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"Unidentified life form" found off New Zealand coast

<p>Ah, the deep sea, where the mysteries of the ocean lurk in the shadows, waiting to be discovered by intrepid marine scientists armed with nets, trawls and a healthy dose of confusion...</p> <p>Recently, a team of brave souls embarked on a journey off the coast of New Zealand, armed with curiosity and a fervent desire to find Nemo's distant relatives. What they found, however, was not just Nemo's cousins – but a veritable treasure trove of potential new species. Or at least, they think so.</p> <p>In a saga that could rival any aquatic adventure film, the scientists stumbled upon approximately 100 potential new species, including one particularly enigmatic life form that has left them scratching their heads in bewilderment.</p> <p>Initially mistaking it for a sea star – or perhaps a particularly flamboyant sea cucumber – they now suspect it might be a deep-sea coral. Or a cosmic jellyfish. Or a lost prop from a sci-fi movie. The possibilities are as endless as the ocean itself.</p> <p>Dr Michela Mitchell, a taxonomist with a penchant for the dramatic, declared it could be "a whole new group outside of the octocoral." Because why settle for identifying just one species when you can potentially create an entire taxonomic order?</p> <p>Dr Daniel Moore, another member of the expedition and self-proclaimed captain of the confusion ship, confessed, "We can't even describe it to family." One can only imagine the perplexed expressions at family gatherings as they attempt to explain their latest discovery: "Well, it's sort of like a sponge, but not really. And it might have tentacles. Or wings. We're not entirely sure."</p> <p>Their research vessel, the <em>Tangaroa</em>, became a floating laboratory of befuddlement as they collected nearly 1,800 samples from the abyssal depths. Armed with modified sleds and a healthy dose of optimism, they trawled the ocean floor, hoping to snag the elusive creatures that lurked below.</p> <p>"It was true exploration, very exciting," Dr Moore boasted, his enthusiasm undiminished by the fact that they still couldn't <em>definitively</em> identify half of what they'd found.</p> <p>Among their discoveries was a new species of fish, dubbed the "eelpout", which was "instantly recognised as being different to the others." Because, apparently, it had a flair for the dramatic and refused to conform to traditional fish norms.</p> <p>In a surprising revelation, Dr Moore admitted, "Finding new vertebrates is rare." One can only assume that the eelpout, upon hearing this declaration, puffed out its chest (or whatever passes for a chest in fish anatomy) and proclaimed itself the king of the ocean.</p> <p>As the expedition came to a close, the scientists reflected on the vastness of the ocean and the infinitesimal fraction of its inhabitants they had encountered. With only 240,000 species identified out of an estimated 2.2 million, they realised they had barely scratched the surface. Or, in this case, the sea floor.</p> <p>And so, armed with their nets, their sleds, and their unshakeable sense of optimism, the intrepid scientists set sail once more, ready to delve deeper into the mysteries of the ocean and perhaps stumble upon another baffling creature that defies explanation. After all, what's science without a little bit of confusion?</p> <p><em>Image: Ocean-Census | NIWA</em></p>

International Travel

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Marine species are being pushed towards the poles. From dugong to octopuses, here are 8 marine species you might spot in new places

