Constantine Alexander's blog

Scientists announce Top 10 New Species

Researchers call for massive mission: discover 10 million species in 50 years

Top 10 New Species 2013. Composite: Jacob Sahertian

An amazing glow-in-the-dark cockroach, a harp-shaped carnivorous sponge and the smallest vertebrate on Earth are just three of the newly discovered top 10 species selected by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. A global committee of taxonomists — scientists responsible for species exploration and classification — announced its list of top 10 species from 2012 today, May 23.

The announcement, now in its sixth year, coincides with the anniversary of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus — the 18th century Swedish botanist responsible for the modern system of scientific names and classifications.

Also slithering it way onto this year's top 10 is a snail-eating false coral snake, as well as flowering bushes from a disappearing forest in Madagascar, a green lacewing that was discovered through social media and hangingflies that perfectly mimicked ginkgo tree leaves 165 million years ago. Rounding out the list is a new monkey with a blue-colored behind and human-like eyes, a tiny violet and a black staining fungus that threatens rare Paleolithic cave paintings in France.

"We have identified only about two million of an estimated 10 to 12 million living species and that does not count most of the microbial world," said Quentin Wheeler, founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at ASU and author of "What on Earth? 100 of our Planet's Most Amazing New Species" (NY, Plume, 2013).

"For decades, we have averaged 18,000 species discoveries per year which seemed reasonable before the biodiversity crisis. Now, knowing that millions of species may not survive the 21st century, it is time to pick up the pace," Wheeler added.

"We are calling for a NASA-like mission to discover 10 million species in the next 50 years. This would lead to discovering countless options for a more sustainable future while securing evidence of the origins of the biosphere," Wheeler said.

Taxon experts pick top 10

Members of the international committee made their top 10 selection from more than 140 nominated species. To be considered, species must have been described in compliance with the appropriate code of nomenclature, whether botanical, zoological or microbiological, and have been officially named during 2012.

"Selecting the final list of new species from a wide representation of life forms such as bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, is difficult. It requires finding an equilibrium between certain criteria and the special insights revealed by selection committee members," said Antonio Valdecasas, a biologist and research zoologist with Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain. Valdecasas is the international selection committee chairman for the top 10 new species.

"We look for organisms with unexpected features or size and those found in rare or difficult to reach habitats. We also look for organisms that are especially significant to humans — those that play a certain role in human habitat or that are considered a close relative," Valdecasas added.

This year's top 10 come from Peru; NE Pacific Ocean, USA: California; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Panama; France; New Guinea; Madagascar; Ecuador; Malaysia; and China.

Top 10 New Species, 2013

"I don't know whether to be more astounded by the species discovered each year, or the depths of our ignorance about biodiversity of which we are a part," shared Wheeler.

"At the same time we search the heavens for other earthlike planets, we should make it a high priority to explore the biodiversity on the most earthlike planet of them all: Earth," he added. "With more than eight out of every 10 living species awaiting discovery, I am shocked by our ignorance of our very own planet and in awe at the diversity, beauty and complexity of the biosphere and its inhabitants."

The discoveries

Lilliputian Violet
Viola lilliputana
Country: Peru

Tiny violet: Not only is the Lilliputian violet among the smallest violets in the world, it is also one of the most diminutive terrestrial dicots. Known only from a single locality in an Intermontane Plateau of the high Andes of Peru, Viola lilliputana lives in the dry puna grassland eco-region. Specimens were first collected in the 1960s, but the species was not described as a new until 2012. The entire above ground portion of the plant is barely 1 centimeter tall. Named, obviously, for the race of little people on the island of Lilliput in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

Lyre Sponge
Chondrocladia lyra
Country: NE Pacific Ocean; USA: California

Carnivorous sponge: A spectacular, large, harp- or lyre-shaped carnivorous sponge discovered in deep water (averaging 3,399 meters) from the northeast Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. The harp-shaped structures or vanes number from two to six and each has more than 20 parallel vertical branches, often capped by an expanded, balloon-like, terminal ball. This unusual form maximizes the surface area of the sponge for contact and capture of planktonic prey.

Lesula Monkey
Cercopithecus lomamiensis
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Old World monkey: Discovered in the Lomami Basin of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the lesula is an Old World monkey well known to locals but newly known to science. This is only the second species of monkey discovered in Africa in the past 28 years. Scientists first saw the monkey as a captive juvenile in 2007. Researchers describe the shy lesula as having human-like eyes. More easily heard than seen, the monkeys perform a booming dawn chorus. Adult males have a large, bare patch of skin on the buttocks, testicles and perineum that is colored a brilliant blue. Although the forests where the monkeys live are remote, the species is hunted for bush meat and its status is vulnerable.

No to the Mine! Snake
Sibon noalamina
Country: Panama

Snail-eating snake: A beautiful new species of snail-eating snake has been discovered in the highland rainforests of western Panama. The snake is nocturnal and hunts soft-bodied prey including earthworms and amphibian eggs, in addition to snails and slugs. This harmless snake defends itself by mimicking the alternating dark and light rings of venomous coral snakes. The species is found in the Serranía de Tabasará mountain range where ore mining is degrading and diminishing its habitat. The species name is derived from the Spanish phrase "No a la mina" or "No to the mine."

