Jim Sedinger, ecologist, conservation biologist and professor with the University of Nevada, Reno, has been studying the black brant goose at their Bering Sea nesting grounds since 1984. The rustic site, which researchers occupy in summers only, is on the coast 500 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska in the Chevak-tutkoke area. Photo courtesy of University of Nevada, Reno
Not all birds mate for life, but for those species that do, wildlife biologists have found a clear benefit to the birds from such long-term relationships: greater longevity and breeding success, according to a study led by University of Nevada, Reno scientists that was recently published in Behavioral Ecology.
The study's authors found that when female black brant (a small arctic goose) lose their mate, their chances for survival are greatly diminished. The study is the first to characterize health effects of mate loss to female geese, and its conclusions have implications for wildlife population management.
"Scientists now have evidence to demonstrate that in species that mate for life, harvesting of males can have the unintended consequence of reducing the survival prospects for their female mates, in some cases, 'killing two birds with one stone'," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "The evidence says that only the very fittest and strongest of the females will survive the loss of her mate to breed again."
"In fluctuating waterfowl populations, as has occurred in black brant, female health is often the most sensitive factor that regulates populations," says David Ward, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center and co-author of the study.
In the study, led by Chris Nicolai and Jim Sedinger of the University of Nevada, Reno, the researchers followed over 2,000 known pairs of black brant to examine the effect on female survival and their subsequent reproduction after they lost their mate during regular sport-hunting seasons. The authors found that female brant survival declined about 16 percent after losing a mate. The authors also found evidence that only widowed females in better body condition were able to re-pair with a new male and again reproduce.
"Mate loss increases the vulnerability of females to harvest and natural mortality because females need protection by males during feeding, nesting, and migration. It may take an especially fit female to survive mate loss, re-pair with a new mate, and continue reproducing in the future," says Nicolai, now a migratory bird biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "In situations where goose populations are fluctuating, population management actions could focus on improving the maintenance of pair bonds and female health by informing harvest policy, management of natural mortality, and habitat improvements."
The study is part of a decades-long investigation into the Brant, initiated by ecologist and conservation biologist Sedinger, the lead scientist on the project. Knowledge gained from the studies is applied to the management of wetlands, waterfowl and other avian populations and to the training of students.
"Since 1984 we've had a rustic summer basecamp near a brant nesting area 500 miles west of Anchorage near Chevak, a small Eskimo village on the Bering Sea," Sedinger said. "The birds are also followed, using unique tagging codes, while they winter in Mexico."
The paper, "Mate loss affects survival but not breeding in black brant geese," was recently published in Behavioral Ecology. The paper was authored by Christopher A. Nicolai and James S. Sedinger from the University of Nevada, Reno, David H. Ward from the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center, and W. Sean Boyd from the Pacific Wildlife Research Centre, Canadian Wildlife Service.
Nevada's land-grant university founded in 1874, the University of Nevada, Reno has an enrollment of 18,000 students and is ranked in the top tier of the nation's best universities. Part of the Nevada System of Higher Education, the University has the system's largest research program and is home to the state's medical school. With outreach and education programs in all Nevada counties and with one of the nation's largest study-abroad consortiums, the University extends across the state and around the world.
Social investing, impact investing, microfinance, impact finance, sustainable and responsible investing, are terminologies that are often used in a multitude of overlapping and sometimes confusing ways. Although responsible investors tend to see the global picture in a much clearer way than before, challenges remain present when it comes to defining and categorising responsible investing products.
Methods and approaches to value and integrate Environmental, Social and Governance “ESG” considerations into investment processes are multiplying and appear to be in constant evolution. Whereas it is clear that responsible investing will continue to evolve in various ways and under various names, it is also important to be able to measure the size of the market in a comprehensive manner to allow comparisons and measure evolution over time. The principal aim of this study is to establish an accurate point from which to measure both the current Responsible Investment fund market and future evolution.