<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/gretta-pecl-128477">Gretta Pecl</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-tasmania-888">University of Tasmania</a></em>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/curtis-champion-1373045">Curtis Champion</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/southern-cross-university-1160">Southern Cross University</a></em>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/zoe-doubleday-393169">Zoe Doubleday</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-south-australia-1180">University of South Australia</a></em></p> <p>If you take a plunge in the sea this winter, you might notice it’s warmer than you expect. And if you’re fishing off Sydney and catch a tropical coral trout, you might wonder what’s going on.</p> <p>The reason is simple: hotter water. The ocean has absorbed the vast majority of the extra heat trapped by carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. It’s no wonder heat in the oceans is building up rapidly – and this year is <a href="https://theconversation.com/ocean-heat-is-off-the-charts-heres-what-that-means-for-humans-and-ecosystems-around-the-world-207902">off the charts</a>.</p> <p>That’s even without the likely arrival of El Niño, where the Pacific Ocean gets warmer than usual and affects weather all over the world. Our coastal waters <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/oceantemp/sst-outlook-map.shtml">are forecast</a> to be especially warm over the coming months, up to 2.5℃ warmer than usual in many places.</p> <figure class="align-center "><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533327/original/file-20230622-27-cqb9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533327/original/file-20230622-27-cqb9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=482&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533327/original/file-20230622-27-cqb9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=482&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533327/original/file-20230622-27-cqb9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=482&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533327/original/file-20230622-27-cqb9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=605&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533327/original/file-20230622-27-cqb9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=605&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533327/original/file-20230622-27-cqb9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=605&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" alt="" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oceans around Australia are forecast to be much warmer than usual. SSTA stands for projected Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly, the difference between forecast ocean temperatures and a historical baseline period encompassing 1990–2012.</span> <span class="attribution">Bureau of Meteorology</span></figcaption></figure> <p>Many marine species live within a narrow temperature range. If the water heats up, they have to move, and if they don’t, they might die. So those that can move, are moving. In Australia, at least 200 marine species have <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.15634">shifted distributions</a> since 2003, with 87% heading south.</p> <p>This pattern is happening all around the world, both on land and <a href="https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-photos-captured-by-everyday-australians-reveal-the-secrets-of-our-marine-life-as-oceans-warm-189231">in the ocean</a>. This year, the warmer ocean temperatures during winter mean Australia’s seascapes are likely to be more like summer. So, the next time you go fishing or diving or beachcombing, keep your eyes peeled and your camera ready. You may glimpse the enormous disruption happening underwater for yourself.</p> <h2>Here are eight species on the move</h2> <p><strong>1. Moorish idol (<em>Zanclus cornutus</em>)</strong></p> <p>Historic range: northern Australia</p> <p>Now: This <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/species/1/204/">striking fish</a> can now be seen south of Geraldton in Western Australia and Eden in New South Wales.</p> <p>This is a great fish for divers to spot on hard-bottomed habitats.</p> <figure class="align-center zoomable"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533373/original/file-20230622-21-6g6xk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" alt="moorish idol" /></a><figcaption><span class="caption">Moorish Idols are heading south to escape the heat.</span> <span class="attribution">Shutterstock</span></figcaption></figure> <p><strong>2. Branching coral (<em>Pocillopora aliciae</em>)</strong></p> <p>Historic range: northern NSW</p> <p>Now: Look out for this <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/species/2/255">pale pink beauty</a> south of Port Stephens, not far from Sydney.</p> <p>Seemingly immovable species like coral are fleeing the heat too. They’re already providing habitat for a range of other shifting species like tropical fish and crab species.</p> <p><strong>3. Eastern rock lobster (<em>Sagmariasus verreauxi</em>)</strong></p> <p>Historic range: common in NSW</p> <p>Now: South, as far as <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/species/2/167">it can get.</a> It’s now found in Tasmania and even in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-marine-biological-association-of-the-united-kingdom/article/westward-range-expansion-of-the-eastern-rock-lobster-sagmariasus-verreauxi-in-australia/8DE945E58E1DDA1A2BB7431065AAC8EC">South Australia</a>.</p> <p>This tasty greenish crustacean <a href="https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v624/p1-11/">doesn’t like heat</a> and has moved south into the territory of red southern rock lobsters (<em>Jasus edwardsii</em>).</p> <p><strong>4. Gloomy octopus (<em>Octopus tetricus</em>)</strong></p> <p>Previous range: common in NSW</p> <p>Now: As far south as Tasmania.</p> <p>Look out for this slippery, smart invertebrate in <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/species/2/127">Tasmanian waters</a> this winter. You might even spot the octopus nestled down with some eggs, as this looks to be a <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/mf/mf14126">permanent sea change</a>.</p> <figure class="align-center zoomable"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=462&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=462&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=462&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=581&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=581&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533376/original/file-20230622-17-lf2y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=581&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" alt="gloomy octopus" /></a><figcaption><span class="caption">The gloomy octopus is also known as the common Sydney octopus.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Niki Hubbard, Wikimedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure> <p><strong>5. Whitetip reef shark (<em>Triaenodon obesus</em>)</strong></p> <p>Previous range: northern Australia</p> <p>Now: <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/species/3/185">South of K'gari</a> (formerly known as Fraser Island).</p> <p>Classed as vulnerable in parts of the world, this tropical shark is a slow swimmer and never sleeps. It poses very little danger to humans.</p> <p><strong>6. Dugongs (<em>Dugong dugon</em>)</strong> Previous range: northern Australia</p> <p>Now: As far south as Shark Bay in WA and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-17/tweed-river-dugong-sighting-boaties-warned/102355438">Tweed River</a> in New South Wales.</p> <p>Our waters are home to the largest number of dugong in the world. But as waters warm, they’re heading south. That means more of us may see these elusive sea-cows as they graze on seagrass meadows.</p> <p>Some of the most adventurous have gone way out of their normal range – in 2014, a kitesurfer <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/articles/2021/07/26/are-dugongs-hitching-a-ride-south/">reported</a> passing a dugong at City Beach, Perth. As a WA wildlife expert says, dugongs may occasionally stray further south of Shark Bay but “given the recent warming trend […] more dugong sightings might be expected in the future”</p> <p><strong>7. Red emperor (<em>Lutjanus sebae</em>) and other warm water game fish</strong></p> <p>Previous range: northern Australia</p> <p>Now: Appearing much further south – especially in WA.</p> <p>Look for <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/species/1/108/">red</a>, threadfin, and redthroat emperors in southwest WA as the Leeuwin current carries these <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/articles/2021/07/26/game-fish-follow-warm-route-south/">warm water species</a> south. As WA fisheries expert Gary Jackson has said, this current is a warming hotspot, acting like a warm water highway for certain marine species.</p> <p>These fish are highly <a href="https://goodfish.org.au/species/red-emperor/">sought after</a> by fishers.</p> <p><strong>8. Long-spined sea urchin (<em>Centrostephanus rodgersii</em>)</strong></p> <p>Historic range: NSW and Victoria</p> <p>Now: Tasmania</p> <p>Look out for these <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/species/2/34/">spiky critters</a> in southern and western Tasmania. The larvae of these urchins have crossed the Bass Strait and found a new home, due to warming waters. Urchins are grazers and can scrape rocks clean, creating urchin barrens where nothing grows. That’s bad news for kelp forests and the species which depend on them. In response, Tasmanian authorities are working to create a <a href="https://fishing.tas.gov.au/community/long-spined-sea-urchin-management/long-spined-sea-urchin-strategy#:%7E:text=%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8BTackling%20the%20longspined%20sea%20urchin&amp;text=Unchecked%2C%20the%20urchin's%20presence%20is,at%20around%2020%20million%20individuals.">viable urchin fishery</a> to keep numbers down.</p> <figure class="align-center zoomable"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533379/original/file-20230622-33216-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" alt="long spined sea urchins" /></a><figcaption><span class="caption">Long-spiked sea urchins are voracious eaters of seaweed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwturnbull/32131133496/in/photostream/">John Turnbull/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure> <h2>You can help keep watch</h2> <p>For years, fishers, snorkellers, spearfishers and the general public have contributed their unusual marine sightings to <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/">Redmap</a>, the Australian citizen science project aimed at mapping range extensions of species.</p> <p>If you spot a creature that wouldn’t normally live in the waters near you, you can upload a photo to log your sighting.</p> <p>For example, avid spearfisher Derrick Cruz logged a <a href="https://www.redmap.org.au/sightings/1624/">startling discovery</a> with Redmap in 2015: A coral trout in Sydney’s waters. As he told us: “I’ve seen plenty of coral trout in tropical waters, where they’re at home within the coral. But it was surreal to see one swimming through a kelp forest in the local waters off Sydney, much further south than I’ve ever seen that species before!”</p> <p>How does tracking these movements help scientists? Many hands make light work. These vital observations from citizen scientists <a href="https://data-blog.gbif.org/post/gbif-citizen-science-data">have helped</a> researchers gain deeper understanding of what climate change is doing to the natural world in many places, from bird migrations to flowering plants to marine creatures.</p> <p>So, please keep an eye out this year. The heat is on in our oceans, and that can mean sudden change. <img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207115/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /></p> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/gretta-pecl-128477">Gretta Pecl</a>, Professor, ARC Future Fellow &amp; Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-tasmania-888">University of Tasmania</a></em>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/curtis-champion-1373045">Curtis Champion</a>, Research Scientist, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/southern-cross-university-1160">Southern Cross University</a></em>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/zoe-doubleday-393169">Zoe Doubleday</a>, Marine Ecologist and ARC Future Fellow, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-south-australia-1180">University of South Australia</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/marine-species-are-being-pushed-towards-the-poles-from-dugong-to-octopuses-here-are-8-marine-species-you-might-spot-in-new-places-207115">original article</a>.</em></p> <p><em>Images: Getty</em></p>