A Smudge on Paleolithic Art
Ochroconis anomala
Country: France

Fungus: In 2001, black stains began to appear on the walls of Lascaux Cave in France. By 2007, the stains were so prevalent they became a major concern for the conservation of precious rock art at the site that dates back to the Upper Paleolithic. An outbreak of a white fungus, Fusarium solani, had been successfully treated when just a few months later, black staining fungi appeared. The genus primarily includes fungi that occur in the soil and are associated with the decomposition of plant matter. As far as scientists know, this fungus, one of two new species of the genus from Lascaux, is harmless. However, at least one species of the group, O. gallopava, causes disease in humans who have compromised immune systems.

World's Smallest Vertebrate
Paedophryne amanuensis
Country: New Guinea

Tiny frog: Living vertebrates — animals that have a backbone or spinal column — range in size from this tiny new species of frog, as small as 7 millimeters, to the blue whale, measuring 25.8 meters. The new frog was discovered near Amau village in Papua, New Guinea. It captures the title of 'smallest living vertebrate' from a tiny Southeast Asian cyprinid fish that claimed the record in 2006. The adult frog size, determined by averaging the lengths of both males and females, is only 7.7 millimeters. With few exceptions, this and other ultra-small frogs are associated with moist leaf litter in tropical wet forests — suggesting a unique ecological guild that could not exist under drier circumstances.

Endangered Forest
Eugenia petrikensis
Country: Madagascar

Endangered shrub: Eugenia is a large, worldwide genus of woody evergreen trees and shrubs of the myrtle family that is particularly diverse in South America, New Caledonia and Madagascar. The new species E. petrikensis is a shrub growing to two meters with emerald green, slightly glossy foliage and beautiful, dense clusters of small magenta flowers. It is one of seven new species described from the littoral forest of eastern Madagascar and is considered to be an endangered species. It is the latest evidence of the unique and numerous species found in this specialized, humid forest that grows on sandy substrate within kilometers of the shoreline. Once forming a continuous band 1,600 kilometers long, the littoral forest has been reduced to isolated, vestigial fragments under pressure from human populations.

Lightning Roaches?
Lucihormetica luckae
Country: Ecuador

Glow-in-the-dark cockroach: Luminescence among terrestrial animals is rather rare and best known among several groups of beetles — fireflies and certain click beetles in particular — as well as cave-inhabiting fungus gnats. Since the first discovery of a luminescent cockroach in 1999, more than a dozen species have (pardon the pun) "come to light." All are rare, and interestingly, so far found only in remote areas far from light pollution. The latest addition to this growing list is L. luckae that may be endangered or possibly already extinct. This cockroach is known from a single specimen collected 70 years ago from an area heavily impacted by the eruption of the Tungurahua volcano. The species may be most remarkable because the size and placement of its lamps suggest that it is using light to mimic toxic luminescent click beetles.

No Social Butterfly
Semachrysa jade
Country: Malaysia

Social media lacewing: In a trend-setting collision of science and social media, Hock Ping Guek photographed a beautiful green lacewing with dark markings at the base of its wings in a park near Kuala Lumpur and shared his photo on Flickr. Shaun Winterton, an entomologist with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, serendipitously saw the image and recognized the insect as unusual. When Guek was able to collect a specimen, it was sent to Stephen Brooks at London's Natural History Museum who confirmed its new species status. The three joined forces and prepared a description using Google Docs. In this triumph for citizen science, talents from around the globe collaborated by using new media in making the discovery. The lacewing is not named for its color — rather for Winterton's daughter, Jade.

Hanging Around in the Jurassic
Juracimbrophlebia ginkgofolia
Country: China

Hangingfly fossil: Living species of hangingflies can be found, as the name suggests, hanging beneath foliage where they capture other insects as food. They are a lineage of scorpionflies characterized by their skinny bodies, two pairs of narrow wings, and long threadlike legs. A new fossil species, Juracimbrophlebia ginkgofolia, has been found along with preserved leaves of a gingko-like tree, Yimaia capituliformis, in Middle Jurassic deposits in the Jiulongshan Formation in China's Inner Mongolia. The two look so similar that they are easily confused in the field and represent a rare example of an insect mimicking a gymnosperm 165 million years ago, before an explosive radiation of flowering plants.

Why create a top 10 new species list?

Arizona State University's International Institute for Species Exploration announces the top 10 new species list each year as part of its public awareness campaign to bring attention to biodiversity and the field of taxonomy.

"Sustainable biodiversity means assuring the survival of as many and as diverse species as possible so that ecosystems are resilient to whatever stresses they face in the future. Scientists will need access to as much evidence of evolutionary history as possible," said the institute's Wheeler, who is also a professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and in the School of Sustainability, as well as a senior sustainability scientist with the Global Institute of Sustainability.

