Marine Mammals and Climate Change: study looks at win some/lose some in biodiversity

According to predictive models from a recent study on marine mammal biodiversity and the impact of climate change, cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and pinnipeds (seals and sea lions) are faced with a win some, lose some future.

The study, recently published in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, was a collaboration of US, Canadian, and Brazilian researchers, headed up by Dr. Kristin Kaschner of the University of Freiburg, Germany. According to Science Daily, the team produced predictions of patterns of global marine mammal biodiversity using a species distribution model which incorporated oceanographic data such as water depth, sea surface temperature, and sea ice concentration as well as information on marine mammal species occurrence. They then investigated and modeled the effects of global warming on individual species' distributions and biodiversity hotspots by the year 2050 based on an intermediate climate change scenario.

The researchers found that there was a higher concentration of marine mammal biodiversity in the temperate waters of the southern hemisphere. In addition, there are marine mammal diversity "hot spots" along the coast of Japan, northern New Zealand, the Pacific Coast of North America, and the polar regions. And while climate change may alter the environment over the next 40 years, the overall distribution of marine mammals will stay fairly constant, according to the study's predictions. That's the "win some."

However, the "lose some" entails more losses with specific species and also biodiversity shifts in the polar regions where there are fewer species - and of those species most are less amenable to a changing climate. The study concluded that there could be a loss of as much as 80% in local species in areas like the Arctic and Antarctic, while biodiversity distribution for species in more temperate and tropical climates could actually increase significantly.

So what does this all mean? Well, marine mammals are not isolated or inconsequential animals in the seas. They play an important role in maintaining a healthy marine food web, so where they are and where they might cease to be in the future can be very important in determining marine areas of concern for conservation. In considering potential marine protected areas (MPAs), it is vital that climate change and its impact on biodiversity, now and in the future, be a key component. Knowing where the marine mammal hotspots or prime distribution areas are and how they might change in the years to come, will allow governments and international agencies to make sound decisions as we all press for more and more MPAs to preserve our ocean resources.

Read about the study in Science Daily.

Evolution: study finds commonality in fish and mammal development

Evolution can appear to be a very complex process. How biodiversity developed over millions of years, producing thousands of various animal and plant species, is continually being studied and surprises seem to crop up with every new study. Whether piecing together the many branches and various dead ends that ultimately resulted in homo sapiens or deciphering the genetic code that determines who has a tail or who has wings, scientists are, piece by piece, assembling the puzzle that makes up nature's grand experiment in life on Earth.

And yet, from time to time, they discover within the puzzle a point of commonality - a puzzle piece that is being used over and over again - and the end result in diversity becomes simply a matter of timing. A recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights a genetic process that determines gill structures in elephant fish and sharks and its similarities with the development of limbs in lizards and mammals.

The elephant fish is a distant relative to sharks and rays, sharing the same type of cartilage-based skeletal system and also an outgrowth called a branchial ray - an appendage that extends from the skeleton and forms a supporting structure for the gills. Somewhere in the development process, the elephant develops one set of branchial ray while sharks develop several. To determine how or when this takes place requires studying things at the embryonic level. And for the scientists involved in the study, from Cambridge and the University of Chicago, this was a challenge as elephant fish embryos are difficult to find. Elephant fish lay their eggs in cold, muddy ocean bottoms, so the researchers spent months diving and searching possible breeding sites in Australia and New Zealand, gathering the needed embryos.

The researchers traced the impact of a genetic factor called Shh - the sonic hedgehog gene. It is common to both the elephant fish and sharks but when it expresses itself in the early developmental process determines whether there's one branchial ray set or more. This same process appears in the development of lizards and mammals, helping to determine outgrowths like limbs and number of toes for different species.

"The research highlights how evolution is extremely efficient, taking advantage of preexisting mechanisms, rather than inventing new ones," said Dr. Andrew Gillis of Cambridge University. "By simply tinkering with the timing of when or where a gene is expressed in an embryo, you can get very different anatomical outcomes in adults."

"It's basically showing that the limb story is part of a much more general narrative, which is the story of outgrowths," said Dr. Neil Shubin, University of Chicago. "There's a common development toolkit for all the outgrowths that we know in the body; they're all versions of one another in a developmental sense."

