Images

USGS conducts a health assessment on a mantee in Crystal River, Florida.

Field water-level monitoring gage EDEN 13. Photograph by Michael Oliver, U.S. Geological Survey.
U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2017–3069
Version 1.1, January 2018

A male lesser scaup at the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center in Maryland. This bird was not part of this new research. Photograph taken in 2017. Credit: Jeffrey Sullivan, USGS. 

Dawn Childs SCUBA dives on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, at night. Dawn is an Information Specialist with the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program in the Ecosystems Mission Area, USGS.

A USGS intern preparing to examine a black carp captured from the wild. This fish and others were examined for various aspects of their life history, including age, the environments in which they have lived and whether they were naturally reproduced. Credit: USGS.

A little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) with white-nose syndrome hibernating in a Virginia cave during late spring of 2016.

This photomicrograph shows a liver of a frog with a severe Perkinsea infection.

Monarch butterfly on a Joe Pyeweed plant.

A monarch butterfly on a hairy puccoon plant.

Introduced Phragmites australis, also called the common reed, is an invasive grass in the Great Lakes.

USGS scientist Sarah Fitzgerald holds a surf scoter that has been fitted with a satellite tag that works by transmitting the location of the birds to satellites that are orbiting the Earth. (Jonathan Fiely, USGS)

Early development zebrafish embryos are used as an alternative approach to the use of adult zebrafish in ecotoxicology studies.

Green sea turtles are listed as threatened or endangered throughout their range. (Credit: Thierry Work, USGS)

This microscopic image shows a sun-shaped area within turtle skin cells where chelonid herpesvirus 5 replicates. The virus capsids, or protein shells, are arrayed like a corona around the circle. ChHV5 is associated with fibropapillomatosisa tumor disease affecting endangered green turtles.

This image shows the blue version of sylvatic plague vaccine bait for prairie dogs. 

Prairie dogs in the wild are less likely to succumb to a deadly disease called sylvatic plague after they ingest peanut-butter-flavored bait that contains a vaccine against the disease.

A Phragmites rhizome, or a belowground stem that puts up new shoots, dug up in a coastal marsh of Lake Erie in northern Ohio. Phragmites' belowground biomass can exceed that of its aboveground biomass. 

This image shows a sea lamprey in its larvae phase.

This image shows a sea lamprey in its larvae phase.

The arrows in this image point to mouths of individual corallimorphs, which are a type of invasive anemone that typically thrives in coral reefs that have been degraded by environmental or man-made disturbances. Each corallimorph mouth is surrounded by a corona of tentacles.

Coral reefs are prone to phase shifts where they quickly transition from coral-dominated to a uniformity of other organisms, typically algae. The Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Central Pacific is a unique case where a transition from corals to corallimorphs occurred.

Coral reefs are prone to phase shifts where they quickly transition from coral-dominated to a uniformity of other organisms, typically algae. The Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Central Pacific is a unique case where a transition from corals to corallimorphs occurred.