New research shows how oil spills and their cleanup harm water striders, raising questions about the broader ecological impacts of even small spills.
The dangers of freshwater oil spills to fish and birds are well known, but what about the other creatures, like insects, that live in or on rivers and lakes? Tyler Black, a Ph.D. student in environmental sciences at the University of Guelph in Canada, was inspired to look at this question when he noticed something odd during oil spill experiments at the Experimental Lakes Area in northern Ontario. Read more in Inside Science.