Green Group discussion

Ecologists are constantly out in the field, identifying, measuring and recording biodiversity.

The more complex a habitat, the more species can live in the habitat.
"We found that you need to know exactly three things about a habitat: rugosity, fractal dimension and height range," explained Dr. Joshua Madin, an associate researcher at HIMB in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. "If you think of your backyard brick-pile, rugosity tells you the amount surface area there is for critters to live on, fractal dimension tells how many critters of different sizes can fit in among the bricks, and height range sets an upper limit to critter size. You won't find an elephant in your bricks, right?"

The extraordinary part of the researcher's work, published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, is that you only need to know two of the three measurements to be able to characterize the structure of a habitat. "

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nooks-c...

More information: A geometric basis for surface habitat complexity and biodiversity, Nature Ecology and Evolution (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-1281-8 , www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-12...
Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution

Nature Beyond Solitude: Notes from the Field

Coves of Departure: Field Notes from the Sea of Cortez

Ecologists found that habitats decayed more quickly than had been expected once they met interference.

""Ecosystem decay" refers to the case when some species are more likely to go extinct when habitat is lost than predicted by theory. Pioneering conservation biologist, Thomas Lovejoy, coined the term to describe results from studies in small forest islands left behind after clearcutting in the Brazilian Amazon. High levels of sunlight encroached into the normally dark forest understory, harming plants adapted to lowlight conditions. Larger animals, like monkeys and big cats, left or went locally extinct."

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-smaller...

More information: Ecosystem decay exacerbates biodiversity loss with habitat loss, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2531-2, www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-25...
Journal information: Nature

Fiction on ecology field work; feel free to post your own favourites.

A Solitude of Wolverines

What Should a Clever Moose Eat?: Natural History, Ecology, and the North Woods


More non-fic field work.

Natural habitats run like clockworks in terms of interaction. They are waterproof and the gears have a lot of play in them but they are are fragile when sections of the habitat are removed or permanently destroyed and never allowed to be replaced. It's like having a beautiful house and some one comes along and removes most of the roof because they want it. The house is still there, the stuff is still inside, the yard taken care off. But with enough of the roof gone, the house inside starts to change in a bad way, and if the inhabitants are themselves unable to put the roof back on, they will move out, and the whole place will drift into disuse.

Great analogy.

Here's a fossil providing evidence of biodiversity, depending on where populations of the creature lived.
This pig-sized mammal Lystrosaurus lived on Antarctica, and while it looks like a walrus, it doesn't seem to have been a swimmer.
The tusks grew continually, and comparisons with populations in South Africa show that the beasties in Antarctica had to hibernate.
Eventually, I guess, Antarctica just got too icy.

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fossil-...

And here are the wolverines just as described in the book I posted above. A female with kits returned to Mount Rainier.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/wolverine...

A nice chart showing the difference between regenerative forestry and conventional crops for biodiversity.

https://app.arkrewards.com/posts/803?...

Several newly recorded spider species in Cornwall. If you don't know what you've got, you can't track its progress and protect its specific habitat.
Warning that there are photos of spiders.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cor...
"Now Forestry England is asking walkers to take a closer look at the tree trunks, fences, logs, and banks to see what they can find.

"Take a photo of your discoveries and upload it to the iNaturalist app for help identifying your beastie, and to help build important records of UK wildlife," it said. "Download the free app here.""

Can you just imagine what might be at the lowest point of the deepest freshwater cave in the world?
We don't know yet, but mapping that cave, east of Prague, and discovering how it was formed is a great start.

https://gizmodo.com/no-one-knows-what...

"New research suggests Hranice Abyss—the world’s deepest freshwater cave—is around 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) deep, which is more than twice the depth of previous estimates.

Back in 2016, scientists measured the depth of Hranice Abyss at 1,552 feet (473 meters), but they suspected it was deeper because their remotely operated vehicle had reached the end of its fiber-optic communication cable. Now, using multiple geophysical imaging techniques, a research team led by Radek Klanica from the Czech Academy of Sciences has established a new estimated depth for Hranice Abyss, which is at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) deep. A paper describing this research was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface."

Here is why we need ecologists to measure the biodiversity we now have, and compare with figures of previous decades, where those exist. More species are endangered now than were 50 years ago. Worldwide, wildlife has "plummetted by 68% in 50 years."