The source of our food, medicines and clean water, as well the livelihoods of millions of people may be at risk with the rapid decline of the world’s animal, plant and fungi species. The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, released today on the eve of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, shows that of the 63,837 species assessed, 19,817 are threatened with extinction, including 41% of amphibians, 33% of reef building corals, 25% of mammals, 13% of birds, and 30% of conifers. The IUCN Red List is a critical indicator of the health of the world’s biodiversity.
“Sustainability is a matter of life and death for people on the planet,” says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). “A sustainable future cannot be achieved without conserving biological diversity - animal and plant species, their habitats and their genes - not only for nature itself, but also for all 7 billion people who depend on it. The latest IUCN Red List is a clarion call to world leaders gathering in Rio to secure the web of life on this planet.”
While most people in wealthy countries depend primarily on domesticated species for their dietary needs, millions of other people are dependent on wild species. Freshwater ecosystems are under substantial pressure from expanding human populations and exploitation of water resources. An important food source, freshwater fish are facing threats from unsustainable fishing practices and habitat destruction caused by pollution and the construction of dams. A quarter of the world’s inland fisheries are located on the African continent, yet 27% of freshwater fish in Africa are threatened including the Oreochromis karongae, an extremely important source of food in the Lake Malawi region that has been severely overfished. Further studies are being carried out in other regions and in the latest IUCN Red List update the Mekong Herring (Tenualosa thibaudeaui), an important commercial fish endemic to the lower Mekong River in the Indo-Burma region, has been listed as Vulnerable as a result of overfishing and habitat degradation.
In some parts of the world up to 90% of coastal populations obtain much of their food and earn their primary income through fishing; yet overfishing has reduced some commercial fish stocks by over 90%. 36% of skates and rays are threatened with extinction including the commercially valuable Leopard Ray (Himantura leoparda), which is listed as Vulnerable due to extensive habitat degradation and heavy fishing pressures. More than 275 million people are dependent on coral reefs for food, coastal protection and livelihoods. Globally, coral reef fisheries are worth US$ 6.8 billion annually. Overfishing affects 55% of the world’s reefs and according to The IUCN Red List, 18% of groupers, an economically important family of large reef fish, are threatened. Coral reefs must be managed sustainably to ensure they continue to provide the essential food that millions of people rely on as a source of protein.
“The services and economic value that species provide are irreplaceable and essential to our wellbeing,” says Jon Paul Rodríguez, Deputy Chair, IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC). “Unless we live within the limits set by nature, and manage our natural resources sustainably, more and more species will be driven towards extinction. If we ignore our responsibility we will compromise our own survival.”
Crop wild relatives, such as the Critically Endangered Beta patula, a primary wild relative of cultivated beets, are of vital importance for food security and agriculture as they can be used to produce new crop varieties. It is estimated that crop wild relatives contribute more than US$ 100 billion worldwide towards increased crop yields. Production of at least one third of the world’s food, including 87 of the 113 leading food crops, depends on pollination carried out by insects, bats and birds. This ecosystem service is worth over US$ 200 billion per year. According to the IUCN Red List 16% of Europe’s endemic butterflies are threatened. Bats, which are also important pollinators, are also at risk with 18% threatened globally. The latest IUCN Red List update shows that four members of the hummingbird family, which is known for its pollination services, are now at greater risk of extinction with the Pink-throated Brilliant (Heliodoxa gularis) listed as Vulnerable. In addition to their important pollination roles, bats and birds also aid in controlling insect populations that may otherwise destroy economically important agricultural plants.
Invasive alien species are one of the leading and most rapidly growing threats to food security, human and animal health and biodiversity. A recent analysis of IUCN Red List data highlighted invasive alien species as the fifth most severe threat to amphibians, and the third most severe threat to birds and mammals. Together with climate change, they have become one of the most difficult threats to reverse. For example, Water Hyacinth (Eichnornia crassipes) is an aquatic plant native to the Amazon basin, but in Africa its rapid spread poses a significant threat to water supplies and the use of inland waters for fishing or transportation. The economic impacts may be as much as US$ 100 million annually across all of Africa. Solutions incorporating awareness and prevention measures, as well as early warning and rapid response systems that include containment, control and eradication programmes, need to be implemented on both a regional and global scale in order to reduce the negative effects of alien species.