International Travel

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“Rarest species of feline on Earth”: Unique cat mystifies the internet

<p dir="ltr">A photo of the “rarest species of feline on Earth”, a cat with black and neon yellow stripes, has mystified the internet.</p> <p dir="ltr">The incredible photo of the “Amazon snake cat” is truly unbelievable.</p> <p dir="ltr">The image of the so-called “Serpens Cattus”, a feline with black and neon-yellow stripes resembling a snake, made waves online, with social media posts claiming it was the “rarest species of feline on Earth”. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Serpens Cattus is the rarest species of feline on Earth. These Animals live in hard-to-reach regions of the Amazon rainforest, and therefore they are relatively poorly studied,” a Twitter user claimed. “The first images capturing the snake cat appeared only in 2020. Weighs up to 4 stone (25kgs).”</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://t.co/rpeMQKCF4I">pic.twitter.com/rpeMQKCF4I</a></p> <p>— Jeff_kamara2 (@Kamara2R) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kamara2R/status/1635669633553367040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 14, 2023</a></p></blockquote> <p dir="ltr">A now-deleted Reddit post of the “Serpens Cattus” attracted several comments who flagged the feline as not being real. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Obvious fake. No known gene can produce natural hair or fur of those (navy and bright yellow) colours,” one commented.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Really rough attempt at a fake Latin name,” a second person chimed in. “One google about species naming would have made this a lot less obvious.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The post caught the eye of zoology experts to verify the authenticity of the photo.</p> <p dir="ltr">However, the colours and patterns on the female bare a strong resemblance to the reptilian boiga dendrophila, which is commonly referred to as the “gold-ringed cat snake”.</p> <p dir="ltr">According to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo &amp; Conservation Biology Institute, the snake is found in the same countries where the “Amazon snake cat” was rumoured to be found. </p> <p dir="ltr">The serpent-like feline slid over to TikTok, where one user claimed that the species lived in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname.</p> <p dir="ltr">“He’s in the next fantastic beasts,” laughed one user referencing the Harry Potter spin-off franchise.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Use this s**t for good not to misinform,” another user wrote.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Stop sharing bulls**t,” a third commented. </p> <p dir="ltr">It's clear to see the mysterious feline has certainly left some in hiss-belief.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-919797d4-7fff-89ab-2d2e-e88b391d041a"></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credit: Twitter</em></p>

Family & Pets

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Using a dental scanner on corals like a “magic wand”

<p>Dr Kate Quigley’s trip to the dentist might have revolutionised coral reef research.</p> <p>The intra-oral dental scanner her dentist was using turned out to be the perfect thing for scanning baby corals and learning critical information about their growth.</p> <p>“Baby corals and teeth are actually not too different. They’re both wet,” says Quigley, now a senior research scientist at the Minderoo Foundation.</p> <p>“Which might not seem like a big deal – but if you’re scanning something, that creates diffraction. […] Having tech that can work in a wet environment and handle a texture that’s wet, is actually really important.”</p> <p>There are a few other things that bring dental scanners and coral together, too.</p> <p>“The properties of teeth and baby coral skeletons are very similar. They’re calcium-based, slightly different, but similar enough that the resolution of the laser was tailored to coral skeletons, just by accident,” says Quigley.</p> <p>While conducting research at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and James Cook University, Quigley managed to get one of the tooth-scanning devices she’d seen at the dentist (the ITero Element 5D Flex), and test it on corals.</p> <p>Quigley has published a description of the new method in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.</p> <p>Monitoring coral growth is key to restoring and preserving it.</p> <p>“Growth and survival are really the currency of any monitoring program. It doesn’t matter what organism you’re looking at,” says Quigley.</p> <p>But it’s very difficult to monitor the growth of corals – because of their shape and size.</p> <p>“How most coral growth studies are done is really just taking 2D flat images. And that works really well when the coral is really young, say a month or two months, because they’re like little flat pancakes,” says Quigley.</p> <p>As they grow, corals develop very complex three-dimensional structures. Scanning these structures is time-consuming, and often destructive: the coral has to be killed in order to be scanned.</p> <p>The dental scanner takes quick, harmless scans and uses AI to combine the images into a 3D picture almost immediately.</p> <p>“Instead of taking all day and into the night, it takes two minutes,” says Quigley.</p> <p>It also provides better detail.</p> <p>“Baby corals start off really small. They’re almost invisible,” says Quigley.</p> <p>“Being able to measure those really fine scale differences, smaller than a millimetre, was also really important.”</p> <p>Quigley describes the scanner as “effectively a magic wand”.</p> <p>So far, the scanner’s been shown to work in a lab (at AIMS National Sea Simulator) and in the field – on a boat above the water.</p> <p>Unfortunately, it’s not waterproof enough to take diving. Yet.</p> <p>Quigley hopes it will become a regular tool used by coral researchers and restorers.</p> <p>“If we are thinking about scaling up reef restoration in the future we’re going to need a way to measure and monitor these individuals more effectively. It wouldn’t be sustainable if it’s one individual a day.”</p> <p>Quigley says that this discovery demonstrates the importance of thinking laterally.</p> <p>“In science I feel like there’s less and less room to just be creative anymore,” she says.</p> <p>“This has been a really interesting time for me – to dabble in dentistry and look at all the tech that’s available and may be useful in conservation.”</p> <p><strong>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/coral-dental-scanner/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cosmosmagazine.com</a> and was written by Ellen Phiddian.</strong></p> <p><em>Images: Shutterstock</em></p>