Thanks to RTE for this article.

"Global animal, bird and fish populations have plummeted more than two-thirds in less than 50 years due to rampant over-consumption, experts have said today in a stark warning to save nature in order to save ourselves.

The Living Planet Index, which tracks more than 4,000 species of vertebrates, warns that increasing deforestation and agricultural expansion were the key drivers behind a 68% average decline in populations between 1970 and 2016."

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0910/116...

Measuring biodiversity has to look back at the past of biodiversity to understand how we came to have the species present today (and not, for instance, dinosaurs). Here is the most complete study of reptile species' evolution to date.
This was made by:
"Tiago R. Simões.

Simões is the Alexander Agassiz Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Harvard paleontologist Stephanie Pierce. From 2013 to 2018, he traveled to more than 20 countries and more than 50 different museums to take CT scans and photos of nearly 1,000 reptilian fossils, some hundreds of millions of years old.
It amounted to about 400 days of active collection, helping form what is believed to be the largest available timeline on the evolution of major living and extinct reptile groups."

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-rebuts-...
More information: Tiago R. Simões et al, Megaevolutionary dynamics and the timing of evolutionary innovation in reptiles, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17190-9
Journal information: Nature Communications
Provided by Harvard University

Clare and contributors, I’m new so I hope it’s OK to share this type of thing. You all may already be aware but Half Earth Project is sponsoring the virtual Half Earth Day a week from Thursday on 10/22. Below is a post I made on my @pedrothewaterdog page. I’m really looking forward to attending. Kris Tompkins is in the last session with EO Willson. Before Doug Tompkins died, I had a dream of joining the volunteers on one of their restored properties removing the old cattle barbed wire fencing. Come to think of it, maybe I need to keep that dream! Peace. Avis
***
“Only a major shift in moral reasoning, with greater commitment given to the rest of life, can meet this greatest challenge of the century.” –E.O. Wilson
What are you doing a week from this Thursday, 10/22? I’ll be attending Half Earth Day with E.O. Wilson (topics below). I’m no spring chicken either, but EO Wilson is getting up in years and it will be such an honor to participate in this event and to learn more about this important movement inspired by his book Half Earth. Here’s the link to register: https://www.half-earthproject.org/hal...
Photo: Sutter Buttes

Here are the topics and speakers (Thurs 10/22/20):

11:00am EDT HOW TO SAVE THE NATURAL WORLD, With E.O. Wilson and Paula J. Ehrlich

11:15am EDT THE SCIENCE OF HALF-EARTH, Led by Walter Jetz

12:40pm EDT INSPIRING THE NEXT NATURALIST, Led by Dennis Liu

2:00pm EDT IGNITING CHANGE, Hosted and moderated by Glenn Close, in conversation with E.O. Wilson, Hansjörg Wyss, Kris Tompkins, Reggie Love, Jacob Lebel, Jaime Butler, and Jeff Ubben

Thank you Avis, I am always interested in such events and I know others are too.

Ireland is hosting a conference about wildlife crime. This is all online. Bookings by 24th October.

https://events.eventzilla.net/e/wildl...

I don't know why this needs to cost money - €40 for a student is the cheapest, for one day, and we're sitting at home.
I have just been staff at Ireland's national science fiction convention, and we hosted that online on Discord and produced talks which were filmed on Zoom and streamed live on Twitch. This was a free Con. We raised funds for a partner charity.

Trinity students are out and about, reconnoitring the landscape and seeing the different ground covers and water catchments. A nice look at south county Dublin and northern Wicklow.

https://campusbuzz.blog/2020/11/02/22...

Monitoring how shore birds survive hurricanes.

"Marsh birds are adept at hiding in dense grasses, so it's more common to hear them than to see them. That's why we use a process known as a callback survey to monitor for them.

First we play a prerecorded set of calls to elicit responses from birds in the marsh. Then we determine where we think the birds are calling from and visually estimate the distance from the observer to that spot, often using tools such as laser range finders. We also note the type of ecosystem where we detect the birds – for example, whether they're in a tidal marsh with emergent vegetation or out in the open on mud flats.