"All of our hopes and dreams for conservation hinge upon saving millions of species that we cannot recognize and know nothing about," Wheeler added. "No investment makes more sense than completing a simple inventory to the establish baseline data that tells us what kinds of plants and animals exist and where. Until we know what species already exist, it is folly to expect we will make the right decisions to assure the best possible outcome for the pending biodiversity crisis."

Additionally, the announcement is made on or near May 23 to honor Linnaeus. Since he initiated the modern system for naming plants and animals, nearly two million species have been named, described and classified. Excluding unknown millions of microbes, scientists estimate there are between 10 and 12 million living species.

IISE International Selection Committee: Antonio G. Valdecasas, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Spain, Committee Chair; Andrew Polaszek, Natural History Museum, England; Ellinor Michel, Natural History Museum, England; Marcelo Rodrigues de Carvalho, Universidade de São Paulo; Aharon Oren, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Mary Liz Jameson, Wichita State University, USA; Alan Paton, Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, England; James A. Macklin, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada; John S. Noyes, Natural History Museum, England; Zhi-Qiang Zhang, Landcare Research, New Zealand; and Gideon Smith, South African National Biodiversity Institute, South Africa.Nominations for the 2014 list — for species described in 2013 — may be made online.

Contact: Sandra Leander
sandra.leander@asu.edu
480-965-9865
Arizona State University

UCLA life scientists present new insights on climate change and species interactions

UCLA life scientists provide important new details on how climate change will affect interactions between species in research published online May 21 in the Journal of Animal Ecology. This knowledge, they say, is critical to making accurate predictions and informing policymakers of how species are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures.

"There is a growing recognition among biologists that climate change is affecting how species interact with one another, and that this is going to have very important consequences for the stability and functioning of ecosystems," said the senior author of the research, Van Savage, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of biomathematics at UCLA. "However, there is still a very limited understanding of exactly what these changes will be. Our paper makes progress on this very important question."

Climate change is causing global increases in mean temperature, as well as more fluctuations and greater variability in temperature. Growing evidence suggests these changes are altering when and how species interact, and even which species are able to interact without going extinct, Savage said.

Already, climatic warming is rapidly altering the timing and rate of flowering in plants, as well as breeding and migration in animals — changes that are likely to disrupt interactions between species.

"These changes may bring about novel and potentially unstable species interactions by causing warm-adapted species to seek out geographic regions and to experience seasonal periods that have historically been too cold for them until temperatures begin to rise," said lead author Anthony Dell, a former UCLA postdoctoral researcher now at Germany's University of Gottingen.

Such changes could destabilize entire ecosystems, such as rainforests or coral reefs, said co-author Samraat Pawar, a former UCLA postdoctoral researcher currently at the University of Chicago, who noted that although biologists are becoming increasingly aware that changes in species interactions are likely to be one of most important biological impacts of climate change, they have found it challenging to understand and predict.

Savage's research team has recently made significant progress on this front by developing a biotraits database. This massive dataset has been compiled from the literature and has been standardized and organized so that data can be combined and compared. This group has already used statistical analysis and mechanistic mathematical models to provide information on how various biological traits of organisms respond to changes in temperature and other environmental factors.

In particular, Savage and his team have looked at the impact temperature changes can have on the rate at which an organism uses energy, known as the metabolic rate. This fundamental process governs many aspects of an organism's life, including how much food it will eat, how fast it can move, how much it sleeps and how fast its heart beats. The team makes predictions about how an organism's activity — and thus the broader ecology — are affected by temperature.

In the current research, Savage and his colleagues examined how organisms' different physiological responses to rising temperatures could impact what are known as consumer–resource interactions. These are interactions between two organisms that lead to a "feeding" event — a prime example being a predator (consumer) and its prey (resource). Taken as a whole, a collection of consumer–resource interactions constitutes the food chain or food web that drives the diversity, dynamics and stability of particular communities and ecosystems.

Their model accounts for the fact that a change in temperature is likely to result in some predators becoming better at capturing prey while some prey animals become more efficient at evading capture, leading to imbalances in the food chain and potential repercussions for ecosystems.

A key biological trait driving different responses to temperature change among consumers and resources is body velocity — the speed at which an animal moves. Cold-blooded animals, for example, tend to move faster as their body temperature increases. The biologists predict that one of the primary impacts of global warming will be increasing the amount of time and speed with which organisms move around a landscape and thus encounter and interact with one another.

Specifically, the researchers say, the effects of climatic warming will be determined by the ways in which predators seek their prey — by moving around the landscape in search of mobile prey (active-capture), by remaining stationary and waiting for moving prey (sit-and-wait) or by moving around in search of immobile prey (grazing) — as well as by whether interacting predator–prey species are both cold-blooded, both warm-blooded or one of each.

Because of the effect of temperature on body velocity, biologists predict that encounter rates between predators and prey will increase with rising temperatures if the foraging strategy is active-capture (both predator and prey moving through the landscape), as with an eagle hunting a fish. However, if both species respond to temperature in identical ways, these changes may not lead to significant shifts in their interactions.

