Science Blog

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How leaves shaped the world

Leaves are the solar-powered food factories of the world. Beautiful, compact, and complex, without them the world would be a very different place indeed.

Baby loggerhead sea turtle on the beach of Keewaydin Island

Turtle-powered elevator? Sea turtle hatchling emergence

People run. Feet burning, faces wincing, regret building with every second on the sizzling pavement. “It’s only a little ways. I’ll just leave my sandals in the car”. Admonishing themselves…

Storm over the Gulf of Mexico

Sea turtle nesting: Ways you can help

How often, alone, do we expose ourselves to the midnight hour? To the boundary of civilized and savage? A ribbon of sand between the tame and turbulent, the known and…

Mangroves at sunset

A Mangrove Misunderstanding: Silent Guardians of the Coast

Read just about anything on mangrove forests and you’ll quickly learn how incredibly important these ecosystems are to all forms of life around them. However, it’s precisely the way they deliver this litany of benefits that can make them such a nightmare to walk through. These forests are the ultimate test to your depth of field, troubling even the most nimble of us, and oftentimes, while I myself stumble about; I entertain visions of James Bond attempting a “high speed” chase through here.

Team member on the beach with a large female nesting sea turtle

40 years of sea turtle research

As we approach the 40th Year of the Conservancy’s sea turtle program, it is fitting to look back and reflect on its humble beginnings. The Conservancy of Southwest Florida’s Sea…

Cane Toad Banner Square

Mourning Dove and Eastern Bluebird Found in Diet of the Non-native Cane Toad

Written and researched by Schuman, M.J., S.L. Snyder, C.H. Smoak, and C.J. Dove. Published in Southeastern Naturalist 2021. Copyright: The publisher, Eagle Hill Institute reserves the copyright to all its…

Cuban Treefrog

Tentative Times for Treefrogs

By Melinda Schuman | Biologist Humans have undoubtedly had an impact on the land in Florida. Occasionally the history of an area and how humans have interacted with it gets…

Halichondria sponge

A diet of glass for Kemp’s ridleys

By Dr. Jeff Schmid | Conservancy Environmental Research Manager Some marine turtles have a “diet of glass”, but this is not the eating disorder of hyalophagia or a circus sideshow…

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Invasion of the Atomic Sunfish

By Conservancy Research Manager, Dr. Jeff Schmid The atomic sunfish has invaded our coasts! Not in the sense of a nuclear disaster followed by a monstrous creature emerging from the…