explorers toured the area,” he says, “they may have seen that phenomenon we now call a ‘red tide.’ But the waters are a sparkling turquoise blue most of the time. So the Red Sea is truly a misnomer.”

Barbara Tannenbaum is a science writer working with the Academy’s Digital Engagement Studio. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Magazine and many other publications.

Image: Terry Gosliner

A leggy neighbor

The leggiest animal on the planet lives just south of San Francisco, according to a new report in ZooKeys. Illacme plenipes comes the closest to the description of a millipede than any of its relatives—females have as many as 750 legs!

Even millipede researcher Paul Marek thinks Illacme plenipes is special. Its plentiful legs have claws and National Geographic News lists more of its cool features:

…massive antennae (relative to the scale of its body), which the millipede uses to feel its way through the dark; a jagged and translucent exoskeleton; and body hairs that produce a sort of silk that may help Illacme plenipes adhere to the undersides of boulders. And unlike in other millipedes, the mouth of this species is specifically structured for piercing and sucking plant tissues.

Wanna get to know your neighbor? Movies and images are available for download here.

Insect hearing aids

A recent publication in Science explores how certain rainforest katydids are able to listen like mammals do, but much more efficiently. Katydids’ hearing organs are near the insects’ knees, and much like human ears, gather sounds from the air and transmit them to the brain in fluids.

For humans and other mammals, sounds are collected by the eardrums in vibrations, which are transferred by three ear bones to the cochlea. Fluid in the cochlea translates these sounds and sends them to the brain.

In katydids, the ear bones are missing, simplifying the process. (An excellent comparison illustration is available at Scientific American.) This simplification could lead to better hearing aids for humans, according to the lead author of the study, Fernando Montealegre-Z. “These findings change our views on insect hearing and open the way for designing ultrasensitive bio-inspired sensors.”

Insect-inspired water bottles

Finally, recent news reports describe a new company creating water-collecting bottles for “the most arid regions of the world.” Their inspiration? The Namib Desert beetle. Wired UK describes the insects’ process of water collection:

The beetle survives by collecting condensation from the ocean breeze on the hardened shell of its wings… The beetle extends and aims the wings at incoming sea breezes to catch humid air; tiny droplets 15 to 20 microns in diameter eventually accumulate on its back and run straight down towards its mouth.

Want more exciting entomology?

How about disease-fighting ladybirds? Learn more at ScienceShot. Insect movie stars? Watch their cameos at the New York Times.

Katydid image: Fernando Montealegre-Z and Daniel Robert

The evolution of our species’ most famous traits – big brains, walking on two legs, language – took hundreds of thousands of years. But in some cases, evolution doesn’t always take its sweet time.

In a new study published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, an international team of scientists believe they’ve found an example of evolution only a few thousand years in the making.

The research team, led by Andres Moreno of Stanford University, studied FOXI1, a gene involved in water retention in the kidneys. Moreno and his colleagues collected DNA samples from Europeans, East Asians, and the Yoruba, an African tribe living on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. An analysis of the FOXI1 gene in each group found a considerably different genetic change in the Yoruba, compared to the other groups. This mutation in the Yoruba’s FOXI1 gene may improve tribe members’ ability to retain water, a big advantage if you live near a desert.

The team calculated that the FOXI1 gene mutation evolved between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, just as the Sahara Desert was drying out from a brief wet spell. As a consequence of an increasingly harsh climate, the ancestors of the modern Yoruba evolved a way to retain water more efficiently than humans in other parts of the world.

This is not the first time scientists have demonstrated unique adaptations in our species’ more recent history. The July 2 issue of the journal Science reported the discovery of a 3,000-year-old genetic mutation that has allowed native Tibetans living at high altitudes to breathe easier than their low-altitude neighbors.

But this FOXI1 gene mutation has wider implications, especially in the light of our changing planet. The last several decades have seen temperatures rise, forests dwindle, and deserts expand, so mutations like the Yoruba’s may eventually help us adapt to the harsh effects of global warming.

As anthropological geneticist Anne Stone of Arizona State University told New Scientist, “Over the long term, if the Earth keeps warming, I would not be surprised to see genetic shifts.” Whether those will take the shape of improved water retention, resistance to disease or changes in body shape, however, remains to be seen.

How do you think humans will evolve over the next 10,000 years? Let us know!

Anne Holden, a docent here at the California Academy of Sciences, is a PhD trained genetic anthropologist and science writer living in San Francisco.

Image by Melvin “Buddy” Baker