While analyzing all of the minute components found within the evolutionary process might seem a little esoteric or obscure to some, one of the advantages in understanding species development is to then be able to consider how or what might change that process. What environmental factors might come into play to alter or disrupt embryonic development, producing an evolutionary course correction or a tragic mutation? How easily can an evolutionary process, millions of years in the making, be altered by pollution, climate change, or other shifts in the norm?

As we study and learn more about both the complexity and the commonality or simplicity of evolutionary development, we can begin to see nature's wondrous puzzle of life and how the pieces can possibly be rearranged for better or for worse.

Read about the study in EurekAlert!
Read more in a Cambridge University press release.
Read the entire report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Nagoya Protocol: COP 10's positive progress towards saving Earth's biodiversity

As a quick follow up to yesterday's post on the COP 10 biodiversity conference, there is some good news to report as the meeting in Nagoya, Japan of nearly 190 nations comes to a close.

The representatives have signed what is being called the Nagoya Protocol which is a strategic plan that addresses both specific biodiversity conservation goals (increasing to 17% protection of the land and inland waters and 10% for coastal and marine waters by 2020 - up from 13% and a paltry 1%, respectively) and a broader demand for each nation to look at how it can improve on diminishing the threat of overfishing, invasive species, and the general destruction of natural resources.

"This is a day to celebrate in terms of a new and innovative response to the alarming loss of biodiversity and ecosystems. And a day to celebrate in terms of opportunities for lives and livelihoods in terms of overcoming poverty and delivering sustainable development...This meeting has delivered a sea change in the global understanding of the mulit-trillion dollar importance of biodiversity of forests, wetlands and other ecosystems," declared Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environmental Programme.

While participating nations seem to be on board, the major challenge lurking in the wings is cost. Funding for the required implementation of the protocol was not determined during the two-week conference, preferring to leave to the devices of each nation. But Japan, recognized by some conservation factions as a conservation spoiler and major participant in overfishing, promised $2 billion towards biodiversity. Other cash-strapped nations may have to consider the alternative economic perils derived by not funding: collapsed fisheries, reduced tourism, greater food imports, and even population malnutrition.



While the Nagoya Protocol did not deliver everything that conservation groups had asked for (Conservation International, as an example, was pushing for higher percentage goals), it was, however, a game-changer compared to the results from previous international meetings.

A reason for cautious celebration with a strong dose of let's wait and see just what comes to pass.

Read the COP10 press release.
Read TIME writer Bryan Walsh's article on the Nagoya Protocol.

Census of Marine Life: milestone 10-year study releases results

After 10 years of study, involving 2,700 scientists from 80 nations, the results from the Census of Marine Life was released today. Ocean animals were cataloged, photographed, tagged and tracked or whatever was needed to be able to get a more accurate picture as to the size and scope of marine life worldwide. And the results are both a source of awe and inspiration and a reason for concern.

Scientists have identified around 250,000 marine species but estimate that the total number is probably closer to one million. The census collated data on nearly 17,000 species of fish but scientists estimates there are another 5,000 yet to be discovered. And that's excluding the oceans vast array of microbes, which are estimated alone to total up to a billion.

Over the study's ten-year period, scientists explored shallow reefs and some of the ocean's deepest canyons, from frigid Arctic waters to warm lagoons. Much was learned and much was realized to be, as yet, undiscovered. One of the cornerstone's of the study's research is the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), a central database of observations dating back centuries which forms a baseline of data constructed from 28 million observations and growing by approximately 5 million observations each year.

"The census enlarged the known world. Life astonished us everywhere we looked. In the deep sea we found luxuriant communities despite extreme conditions," said Myriam Sibuet, vice-chair of the study's Steering Committee.

As I had mentioned in a previous post on the Marine Census, the amazing pictures that we will be seeing in the news, magazines, and books in the weeks and months to come will portray an ecosystem that is vibrant with life of all kinds. But we must not think that with this multitude of life that all is well in the seas.

