conservation
edyong | November 15, 2008
Climate change is not just about surface warming and glacial melting. The carbon dioxide that human activity is pumping into the atmosphere also dissolves in the world's oceans, slowly increasing their acidity over time. And that spells trouble for corals.
Corals may seem like immobile rock, but these hard fortresses are home to soft-bodied animals. These creatures - the coral polyps - build their mighty reefs of calcium carbonate using carbonate ions drawn from the surrounding water. But as the water's pH levels fall, these ions become depleted and the corals start to run out of their…
sheril | November 12, 2008Ecology professor Nalini Nadkarni at Evergreen State College recently estimated that we presently have '61 trees per person.' Our latest post at Talking Science explores what that calculation means.
grrlscientist | November 12, 2008tags: ecology, exotic species, introduced species, non-native species, invasive species, monk parakeets, quaker parrots, Myiopsitta monachus, Michael A Russello, Michael L Avery, Timothy F Wright
Monk (Quaker) parakeets, Myiopsitta monachus, with nest.
Image: Arthur Grosset [larger view].
Invasive species are everywhere: from plants such as Scotch (English) broom, Cytisus scoparius, whose yellow flowers bloom prolifically along roadways of North America, Australia and New Zealand to mammals such as human beings, Homo sapiens, which are the ultimate invasive species because we have…
sheril | November 11, 2008
Cottontop tamarins can only be found in the tropical forests of Colombia. Critically endangered, less than 1,000 live in the wild and 1,800 in captivity.
[source: BBC]
grrlscientist | November 10, 2008tags: pets, cutest kitten in the world, streaming video
This video is a 5 minute amateur documentary about Hawai'i's endangered birds and the causes of their decline. The filmographer writes; "This was somewhat a difficult topic and we suffered from a lack of suitable footage of native birds as most endangered birds are not seen regularly as they used to be decades ago. Could have done better for sure, in fact if I had the chance I'd do it over for the sake of sharing the issues of the human impact on island birds." I think this is a great start for a conservation filmographer! [5:14]
edyong | November 8, 2008On the surface, plummeting populations of sharks do not seem like much cause for concern for humans or, for that matter, other sea life. But this simple viewpoint relies on splitting animals into two groups - predators and prey. In practice, this distinction is far too crude. Too put it bluntly, there are predators and there are predators. Those at the top kill those in the middle, and stop them in turn, from killing those at the bottom. As the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The rise in shark fishing is mainly driven by a growing market for their fins. Shark fins soup…
sheril | November 6, 2008The week, the NYTimes interviewed conservation biologist Stuart Pimm--or 'Indy Pimm' as I like to call him--who works to save endangered species and places around the world from tracking elephants in South Africa to restoring Florida's Everglades. He holds the Doris Duke professorship of Conservation Ecology at Duke University and won the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences in 2006 aka 'the Nobel of the ecology world'.
But what's most extraordinary about Stuart is that he's doing real conservation that matters. Beyond studying population structure and movement, Pimm's planetary family…
edyong | October 29, 2008Our amphibians are not doing well. Populations of frogs, toads, salamanders and newts the world over are falling dramatically. Their moist, permeable skins and their need for water to reproduce make them vulnerable to a multitude of threats including drought brought on by climate change, a deadly fungus, and other infectious diseases. Now, we can point an accusatory finger at another culprit - a chemical called atrazine that is second most commonly used pesticide in the United States, and perhaps the world.
Jason Rohr and colleagues from the University of Florida found that atrazine exposes…
sheril | October 26, 2008Orcas are one of my favorite species. Extremely intelligent and exhibiting many complex behaviors, they're simply beautiful marine mammals.
Seven orcas are now feared dead in Puget Sound. If true, it could be the biggest decline among the sound's population in almost a decade. Possible causes: Low numbers of their main food--chinook salmon, pollution, and stress from whale-watching tour boats and Navy sonar.
The number of 'southern resident' orcas is estimated to be 83.
grrlscientist | October 24, 2008tags: parrots, endangered species, conservation, birds, ornithology, Indonesia
Masakambing (Abbott's) yellow-crested cockatoo, Cacatua sulphurea abbotti at Sukun tree.
Image: Indonesian Parrot Project, summer 2008 [larger view].