With a sit-and-wait strategy, often used by snakes and lizards, the effects of temperature change would arise primarily via the moving prey species, potentially creating a very strong asymmetry between predator and prey. In this case, the asymmetry may profoundly alter the nature of the interaction, so that the two species have much higher or lower abundances and may no longer be able to coexist in the feeding relationship without one or both going extinct.

Similarly, increasing temperatures are likely to have significant impacts on interactions between warm-blooded and a cold-blooded animals, such as warm-blooded birds that feed on cold-blooded lizards, or snakes that feed on squirrels. In these cases, the internal body temperature of the cold-blooded animal — the lizard or snake — will vary when the climate changes. As a result, the organism's physiology will change and, in turn, influence its body velocity, activity and reaction rates. In contrast, warm-blooded animals, whose body temperature is largely independent of external climate, will not experience much change, again creating an asymmetry between species.

Using the biotraits database, the authors show that trait-specific asymmetries exist in organisms' responses to temperature change and are likely to be a major factor in determining the effects of climate change on species interactions.

Naturally, the researchers say, it is impossible to study all the species on the planet, but with their new mathematical model, predictions can be made about effects of warming on different types of consumer–resource interactions.

"The large diversity of species that make up natural ecosystems mean it is logistically infeasible to study every species interaction in a community and make predictions about how these interactions will be affected by climate warming," Savage noted. "However, models that assume all species respond to temperature in the same way will both miss the large diversity in ecological systems and therefore miss the most important consequences that arise from differential and asymmetric responses to temperature among species."

"In this paper we forge a middle ground between these two extremes," Dell said. "We allow different species to have different thermal responses and show this is essential for predicting species responses to climate change, while also having our categories be much broader than every species on the planet. This new model can help form the foundation for a more predictive framework for understanding the effects of climate change on communities and ecosystems."

Citation: Dell, A. I., Pawar, S., Savage, V. M. (2013), Temperature dependence of trophic interactions are driven by asymmetry of species responses and foraging strategy. Journal of Animal Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.12081

Contact: Stuart Wolpert
swolpert@support.ucla.edu
310-206-0511
University of California - Los Angeles 

Abundance and distribution of Hawaiian coral species predicted by model

Abundant corals are shown in a shallow Hawaiian lagoon. Credit: Keoki Stender

Researchers from the University of Hawaii – Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) developed species distribution models of the six dominant Hawaiian coral species around the main Hawaiian Islands including two species currently under consideration as threatened or endangered. They found the order of coral abundance (from highest to lowest) around the main Hawaiian Islands to be Porites lobata, Montipora patula, Pocillopora meandrina, Montipora capitata, Porites compressa, and Montipora flabellata.

Environmental factors (wave energy, shape of the seafloor, water clarity, depth, rugosity (roughness of the seafloor), geological island age, and organic sediment content) are known to influence Hawaiian reefs. However, this is the first study to systematically examine the influence of these factors on the distribution and abundance of coral species across the entire seascape of shallow reefs in the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI).

"Average wave height and maximum wave height were the most influential variables explaining coral abundance in the Hawaiian Islands," reported Erik Franklin, lead author of the study and Assistant Research Professor at the UHM Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. "Our models also identified relationships between coral cover and island age, depth, sunlight, rugosity, slope, and aspect (direction a slope faces)."

In general, coral cover was predicted to be highest in primarily wave-sheltered coastlines and embayments. Reefs with highest cover were concentrated in Kaneohe Bay on Oahu; the wave-sheltered reefs of Molokai, Lanai, Maui, and Kahoolawe; and the Kohala coast of Hawaii.

To construct the species distribution and abundance models, researchers integrated field surveys for corals (data provided by the US National Park Service and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) with environmental data of wave exposure (data provided by UHM Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering), benthic geomorphology, and sunlight from 2000 to 2009.

Regional-scale mapping of coral species from these models provide a framework for population modeling and marine spatial planning of Hawaiian coral reefs. The geographic characterization of coral reefs would benefit greatly from the improved coral distribution and abundance information generated from coral distribution models. Data from these models can be incorporated into marine conservation plans or used for threat assessments to reefs.

"For example," Franklin says, "our results were recently used in the management plan review process of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary as they considered the distribution and abundance of animals other than whales."

One advantage of this integrative, modeling approach is that researchers are able to consider a broader range of areas than field surveys alone and, therefore, can provide a truer picture of total abundance. "We were most surprised at the high relative abundance of Montipora patula which is currently under consideration for listing as a threatened or endangered species," reported Franklin. Montipora flabellata, the other coral species under consideration as a threatened or endangered species, was not as abundant as the other five species.

Franklin and colleagues are in the process of extending the modeling approach to include additional marine species in Hawaii such as reef fish and include additional environmental variables to try to improve the predictive capacity of the models. Ideally the results will continue to inform marine resource management in the Hawaiian Islands.