...
"When a tropical storm strikes, many factors – including wind speed, flooding and the storm's position – influence how severely it will affect marsh birds. Typically birds ride out storms by moving to higher areas of the marsh. However, if a storm generates extensive flooding, birds in affected areas may swim or be blown to other locations. We saw this in early June when Hurricane Cristobal blew hundreds of clapper rails onto beaches in parts of coastal Mississippi.

In coastal areas immediately to the east of the eye of a tropical cyclone we typically see a drop in clapper rail populations in the following spring and summer. This happens because the counterclockwise rotation of the storms results in the highest winds and storm surge to the north and east of the eye of the storm.

But typically there's a strong bout of breeding and a population rebound within a year or so – evidence that these birds are quick to adapt. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2005, however, depending on the type of marsh, it took several years for rail populations to return to their pre-Katrina levels."

Great article detailing research methods.

https://www.ecowatch.com/how-birds-su...

We can represent the threats to biodiversity in various ways, but this infographic has pictorial visuals. Nice and easy to understand.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/bigg...

Great story: give people things like mattresses to encourage them to preserve agro-biodiversity.

https://phys.org/news/2020-11-money-i...

"Drucker and co-author Marleni Ramirez recently assessed eight years of programs that use incentives and competitive tenders in which farmers receive in-kind payments in exchange for cultivating threatened varieties of important crops such as quinoa and maize.

In their article published in Land Use Policy, Drucker and Ramirez analyzed payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services, or PACS, in four Latin American countries between 2010-2018.

Their conclusion: these schemes are very affordable, attractive to farmers and policymakers, and can successfully conserve crop diversity on farms. The programs have been very well-received in Peru, a megadiverse Andean nation with world-famous cuisine and a long tradition of innovation in cultivation."

More information: Adam G Drucker et al, Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences, lessons learned and upscaling challenges, Land Use Policy (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104810
Provided by International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)

Recently, 102 species in a single river were found to be at risk of becoming extinct.

"The Fraser River estuary in British Columbia is home to 102 species at risk of extinction. A new study says it's not too late to save these species if action is taken now.

Lead author Laura Kehoe, who did the work while a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria and UBC, says it's not too late to save these species if we act now.

"The price tag is $381 million over 25 years or $15 million a year and invests in strategies ranging from aquatic habitat restoration and transport regulation to green infrastructure and public land management. This amounts to less than $6 per person a year in Greater Vancouver—the price of a single beer or latte."

The authors acknowledge that identifying the management strategies to conserve species within such regions, and ensuring effective governance to oversee their implementation, presents enormous challenges—yet the cost of not acting is staggering.

"Not only do we risk losing these species from the region, but the co-benefits from investing in these conservation actions are enormous," explains Martin. "For example, along with generating more than 40 full-time jobs for 25 years, historically the value of a Fraser salmon fishery exceeds $300 million a year, and whale watching is more than $26 million. If we lose thriving populations of these species, we lose these industries. Our study suggests that investing in conservation creates jobs and economic opportunities."

Crucially, the study found that future major industrial developments, including the contentious Trans Mountain pipeline and Roberts Bank port terminal expansion, jeopardizes the future of many of these species including the southern resident killer whale, salmon and sturgeon, and the migratory western sandpiper.

The study concludes that biodiversity conservation in heavily urbanized areas is not a lost cause but requires urgent strategic planning, attention to governance, and large-scale investment."

https://phys.org/news/2020-11-late-sp...
More information: Laura J. Kehoe et al. Conservation in heavily urbanized biodiverse regions requires urgent management action and attention to governance, Conservation Science and Practice (2020). DOI: 10.1111/csp2.310
Provided by University of British Columbia

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/huma...

"Only 5% of the world’s lands are unaffected by humans, which amounts to nearly 7 million km² of the Earth’s land, and 44% (59 million km²) is categorized as low modification.

The remainder of land has a moderate to high degree of modification: with 34% categorized as moderate (46 million km²), 13% categorized as high (17 million km²), and 4% categorized as very high modification (5.5 million km²). This latter category is the most visible on the map, with portions of China, India, and Italy serving as focal points.

Below is a look at how Earth’s various biomes fare under this ranking system:"

Follow link for visualisations.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/satellite...