"Moving to a ‘green economy’ demands recognition of the role that biodiversity and ecosystems play in economic affairs,” says Dr Jane Smart, Global Director, IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group. “Biodiversity is the foundation of ‘green’ in green economy. A truly sustainable future will only be possible if the leaders in Rio seek solutions that conserve biodiversity whilst supporting livelihoods and providing investment opportunities for business.”
The latest IUCN Red List shows that 10% of snakes endemic to China and South East Asia are threatened with extinction. Snakes are used in traditional medicines and anti-venom serum, as food, and as a source of income from the sale of skins. Nearly 43% of the endemic snake species in South East Asia in the Endangered and Vulnerable categories are threatened by unsustainable use. The world’s largest venomous snake, the King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), is listed as Vulnerable due to loss of habitat and over-exploitation for medicinal purposes. The Burmese Python (Python bivittatus), best-known in the West as an invasive species in the Florida Everglades, is also listed as Vulnerable in its native range, with trade and over-exploitation for food and skins, especially in China and Vietnam, being the main threats to the species. Despite its designation as a protected species in China, populations there show no evidence of recovery, and illegal harvesting continues.
In some countries, medicinal plants and animals form the basis of most of the medicinal drugs people use, and even in technologically-advanced countries like the USA, half of the 100 most-prescribed drugs originate from wild species. Amphibians play a vital role in the search for new medicines as important chemical compounds can be found on the skin of many frogs. Yet 41% of amphibian species are threatened with extinction, including the recently described frog, Anodonthyla hutchisoni, from Madagascar, which is now considered Endangered. More than 70,000 different plant species are used in traditional and modern medicine. Today’s IUCN Red List update includes a number of South East Asian plants which are used for food and medicine. The Tsao-ko Cardamom (Amomum tsao-ko) is listed as Near Threatened because its edible fruits have been over-harvested for trading. In several cases the over-exploitation combined with loss of habitat due to deforestation and other threats has resulted in species being listed in a threatened category. Two relatives of turmeric – Curcuma candida and Curcuma rhabdota (Candy Cane Ginger) are both listed as Vulnerable, and the Zingiber monophyllum, a wild species of ginger is listed as Endangered.
Other important services supplied by species include improvement and control of air quality by plants and trees. A mature leafy tree produces as much oxygen in a season as 10 people inhale in a year. They clean the soil, act as carbon sinks, and clean the air. Bivalve molluscs and many wetland plants carry out water filtration services to provide clean water, whilst snails help control algae. In Africa 42% of all freshwater molluscs are globally threatened and in Europe 68% of endemic freshwater molluscs are globally threatened by habitat loss, pollution and the development of dams.
“Most of the drivers of biodiversity loss, including species extinctions, are economic in nature,” says Dr Simon Stuart, Chair, IUCN Species Survival Commission. “An economy can only be described as ‘green’ if it promotes the achievement of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets that governments agreed on in 2010.”
“Recent work on plant assessments suggests that around 1 in 5 plants are threatened with extinction. Three quarters of the world’s population depends directly on plants for their primary health care. Eighty percent of our calorie intake comes from 12 plant species,” says Professor Stephen Hopper, Director (CEO and Chief Scientist), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. “If we care about the food we eat, and the medicines we use, we must act to conserve our medicinal plants and our crop wild relatives. There are large gaps in our knowledge and much work needs to be done to secure the future of plants and fungi which are critical to our survival.”
“A green economy is one that values all species, whether they have market value or not,” says Professor Jonathan Baillie, Director of Conservation Programmes, Zoological Society of London. “To stop the rapid increase of threatened species and ecosystems the Rio + 20 Earth Summit must succeed in laying the foundation of a new development path that values all life.”