Citation: E C Franklin, P L Jokiel, M J Donahue (2013). Predictive modeling of coral distribution and abundance in the Hawaiian Islands. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 481:121-132; doi: 10.3354/meps10252.

Funding for this research was provided by The National Marine Sanctuary Program, the US Environmental Protection Agency Science To Achieve Results PhD Fellowship, and the US National Science Foundation.

Contact: Marcie Grabowski
mworkman@hawaii.edu
808-956-3151
University of Hawaii ‑ SOEST

Front-row seats to climate change

Amphibians and climate change

By day, insects provide the white noise of the South, but the night belongs to the amphibians. In a typical year, the Southern air hangs heavy from the humidity and the sounds of wildlife.

The Southeast, home to more than 140 species of frogs, toads and salamanders, is the center of amphibian biodiversity in our nation. If the ponds and swamps are the auditorium for their symphonic choruses, the scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey's Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, or ARMI, have front-row seats.

Amphibians, which rely on water for part or all of their life cycle, must adjust to often atypical weather. Some years bring heavy deluges, such as the region's notorious hurricanes, and others bring the transformations that come with drought. Amphibians around the world seem to be experiencing the worst declines documented among vertebrates. While habitat loss is the number one reason for population declines, research suggests that disease, invasive species, contaminants and perhaps other factors contribute to declines in protected areas.

And then there's climate change, another stressor for amphibians to contend with. Climate change projections indicate that rainfall will increasingly come in pulses, with greater deluges and longer periods of drought. Scientists have long suspected that climate change is an important factor in amphibian declines, and resource managers are asking whether conservation measures might help species persist or adapt in a changing climate. Three recent U.S. Geological Survey studies offer some insight into the issue.

Why amphibians?

Amphibians, which are declining throughout the world, play an important role in ecological systems. They eat small creatures, including mosquitos, and they are food themselves for larger creatures, such as birds and snakes. Because amphibians are the middle of the food chain -- and sensitive to environmental disruption because of their aquatic or semi-aquatic lives -- their existence is often used as an indication of ecosystem health.

Scientists in ARMI, a program started by Congress in 2000 in response to concerns about amphibian declines, have been working to unravel the ups and downs of amphibian populations to support effective conservation and resource management decisions. To do this, ARMI scientists and field crews monitor the status of amphibians, research the causes of declines, and scientifically evaluate projects undertaken to sustain these species and their habitats across the country.

Pond life – it's not easy being green!

ARMI scientists looked at a range of amphibian species found in the Southeast and posed the question, "What will happen to their populations under a scenario of changes in rainfall patterns – more deluges alternating with droughts - which is being predicted by current climate models?"

It turns out that understanding how climate affects amphibians requires "thinking like the ponds" in which they live. Amphibians have unique life cycles – most alternate between living in water as juveniles, to maturing and dispersing on land, then returning to water again as adults to mate and lay eggs.

When USGS scientists reviewed what was known about amphibian responses to rainfall, it turned out that both extremes in rainfall – drought and heavy rainfall events – can decrease the number of amphibians. The amphibians' response depends on a balance between these two key factors. If ponds dry up while aquatic juveniles are developing, survival of the next generation is lowered. However, if a deluge occurs at that time, nearby pools that often contain fish will be physically connected with the pools containing juvenile amphibians, and the fish will eat the juveniles.

In essence, the study showed that extreme rainfall events are key to predicting amphibian responses to climate, because such events affect the amount and timing of water in ponds that they depend on. The full review of species' responses was published in March 2013 edition of the journal Biology.

Drought and declining salamanders

Knowing that each species responds to droughts and deluges based on the particulars of their biology, scientists set out to test just how these dynamics played out in the southeastern U.S. by looking at larval mole salamanders in small isolated ponds in St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge, Florida.

Larval mole salamanders have a similar life cycle to the flatwoods salamander, a federally threatened species found on the refuge. Because it is difficult to study the flatwoods salamander directly, and mole salamanders are ecologically similar, scientists study the mole salamander instead, knowing that whatever affects them will likely impact the flatwoods salamander as well.

In the four years of the study, drought consistently decreased salamander occupancy in ponds. To support young salamanders, rain has to fill a pond during the breeding season and then the pond has to stay filled long enough for larvae to transform into the next life stage. Therefore, scientists confirmed that drought did indeed cause short-term declines in mole salamanders – suggesting that the listed flatwoods salamander may face a similar fate under climate change.

The results of the mole salamander study are published in the April 2013 edition of the journal Wetlands.

Can habitat conservation make a difference for frogs and toads?

To answer this question, USGS scientists examined whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service Wetlands Reserve Program was helping address the problem. The Wetlands Reserve Program is a voluntary USDA program offering landowners the opportunity to protect, restore, and enhance wetlands on their property. To assess the potential benefit of WRP restoration to amphibians, in this case, frogs and toads, USGS scientists surveyed 30 randomly selected WRP sites and 20 nearby agricultural sites in the Mississippi Delta in northwest Mississippi.