Jesse Asubel, co-founder of the Census, said, "The Census encountered an ocean growing more crowded with commerce and transparent through technology. Setting out to draw baselines of the diversity, distribution, and abundance of species, the first Census of Marine Life documented a changing ocean, richer in diversity, more connected through distribution and movements, more impacted by humans, and yet less explored than we had known."

The Census of Marine Life is a major milestone in ocean biology. Future census studies will add more data and uncover more surprises. There's much we know, much more we need to learn, and all of it we need to conserve and protect.

With the release of the Census' final report, three books will soon be available:
Discoveries of the Census of Marine Life (Cambridge University Press)
Life in the World's Oceans: Diversity, Distribution and Abundance (Blackwell Publishing)
Citizens of the Sea: Wondrous Creatures from the Census of Marine Life (National Geographic)

Read news article on the Census of Marine Life from CNN.com.

Congress Squabbles Over Conservation: biodiversity protections held up while Senators debate merits

Discovery's Tree Hugger blog site and Washington DC's The Hill both ran important news items on several pieces of conservation legislation being stalled in the U.S. Senate, primarily due to the efforts of one Senator Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.). His position was that the five bills, supported by several key Republican colleagues and ranging from issues regarding shark finning to marine mammals to great cats and canids to cranes, were a waste of money.

"The problems that are facing this country are so big and so massive that our attention ought to be focused on those large problems, not on five separate bills that have been proffered for special interest groups," the senator was quoted as saying.

While the current economic situation in the United States, and globally, is without question one of the more pressing issues today and will garner greater priority and attention than longer term environmental issues, the politics of fear combined with the campaign jargon of the moment must not derail responsible policymakers from making decisions that have implications, both environmental and economic, far beyond simply the conservation of a particular species. Maintaining a healthy biodiversity is not just a feel good moral issue, it is one that has concrete implications over a range of industries and worldwide economies.

As noted in Tree Hugger, The Huffington Post described Senator Coburn's actions this way, "Cautious spending is an important value, but so is the defense of animals from cruelty, the rescue of marine creatures injured by human actions, or the protection of wild species from extinction. Coburn has corrupted a laudable principle of fiscal conservatism, and used it to negate and nullify valuable initiatives designed to protect vulnerable species at serious risk."

Read the entire article in Discovery's Tree Hugger.
Read the entire article in The Hill.
Read the entire article in The Huffington Post.

Aspens and Chernobyl: nature's resiliency and ability to survive or not

Turning from the wet to the dryside for a moment, have you ever noticed how trees like Aspens seem to change into their fall colors simultaneously? Like the drop of a hat, one moment they're green and the next moment they are a striking brilliant yellow - almost as if they were one tree rather than individuals.

Well, in essence, they are one tree. Certain species, particularly aspens, have the ability to sprout new trees from an expanding root network without the need for reproduction or fertilization. Call it botanical cloning. In fact, some groves of aspens constitute some of the largest single living organisms on the planet (there are some fungus experts that might argue who has the title, as there are huge underground fungi that grow in a similar fashion).

However, a group of Canadian researchers from British Columbia have determined through groundbreaking (no pun intended) DNA studies, that this ability of the aspen to "clone" itself is not everlasting. Their studies show that this method of propagation, like with other biological species, can produce genetic mutations with each succeeding tree which impacts its fertility and its ultimate life span. At some point the tree (or trees) must reproduce by more "traditional" means.

According to Howard Falcon-Long of the BBC News, "Dr Ally's team found that genetic mutations gradually build up with each subsequent generation of clone, resulting in a decline in fertility. This means that the aspen cannot clone itself indefinitely, but eventually must reproduce sexually or die."

Here's a video I shot along California's eastern Sierras which contains scenes of aspen groves in the midst of changing to their fall colors. Imagine that many of the trees you see here are actually all part of the same tree.



On the other side of the globe, the effects of genetic mutation and biodiversity brought about by contamination have been the subject of a long study at Russia's Chernobyl nuclear facility. After four years of study in and around the plant's "exclusion zone," scientists from the U.S. and France have reported a decline in the number of mammals, insects, and reptiles. So, with environmental contamination events - like Chernobyl or, say, the Gulf oil spill - when left to its own devices, without human interference, nature does not necessarily heal itself or bring itself back to "normal."