“Expanding both the number and diversity of species assessed on the IUCN Red List is imperative if we are to have a clear understanding of our impact on the natural world,” says Richard Edwards, Chief Executive of Wildscreen, who are working with IUCN to help raise the public profile of the world’s threatened species through the power of wildlife and environmental imagery. “The latest update to the IUCN Red List highlights the impacts we are having on the world’s biodiversity, even those species that so many of the human population rely on for food, medicine, clean water, etc. We need to successfully communicate the plight, significance, value and importance of all these species if we are to rescue them from the brink of extinction.”
“More than half of the snake species identified as threatened with extinction - 57% - are at most risk from habitat loss and degradation. The Malaysian island Pulau Tioman is home to three of the Critically Endangered reptile species – the Pulau Tioman ground snake, Boo-Liat’s kukri snake and a recently described reed snake, Oligodon booliati – that are under threat from development destroying the small area of remaining forest. This could result in their extinction within a decade,” says Dr Russell Mittermeier, IUCN Vice President and President of Conservation International. “In cases such as the Vulnerable King Cobra and Burmese Python, to which exploitation is the greatest threat, forest loss is an additional pressure. These two species may in fact be considerably more threatened, but research is urgently needed to confirm this. Ultimately, declines and losses of species are a symptom of broader human pressures on their habitats.”
“With the spotlight shining on Brazil at the Rio+20 conference, it is worrying that almost 100 bird species from the Amazon have been moved to higher categories of threat in the 2012 IUCN Red List following an analysis by BirdLife International on the impacts of projected Amazonian deforestation,” says Dr Stuart Butchart, Global Research Coordinator, BirdLife International.
“We find cause for hope in the rediscovery of species even in the United States, like the Wicker Ancylid from Alabama's Coosa River valley,” says Mary Klein, president and CEO of NatureServe. "But by highlighting how many species still face ongoing local and global threats, the current update to the Red List underscores the fundamental need to continue and even expand efforts to assess extinction risks to species.”
One year from now, leaders from government, UN agencies, business, industry and civil society organizations will come together in the Republic of Korea to debate and decide on solutions to the world’s most pressing environment and development challenges. The occasion is the 2012 IUCN World Conservation Congress which will run from 6 to 15 September. Held every four years, the IUCN Congress is the world’s largest and most important conservation event. It aims to improve how we manage our natural environment for human, social and economic development. Issues involving species survival and conservation will be discussed at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Jeju, Republic of Korea, from 6 to 15 September 2012.
The USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) recently published a national study, Outdoor Recreation Trends and Futures, showing that Americans' current choices for outdoor recreation differ noticeably from those made by previous generations of Americans.
Participation in "traditional" activities such as hunting and fishing has flattened or declined while participation in activities that involve viewing and photographing nature is growing. Because of the continued importance of public lands for outdoor recreation, study findings have direct implications for how these lands are managed in the future.
"Our research shows that not only are more Americans participating in outdoor recreation, the number of times they participated in many of the outdoor activities surveyed has grown," said author and lead researcher Ken Cordell, SRS pioneering scientist and one of the foremost authorities on recreational trends in the United States.
Cordell prepared the report as part of the 2010 Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment. The Forest and Rangeland RPA of 1974 mandates a periodic assessment of the conditions and trends related to the Nation's renewable resources. Outdoor Recreation Trends and Futures provides an extensive and detailed overview of outdoor recreation participation, regional variation in participation, and differences in participation by demographic groups. The report emphasizes nature-based outdoor recreation and the natural amenities driving these activities.
"Trends in nature-based and other outdoor recreation have far-reaching implications, especially for how we manage public lands," said Cordell. "This report offers the only public agency-sponsored long range forecasting of recreation demand for the United States."
The study showed a discernible growth in nature-based activities—those defined as taking place in natural settings or involving directly some element of nature –from 2000 to 2009. Among types of nature-based recreation, motorized off-road and snow activities grew until about 2005, but ended the decade at about the same level as 2000. The trend in hunting, fishing, and backcountry activities remained relatively flat and various forms of skiing, including snowboarding, declined during this period. The clear growth area was within the overall group of activities oriented towards viewing and photographing nature.