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Record coral cover doesn’t necessarily mean the Great Barrier Reef is in good health (despite what you may have heard)

<p>In what seems like excellent news, coral cover in parts of the Great Barrier Reef is at a record high, according to <a href="https://www.aims.gov.au/information-centre/news-and-stories/highest-coral-cover-central-northern-reef-36-years" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new data</a> from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. But this doesn’t necessarily mean our beloved reef is in good health.</p> <p>In the north of the reef, coral cover usually fluctuates between 20% and 30%. Currently, it’s at 36%, the highest level recorded since monitoring began more than three decades ago.</p> <p>This level of coral cover comes hot off the back of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/another-mass-bleaching-event-is-devastating-the-great-barrier-reef-what-will-it-take-for-coral-to-survive-180180" target="_blank" rel="noopener">disturbing decade</a> that saw the reef endure six mass coral bleaching events, four severe tropical cyclones, active outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish, and water quality impacts following floods. So what’s going on?</p> <p>High coral cover findings <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-lot-of-coral-doesnt-always-mean-high-biodiversity-10548" target="_blank" rel="noopener">can be deceptive</a> because they can result from only a few dominant species that grow rapidly after disturbance (such as mass bleaching). These same corals, however, are extremely susceptible to disturbance and are likely to die out within a few years.</p> <h2>The data are robust</h2> <p>The <a href="https://peerj.com/articles/4747/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Great Barrier Reef spans</a> 2,300 kilometres, comprising more than 3,000 individual reefs. It is an exceptionally diverse ecosystem that features more than 12,000 animal species, plus many thousand more species of plankton and marine flora.</p> <p>The reef has been teetering on the edge of receiving an “in-danger” <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-declaring-the-great-barrier-reef-as-in-danger-only-postpones-the-inevitable-164867" target="_blank" rel="noopener">listing</a> from the World Heritage Committee. And it was <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-australias-most-important-report-on-the-environments-deteriorating-health-we-present-its-grim-findings-186131" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recently described</a> in the State of the Environment Report as being in a poor and deteriorating state.</p> <p>To protect the Great Barrier Reef, we need to routinely monitor and report on its condition. The Australian Institute of Marine Science’s long-term monitoring program has been collating and delivering this information since 1985.</p> <p>Its approach involves surveying a selection of reefs that represent different habitat types (inshore, midshelf, offshore) and management zones. The <a href="https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-condition-summary-2021-22" target="_blank" rel="noopener">latest report</a> provides a robust and valuable synopsis of how coral cover has changed at 87 reefs across three sectors (north, central and south) over the past 36 years.</p> <h2>The results</h2> <p>Overall, the long-term monitoring team found coral cover has increased on most reefs. The level of coral cover on reefs near Cape Grenville and Princess Charlotte Bay in the northern sector has bounced back from bleaching, with two reefs having <a href="https://www.aims.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-08/AIMS_LTMP_Report_on%20GBR_coral_status_2021_2022_040822F3.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more than 75% cover</a>.</p> <p>In the central sector, where coral cover has historically been lower than in the north and south, coral cover is now at a region-wide high, at 33%.</p> <p>The southern sector has a dynamic coral cover record. In the late 1980s coral cover surpassed 40%, before dropping to a region-wide low of 12% in 2011 after Cyclone Hamish.</p> <p>The region is currently experiencing outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish. And yet, coral cover in this area is still relatively high at 34%.</p> <p>Based on this robust data set, which shows increases in coral cover indicative of region-wide recovery, things must be looking up for the Great Barrier Reef – right?</p> <h2>Are we being catfished by coral cover?</h2> <p>In the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s report, reef recovery relates solely to an increase in coral cover, so let’s unpack this term.</p> <p>Coral cover is a broad proxy metric that indicates habitat condition. It’s relatively easy data to collect and report on, and is the most widely used monitoring metric on coral reefs.</p> <p>The finding of high coral cover may signify a reef in good condition, and an increase in coral cover after disturbance may signify a recovering reef.</p> <p>But in this instance, it’s more likely the reef is being dominated by only few species, as the report states that branching and plating Acropora species have driven the recovery of coral cover.</p> <p>Acropora coral are renowned for a “boom and bust” life cycle. After disturbances such as a cyclone, Acropora species function as pioneers. They quickly recruit and colonise bare space, and the laterally growing plate-like species can rapidly cover large areas.</p> <p>Fast-growing Acropora corals tend to dominate during the early phase of recovery after disturbances such as the recent series of mass bleaching events. However, these same corals are often susceptible to wave damage, disease or coral bleaching and tend to go bust within a few years.</p> <p>Inferring that a reef has recovered by a person being towed behind a boat to obtain a rapid visual estimate of coral cover is like flying in a helicopter and saying a bushfire-hit forest has recovered because the canopy has grown back.</p> <p>It provides no information about diversity, or the abundance and health of other animals and plants that live in and among the trees, or coral.</p> <h2>Cautious optimism</h2> <p>My <a href="https://theconversation.com/almost-60-coral-species-around-lizard-island-are-missing-and-a-great-barrier-reef-extinction-crisis-could-be-next-163714" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a>, published last year, examined 44 years of coral distribution records around Jiigurru, Lizard Island, at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef.</p> <p>It suggested that 28 of 368 species of hard coral recorded at that location haven’t been seen for at least a decade, and are at risk of local extinction.</p> <p>Lizard Island is one location where coral cover has rapidly increased since the devastating 2016-17 bleaching event. Yet, there is still a real risk local extinctions of coral species have occurred.</p> <p>While there’s no data to prove or disprove it, it’s also probable that extinctions or local declines of coral-affiliated marine life, such as coral-eating fishes, crustaceans and molluscs have also occurred.</p> <p>Without more information at the level of individual species, it is impossible to understand how much of the Great Barrier Reef has been lost, or recovered, since the last mass bleaching event.</p> <p>Based on the coral cover data, it’s tempting to be optimistic. But given more frequent and severe heatwaves and cyclones are predicted in the future, it’s wise to be cautious about the reef’s perceived recovery or resilience.</p> <p><strong>This article originally appeared on The Conversation.</strong></p> <p><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>