According to a BBC News report, birds were heavily impacted by the contamination. "During their census work, [scientists Professor Timothy Mousseau] and Dr. [Anders] Moller have also examined the effects of radiation contamination on the animals. They say that these impacts are particularly obvious in birds. 'We think they may be more susceptible, after long migrations, to additional environmental stress.' explained Professor Mousseau."

The scientists are not without their critics. Though their motives or supporting data may be questionable, Ukrainian scientists have said the opposite is true: that without human influence, animals are thriving in Chernobyl. Professor Mousseau claims their evidence is totally anecdotal.

Nature has amazing ways to perpetuate life; backup systems, if you will, like the cloning and traditional reproduction methods of the aspens. But mankind's technology has been able to produce impacts that can overpower nature's ability to heal and come back strong. We must carefully monitor what happens in the wild, what happens in and around facilities like energy and oil drilling plants, and we must not drop the ball when it comes to following up on the effects of our mistakes.

Read about the aspens and Chernobyl in BBC News.

Sweden's First Marine Park: protecting cold water environments

Marine parks serve a vital role in protecting regional marine ecosystems which then often serve to benefit the biodiversity of larger open ocean areas by providing a sheltered breeding ground and/or food source for many different species - in essence, a safe haven that serves an even larger community.

We often think of marine parks as being located in temperate to tropical waters. Indeed, recently designated parks have been in such places as governing agencies realize the importance of these fragile ecosystems (Read prior post). But the purpose and value of marine parks is not limited to just such regions. Kathleen Kobbe of The International Office recently brought to my attention the Kosterhavet National Marine Park in Sweden. This park, designated in September, 2009, is Sweden's first national marine park and is home to thousands of marine species, from sponges and coral to sea birds and harbor seals that use the park as a breeding ground.

The blog Explore West Sweden interviewed the park's head biologist, Martin Larsvik. "In the Kosterhavet Marine National Park there are about 6000 marine species. More than 200 of those have not been found elsewhere in Sweden, but can be found further west in the Atlantic Ocean. There are, for instance, large brown macroalgae (kelp), sponge animals, polychaete worms, crabs, starfish, sea cucumbers and fish. The most spectacular species is the eye coral (Lophelia pertusa), forming coral reefs at a depth of 85 meters," Larsvik explained.

Commercial fishing is highly regulated in the park and this is an important feature of a cold water protected zone like at Kosterhavet (41 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit). Many of the major fish species sought by commercial fishermen are cold water species. So, while we are inclined to preserve and protect the more obvious beauty of tropical reefs and other warmer water environments, we must also keep an eye on protecting those chillier environments that can be threatened by large-scale industrial fishing.

Grattis, Sweden!

Biodiversity Yin-Yang: sobering UN report and more tigers in India

Yin-Yang news about biodiversity: the United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity recently released its third Global Biodiveristy Outlook report and the results were not good. Eight years ago, targets were set to improve both plant and animal biodiversity and not only were those targets not met, but the report determined that the rate of extinction of plant and animal life is happening 1000 times faster than expected.

The report examines global biodiversity which includes ecosystems such as coral reefs, tropical rainforests, and other ecosystems in addition to specific threatened plant and animal life.

But on a more positive note and speaking of threatened animal life, a recent field study of tigers in the Kaziranga National park in northeast India revealed the largest concentration of these highly endangered cats. Using camera traps, the study, conducted in the first quarter of 2009, photographed tigers at a rate of 32 per 100 sq. km - that's compared to the rate of 3-12 tigers found throughout India's reserve parks and nearly twice that of the previous record of 19.6 tigers found in another reserve.

The success of the tiger population in this one reserve is being attributed to the reserve's grassland features and available food sources like deer and wild boar. Hopefully, the reserve's ability to resist poaching is also playing a role. Unfortunately, tigers are illegally hunted for their hides and, in particular, for their genitals - a homeopathic freeze-dried aphrodisiac that commands a high price in many Asian countries.

Read about the biodiversity report in the Guardian.co.uk.
Read about the tiger study (with pictures) in the BBC Earth News.