In addition to describing trends in outdoor recreation in the United States, the report provides descriptions of outdoor recreation activities on public and private lands, with projections of participation out to 2060.
"The study shows that public lands continue to be highly important for the recreational opportunities they offer, with again, a growth in nature-based recreation, especially viewing, photographing, or otherwise appreciating nature," said Cordell. "Continuous assessment and adaptions to the management of public lands is essential as changes emerge in the future. Orienting overnight and day-use sites on public lands to emphasize nature viewing, photography and study would seem to be an appropriate strategy."
The report includes invited papers from a wide range of recreation and social scientists that add context to tables and figures by focusing on specific issues and perspectives on: trends in wildlife-related recreation; recreation patterns across demographic, region-of-country, and natural setting strata; youth time and activities outdoors, and recreational use of public and private properties.
Headquartered in Asheville, N.C., the Southern Research Station is comprised of more than 120 scientists and several hundred support staff who conduct natural resource research in 20 locations across 13 southern states (Virginia to Texas). The Station's mission is "…to create the science and technology needed to sustain and enhance southern forest ecosystems and the benefits they provide."
iPod owners aren't the only ones who frequently shuffle their favorite tunes. Baby songbirds do it, too, a new study shows.
A baby songbird prefers to learn the clearest versions of songs he hears and uses them to build his personal playlist for life. As a result, noise, from nature and humans, influences which songs a bird learns to sing and can create lasting changes to his species' top tunes, the study's results suggest.
"There's been an enormous amount of interest in how anthropogenic factors affect the channels animals use for communication and in particular how human noise affects birdsong," said Duke University biologist and study co-author Steve Nowicki. "As far as we know, this is the first study that can link noise to cultural evolution of bird song."
The team designed the study to test a 30-year-old hypothesis suggesting that young birds memorize and later sing the clearest songs they hear during their critical learning period. In the experiment, Nowicki and his collaborators collected nine male, swamp-sparrow nestlings and hand-raised them in a soundproof room.
Twice a day for 12 weeks, the birds heard recordings of 16 song types sung by adult males of their species. Eight song types were degraded, or noisy, by being broadcast across a typical sparrow territory of 25 meters and then re-recorded. The other eight were clean copies of similar-sounding, but different songs. When the birds later matured and began to sing, they only repeated the clear songs.
"It wasn't too surprising that the sparrows preferred them," said Duke behavioral ecologist Susan Peters, lead author of the study. "What is exciting is how clear-cut the results are. All of the birds learned clear songs and none learned any of the degraded songs," she said.
The results appeared online June 20 in the journal Biology Letters.
This "simple" but "elegant" experiment "says a great deal about how birds put to use their extraordinary ability to hear small-time differences," said Eugene Morton, a biologist at York University in Canada who was not involved in the study.
The birds use this ability to learn songs that transmit through their habitat with the least amount of degradation. "In this way, the birds themselves reject songs less well suited to their environment," an example of cultural selection, Morton said.
Scientists consider the song shifts to be selected culturally, rather than naturally, because the songs are learned, not innate.
"This is important because cultural selection can happen more rapidly than natural selection," Peters said. "It helps to explain why birdsong is so diverse," and shows evidence that song variation depends on the bird's habitat.
She added that noise from cities and humans would have the same effect on song selection. "We already knew that some birds can adjust some features of their song when confronted with anthropogenic noise, and now we know that this may have an impact on cultural transmission of their song," she said.
If naturally noisy songs are less desirable to learn, then songs shaped by human noise are probably less likely to be passed down and learned generation after generation. "Who would have thought that a swamp sparrow song might be affected by human activity?" Peters said.