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Cats declared an “invasive alien species” in Poland

<p dir="ltr">A scientific institute in Poland has categorised domestic cats as an “invasive alien species”, joining a menagerie of animals on their invasive species list.</p> <p dir="ltr">The Polish Academy of Sciences has deemed the house cat (Felis catus) as an “alien” species as it was domesticated in the Middle East, and “invasive” due to the “negative influence of domestic cats on native biodiversity”, according to a statement.</p> <p dir="ltr">Cats join a long list of animals and plants deemed an “invasive alien species” by the institute, including Japanese knotweed, racoons, clearwing moths and mandarin ducks.</p> <p dir="ltr">The Academy states that cats pose “an unpredictable risk to local wildlife”, citing <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989418303196?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a study</a> that shows cats kill 41.1 million mammals and 8.9 million birds each year, eating an additional 583.4 million mammals and 135.7 birds.</p> <p dir="ltr">Wojciech Solarz, a biologist at the state-run institute, told <a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-poland-wildlife-cats-birds-b942a55135832d085375de73c9cc2e23?user_email=d892765ed707c6b27af3429c2e8ec0607119ec5a15758542d760a9bac7b882a8&amp;utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=July27_MorningWire&amp;utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AP</a> that the criteria to be declared an alien invasive species “are 100 percent met by the cat”.</p> <p dir="ltr">However, cat owners and lovers have expressed outrage at the decision, arguing it could incite abuse or mistreatment of cats, with concerned commenters declaring it “simply stupid and harmful” on the Academy’s Facebook page.</p> <p dir="ltr">AP has also reported that some media reports have incorrectly given the impression that the Academy was calling for cats to be euthanized.</p> <p dir="ltr">Solarz told the outlet he hadn’t expected such a response, adding that no other entry on their database of invasive and alien species had resulted in such an emotional response.</p> <p dir="ltr">He suggested that the negative feedback may be due to a misunderstanding that the Academy was implying that people harm their cats.</p> <p dir="ltr">In actuality, the Academy has only recommended that cat owners limit the amount of time their pets spend outdoors during bird breeding season.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-3485969e-7fff-54f6-de1d-11099865d6bb"></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Images: Getty Images</em></p>

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Australia’s greater glider now an endangered species

