Oct

10

2008
 
 

Journal Watch Online is being upgraded!



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We are revamping Journal Watch Online and will be launching a new and improved site in January. Please check back then to find out about the latest developments in conservation research.


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Aug

27

2008
 
 

Take a deep breath



Scientists discover cause of high bat mortality near wind turbines

quixoticismBats suffer much higher mortality near wind turbines than birds, yet quite why the echolocating mammals should fall foul to such a large solid object as a whirring rotor has mystified scientists. In a paper published this week in Current Biology, University of Calgary researcher Erin Baerwald and colleagues provide evidence that it’s not direct collisions that cause many of the fatalities, but the sudden change in air pressure as the blade sweeps through its deathly arc. The bat’s tiny lungs effectively explode: Baerwald’s study found that although around half of dead bats examined had no external evidence of injury, some ninety percent had internal damage consistent with “barotrauma”. Migrating bats are particularly prone, so one way to lessen the carnage would be to switch the turbines off on all but the windiest nights. Source: Baerwald EF, D’Amours GH, KlugBJ & Barclay RMR (2008) Barotrauma is a significant cause of bat fatalities at wind turbines. Current Biology DOI: TBA

Image: © Brian Jackson

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Aug

7

2008
 
 

The ice-mollusc cometh



Pacific shellfish set to resume ancient Atlantic invasion as Arctic ice melts

Flying snails make good invadersWhen the Arctic ice finally melts away, by around 2050, a gang of North Pacific shellfish are going to finish something they started three and a half million years ago. Writing this week in Science, UC Davis geologist Geerat Vermeij and collaborator Peter Roopnarine argue that at least 56 molluscan lineages have the potential to expand their ranges across the Bering Strait into the North Atlantic. The fossil record shows that such an invasion was interrupted with the widespread establishment of permanent sea ice, a barrier we humans have successfully broken down over the last couple of hundred years. The authors urge us to “anticipate with interest” the molluscan army’s progress. That’s one way to look at a melting icecap… Source: Vermeij GJ & Roopnarine PD (2008) The coming Arctic invasion. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1160852

Image: © Russ Hopcroft | NOAA

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Aug

6

2008
 
 

Bone dry



Not all elephant calves are equal when drought bites hardest

Elephant familyMale elephant Loxodonta africana calves with young mothers are most likely to die during a drought, according to findings published this week in Biology Letters. The study, led by Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Charles Foley, used data from the 1993 extreme drought in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, to look for patterns in calf survival resulting from calf sex, mother’s age and family group. Some family groups migrated out of the Park during the drought: only these clans contained individuals old enough to remember the previous severe drought of 1958-61. Seems that an elephant really does never forget. Source: Foley C, Pettorelli N & Foley L (2008) Severe drought and calf survival in elephants. Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0370

Image: © Charles Foley

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Aug

4

2008
 
 

Soft boiled eggs



Reef-building animals will struggle to reproduce as the climate changes

purple sea urchinsOcean acidification – the result of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels – will affect the sex lives of many marine organisms, according to a study published recently in Current Biology. Jon Havenhand, a marine biologist at the University of Gothenberg, and colleagues found that the swimming ability of sea urchin Heliocidaris erythrogramma sperm, fertilization rate and subsequent development of embryos are all negatively affected by relatively modest changes in the water acidity. Acidification causes many problems for calcifying organisms and the future looks gloomy for coral reefs. The new findings add to their woes, as direct effects on reproduction had previously not been investigated. One can only hope that the invisible hand of selection will guide these marine creatures to a state of adaptation that copes with the conditions they will have to face. Source: Havenhand JN, Buttler F-R, Thorndyke MC & Williamson JE (2008) Near-future levels of ocean acidification reduce fertilization success in a sea urchin. Current Biology DOI: tba

Image: © Tammy Peluso

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Aug

1

2008
 
 

What do krill kill?