CITATION: "Songbirds learn songs least degraded by environmental transmission." S. Peters, E. Derryberry, and S. Nowicki. 2012. Biology Letters. doi/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0446
This is a Lincoln's Sparrow, a songbird that winters in riparian forests in California's Central Valley. This species benefits from streamside habitat restoration. Credit: Tom Grey
The floodplain of California's Central Valley is rich with streamside forests of willows, cottonwoods, oaks, and sycamores. Each summer, these forests are alive with the sounds of singing songbirds, but what may be surprising to some is that these same forests help migratory songbirds survive the winter. Birds from Alaska and Canada fly about 2,400 miles each year to winter in the forests of the Central Valley. Their survival is dependent upon having enough healthy habitats available.
"We often focus on the importance of floodplain forests for songbirds that nest in the spring and summer," said PRBO avian ecologist Mark Dettling, "but this is the first study to show that restored forests also provide habitat for wintering songbirds in the Central Valley."
The study, published in the journal Conservation Biology, found that songbirds generally prefer restored forests equally to existing older forests. But some species, including Lincoln's and White-crowned Sparrows, were found in higher numbers in restored forests.
"We know that our Central Valley floodplains provide vital habitat for waterfowl, salmon, and our breeding and wintering songbirds." explained Dr. Nat Seavy, Research Director for the Central Valley Group at PRBO, "This study provides the type of information we need to help manage our flood plains for the many benefits they provide – to birds and to people."
In addition to creating wildlife habitat, restoring streams and rivers provides multiple benefits for human communities including slowing down flood waters and replenishing underground aquifers. River restoration also keeps our waterways cool and clear, helps our fisheries thrive, and provides people with the opportunity to enjoy and appreciate nature.
Citation: Latta, S. C., C. A. Howell, M. D. Dettling, and R. L. Cormier. 2012. Use of data on avian demographics and site persistence during overwintering to assess quality of restored riparian habitat. Conservation Biology 26(3):482-492.
PRBO advances conservation of birds, other wildlife and ecosystems through innovative research, restoration, outreach and extensive partnerships. Our highest priority is to reduce the impacts of habitat loss, climate change and other threats to wildlife and people, while helping to prepare for and adapt to our changing world. Founded in 1965 as Point Reyes Bird Observatory, our 140 scientists work hand-in-hand with governmental and non-governmental agencies as well as private interests to ensure that every dollar invested in conservation yields the most for biodiversity and our communities.
An international team of researchers in Colombia, the UK, US and Switzerland have developed the first ever system to monitor deforestation across Latin America in near real-time using satellite data
This shows deforestation around the dry Chaco of Paraguay from 2004-2011. Credit: Karolina Argote/Louis Reymondin
An international team of researchers in Colombia, the UK, USA and Switzerland have developed the first ever system to monitor deforestation across Latin America in near real-time using satellite data. Preliminary results from the new system reveal that in parts of Colombia, deforestation has increased by 340 per cent since 2004; and over a million hectares of forest have been lost in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay.
The new satellite system, known as Terra-i, is being launched this week in time for the Rio+20 UN environment conference, and is soon to be expanded to cover all tropical regions. Although Brazil has had a sophisticated near real-time deforestation monitoring system in place since 2008, until now there has been no equivalent for the rest of Latin America.
Terra-i has been developed to monitor changes land cover every 16 days and for every 250 metres on the ground, in order to help national governments, conservation organisations and those implementing climate-related policy to assess recent trends in deforestation and emerging hotspots of change. The system uses data supplied by NASA's MODIS satellite sensor and is the result of collaboration between the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the USA and South America, the School of Engineering and Management of Vaud (HEIG-VD) in Switzerland and King's College London.
Deforestation can lead to widespread loss of biodiversity and also impacts the 'ecosystem services' that foster a stable climate and secure freshwater supplies. However, in many parts of the world the scale and pattern of deforestation is infrequently and inconsistently monitored and this makes management of change very difficult.
Huge volumes of data need to be processed to detect land cover change at a 250m spatial resolution every 16 days. Moreover, separating real human-induced changes, such as deforestation, from changes brought about by natural seasonality and by droughts, floods or persistent cloud cover, has made the development of an operational monitoring system a real challenge. The availability of MODIS imagery means that assessment of land cover change can be made in a geographically consistent manner between countries and also updated frequently.
