Constantine Alexander's blog

Making a Killing, Earth Summit Satire

William M Johnson’s critically-acclaimed satire, Making a Killing, has recently been republished by Iridescent Publishing as an Amazon Kindle ebook. The publication marks the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit (June 20-22), when some 50,000+ dignitaries, bureaucrats, scientists, nature managers, conservationists, business leaders, celebrities, and the world’s press will once again converge upon glamorous Rio de Janeiro for the UN’s “Rio+20” Earth Summit — billed as a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ to save the planet.

With elephant-hunting royalty again in the news, nature managers insisting that endangered species must be made to pay for their own conservation, sea levels on the rise and deserts on the march, the frenetic political escapism, corporate wheeling and dealing, and media frenzy that Making a Killing flayed back in 1996, are if anything even more acute today — and just as deserving of this satire’s poison-tipped pen.

An End of the World Black Comedy, ‘the deepest shade of noir…’ — BBC Wildlife

‘[A] highly original, often unexpectedly witty but frightening tale of man’s destruction of the Earth and his seeming indifference to the fate of all creatures but his own… This sharp, brilliantly observed book deserves a wide audience.’ — Virginia McKenna

‘A mind-blowing and witty exposé… A no-holds barred, no mercy account of the conservation mercenaries’ (Have Bad News — Will Travel — First Class) successful efforts to get a rich living from a dying planet…’ — Ian MacPhail, a founder of World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Excerpts of Making a Killing are available for free download on Iridescent’s new website, where several monk seal titles are also available.

Bat bridges don't work

		This image shows a bat gantry. Credit: Anna Berthinussen

Wire bridges built to guide bats safely across busy roads simply do not work, University of Leeds researchers have confirmed.

In a study published today (13 June 2012) in PLoS ONE, a team from the University's Faculty of Biological Sciences monitored four wire bridges spanning major roads in the north of England. All had been built over the last nine years to replace hedgerows – the bats' established commuting routes – when these routes were severed by new roads.

Roads act as barriers to bats, cutting colonies off from established feeding sites and reducing their ability to feed themselves and their young (1). Most species of bat fly relatively close to the ground or close to trees and hedges, for protection against the weather and potential predators. Those that do cross roads typically do so at traffic height, with a high risk of collision – so the wire bridges are a common conservation measure aimed at encouraging bats to cross above the traffic.

Using bat detectors – which pick up the bats' high frequency echolocation calls – and night video equipment, the team measured the height at which bats crossed the road and their proximity to the wire bridges and compared the results with bats crossing at nearby severed hedgerows without wire bridges.

The Leeds team showed that almost all the bats in the study favoured their former commuting routes rather than the wire bridges, crossing the road at a low height. There was no evidence to suggest that the bats changed their behaviour in response to the bridges, even over time. A well-established wire bridge built nine years ago and only 15 metres from the severed commuting route it replaced was still spurned by the bats.

Study leader, Professor John Altringham said: "The results of this research are relevant to small insectivorous bats worldwide and highlight the impact of roads on wildlife in general."

Under UK and European law, governments have an obligation to ensure that development does not have a detrimental effect on populations of protected species. Wire bridges are assumed to act as artificial aerial hedges, guiding bats safely over traffic and are an increasingly favoured mitigation tool across Europe.

Referring to the costs associated with the installation of bat bridges, Professor Altringham says: “Conservation measures are sometimes widely implemented without evidence to support their effectiveness, and large sums of public money are being spent without any proven benefit to nature.”

The paper's lead author, PhD student Anna Berthinussen, said: "Many bat species forage up to several kilometres from their roost, so our road system is an ever expanding network of life-threatening hurdles the bats must overcome. Our findings raise concerns about how we can build or improve roads without impacting on these protected species. "We need to find solutions that really work and suggest that alternative designs are investigated and, most importantly, tested more effectively than they have been in the past."