<p>This week’s assignment of ‘endangered’ status to the greater glider may surprise many Australians, but for experts it’s hardly unexpected.</p> <p>On Tuesday, Australia’s environment minister Tanya Plibersek accepted advice from the government’s threatened species scientific committee to ‘uplist’ the conservation status of the southern and central <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/greater-glider-glide-into-your-heart/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-type="post" data-id="193138">greater glider</a> (Petauroides volans), a large marsupial that calls forests along Australia’s east coast home.</p> <p>It’s the largest of eastern Australia’s gliding possums (at least another eight are found here), known for its furry body, teddy bear-esque ears, and a canopy-like membrane that allows it to slide through the air. Individuals typically reside in ‘dens’ provided by old eucalyptus tree hollows. Some eucalypts provide the leaves that serve as their primary source of food.</p> <p>But the destruction of vital habitat during the catastrophic <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/climate/what-fuelled-australias-black-summer-fires/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-type="URL" data-id="https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/climate/what-fuelled-australias-black-summer-fires/">Black Summer</a> bushfires in 2019-20 has pushed glider populations of the species to the brink.</p> <h2>Extended family: greater gliders are separate species and are all likely under threat</h2> <p>The greater glider was first listed as vulnerable in 2016, and was considered one species – P. volans. But since 2020, experts consider the glider to be at least three distinct species.</p> <p>P. volans inhabits forests from Proserpine in the Whitsunday region of Queensland down the continent’s east coast to the forested areas surrounding Melbourne, Victoria. P. minor occupies the wet-dry tropical region near Townsville and Cairns north-eastern Australia, and has been now added to the threatened species list as ‘vulnerable’.</p> <p>A third species – P. armillatus – is considered vulnerable by Queensland’s government, and likely faces the same pressures as the others.</p> <p>“The taxonomy of the gliders is not completely resolved as yet,” explains Professor David Lindenmayer of the Australian National University, Canberra. “There may be up to five species of greater gliders, and it’s unlikely that any of them will be secure in number.</p> <p>“We’re going to have to work hard to make sure that we can conserve all of those species because it’s all an important part of Australia’s natural heritage.”</p> <p>There is encouraging language from the Australian government, with environment minister Plibersek publicly backing efforts to help gliders recover from the Black Summer bushfires. But while those fires had a devastating effect on numerous plant and animal populations, other factors like climate change, habitat clearing and fragmentation and timber harvesting pose existential threats to glider survival.</p> <p>“All these various threats and factors interacting in different ways ultimately increase the risk of extinction,” says Luke Emerson, a researcher at Deakin University’s Centre for Integrative Ecology who specialises in the ecology of arboreal marsupials like the glider.</p> <p>“Rising temperatures, increasing fire severity, shorter fire intervals, logging on top of that, conversion and fragmentation of habitat… all these things are interacting to put greater pressure on arboreal marsupials.</p> <p>“These multiple threats are interacting in ways that we can predict, but there’s probably ways that we can’t predict that are going to negatively impact them as well.”</p> <h2>The bad list: more Australian icons added or re-graded in 2022</h2> <p>The greater glider isn’t alone in being uplisted on the nation’s threatened species register in 2022.</p> <p>Populations of the iconic koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) living in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory were notably transferred from vulnerable to endangered status <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/animals/explainer-koalas-endangered-nsw-qld-act/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">earlier this year.</a> The yellow-bellied glider (Petaurus australis australis) and long-nosed potoroo (Potorous tridactylus trisulcatus) were listed as vulnerable in March.</p> <p>And many species other than mammals have been added to the list in 2022.</p> <p>Watson’s (Litoria watsoni) and Littlejohn’s tree frog (L. littlejohni), the gang-gang cockatoo (Callocephalon fimbriatum) and the South Australian Bassian thrush (Zoothera lunulata halmaturina) have been either added or uplisted to endangered, while the pilotbird (Pycnoptilus floccosus) was added as vulnerable.</p> <p>The work to protect animal species from spiraling further towards extinction is a difficult business at the best of times. Triumphs are rare.</p> <p>One of note is Zoos Victoria’s 33-year-old captive breeding program for eastern barred bandicoots (Perameles gunnii), which was retired in 2021 when the species – previously extinct in the wild – was downlisted to endangered. The species is now regenerating itself in specially fenced, predator free release sites across Victoria.</p> <p>For Zoos Victoria reproductive biologist Dr Marissa Parrot, the success of the bandicoot program was a career high point. But alongside these all-too-rare moments of success are declines in other species.</p> <p>“It’s such an amazing feeling to know that you’ve made a difference to a species… but it’s just one of thousands that do need help,” Parrott says. “When an animal is added to the endangered species list, they’re going to hopefully get more focus and more funding, and they need that long-term care.</p> <p>“But it also means that they’ve got to the point where they need to be added to an endangered list, and that’s quite devastating.”</p> <p>Parrott believes that improving public knowledge of both the existence of species and the threats that exist in the wild may improve outcomes for many animals.</p> <p>That knowledge-building can extend to people taking individual action – such as providing suitable food trees to support endangered animals that lose habitat, participation in citizen science programs or even turning outdoor lights off to support threatened moths.</p> <p>While the uplisting of species like the greater glider is a troubling event, Parrott say it can serve to draw people’s attention to the challenges confronting lesser-known animals.</p> <p>“Animals like the greater glider are beautiful, and they’re fluffy, and they can really grab people’s attention,” she says. “It’s great that they’re getting that attention, but we also have many species no one’s ever heard of, like the pookila (New Holland mouse), and the <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/australia/missing-the-bogong-moth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-type="URL" data-id="https://cosmosmagazine.com/australia/missing-the-bogong-moth/">bogong moth</a>, which is also a tiny little animal, but an amazing species.</p> <p>“Just last week I’ve seen gang gang cockatoos and grey-headed flying foxes in my own suburb – showing that these endangered species that are in trouble are actually around us [is important].”</p> <h2>Common causes and solutions for endangerment</h2> <p>The challenges confronting greater gliders are shared by these other, less prominent animals.</p> <p>While addressing climate change requires largescale transformation across society, there are other actions that can be implemented to provide more immediate relief for native species.</p> <p>Government conservation advice provided for all animals added or uplisted so far in 2022 notes land and vegetation clearing as a survival threat. For gliders, it poses a catastrophic risk.</p> <p>That’s why moving the forestry industry to an entirely plantation-based sector is a critical solution Lindenmayer believes needs to be implemented, and soon.</p> <p>“It’s time to exit native forest logging,” he says. “The Western Australians have done this: on the 31st of December 2023, [WA] will no longer be logging native forests.</p> <p>“Victoria needs to do that at the same time, so does New South Wales. It’s really important that we tackle that issue, which renders huge areas of forest unsuitable for animals like greater gliders, either permanently or for periods of up to 200 years.”</p> <p>Lindenmayer also points to non-forestry land clearing and coal mine construction in the eastern states as adding pressure to threatened forest-dwellers. But he also wants to see the government to take biodiversity seriously.</p> <p>“The federal minister can actually get involved in this seriously and not unravel, but improve, environmental laws, to make sure that more biodiversity is not lost. That’s critical.”</p> <p>Australia <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1417301112" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">accounts for 35%</a> of global modern mammal extinctions. Over the past 200 years, about 10% of our terrestrial endemic mammals have gone extinct.</p> <p>This article originally appeared in <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/greater-glider-now-endangered/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cosmos Magazine</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

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Arctic heatwaves building in intensity

<div> <p>Ocean heatwaves in the Arctic are increasing in power and frequency, quite probably at a greater rate than in other oceans, according to new research.</p> <p>Marine heatwaves are events in which water temperatures rise well above normal and remain there for days, weeks, or even months. At lower latitudes, they can damage corals and force fish and marine mammals to temporarily move away in pursuit of food and cooler water. It’s an effect that has been compared to that of decades of climate change impact, but all at once.</p> <p>In the Arctic, the effect isn’t as well documented, but with climate change proceeding more dramatically there than at lower latitudes, a team led by Boyin Huang of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina, examined nearly four decades of US, European and Japanese satellite data to find out how climate change is altering the strength and frequency of these heatwaves.</p> <p>Huang presented his study this week at the 2022 Ocean Sciences Meeting, which for the first time was conducted entirely virtually. (Organisers had already said two years ago that they wanted to include a virtual component this year, in order to save resources and spare the climate, even before COVID-19 forced them to do so.)</p> <p>The study examined sea-surface temperatures,  air temperatures, ice coverage and the extent of cloud coverage, all of which can increase the likelihood of heatwaves. </p> <p>On average, Huang said, the Arctic sees one to two such heatwaves per summer. But over his study period, from 1982 to 2020, they were getting longer, stronger and extending ever deeper into autumn.</p> <p>In the early years, Huang says, the heatwaves were confined to a short season from late July to early August. Since then, however, that season has dramatically expanded, ending in mid-August or even through to the end of September.</p> <p>Other scientists are studying different types of changes in the Arctic that may (or may not) be related. For example, Michael Karcher, a senior researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, says scientists realised 25 years ago that plumes of iodine-129 (a rare, radioactive isotope of iodine) from nuclear fuel reprocessing plants in France and the UK can be used as a tracer of the flow of North Atlantic seawater into and around the Artic Ocean.</p> <p>What this has revealed, Karcher told the Ocean Sciences Meeting, is that there has been a change in the circulation pattern in the Arctic Ocean that has allowed relatively warm Atlantic Ocean water to penetrate further toward Alaska, reducing the spread of cooler Pacific water (which is not contaminated with iodine-129, and is therefore easy to distinguish).</p> <p>Karcher and Huang were unable to say whether this was contributing to Arctic heatwaves. In theory, the warmer water from the Atlantic should have some impact as it travels beneath the pack ice.</p> <p>“But how much it interacts with ice is the open question,” says Huang. “Our speculation is that atmospheric forcing [ie top-down heat] is the more important contributor.”</p> <p>The bottom line, however, is clear. Arctic waters are changing, and quickly.</p> <p>Huang’s research was published late last year in Geophysical Research Letters.</p> <p>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oceans/ocean-arctic-heatwaves/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cosmosmagazine.com</a> and was written by Richard A Lovett. </div> <div> </div> <div><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></div>