The scientists found that WRP sites had more kinds of species and was home to more numbers of amphibians than the agricultural sites studied. The restoration of wetland hydrology appeared to provide the most immediate benefit to the animals.

The study can be found in the March 2013 edition of the journal Restoration Ecology.

What's next?

With multiple studies pointing to the synergistic role of climate change, disease, habitat change, and other factors in amphibian declines, USGS and its partners are continuing their research to provide information which resource managers can use in making decisions that can help arrest or reverse declines. Additionally, a new study that provides the first-ever broad assessment of amphibian populations in the United States, and the first quantitative estimate of trends for amphibian populations at a continental scale, will be published later in May.

For more information, visit  the USGS Amphibian Monitoring website.

Contact: Hannah Hamilton
hhamilton@usgs.gov
703-648-4356
United States Geological Survey

The genome sequence of Tibetan antelope sheds new light on high-altitude adaptation

Why Tibetan antelope can live at elevations of 4,000-5,000m on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau? In a collaborative research published in Nature Communications, investigators from Qinghai University, BGI, and other institutes provide evidence that some genetic factors may be associated with the species' adaption to harsh highland environments. The data in this work will also provide implications for studying specific genetic mechanisms and the biology of other ruminant species.

The Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) is a native of the high mountain steppes and semi-desert areas of the Tibetan plateau. Interestingly, it is the only member of the genus Pantholops. Tibetan antelope is a medium sized antelope with the unique adaptations to against the harsh high-altitude climate. For non-native mammals such as humans, they may experience life-threatening acute mountain sickness when visiting high-altitude regions.

In this study, researchers suggest that Tibetan antelopes must have evolved exceptional mechanisms to adapt to this extremely inhospitable habitat. Using next-gen sequencing technology, they have decoded the genome of Tibetan antelope and studied the underlying genetic mechanism of high-altitude adaptations.

Through the comparison between Tibetan antelope and other plain-dwelling mammals, researchers found the Tibetan antelope had the signals of adaptive evolution and gene-family expansion in genes associated with energy metabolism and oxygen transmission, indicating that gene categories involved in energy metabolism appear to have an important role for Tibetan antelope via efficiently providing energy in conditions of low partial pressure of oxygen (PO2).

Further research revealed that both the Tibetan antelope and the highland American pika have signals of positive selection for genes involved in DNA repair and the production of ATPase. Considering the exposure to high levels of ultraviolet radiation, positive selective genes related to DNA repair may be vital to protect the Tibetan antelope from it.

Qingle Cai, Project manager from BGI, said, "The completed genome sequence of the Tibetan antelope provides a more complete blueprint for researchers to study the genetic mechanisms of highland adaptation. This work may also open a new way to understand the adaptation of the low partial pressure of oxygen in human activities."

Contact: Jia Liu
liujia@genomics.cn
BGI Shenzhen

BGI was founded in 1999 with the mission of being a premier scientific partner to the global research community. The goal of BGI is to make leading-edge genomic science highly accessible through its investment in infrastructure that leverages the best available technology, economies of scale, and expert bioinformatics resources. BGI, which includes both private non-profit genomic research institutes and sequencing application commercial units, and its affiliates, BGI Americas, headquartered in Cambridge, MA, and BGI Europe, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, have established partnerships and collaborations with leading academic and government research institutions as well as global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, supporting a variety of disease, agricultural, environmental, and related applications. 

Who's your daddy?

Infidelity and paternity in reed warblers

Depending on the species, males have different strategies. They may try to ensure paternity by increased surveillance and fighting off the competition, or by having more frequent sex with their long-term partners. Others react by physically punishing unfaithful females or by reducing parental care once the – potentially unrelated – offspring has arrived. Herbert Hoi and colleagues of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, together with scientists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, carried out experiments with reed warblers to see how a situation of potential infidelity affects later paternal investment in the chicks and whether it does in fact lead to extra-pair mating. They found that the males aggressively try to chase off competitors and to keep potentially "double-dealing" females in line. But whether or not they manage, they turn out to be caring fathers once the babies are born. The findings were published in April 2013 in the online journal PLOS ONE.

Reed warblers are socially monogamous, defend their territory, and both parents care for the offspring. Scientists of the Konrad-Lorenz-Institute of Ethology of the Vetmeduni Vienna for the first time tried to experimentally test the behaviour of reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) after a potential act of "cheating" by the female. How does the male treat a competitor, and how does an "affair" affect care for the brood? To answer these questions they simulated an increased risk of adulterous behaviour in female reed warblers by briefly introducing a caged extra male to 31 reed warbler pairs during the female´s fertile period. In addition they played back recorded songs of randomly selected warbler males from the area. The scientists then observed nest building activity and feeding of offspring, and determined chick paternity through DNA analyses.