Ms Berthinussen has also been investigating the extent to which bats make use of underpasses built to carry roads and footpaths under roads. Of three underpasses studied, only one was used extensively by bats, but she believes there may be potential to improve their attractiveness to bats.

Reference:

1. In a previous study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology last year, the Leeds team showed that the number and diversity of bats can be significantly depleted near major roads. (doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2011.02068.x)

Contact: Professor John Altringham
j.d.altringham@leeds.ac.uk
44-113-343-2832
University of Leeds

Stanford researchers discover the African cichlid's noisy courtship ritual

		Stanford researchers say the sounds the dominant male cichlid makes may help explain how similar-looking cichlid species avoid interbreeding. Credit: Fernald Lab

African cichlids enjoy an alien, exotic courtship routine. A dominant male attracts choice females to his territory by dancing seductively. If the female is sufficiently impressed, she lays her eggs and immediately collects them in her mouth, where the male fertilizes them. And, in some species, every once in a while, a lower-ranking male will dart into the scene and try to fertilize a few eggs before the dominant male knows what's happened.

At least that's what we thought was going on. But one day, while watching this nostalgic display in the lab, Stanford postdoctoral biology researcher Karen Maruska noticed something unusual. A dominant male was courting a female in one corner of the tank, at the entrance to a terra cotta pot he had claimed as his territory.

"Then, at the last minute, a subordinate male made a beeline for them from the corner of the tank behind the pot, so he could spawn at just the right time," Maruska said. "And I thought: there's no way the subordinate saw" that opportunity. In fact, he didn't see it. He heard it.

Astatotilapia burtoni's predilection for waggling its tail and quivering its body before mating is well documented. But what Maruska, undergraduate researcher Uyhun Ung and Stanford biology Professor Russ Fernald would later write in a paper published last week in PloS ONE was that males also vocalize during courtship. Not only are females responsive to these calls, but their ability to hear them improves with their sexual receptiveness. This additional courtship component may provide crucial signals used for mate choice decisions and help explain how similar-looking cichlid species avoid accidental interbreeding.

Listening fish

Using underwater microphones called hydrophones, the researchers found that males would make low-frequency sounds when confronted with receptive females. And females preferred males associated with playbacks of these courtship sounds over males that were associated with no sound, or a neutral noise.

But not all hearing thresholds were created equal. Females that were sexually receptive – and had high circulating levels of sex hormones – were dramatically more sensitive to the low frequencies contained in the courtship sounds than females that had already spawned and were in the mouth-brooding parental care phase of their cycle. This kind of hormone-dependent hearing has been observed in other animals, and is a reliable indicator of the importance of sounds in courtship displays.

Subordinate males were also subtly more sensitive to certain frequencies than dominant males. Although the reasons for this change are less clear, Maruska suggests the subordinate males may "use the frequency of the sound to determine which males to fight with and attempt to take over their territory." Because the frequency of the courtship sound is related to body size, subordinate males may listen to these courtship sounds to identify the smallest – and most vulnerable – males in their area.

A small pond

The cichlids studied by the Fernald lab are native to Lake Tanganyika in East Africa "where they co-exist with a lot of other cichlid species," said Maruska. "Each species needs to find its niche in the system."

The high level of diversity within the cichlid family is unusual, and difficult to maintain when all the relatives are in the same body of water. Researchers had previously assumed that cichlids, which tend to be brightly colored fish, only used visual cues to distinguish potential mates from out-of-species mistakes. But biologists now believe that visual cues alone can't account for the phenomenon.

Recent field studies by other scientists have shown that cichlid species that live in overlapping areas in the wild produce distinct sounds. The Stanford researchers' discovery that these sounds are an integral component of courtship rituals lends credence to the theory that the vast array of cichlid species may be a consequence of courtship displays that make use of more than one sensory system.

Still, "not a lot is known about fish sounds," said Maruska. There remains a host of unsolved mysteries in the field. "We don't even know the mechanism of sound production in this species yet."