The development of the Terra-i system was led Louis Reymondin, PhD student in the Department of Geography at King's College London, supervised by Dr Mark Mulligan, in collaboration with CIAT and HEIG-VD and funded by TNC.
'We developed a computational neural network and 'trained' it with data from 2000-2004 to recognise the normal changes in vegetation greenness due to seasonal variation in rainfall in different areas,' said Dr Mulligan, who is attending the Rio+20 conference this week.
'The network now recognises where and when greenness suddenly changes well beyond these normal limits as a result of deforestation. The system runs on data for every 250 square metres of land from Mexico to Argentina shortly after the data comes in from MODIS and highlights every 16 days the pixels that significantly change, writing these results to Google Maps for easy visualisation,' he said.
Preliminary data from Terra-i show that in Caquetá, Colombia for example, deforestation grew from around 4,880 hectares in 2004 to 21,440 in 2011, up by 340 per cent. Deforestation has grown significantly in the buffer zones of the Chiribiquete National Park where deforestation rates increased by 196 per cent from 2010 to 2011.
The Gran Chaco in Paraguay is the second largest forested area in South America. Terra-i found that between 2004 and 2010, over a million hectares of this area was deforested with a peak in 2009 of 454,700 hectares.
'As we approach Rio+20 in which the world will define the targets that will guide us along the road to a more sustainable development, it is critical that we deploy the appropriate tools to carefully monitor and manage our landscapes,' said Dr Mulligan.
'We need to ensure that we maintain enough farmland to feed the nine billion to come but we must also have protected natural landscapes that provide clean water, a stable climate, a refuge for biodiversity and space for increasingly urbanised populations to experience and appreciate the wonders of nature.
'Achieving the right balance between intelligently intensive agriculture and protected natural environments across the world will be fundamental to achieving truly sustainable development and requires sophisticated, geographically detailed and timely tools such as Terra-i to support appropriate policy and decision-making'.
Individuals in some species learn information about food, predators, and potential mates indirectly from conspecifics, without taking unnecessary risks by learning directly for themselves ('social learning'). Sarah Zala and Dustin Penn from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna investigated whether zebrafish use social learning to assess risk ('boldness/shyness' behaviour). They found that wild zebrafish, which are more timid than their domesticated counterparts, became emboldened after interacting with domesticated zebrafish. The opposite did not occur, however. When the bolder domesticated zebrafish came in contact with wild zebrafish, they did not become more cautious.
To test fish disposition, the scientists scored "boldness" as the response to a moving object. If fish approached the object relatively closely, they were classified as "bold", while those who tended to stay at the back of the tank were considered "shy". When the wild fish were allowed to interact with bolder domesticated fish, they became less likely to avoid the moving object.
These results confirm the researchers´ hypothesis that zebrafish use social learning for assessing risk: they observe other individuals' behaviour, and change their own behaviour accordingly. The findings also indicate that zebrafish adapt their social-learning strategies to the costs of a perceived risk, as the domesticated bold fish did not change their behaviour after interacting with the shy fish.
"When a zebrafish moves a few centimetres closer to an unfamiliar object than its buddies it may not seem like a big deal to human observers," says Sarah Zala, "but 3 cm is about one fish length and in nature might mean exposing the fish to a predatory attack. So in reality, from the fish´s point of view, he is taking a big chance."
The researchers also investigated whether zebrafish adapt their behaviour to conform to the behaviour of a larger group ('social conformity'), but found no evidence for this hypothesis. Future studies should be able to utilize this model species to incorporate genetic and genomic tools to study the development and evolution of social learning.
The article "Different social-learning strategies in wild and domesticated zebrafish, Danio rerio" by Sarah M. Zala, Ilmari Määttänen, and Dustin J. Penn is published in the June 2012 issue of the journal "Animal Behaviour" (83 (2012) pp. 1519-1525 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.03.029).