When the going gets tough

From previous observations it was known that male territory owners will aggressively try to chase away intruders (conspecific males) as soon as they detect them. This territorial behaviour is interpreted as a paternity guard. Herbert Hoi and his colleagues observed that all males tried to attack and chase away the caged intruder. When the female appeared to show interest in the intruder, the male behaved considerably more aggressively, both to the intruder and to his female partner. Almost half of the females did not even approach the newcomer. Herbert Hoi explains, "We think that the males are more aggressive when their partners are watching because first, it only pays for the male to show off when the "babe" is watching him, and second, he certainly has more reason to fear being cuckolded or even losing his partner when the newcomer approaches his female."

A "cuckoo" in the nest

Hoi and colleagues found that many nests housed nestlings fathered outside the pair-bond. This was the case both in the experimental and in the control group. Those females that had been observed to show interest in the intruder were also later found to be more likely to have extra-pair chicks in their nest. In addition, the results suggest that larger females seem to be more promiscuous.

Cuckolded males are caring fathers

The researchers then looked at whether offspring care was affected by paternity uncertainty. The results were surprising: Males seem to readily procure food for the chicks, regardless whether they are their own or not. Females, however, cared significantly less for their young if they had been faced with the simulated intruder. Perhaps the female´s potential infidelity had no effect on the male´s subsequent feeding investment because he cannot distinguish his own from an extra-pair chick. On the other hand, females who perceived their males as unable to repel an intruder quickly enough and therefore as a "weakling", then invest less in the joint offspring. The only chance a male has to ensure successful paternity seems to be to quickly get rid of potential competitors.

Citation: Hoi H, Krištofík J, Darolová A (2013) Experimentally Simulating Paternity Uncertainty: Immediate and Long-Term Responses of Male and Female Reed Warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus. PLoS ONE 8(4): e62541. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062541

Contact: Dr. Herbert Hoi
Herbert.Hoi@vetmeduni.ac.at
43-148-909-15824
University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna

H1N1 discovered in marine mammals

Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga angustirostris), Piedras Blancas, San Simeon, CA. Photo by Michael "Mike" L. Baird

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, detected the H1N1 (2009) virus in free-ranging northern elephant seals off the central California coast a year after the human pandemic began, according to a study published today, May 15, in the journal PLOS ONE. It is the first report of that flu strain in any marine mammal.

"We thought we might find influenza viruses, which have been found before in marine mammals, but we did not expect to find pandemic H1N1," said lead author Tracey Goldstein, an associate professor with the UC Davis One Health Institute and Wildlife Health Center. "This shows influenza viruses can move among species."

UC Davis researchers have been studying flu viruses in wild birds and mammals since 2007 as part of the Centers of Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance program funded by National Institutes of Health. The goal of this research is to understand how viruses emerge and move among animals and people.

Between 2009 and 2011, the team of scientists tested nasal swabs from more than 900 marine mammals from 10 different species off the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. They detected H1N1 infection in two northern elephant seals and antibodies to the virus in an additional 28 elephant seals, indicating more widespread exposure.

Neither infected seal appeared to be ill, indicating marine mammals may be infected without showing clinical signs of illness.

The findings are particularly pertinent to people who handle marine mammals, such as veterinarians and animal rescue and rehabilitation workers, Goldstein said. They are also a reminder of the importance of wearing personal protective gear when working around marine mammals, both to prevent workers' exposure to diseases, as well as to prevent the transmission of human diseases to animals.

H1N1 originated in pigs. It emerged in humans in 2009, spreading worldwide as a pandemic. The World Health Organization now considers the H1N1 strain from 2009 to be under control, taking on the behavior of a seasonal virus.

"H1N1 was circulating in humans in 2009," said Goldstein. "The seals on land in early 2010 tested negative before they went to sea, but when they returned from sea in spring 2010, they tested positive. So the question is where did it come from?"

When elephant seals are at sea, they spend most of their time foraging in the northeast Pacific Ocean off the continental shelf, which makes direct contact with humans unlikely, the report said.

The seals had been satellite tagged and tracked, so the researchers knew exactly where they had been and when they arrived on the coast. The first seal traveled from California on Feb. 11 to southeast Alaska to forage off the continental shelf, returning to Point Piedras Blancas near San Simeon, Calif., on April 24. The second seal left Ano Nuevo State Reserve in San Mateo County, Calif., on Feb. 8, traveling to the northeast Pacific and returning on May 5. Infections in both seals were detected within days of their return to land. The report said exposure likely occurred in the seals before they reached land, either while at sea or upon entering the near-shore environment.

The research, led by scientists Goldstein and Walter Boyce at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine's One Health Institute, was conducted with collaborators Nacho Mena and Adolfo Garcia-Sastre at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who sequenced the virus isolates and characterized their phenotypic properties.

"The study of influenza virus infections in unusual hosts, such as elephant seals, is likely to provide us with clues to understand the ability of influenza virus to jump from one host to another and initiate pandemics," said Garcia-Sastre, professor of microbiology and director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine.

The research was funded primarily through the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance, a program supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and the Tagging of Pacific Predators program, a project of the Census of Marine Life.