I had the most fascinating telephone discussion with Bonnie Zimmermann, Vice President of the Indonesian Parrot Project, about the recent reported rediscovery of several individuals of the rarest cockatoo in the world. This species, known as the Masakambing (Abbott's) yellow-crested cockatoo, Cacatua sulphurea abbotti, is a subspecies of Yellow (Sulfur)-crested…
tetrapodzoology | October 17, 2008
Last weekend I and about 40 other people worked together in another effort to rid the shore at Chessel Bay Nature Reserve, Southampton (UK), of rubbish. We didn't succeed of course - if only that were possible - but, as always, picking up humanity's discarded crap gives you plenty to think about. Here are various random impressions. For a more data-heavy look at the menace of plastic waste and its substantial effect on environments, wildlife and human health please see the article I wrote on the same subject back in March.
Actually, this time round the rubbish - though still present in…
grrlscientist | October 15, 2008tags: ethics, endangered species, conservation
Woman with a Parrot by Gustav Courbet (1866)
Oil on canvas
51 x 77 in. (129.5 x 195.6 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [larger view].
A little while ago, I received an odd question from a reader, and I was slow in responding (my bad!), but her question has bothered me ever since I first read it and responded. First, her question:
You have to save the world (and I assume you also want to). You are the only one who can do so, and to do so, you have to destroy one or the other:
The Louvre (with everything inside but people)
or
one…
grrlscientist | October 12, 2008tags: Seattle Washington, Biology Department Greenhouse, University of Washington, poison dart frogs, Dendrobates, Dendrobatidae
Captive-bred Dyeing Poison Dart frog, Dendrobates tinctorius, from the Guianas of northeastern South America.
Image: GrrlScientist 29 September 2008 [larger view].
This is part two of my UW Biology Department greenhouse photoessay. In part one, I showed you seedpods and a lot of flowers (some of which need to be identified), but in this, the second and last part, I am focusing on The Surprise I kept telling you about. As you can see, the surprise discovery I…
grrlscientist | October 10, 2008tags: parrot, Lories, Lorikeet, Loriinae, Loriidae, Rimatara Lorikeet, Kuhl's Lory, Vini kuhlii, conservation, ornithology, South Pacific Islands
Endangered Rimatara Island (Kuhl's) lory, Vini kuhlii,
peer down upon their fledgling chick
in a nest hollow of an albizia tree, Falcataria moluccana,
on the island of Atiu, in the Cook Islands.
Image: Gerald McCormack [larger view].
Those of you who have been following the story of the endangered Kura, or Rimatara Lory, Vini kuhlii, will be very excited to know that these rare birds are producing babies! Last year, 27 Rimatara lories, or Kura,…
edyong | October 3, 2008
According to Christian lore, Mary gave birth to baby Jesus without ever having had sex with Joseph. A biologist might describe this as 'parthenogenesis', the Greek version of the more familiar phrase 'virgin birth'('parthenos' means virgin, and 'genesis' means birth). The New Testament aside, shunning fertilisation and giving birth to young through parthenogenesis is rare among higher animals, occurring in only one in every thousand species. Nonetheless, two Christmases ago, eight virgin births took place in the English town of Chester. The mother's name was Flora and she was a komodo…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, Seychelles magpie-robin, Copsychus sechellarum, behavioral ecology, conservation biology, endangered species, population dynamics, ornithology, birds
Seychelles magpie-robin, Copsychus sechellarum.
Image: Tony Randell (Wikipedia) [larger view].
Every once in awhile, I read a paper that surprises me. Today, I read one of those papers, and it surprised me because it analyzes a phenomenon that is so obvious that I wonder why no one ever thought of studying it in a systematic and rigorous way before. I am referring to a paper that was just published by a team of…
edyong | August 28, 2008Conservationists often object to wind farms because of the possibility that they could kill birds. But birds aren't the only flying animals to be taken out by turbines - it turns out that bats often lose their lives too, and not in quite the way you might imagine.
Recently, scientists have noticed a large number of dead bats at wind farms around the world. The turbines seem to be taking a particularly heavy toll on migratory species and while it was clear that the scale of these deaths is much larger than expected, it's less clear why they're happening at all.
Bats can fly through pitch-…
tetrapodzoology | August 25, 2008
I have not forgotten that 2008 is Year of the Frog: if you have, or if you didn't know this, please go back to December 2007 and read the explanatory article here. Some of you will also recall the EDGE project (EDGE = Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered), and here we look at an anuran that's one of many on the EDGE list.
Myobatrachids, or southern frogs, or Australo-Papuan frogs, include some of the most incredible and bizarre of anurans. The Turtle frog Myobatrachus gouldii looks like a toy, is apparently sometimes mistaken for a baby turtle, and is one of just a few anuran…
sheril | August 19, 2008From living reefs to humans, we're all connected. Watch, listen, and please pass the message on...
"Protect the living reef and we protect the ocean. Protect the ocean, and we protect ourselves."
- Ed Harris, Project AWARE