"Iceberg A68a—currently the world’s largest iceberg—is rotating and possibly moving in a westerly direction away from South Georgia Island, according to new satellite photos. This is potentially good news, as the enormous chunk of ice appeared to be on a collision course with the wildlife-filled island."

Biodiversity starts on your doorstep, as the Urban Birder tells us.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/wildli...

"While nature shows remain incredibly important in highlighting the plight of the natural world, David Lindo suggests that these programmes could be doing more for urban wildlife. 'I think the media should actually focus on urban wildlife much more because most of us live in urban areas,' he says. 'It's all well and good talking about the Serengeti, but we need to show the link from the doorstep to the Serengeti.'"

David Lindo
The Urban Birder

""Based on previous work on how animals respond to color stimuli, we developed a hypothesis that wearing colors that are 'worn' by water anoles themselves would be less frightening to these lizards," Swierk said.

The results of the study supported that hypothesis, with researchers with orange shirts reporting more anoles seen per hour and a higher anole capture percentage. Despite predicting the result, Swierk said that she was surprised by some of the findings. "It was still very surprising to see that the color green, which camouflaged us well in the forest, was less effective than wearing a very bright orange!"

Swierk said that one of the biggest takeaways from this study is that we may not yet quite understand how animals view the world. "

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-impact-...

More information: Andrea Fondren et al, Clothing color mediates lizard responses to humans in a tropical forest, Biotropica (2019). DOI: 10.1111/btp.12744
Journal information: Biotropica
Provided by Binghamton University

Biodiversity loss by continent, visualised.

"The Living Planet Index (LPI) tracks the abundance of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians across the globe
Between 1970 and 2016, the average decline in vertebrate populations was 68%, but the rate of loss differs from region to region
Latin America & Caribbean has seen the largest drop in biodiversity at 94%"

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/eart...

A story from the Narwhal about knowing what you have and what is vanishing and what you need to protect.

"BC Timber Sales, the government agency responsible for auctioning off logging permits, had planned 14 cutblocks in or near Argonaut Creek, which is part of the rare inland temperate rainforest, one of B.C.’s most at-risk ecosystems.

Twelve of the cutblocks overlapped federally designated core critical habitat for the Columbia North southern mountain caribou herd. The herd, which has 147 animals, is widely considered to be the Kootenay-area caribou population with the highest chance of persisting in the long term.

...
"Like other mountain caribou, the Columbia North herd depends on nutritious lichen found on old-growth trees. In October, biologist Rob Serrouya told The Narwhal that approval of the 14 cutblocks would result in the destruction of 300 hectares of “high-quality summer and early-winter habitat” for the herd.

Five of the 14 cutblocks were poised to be auctioned off in the near future, while long-term development plans would see most of the Argonaut drainage roaded and logged.

Since 2006, five Kootenay caribou herds have become extirpated, or locally extinct, including the South Selkirk and Purcells South herds, which winked out last year following years of decline.

The three other remaining Kootenay caribou herds — the Central Selkirk, Frisby-Boulder and Columbia South populations — are struggling to survive, with only 26, 6 and 4 animals, respectively, according to 2020 data from the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development."

https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-suspends-old...

Biodiversity includes the genetic biodiversity within a species. Here, researchers looked at the north American red squirrel to see if territorial squirrels survived better with familiar neighbours whether or not they were related.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-squirre...

More information: Current Biology, Siracusa et al.: "Familiar neighbors, but not relatives, enhance fitness in a territorial mammal" www.cell.com/current-biology/f … 0960-9822(20)31615-8 , DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.10.072
Journal information: Current Biology
Provided by Cell Press

"Researchers are using Cold War spy satellite images to explore changes in the environment, including deforestation in Romania, marmot decline in Kazakhstan and ecological damage from bombs in Vietnam. 
...
"The researchers obtained the photos through the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Centre, after being declassified in 1995 under an executive order by President Bill Clinton.  