Contact: Max McClure
maxmc@stanford.edu
650-725-6737
Stanford University

North-East Passage soon free from ice again?

Winter measurements show thin sea ice in the Laptev Sea, pointing to early and large-scale summer melt

North-East Passage soon free from ice again? Winter measurements show thin sea ice in the Laptev Sea, pointing to early and large-scale summer melt

The North-East Passage, the sea route along the North coast of Russia, is expected to be free of ice early again this summer. The forecast was made by sea ice physicists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association based on a series of measurement flights over the Laptev Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. Amongst experts the shelf sea is known as an "ice factory" of Arctic sea ice. At the end of last winter the researchers discovered large areas of thin ice not being thick enough to withstand the summer melt.

"These results were a great surprise to us", says expedition member Dr. Thomas Krumpen. In previous measurements in the winter of 2007/2008 the ice in the same area had been up to one metre thicker. In his opinion these clear differences are primarily attributable to the wind: "It behaves differently from year to year. If, as last winter, the wind blows from the mainland to the sea, it pushes the pack ice from the Laptev Sea towards the North. Open water areas, so-called polynyas, develop in this way before the coast. Their surface water naturally cools very quickly at an air temperature of minus 40 degrees. New thin ice forms and is then immediately swept away again by the wind. In view of this cycle, differently sized areas of thin ice then develop on the Laptev Sea depending on wind strength and continuity", explains Thomas Krumpen. (See info charts)

However, the expedition team was unaware of just how large these areas can actually become until they made the measurement flights in March and April of this year. In places the researchers flew over thin ice for around 400 kilometres. The "EM Bird", the torpedo-shaped, electromagnetic ice thickness sensor of the Alfred Wegener Institute, was hung on a cable beneath the helicopter. It constantly recorded the thickness of the floating ice. "We now have a unique data set which we primarily want to use to check the measurements of the earth investigation satellite SMOS", says Thomas Krumpen.

The abbreviation SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) is actually a satellite mission to determine the soil moisture of the mainland and salinity of the oceans. However, the satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) can also be used to survey the Arctic sea ice. "The satellite can be used above all to detect thin ice areas, as we have seen them, from space", explains Thomas Krumpen.

The SMOS satellite measurements from March and April of this year confirm that the thin ice areas discovered by the expedition team were no locally restricted phenomenon: "A large part of the North-East Passage was characterised by surprisingly thin ice at the end of the winter", says Thomas Krumpen.

The new findings of the successful winter expedition give cause for concern to the scientists: "These huge new areas of thin ice will be the first to disappear when the ice melts in summer. And if the thin ice melts as quickly as we presume, the Laptev Sea and with it a part of the North-East Passage will be free from ice comparatively early this summer", explains the sea ice physicist.

In the past the Laptev Sea was always covered with sea ice from October to the end of the following July and was navigable for a maximum of two summer months. In 2011 the ice had retracted so far by the third week of July that during the course of the summer 33 ships were able to navigate the Arctic waters of Russia for the first time. The North-East Passage is viewed by shipping companies to be a time and fuel saving alternative to the conventional Europe-Asia route. The connection from Rotterdam to Japanese Yokohama via the Nord-East Passage is some 3800 sea miles shorter than taking the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean route.

Contact: Sirna Loeschke
medien@awi.de
49-047-148-312-008
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres

Divide the Antarctic to protect native species, propose experts

Proposal follows first continent-wide survey of Antarctic biogeography

An international team of scientists have published the first continent-wide assessment of the Antarctic's biogeography, and propose that the landmass should be divided into 15 distinct conservation regions to protect the continent from invasive alien species. The team's findings are published in Diversity and Distributions, while the authors' proposals were outlined today at a lecture to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) in Hobart, Tasmania.

