food consumption

The following links highlight ecology from the month of December, but there are several science-related end-of-year lists floating around as well.

The red lionfish (Pterois volitans) has decorated fish tanks, and invaded Atlantic waters, for decades. While sightings along the East Coast started popping up as early as the mid-1980s, lionfish began to spread rapidly, occupying reefs in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas in the 1990s. Since then, invasive red lionfish have been reported as far north as Rhode Island and, as of this January, tracked to the southern Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula.

As many of us once again rouse ourselves from festivities filled with an overabundance of food, it might be sombering to ponder that a recent PLoS ONE study suggests that nearly 40 percent of food in the United States is wasted.  As noted in a recent ScienceNOW article, physiologist Kevin Hall and mathematician Carson Chow, both at the National Institute…