This type of film data has been given an upgrade, by employing drone image processing software, using a rectification technique known as structure from motion.  
...
"The authors present several new findings, in addition to the published research on marmots in Kazakhstan. One use included revealing the extent of large-scale deforestation in the aftermath of the Second World War in Romania.  
...
"Interestingly, new examination of photos from the Vietnam War has revealed the extensive ecological damage caused by explosions.  Mihai Daniel Nita, in a separate piece of work, has assessed the expansion of agricultural land in previously ravaged forests, as well as craters from the impact of bomb explosions, which have been transformed into fish farming ponds.  "

https://www.britishecologicalsociety....

Wolverines seen in Yellowstone.

https://www.ecowatch.com/wolverine-ye...

Urban trees bring many benefits, but this study explains that mature, major trees are worth more to biodiversity and other ecosystem services than saplings.

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-mature-...

One way to measure biodiversity is to measure what is available to eat. So for a top predator, you need to measure how much prey is available. To a pollinator, the resource is nectar.

These scientists measured how much nectar was produced in suburban gardens.

""The research illustrates the huge role gardeners play in pollinator conservation, as without gardens there would be far less food for pollinators, which include bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, flies, and beetles in towns and cities. It is vital that new housing developments include gardens and also important for gardeners to try to make sure their gardens are as good as possible for pollinators," Nicholas Tew explained.

"Ways to do this include planting nectar-rich flowers, ensuring there is always something in flower from early spring to late autumn, mowing the lawn less often to let dandelions, clovers, daisies and other plant flowers flourish, avoiding spraying pesticides which can harm pollinators, and avoiding covering garden in paving, decking or artificial turf.""

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-reveals...

Looking back, again, we can see that if a mega-carnivore existed it must have had plentiful large prey. From 2019.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/plan...

Although not formally described until now, the Simbakubwa fossils were not a recent find. They were unearthed during a dig at Meswa Bridge, in southwestern Kenya, some 40 years ago. The focus of the excavation at that time was on finding Miocene primates, so Simbakubwa's remains were collected but then set aside without formal classification. (It's a great example of dark data: valuable scientific finds already in museums but not yet studied.)

Paleontologists exploring the backroom collections at the National Museum in Nairobi found the undescribed fossils and recognized their importance. Yes, Simbakubwa was big, but size isn't the only thing that matters about this specimen.

Finding a gigantic hyainailourine specifically in eastern Africa and during the very start of the Miocene tells paleontologists that the animals got larger earlier than thought. And the time when Simbakubwa lived was kind of crazy. Thanks to plate tectonics, Africa and Eurasia, once separate, were coming together, and animals from both sides crossed over landbridges into new territory, encountering alien species they had not evolved alongside. It's likely that some ecological niches got crowded.

The very existence of Simbakubwa at this time and place helps scientists flesh out an early Miocene landscape that must have been rich in megaherbivores, similar to modern elephants and rhinos, to sustain the massive hypercarnivore. The study appears today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...

Nature's version.

"The Simbakubwa fossil described in the study was unearthed sometime between 1978 and 1981. But its true identity escaped researchers until 2013, when palaeontologist Matt Borths was poking through the fossil-mammal collection at the Nairobi National Museum in Kenya. Borths, who was visiting from the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina, spotted the jaw of a huge prehistoric carnivore. The bone was so big that it had to be archived on special shelving.

“I was shocked when I first pulled open the drawer,” Borths says. He recognized the jaw as that of a hyaenodont, but it was much larger and more complete than most examples he’d seen before, and in better condition. “The specimens are so beautifully preserved,” Borths says, down to the shearing edges of the carnivore’s teeth.

He joined forces with Nancy Stevens, a palaeontologist at Ohio University in Athens who he knew had studied fossils from the same site where Simbakubwa was found. The two worked together to study the giant carnivore.

Heather Ahrens, a palaeontologist at High Point University in North Carolina, agrees that “numerous characteristics differentiate Simbakubwa” from previously known giant hyaenodonts, adding another species to the list of these large, extinct carnivores.

Fearsome find
Simbakubwa and other giant hyaenodonts, such as Megistotherium, were a very different form of carnivore from their modern brethren. Whereas modern carnivores have a single row of back teeth that are arranged to chew meat, hyaenodonts had three sets of meat-slicing teeth. “All those extra blades gave them a relatively long jaw that made their heads look a little too big for their bodies,” Borths says. “I imagine them looking a bit like the wargs from Lord of the Rings.”"

