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Article: Standing up for the spineless: are pesticides and other chemicals causing collateral damage in coastal waters?(protecting the invertebrates)
- Article from:
- Oceanus
- Article date:
- April 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ask people to name some animals--any animals--and they will give you a long list. But chances are, all the animals will have one thing in common: a spine.
The animals that usually come to mind--mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and birds--constitute only about 5 percent of the animal diversity on Earth. The other 95 percent are invertebrate species; hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions of species that we largely ignore--to their peril and our own, said biologist Tim Verslycke.
Researchers are now finding that some chemicals, especially pesticides, cause unexpected and unintentional harm to many invertebrate species that play essential roles in ...