Tambarikosy

This post was originally published under the title "Grass Roots Biology" in the December 2015 issue of  The Biologist , the Royal Society of Biology's magazine. If you're a member of the RSB you can also view the article on their website here . The images are not those used by the RSB nor are they mine, the copyright belongs to their credited owners and most are from ARKive.org. Neptune grass ( Posidonia oceanica ) meadow in the Mediterranean © M. San Felix, from  l ivescience.com Grass Roots Biology Home to myriad species and acting as massive carbon sinks, seagrass meadows are key marine habitats – but they are disappearing fast, reports Xaali O'Reilly Berkeley The Biologist  62(6) p16-19 Seagrasses are a group of flowering plants adapted to live in salt water. They grow, flower and pollinate completely submerged in estuaries and along shallow coastal waters around the globe, both in temperate and tropical environments. Although they physi...

Despite a relatively low mortality rate, there are hundreds of millions of malaria cases worldwide per year, making the parasitic disease responsible for a massive annual death toll [1,2] . The definitive hosts of the apicomplexan parasites that cause malaria ( Plasmodium spp ) are anopheline mosquitoes, and various attempts have been made in endemic areas to control mosquito populations as a means of limiting or interrupting transmission [3] . Malaria’s pantropical distribution – therefore, prevalence mostly in developing countries – means that even controlling vector transmission is met by a suite of social, economical, and political obstacles. The same combination of issues added to the parasite’s complex life cycle, have hinder widespread treatment or the development of effective vaccines.