Clare wrote: "Looking back, again, we can see that if a mega-carnivore existed it must have had plentiful large prey. From 2019.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/plan......"

An interesting article, Clare. One of many I've read relative to evolution. What strikes me overall in my reading is the extensive empirical evidence that points to the path of our being as a punctuated cumulative progression under the influence of natural selection. Underlying the problems we face is natural selection being a blind, unconscious, automatic process that selects for seeming survivability and reproduction in an immediate environment. The selection process has though, albeit selectively and possibly unintentionally, endowed us with the intelligence to potentially see where this path is leading us in a successively deteriorating conducive biosphere. As you know, all life forms alter their habitat, spurring environmental changes in geological time that adaptive evolution attempts to keep pace with through natural selection, but our weedy species is altering the environment at such an accelerated pace that we are witnessing worsening environmental changes and excessive extinctions within our lifetimes. If significant human caused detrimental biosphere changes occur faster than adaptive evolution steps can keep pace . . .

Are we capable on the whole of recognizing our shortcomings to become true Homo sapiens (i.e. wise man)? That before the hole we are digging with 'business as usual' buries us.

Yes, one of the major problems natural life faces today is that the climate is changing faster than it can adapt, and we have created so many barriers or destroyed so many habitats that it cannot move to where it can live easily.

The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees


From the oaks in his backyard to the many species of oaks in North America, the author tells us of the myriad of insect species these trees support - and from the insects the birdlife is supported.

"Rick Ostfeld is a disease ecologist at Cary Institute and a co-author on the paper. He explains, "Research is mounting that species that thrive in developed and degraded landscapes are often much more efficient at harboring pathogens and transmitting them to people. In less-disturbed landscapes with more animal diversity, these risky reservoirs are less abundant and biodiversity has a protective effect."

Rodents, bats, primates, cloven-hooved mammals like sheep and deer, and carnivores have been flagged as the mammal taxa most likely to transmit pathogens to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld note, "The next emerging pathogen is far more likely to come from a rat than a rhino."

This is because animals with fast life histories tend to be more efficient at transmitting pathogens. Keesing explains, "Animals that live fast, die young, and have early sexual maturity with lots of offspring tend to invest less in their adaptive immune responses. They are often better at transmitting diseases, compared to longer-lived animals with stronger adaptive immunity."

When biodiversity is lost from ecological communities, long-lived, larger-bodied species tend to disappear first, while smaller-bodied species with fast life histories tend to proliferate. Research has found that mammal hosts of zoonotic viruses are less likely to be species of conservation concern (i.e. they are more common), and that for both mammals and birds, human development tends to increase the abundance of zoonotic host species, bringing people and risky animals closer together."

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-diversi...

More information: Felicia Keesing el al., "Impacts of biodiversity and biodiversity loss on zoonotic diseases," PNAS (2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.202...
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

We need to measure three kinds of biodiversity.
Species level - how many different species inhabit an area?
Within a species - do the individuals have varied genes or is there a genetic bottleneck that could lead to inbreeding problems?
Within a group - do members of the herd, flock, shoal etc. have very similar genes or is there enough diversity without having to introduce outsiders?

With regard to the above, scientists have been measuring the difference between genes of 100-year old cod fish scales in museums and cod of today.

"Many debates over the last few decades have centered on whether cod have evolved in response to fisheries, a phenomenon known as fisheries-induced evolution. Cod now mature at a much earlier age, for example. The concern has been that if the fish have evolved, they may not be able to recover even if fishing is reduced, according to Pinsky.

Cod populations with late-maturing individuals can produce more offspring and more effectively avoid predators, he said. They are also better protected against climate variability, more stable and less likely to collapse.

Both theory and experiments suggest that fishing can lead to an earlier maturation age. But prior to the new study, no one had tried to sequence whole genomes from before intensive fishing to determine whether evolution had occurred. So, scientists sequenced cod earbones and scales from 1907 in Norway, 1940 in Canada and modern cod from the same populations. The northern Canadian population of cod collapsed from overfishing in the early 1990s, while the northeast Arctic population near Norway faced high fishing rates but smaller declines, the study says."

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-overfis...