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Australia's cutest marsupials are now an endangered species

<p>The fight is on to save Australia’s cutest icons.</p><p>Koalas are now officially an “endangered” species in NSW, Queensland and ACT after the federal government upgraded their status from “vulnerable.</p><p>The much-loved marsupials’ population has plummeted in those states over recent years and they are now at serious risk of being wiped out.</p><p>“Today I am increasing the protection for koalas in NSW, the ACT and Queensland listing them as endangered rather than their previous designation of vulnerable,” federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley said on Friday.</p><p>An endangered listing recognises that a species is at high risk of extinction.</p><p>“The impact of prolonged drought, followed by the black summer bushfires, and the cumulative impacts of disease, urbanisation and habitat loss over the past twenty years have led to the advice,” Ms Ley added.</p><p>The environment minister wants Queensland, NSW and Victoria to sign up to a national recovery plan worth $50 million over four years.</p><p>“We are taking unprecedented action to protect the koala, working with scientists, medical researchers, veterinarians, communities, states, local governments and traditional owners,” Ms Ley said.</p><p>The Australian Koala Foundation has estimated there are fewer than 100,000 koalas remaining in the wild, with feral predators and land clearing for development to blame.</p><p>The 2019-20 bushfire crisis and the drought that followed has also contributed to a rapid decline in population. In 2020, a NSW parliamentary inquiry warned the marsupial would likely become extinct before the middle of the century without urgent intervention.</p><p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

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Some endangered species can no longer survive in the wild. So should we alter their genes?

<p>Around the world, populations of many beloved species are declining at increasing rates. According to one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/30/world-plant-species-risk-extinction-fungi-earth">grim projection</a>, as many as 40% of the world’s species may be extinct by 2050. Alarmingly, many of these declines are caused by threats for which few solutions exist.</p> <p>Numerous species now depend on conservation breeding programs for their survival. But these programs typically do not encourage species to adapt and survive in the wild alongside intractable threats such as climate change and disease.</p> <p>This means some species can no longer exist in the wild, which causes major downstream effects on the ecosystem. Consider, for example, how a coral reef would struggle to function without corals.</p> <p>What if there was another way? My colleagues and I have developed an intervention method that aims to give endangered species the genetic features they need to survive in the wild.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411140/original/file-20210714-13-1bf7ccv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="bleached coral with fish" /> <span class="caption">Genetically altering coral may help them survive in a warmer world.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rick Stuart-Smith</span></span></p> <h2>Bringing theory into practice</h2> <p>Over generations, natural selection enables species to adapt to threats. But in many instances today, the speed at which threats are developing is outpacing species’ ability to adapt.</p> <p>This problem is especially apparent in wildlife threatened by newly emerging infectious diseases such as chytridiomycosis in amphibians, and in climate-affected species such as corals.</p> <p>The toolkit my colleagues and I developed is called “targeted genetic intervention” or TGI. It works by increasing the occurrence or frequency of genetic features that impact an organism’s fitness in the presence of the threat. We outline the method in a recent <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169534721003384">research paper</a>.</p> <p>The toolkit involves <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/artificial-selection">artificial selection</a> and <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2019.00175/full">synthetic biology</a>. These tools are well established in agriculture and medicine but relatively untested as conservation tools. We explain them in more detail below.</p> <p>Many tools in our TGI toolkit have been discussed in theory in conservation literature in recent decades. But rapid developments in genome sequencing and synthetic biology mean some are now possible in practice.</p> <p>The developments have made it easier to understand the genetic basis of features which enable a species to adapt, and to manipulate them.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442166/original/file-20220124-19-xc82dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="frog on wet rock" /> <span class="caption">Some animal species cannot adapt in time to survive threats such as disease.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>What is artificial selection?</h2> <p>Humans have long used artificial (or phenotypic) selection to promote desirable characteristics in animals and plants raised for companionship or food. This genetic alteration has led to organisms, such as domestic dogs and maize, that are dramatically different from their wild progenitors.</p> <p>Traditional artificial selection can lead to outcomes, such as high inbreeding rates, that affect the health and resilience of the organism and are undesirable for conservation. If you’ve ever owned a purebred dog, you might be aware of some of these genetic disorders.</p> <p>And when it comes to conservation, determining which individuals from a species are resistant to, say, a deadly pathogen would involve exposing the animal to the threat – clearly not in the interests of species preservation.</p> <p>Scientists in the livestock industry have developed a new approach to circumvent these problems. Called genomic selection, it combines data from laboratory work (such as a disease trial) with the genetic information of the animals to predict which individuals bear genetic features conducive to adaptation.</p> <p>These individuals are then chosen for breeding. Over subsequent generations, a population’s ability to survive alongside pervasive threats increases.</p> <p>Genomic selection has led to disease-resistant salmon and livestock that produce more milk and better tolerate heat. But it is yet to be tested in conservation.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442161/original/file-20220124-27-11vyq0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="cows in green field" /> <span class="caption">Artificial selection has been used to develop traits that humans desire in livestock.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>What is synthetic biology?</h2> <p><a href="https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Synthetic-Biology">Synthetic biology</a> is a toolkit for promoting change in organisms. It includes methods such as transgenesis and gene editing, which can be used to introduce lost or novel genes or tweak specific genetic features.</p> <p>Recent synthetic biology tools such as <a href="https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/genomicresearch/genomeediting/">CRISPR-Cas9</a> have created a buzz in the medical world, and are also starting to gain the <a href="https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/48408">attention</a> of conservation biologists.</p> <p>Such tools can accurately tweak targeted genetic features in an individual organism – making it more able to adapt – while leaving the rest of the genome untouched. The genetic modifications are then passed on to subsequent generations.</p> <p>The method reduces the likelihood of unintended genetic changes that can occur with artificial selection.</p> <p>Synthetic biology methods are currently being trialled for conservation in multiple species around the world. These include the <a href="https://www.esf.edu/chestnut/resistance.htm">chestnut tree</a> and black-footed <a href="https://neo.life/2021/05/cloning-wildlife-and-editing-their-genes-to-protect-them-and-us/">ferrets</a> in the United States, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/gene-editing-is-revealing-how-corals-respond-to-warming-waters-it-could-transform-how-we-manage-our-reefs-143444">corals</a> in Australia.</p> <p>I am working with researchers at the University of Melbourne to develop TGI approaches in Australian frogs. We are trialling these approaches in the iconic southern corroboree frog, and plan to extend them to other species if they prove effective.</p> <p>Worldwide, the disease chytridiomycosis is devastating frog populations. Caused by the fungal pathogen <em>Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis</em>, it has led to the extinction of about <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/amphibian-apocalypse-frogs-salamanders-worst-chytrid-fungus">90 frog species</a> and declines in as many as 500 others.</p> <p>Many frog species now rely on conservation breeding for their continued survival. No effective solution for restoring chytrid-susceptible frogs to the wild exists, because the fungus cannot be eradicated.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442155/original/file-20220124-23-cebr8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="gloved hand removed portion of DNA strand" /> <span class="caption">CRISPR technology could potentially be used to edit the genes of endangered species.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>Looking ahead</h2> <p>As with many conservation approaches, targeted genetic intervention is likely to involve trade-offs. For example, genetic features that make a species resistant to one disease may make it more susceptible to another.</p> <p>But the rapid rate of species declines means we should trial such potential solutions before it’s too late. The longer species are absent from an ecosystem, the greater the chance of irreversible environmental changes.</p> <p>Any genetic intervention of this type should involve all stakeholders, including Indigenous peoples and local communities. And caution should be taken to ensure species are fit for release and pose no risk to the environment.</p> <p>By bringing the concept of TGI to the attention of the public, government, and other scientists, we hope we will spur discussion and encourage research on its risks and benefits.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175226/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tiffany-kosch-1304685">Tiffany Kosch</a>, Research Fellow, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne-722">The University of Melbourne</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-endangered-species-can-no-longer-survive-in-the-wild-so-should-we-alter-their-genes-175226">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Melbourne Zoo</em></p>