Using molecular techniques to understand krill diet

put another krill on the barbieComplex food webs could become easier to analyze with the advent of molecular techniques to identify the remains of prey items from part-digested stomach contents. However, a major stumbling block has been spotting the DNA of rare prey items against a background overwhelmed by the predator’s own DNA. Writing in Frontiers in Zoology, Hege Vestheim and Simon Jarman – biologists at the University of Oslo and the Australian Antarctic Division, respectively – describe a new method to block predator DNA from the identification process. As a result, their tests on Antarctic krill Euphausia superba were able to identify, for the first time, what one of the most abundant animals in the world eats to survive the winter. The method must assume krill don’t resort to cannibalism to make it through the toughest half of the year, but otherwise presents a neat way to find out what an animal has eaten: the study even, er, threw up several unknown species of algae. Source: Vestheim H & Jarman SN (2008) Blocking primers to enhance PCR amplification of rare sequences in mixed samples – a case study on prey DNA in Antarctic krill stomachs. Frontiers in Zoology DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-5-12

Image: © NOAA

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Jul

31

2008
 
 

Patchy chances



Small species ranges increase extinction risk, study finds

glacial lakeSpecies with small ranges face a greater extinction risk from climate change, according to a paper published this week in Biology Letters. University of Durham researcher Ralf Ohlemüller – now at York – and colleagues studied species ranges in European butterflies and plants and Western Hemisphere birds, and noticed a link between rare pockets of habitat and smaller species ranges. Those rare patches — at unusually high or low altitude compared to the surrounding landscape, for example — and their atypical species composition and diversity, are likely relicts from the last ice age. Species there have clung onto survival under the warmer climes they’ve experienced since, but they are particularly vulnerable to the impact of future climate change, being marooned in ever-shrinking oases. Source: Ohlemüller R, Anderson BJ, Araújo MB, Butchart SHM, Kudrna O, Ridgely RS & Thomas CD (2008) The coincidence of climatic and species rarity: high risk to small-range species from climate change. Biol. Lett. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0097

Image: © Ljupco Smokovski

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Jul

29

2008
 
 

Yay for raccoons



Leaving egg-eating top predators alone is good for turtle conservation

hands up who loves raccoons?Raccoons Procyon lotor love loggerhead turtle Caretta caretta eggs, as do ghost crabs Ocypode quadrata. The trouble with the often-used conservation measure of controlling raccoons at turtle nesting beaches is it lets the ghost crabs off the hook: raccoons are also partial to the odd crustacean for dinner. A study published recently in Biological Conservation suggests that leaving at least some raccoons might actually benefit the beleaguered turtles, because they suppress predation levels by crabs. Yale researcher Brandon Barton’s field study found the highest ghost crab numbers – and highest overall turtle nest predation – occurred where there were the fewest raccoons. Go on, go cuddle a raccoon today. Source: Barton BT & Roth JD (2008) Implications of intraguild predation for sea turtle nest protection. Biol. Cons. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2008.06.013

Image: © Hans-Walter Untch

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Jul

23

2008
 
 

Lynx between wildlife and disease



Wildlife harbors tuberculosis, threatening survival of world’s rarest cat

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is emerging as a major conservation problem in some parts of the world, as a study published this week in PLoS ONE shows. The incidence of the bacterial disease among the wild boar Sus scrofa, red Cervus elaphus and fallow deer Dama dama at Spain’s Doñana National Park – a UNESCO biosphere reserve sheltering the few remaining Iberian Lynx Lynx pardinus – has reached epidemic proportions in places. National Wildlife Research Institute biologist Christian Gortázar and colleagues found the incidence of wildlife bTB was highest in cattle-free areas of the Park. That’s a problem for the lynx, as those areas have been cleared of cows to make way for its preferred quarry, the humble rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus. Source: Gortázar C, Torres MJ, Vicente J, Acevedo P, Reglero M, de la Fuente J, Negro JJ & Aznar-Martín J (2008) Bovine tuberculosis in Doñana biosphere reserve: the role of wild ungulates as disease reservoirs in the last Iberian Lynx strongholds. PLoS ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002776

Image: © Morozova Tatiana

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Jul

22

2008
 
 

Life’s a bleach



Taxonomic splits needed to understand how lumps of coral get bleached

Susceptibility to bleaching is down to the fine-scale genetic type of a coral’s dinoflagellate symbionts, according to a study published this week in PNAS. A group of University of Queensland marine biologists, led by Eugenia Sampayo, followed the fate of individually tagged corals Stylophora pistillata on the Great Barrier Reef, monitoring the conditions under which they suffered bleaching and subsequently recovered. The broad symbiont “clades” — genetic subdivisions – weren’t sufficient to explain the observed pattern of bleaching. However, within the “C” clade, some subtypes were more thermally tolerant than others. The discovery suggests a return to the drawing board might be needed to fully understand the role symbionts play in their reef-building host’s ability to withstand changing climatic conditions. Source: Sampayo EM, Ridgway T, Bongaerts P & Hoegh-Guldberg O (2008) Bleaching susceptibility and mortality of corals is determined by fine-scale differences in symbiont type. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0708049105

Image: © Giorgio Fochesato

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