More information: Malin L. Pinsky el al., "Genomic stability through time despite decades of exploitation in cod on both sides of the Atlantic," PNAS (2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.202...
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by Rutgers University

Shea parklands in Africa - the more diverse the habitat, the more pollinators, so the better the crop.

https://campusbuzz.blog/2021/04/20/my...

Major rivers are a barrier to species spread, so once animals get on both sides of them they can differentiate into subspecies. As the hyrax seems to have done.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-barks-n...

"They are usually regarded as nocturnal and tree dwelling, but their behavior has proved difficult to study, in part because, unlike most nocturnal mammals in Africa, their eyes don't shine at night, making them more difficult to spot, the researchers explained.

The researchers studied 418 recordings of tree hyrax calls made between 1968 and 2020 at 42 sites in 12 countries. Bearder, emeritus professor at Oxford Brookes University, produced sonograms from a sample of the 96 clearest and most complete recordings, including 34 from the population between the Niger and Volta and 62 from tree hyrax populations across West, Central, and East Africa, measuring their duration, frequency range, and repetition rates, among other characteristics. This analysis revealed that nearly all the calls recorded between the rivers were "rattle-barks" that differed from the shrieking calls recorded on the western side of the Volta and the eastern side of the Niger.

"Sargis and co-author Neal Woodman of the U.S. Geological Survey and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History also studied the skulls of 69 adult tree hyrax specimens from six museum collections in Europe and North America. They found subtle but clear differences in the shape and size of skulls from specimens collected between the rivers and those gathered elsewhere. The skulls of D. interfluvialis were shorter and broader than those of their counterparts from outside the interfluvial zone, the study found.

An examination of museum skins, carcasses of hyraxes killed by hunters, and camera-trap imagery obtained in Ghana by co-author Edward Wiafe of the University of Environment and Sustainable Development revealed differences in fur color between D. interfluvialis and other populations, with the flanks and limbs of the former being brindled dark brown and lighter yellow-brown while the latter are dark brown to nearly black. Finally, genetic analyses of 21 samples of hyrax tissue from across the African rainforest found that the interfluvial populations were genetically distinct from other hyrax lineages, according to the study."

A new species of mammal may have been found in Africa's montane forests
Journal information: Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
Provided by Yale University

Technology is getting smaller and lighter, so even a snail can carry a computer. This study found that the white snail escaped the introduced predatory rosy wolf snail, because the rosy wolf has a dark shell and got too hot.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s4200...

"Abstract
Pacific Island land snails are highly endangered due in part to misguided biological control programs employing the alien predator Euglandina rosea. Its victims include the fabled Society Island partulid tree snail fauna, but a few members have avoided extirpation in the wild, including the distinctly white-shelled Partula hyalina. High albedo shell coloration can facilitate land snail survival in open, sunlit environments and we hypothesized that P. hyalina has a solar refuge from the predator.

We developed a 2.2 × 4.8 × 2.4 mm smart solar sensor to test this hypothesis and found that extant P. hyalina populations on Tahiti are restricted to forest edge habitats, where they are routinely exposed to significantly higher solar radiation levels than those endured by the predator. Long-term survival of this species on Tahiti may require proactive conservation of its forest edge solar refugia and our study demonstrates the utility of miniaturized smart sensors in invertebrate ecology and conservation."

Picked up by Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-snails-...

and The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/1...

Recording biodiversity and conditions on the Colorado while Lake Mead is at an all time low.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-low-flo...

More information: John Fleck et al, Managing Colorado River risk, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abj5498
Journal information: Science
Provided by Oregon State University

Photographing wildlife can be absorbing, dangerous, tricky... and even if it's for a magazine, this is definitely part of recording biodiversity.

Look at these stunning photos and the crafty setups.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ph...

"While use in animal control is a new development, drones have been used to monitor animals and ecosystems, Nature reported. Conservationists have discussed using drones to stop poaching and to save endangered rhinos and elephants. The technology is also being used to stealthily measure dolphin health. And, in the Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous tribes are using drones to detect and fight illegal deforestation in their territories.

Worldwide, in over 1,200 recent eradication campaigns against destructive, invasive mammals, nearly 85 percent have proven successful, Drone DJ reported. Those advocating for the use of drones hope to increase that percentage even further.