The study, led by Australian Antarctic Division terrestrial biologist Dr Aleks Terauds, examined the geography, geology, climate, flora and fauna of the ice-free areas of Antarctic and used the results to identify biologically distinct Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions.

This is the first continent-wide assessment of the biogeography of Antarctica using all of the available biodiversity data. Dr Terauds presented the team's findings at the prestigious Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) lecture in Tasmania.

"Previously terrestrial Antarctica has been divided into two main areas based on aspects like geography geology or specific types of biodiversity," Dr Terauds said. "The new research amalgamated 38,000 terrestrial records including the diverse biology such as microbes, invertebrates and plants."

"It revealed a complex ecosystem which can be divided into 15 very distinct and potentially delicate biogeographic regions which are characterised by different climates, landscapes and species," Dr Terauds said.

Invasive species are identified as one of the biggest threats to Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in a warming climate. Over 40,000 people are expected to visit Antarctica over the summer, as tourists, scientists or station support personnel. The rise in visitor numbers increases the potential for more species being accidently transferred to and within Antarctica.

"While quarantine procedures are already in place for inter-continental travel, such as cleaning clothing and equipment before arriving in Antarctica, there are less biosecurity measures for intra-continental movement," said Dr Terauds. "The Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions represent an important basis for biosecurity measures to manage the risk of species, including species native to Antarctica, being transferred from one biogeographic zone to another."

The collaborative effort, which involved scientists from Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the UK, identified the 15 areas as:

• North-east Antarctic Peninsula
• South Orkney Islands
• North-west Antarctic Peninsula
• Enderby Land
• Dronning Maud Land
• East Antarctica
• North Victoria Land
• South Victoria Land
• Transantarctic Mountains
• Ellsworth Mountains
• Marie Byrd Land
• Adelie Land
• Ellsworth Land
• South Antarctic Peninsula.

While Antarctica already has a series of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas, delegates at the ATCM are being urged to develop a broader representation of conservation regions based on this new biogeographic assessment.

Contact: Ben Norman
Lifesciencenews@wiley.com
44-124-377-0375
Wiley-Blackwell

Global climate change: Underestimated impact of sea-level rise on habitat loss?

Global climate change is expected to cause sea-level rise of approximately 1-2 meters within this century and studies are beginning to project the consequences for humans and global biodiversity. While the direct consequences of sea-level rise due to flooding and inundation ('primary effects') are beginning to be assessed, no studies have yet considered the possible secondary effects from sea-level rise due to the relocation of human refugees into the hinterland. Researchers from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, with lead author Florian Wetzel and senior researcher Dustin Penn, collaborated with scientists from the Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity Group of Aarhus University, Denmark to assess and project the potential secondary impacts of sea-level rise on habitat availability and the distribution of mammals. They found that in more populated regions secondary effects can lead to an equal or even higher loss of habitat than primary displacement effects.

Florian Wetzel, Helmut Beissmann and Dustin Penn from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna and W. Daniel Kissling from the Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity Group of Aarhus University, Denmark, examined the potential ecological consequences of sea-level rise on habitat availability on more than 1200 islands in the Southeast Asian and Pacific region. Most models predict a sea-level rise around one meter in this century, which is the lowest scenario they considered, though the team also looked at 3 to 6 metre scenarios, as they are possible in this or the next century.

The researchers assessed the potential consequences of human displacement on habitat availability and distributions of selected mammal species. Depending upon the sea-level rise scenario, between 3 and 32 percent of the coastal zone of these islands could be lost from primary effects, and consequently around 8 to 52 million people could become flood refugees. To assess secondary effects, the authors made the simplifying assumption that inundated urban and intensive agricultural areas will be relocated with an equal area of habitat loss in the hinterland. Their projections show that such secondary effects can have dramatic impacts on the distribution of animals. Secondary range loss effects may equal or even exceed primary effects for at least 10-18 percent of the sample mammals in a moderate scenario and for 22-46 percent in a maximum scenario. In other words, for at least 20 percent of the examined species, secondary effects can be at least as important as, or more severe than primary habitat loss effects from sea-level rise.