Contact: Tracey Goldstein
tgoldstein@ucdavis.edu
530-752-0412
University of California - Davis

UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine: As a top veterinary school internationally, and a leader in preventive medicine and wildlife health, UC Davis has an extensive research and training record in the fields of epidemiology, surveillance, zoonotic diseases, comparative medicine, diagnostics, wildlife pathogens and conservation, food safety, disease prevention and outbreak response. The school has trained more than 800 international veterinarians from 75 countries, including hot spots in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Its One Health Institute and Wildlife Health Center manage One Health programs for people and animals ranging from the Pacific Northwest to Africa's Congo Basin and Rift Valley.

Cooling ocean temperature could buy more time for coral reefs

Coral reef in the Red Sea. Photo by Elena Couce ©

Limiting the amount of warming experienced by the world's oceans in the future could buy some time for tropical coral reefs, say researchers from the University of Bristol.

The study, published by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used computer models to investigate how shallow-water tropical coral reef habitats may respond to climate change over the coming decades. Elena Couce and colleagues found that restricting greenhouse warming to three watts per square metre (equivalent to just 50-100 parts per million carbon dioxide, or approximately half again the increase since the Industrial Revolution) is needed in order to avoid large-scale reductions in reef habitat occurring in the future. Shallow-water tropical coral reefs are amongst the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet. They are currently in decline due to increasing frequency of bleaching events, linked to rising temperatures and fossil fuel emissions.

Elena Couce said: "If sea surface temperatures continue to rise, our models predict a large habitat collapse in the tropical western Pacific which would affect some of the most biodiverse coral reefs in the world. To protect shallow-water tropical coral reefs, the warming experienced by the world's oceans needs to be limited."

Coral reef in the Red Sea. Photo by Elena Couce ©

The researchers modelled whether artificial means of limiting global temperatures – known as solar radiation 'geoengineering' – could help. Their results suggest that if geoengineering could be successfully deployed then the decline of suitable habitats for tropical coral reefs could be slowed. They found, however, that over-engineering the climate could actually be detrimental as tropical corals do not favour overly-cool conditions. Solar radiation geoengineering also leaves unchecked a carbon dioxide problem known as 'ocean acidification'.

Elena Couce said: "The use of geoengineering technologies cannot safeguard coral habitat long term because ocean acidification will continue unabated. Decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the only way to address reef decline caused by ocean acidification."

Dr Erica Hendy, one of the co-authors, added: "This is the first attempt to model the consequences of using solar radiation geoengineering on a marine ecosystem. There are many dangers associated with deliberate human interventions in the climate system and a lot more work is needed to fully appreciate the consequences of intervening in this way."

Reference: 'Tropical coral reef habitat in a geoengineered, high-CO2 world' by E. Couce, P.J. Irvine, L. J. Gregorie, A. Ridgwell and E.J. Hendy in Geophysical Research Letters

Contact: Philippa Walker
philippa.walker@bristol.ac.uk
44-117-928-7777
University of Bristol

The Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol carries out fundamental and responsive research on risks and uncertainties in a changing environment. Its interests include natural hazards, food and energy security, resilience and governance, and human impacts on the environment. Its research fuses rigorous statistical and numerical modelling with a deep understanding of interconnected social, environmental and engineered systems – past, present and future.

Why Bears? (Video)

Credit: Emmanuel Keller (CC)

"What if we could preserve wild spaces simply by protecting one family of animals?"

This film is for teachers, scientists, non-profits and people interested in bears and preserving wild spaces. This film was made possible by an anonymous donation and was produced in partnership with Wildlife Media.

What's good for bears is good for people and the planet.

Written by Chris Morgan & Aaron Straight.

Why Bears

 

Black vulture returns to East Balkans

A black vulture (Aegypius monachus) has been spotted in the Eastern Balkan Mountains for the first time for more than 30 years. A photo-trap set up at the vulture supplementary feeding site in the area of the Sinite Kamani Nature Park captured a young black vulture in April, together with a group of foraging griffons. The pictured bird was released as part of the LIFE project, 'Vultures Return in Bulgaria'.

The vulture probably originated from Serbia and was recorded along with several wild, non-tagged young and sub-adult griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus).

Black vulture was once widely distributed across the country, mostly in the plain areas but also in hilly areas and the broad-leaved forest belt – namely, the Dobrudzha, Ludogorie, Shumen and Provadija plateaus, the Danube plain, the slopes of Sakar, Vitosha, the mountains surrounding Sofia, the Rhodopes and south-eastern Bulgaria.

However, the use of poison, traps and poachers led to the complete extinction of the black vulcan as a nesting species. The last confirmed nest of the species was found by the Green Balkans team in the area of the Studen Kladenets Reservoir in 1997 and since then no nesting has been confirmed.

But the country is often visited by black vultures, which still nest in the Dadia Reserve in northern Greece and cross the border in search of food. They often use the supplementary feeding sites that have been maintained by Green Balkans and the BSPB for the past 25 years.

The siting of the black vulture at the supplementary feeding site represents a huge success for the project. Griffon vulture is an indicator species, which it is hoped confirms the improved conditions of the Balkan Mountains.