Serge Wich, a biologist at Liverpool John Moores University, UK and a co-director of the website Conservation Drones, told Nature, "Almost every conservation organization I work with is using drones now, in one way or another.""

https://www.ecowatch.com/galapagos-ra...

"Most modern time-series data of shark abundance come from places with well-studied commercial fisheries, and often data collection starts well after fishing had commenced. This makes it difficult to be certain how many sharks were present before human activities began impacting the ocean, as well as the long-term ecological consequences of shark declines."

A new way of finding and studying ancient records of sharks.

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-fossil-...

More information: Erin M. Dillon el al., "Fossil dermal denticles reveal the preexploitation baseline of a Caribbean coral reef shark community," PNAS (2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.201...
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by University of California - Santa Barbara

This is where we in Ireland can report new species or rare sightings.

https://www.biodiversityireland.ie/re...

"A significant milestone was reached recently when the number of records submitted through Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal in 2021 passed the 100,000 mark.

The 100,000th record was of Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) or Crobh éin as Gaeilge and was from “Wood of O Bog” in Co. Offaly. The record for this species was submitted through Ireland’s Citizen Science Portal on the 29/06/2021 by Margaret Cahill.

We noticed a considerable increase in recording activity in 2020, due to the Covid-19 lockdown and travel restrictions and this year has proven to keep that level of recording activity and in this case surpass it!"

When recording biodiversity, it can be useful to ask "what does this species do?"

"Although mangrove ecosystems support a broad range of specialised invertebrates, little is known about the effect of deforestation and human impact on the functional diversity and resilience of these resident fauna.

To address this question, the team compiled a dataset of 209 crustacean and 155 mollusc species from 16 mangrove forests around the world. They found that mangroves, when compared with other ecosystems, are among those with the lowest the number of animals serving same ecological role.

"A high functional redundancy is a sort of 'ecological insurance' for a given forest, since if one species is lost, another can fulfil its function, ultimately keeping the ecosystem viable," Professor Lee said.

"The low redundancy of the mangrove invertebrates suggests that these coastal vegetations are one of the most precarious ecosystems in the world in the face of the recent anthropogenic changes."

The authors classified the species into 64 functional groups based on feeding habits, behavioural traits, and micro-habitat.

More than 60% of the sites tested showed no functional redundancy, meaning only one species filled each particular functional niche.

"Even a modest loss of invertebrate diversity could have significant consequences for mangrove functionality and resilience because invertebrates in a mangrove forest are crucial for nutrient cycling and for providing oxygen to the tree roots, Professor Lee said."

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-lack-sp...

More information: Stefano Cannicci et al, A functional analysis reveals extremely low redundancy in global mangrove invertebrate fauna, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2016913118
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by Griffith University

Genetic diversity within a species. Dogs.

"The question of when these changes arose surprised the group of international researchers.

They discovered that the genetic combination for one of the coat patterns—dominant yellow, or DY—is shared with arctic white wolves and, based on phylogenetic analysis, originated from an extinct canid that diverged from gray wolves more than 2 million years ago.

"While we think about all this variation in coat color among dogs, some of it happened long before 'dogs' were dogs," Bannasch said. "The genetics turn out to be a lot more interesting because they tell us something about canid evolution."

The researchers hypothesize that lighter coat colors would have been advantageous to an extinct canid ancestor in an arctic environment during glaciation periods 1.5 to 2 million years ago. Natural selection would have caused that coat pattern to persist in the population that eventually gave rise to dogs and wolves.

"We were initially surprised to discover that white wolves and yellow dogs have an almost identical ASIP DNA configuration," said Chris Kaelin of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama, who is co-first author of the work with Bannasch. "But we were even more surprised when it turned out that a specific DNA configuration is more than 2 million years old, prior to the emergence of modern wolves as a species."

...
"Wolves and dogs can make two different types of pigments, a black one called eumelanin and a yellow pigment, pheomelanin. The precisely regulated production of these two pigments at the right time and at the right place on the body gives rise to very different coat color patterns. Pheomelanin (yellow) production is controlled by the agouti signaling protein, which is produced by the ASIP gene."

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-dog-coa...

More information: Danika L. Bannasch et al, Dog colour patterns explained by modular promoters of ancient canid origin, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01524-x
Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution
Provided by UC Davis