"Our findings suggest that to accurately identify ecologically vulnerable regions and species, it is crucial to consider secondary effects of sea-level rise," argues Florian Wetzel. The researchers also found enormous variability among regions in their vulnerability to sea-level rise, which is largely due to differences in primary versus secondary effects: species in Oceania are more vulnerable to primary effects, whereas those in the Indo-Malaysian islands – which may be affected by 7 to 48 million sea-level rise refugees – are more at risk from secondary effects. "We are aware that we are dealing with projections, and that this is a controversial topic, but we are convinced that assessments of sea-level rise should incorporate such secondary effects, or else risk under-estimating the consequences of global climate change on biodiversity and ecosystems" says Dustin Penn.

The paper "Future climate change driven sea-level rise: secondary consequences from human displacement for island biodiversity" by Florian T. Wetzel, W. Daniel Kissling, Helmut Beissmann und Dustin J. Penn is published in the current issue of the journal Global Change Biology (doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02736.x).

Contact: Dr. Dustin Penn
dustin.penn@vetmeduni.ac.at
43-148-909-15823
University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna

Cougars are re-populating their historical range, new study confirms

New evidence shows how American big cats are reversing 100 years of decline

Photo by Wayne Dumbleton

American mountain lions, or cougars, are re-emerging in areas of the United States, reversing 100 years of decline. The evidence, published in The Journal of Wildlife Management, raises new conservation questions, such as how humans can live alongside the returning predators.

"The cougar population declined dramatically from 1900, due to both hunting, and a lack of prey, leaving the remaining population isolated to the American west," said Michelle LaRue from the University of Minnesota. "Here we present the hard evidence that the western population has spread, with cougar populations re-establishing across the Midwest."

Three main cougar populations exist in the Midwest centered around The Black Hills in South Dakota, however, cougars are venturing far outside of this range. One male cougar from the Black Hills was found to have traveled 2,900 kilometers through Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York, before ending up in Connecticut.

"While the distance the Connecticut cougar traveled was rare, we found that cougars are roaming long distances and are moving back into portions of their historical range across the Midwest ", said LaRue. "Our study took in over 3,200,000 Km² of territory, confirming the presence of Cougars from Texas, Arkansas and Nebraska, to the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba."

Working alongside scientists from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and The Cougar Network, LaRue and Principal Investigator Dr. Clay Nielsen analyzed cougar sightings which have been reported since the 1990's to characterize confirmed sightings over time, assess habitat suitability and confirm where cougar populations are being re-established.

Aside from confirmed sightings, the team's evidence included carcasses, tracks, photos, video, DNA evidence and cases of attacks on livestock across 14 states and provinces of North America. Only sightings which were verified by wildlife professionals were included, while sightings of animals known to be released from captivity were excluded to ensure only natural repopulation was analyzed.

The results reveal 178 cougar confirmations in the Midwest with the number of confirmations steadily increasing between 1990 and 2008. Approximately 62% of confirmed sightings took place within 20km of habitat that would be considered suitable for cougar populations.

When cougar carcasses were recovered 76% were found to be male. As the Connecticut example shows, males are capable of traveling long distances and this finding suggests males are leading a stepping-stone dispersal of the cougar population.

"This evidence helps to confirm that cougars are re-colonizing their historical range and reveals that sightings have increased over the past two decades," concluded LaRue. "The question now is how the public will respond after living without large carnivores for a century. We believe public awareness campaigns and conservation strategies are required across these states, such as the Mountain Lion response plans already in place in Nebraska and Missouri."

This research was conducted in partnership with Southern Illinois University Carbondale and The Cougar Network.

Contact: Ben Norman
Lifesciencenews@wiley.com
44-124-377-0375
Wiley-Blackwell