In the forest of New Mexico, scientists are carrying two ten-day-old Mexican wolf pups (幼崽) riding in a backpack, searching for a Mexican wolf pair that has just given birth to six pups.【小题1】

Mexican wolves were extinct in the USA by the 1970s, but there was a plan to bring them back. The first step was to trap five wild Mexican wolves and breed them with two caged ones. In 1998, the first caged-born adult Mexican wolves were released into forests. 【小题2】If animals have to pair up with family members, then their pups will have unhealthy genes, making them sick.

【小题3】 Let wild wolves adopt caged-born pups-that’s how these two pups end up in backpacks. While the adult wolves are out hunting, the scientists gently place the pups with their new brothers and sisters. They rub the caged-born and wild pups together, ever letting them pee (小便) on each other to mix their smells! 【小题4】 This result makes the scientists optimistic about the plan.

The idea is that the caged pups will grow up and breed with wild wolves. 【小题5】 Thanks to this ongoing work, 250 wild Mexican wolves wander Arizona and New Mexico today.

Mobile Bay in Alabama is home to a strange and unique occurrence. During the summer months, hundreds of fish and crustaceans (甲壳纲动物) from the deep waters of the bay move to the shallow waters. The free seafood is so plentiful and easy to catch with nets or bare hands that locals gather to fill their buckets with it. This natural phenomenon has existed for centuries.

Sarah Van Winkle, a student at the Alabama School of Math & Science, is no stranger to the scene. Growing up there, the rich plants and animals never stop to amaze her.

As the world’s oceans face numerous issues such as pollution, overfishing, and habitat destruction, she intended to figure out whether Mobile Bay was experiencing similar environmental threats in her most recent science project. Sarah studied the environment of Mobile Bay and she even extended the range of the research to the Mobile Tensaw-Delta, and the canals of a living district in Fairhope, Alabama. She analyzed key nutrient and metal levels in the ocean ecosystem.

Through the project, Sarah found that turbidity, an important indicator of water quality, increased sharply. This result showed, clearly that the area is filled with tiny pieces of matter, making the water there quite opaque.

For the project. Sarah was chosen as one of this year’s 24 Society for Science & the Public Community Innovation Award winners. “To me, this honor symbolizes that the ten months of late night readings, weekend field trips, and after-school sessions in the laboratory have truly come to fruition and impacted lives,” Sarah noted.

“Our local ocean ecosystem is in danger of chemical pollution from a variety of sources,” Sarah explained in an interview. “The bay plays a vital role in our community and every local should value what the bay offers. It’s our responsibility to work together to preserve it.”

Vicky Barlow is a volunteer for a non-profit environmental organization. She was overturning stones in a rock pool in Falmouth, England when something “extremely bright and unusual” caught her eye. Under a large seaweed-covered rock, she made a very rare find: a rainbow sea slug (蛞蝓).

Rainbow sea slugs are very uncommon in England — they’re usually found in warmer waters, such as those along the west coasts of Spain, Portugal and France. In fact, there have only been three previously documented sightings of the species in the UK. But those were all found by divers rather than rock poolers. “It’s a warm-water species but it looks as if it has arrived here,” said the sea biologist Ben Holt. He adds that waters around the UK have seen rapid warming due to climate change. By the end of the century, water temperatures in the UK will rise by more than 3℃.

Sea slugs are particularly useful in related research. Most sea slugs only live up to about one year, which means they can make a very quick response to the changes in water temperatures caused by climate issues. In Australia, climate scientists have been collecting information on sea slugs for over 10 years to record the species and learn about changes in their distribution (分布), including their arrival in historically cooler waters.

Around 3,000 species of sea slugs exist in waters worldwide. They mainly feed on seaweed and other sea slugs. Unlike snails, adult sea slugs don’t have shells to protect them from being eaten by hungry marine animals. Instead, many of them have formed bright colors to scare off their enemies such as sea turtles, starfish and crabs. Some species may even have the unusual ability to steal stinging cells (刺细胞) from animals they feed on and shoot them out when threatened.

Before sending it back where it came from, Barlow placed the sea slug in a pot to get a better look at its colors. “It is absolutely amazing that I could find it on our rocky coasts,” Barlow writes in her blog. “It’s a perfect example of the incredible wildlife we have on our doorstep.”