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Ancient knowledge is lost when a species disappears. It’s time to let Indigenous people care for their country, their way

<p>Indigenous people across Australia place tremendous cultural and customary value on many species and ecological communities. The very presence of a plant or animal species can trigger an Indigenous person to recall and share knowledge. This is crucial to maintaining culture and managing Country.</p> <p>But as species disappear, ancient knowledge built up over thousands of years also fades away – and fragments of our culture are lost forever.</p> <p>For years, Indigenous groups have pushed for the right to partner with government authorities to “co-manage” culturally significant species and communities. Such recognition of Indigenous rights would require amendments to environment and land management laws.</p> <p>Unfortunately, changes to Australia’s federal environment laws currently underway fall short of what’s needed. To protect Australia’s imperilled species, the law must chart a new course that allows Indigenous groups to manage their Country, their way.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434938/original/file-20211201-25-189bdrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434938/original/file-20211201-25-189bdrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="A woman welcomed to Country" /></a> <span class="caption">Ngurrara Ranger Mary is welcomed to Paruku Country in the Great Sandy Desert. A meeting between many groups discussed threatened and culturally significant species.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Rakotopare/Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation</span></span></p> <h2>Managing the Indigenous estate</h2> <p>Australia’s <a href="https://www.themandarin.com.au/68385-indigenous-estate-ilc-chairperson-eddie-fry-garma/">Indigenous estate</a> takes in about <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0173876">51% of the range</a> of the nation’s threatened vertebrate species.</p> <p>The Indigenous estate refers to the assets held, or reasonably likely to be held, by or for the benefit of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. It includes land and sea held through such means as traditional ownership, native title and land rights organisations. It also includes intangible values such as cultural rights, practice and expression, as well as Indigenous knowledge and traditional management.</p> <p>A range of state and federal programs involve Indigenous participation in land and sea management, offering invaluable protection to the Indigenous estate. These include Indigenous Protected Areas and the successful <a href="https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/environment/indigenous-ranger-programs">Indigenous Ranger program</a>.</p> <p>And many governments and other groups recognise that species and ecological communities can have significant cultural, spiritual and customary value to Indigenous Australians. But often, no legal mechanism exists to protect these entities.</p> <p>Some species and other entities of significance to Indigenous Australians are listed as threatened under Australia’s federal environment law, known as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. But authorities are not required to engage Indigenous Australians in the listing, management or recovery of these species.</p> <p>Indigenous Australians have successfully managed this continent’s landscapes and seascapes for tens of thousands of years. Their approach is holistic and integrated – considering the whole cultural landscape with a deep understanding of the interconnected relationships between species and Country.</p> <p>In contrast, management actions under federal environment law focus on the outcomes of the listed species instead of the overall health of Country.</p> <p>All this has left Indigenous groups underfunded and at the mercy of national-level management decisions, as opposed to place-based Indigenous-led action.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434940/original/file-20211201-25-b87h6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434940/original/file-20211201-25-b87h6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Men sitting around a map" /></a> <span class="caption">Ngurrara Rangers map potential night parrot habitat. The meeting was hosted by Paruku Rangers and Traditional Owners in the Great Sandy Desert.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Rakotopare/Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation</span></span></p> <h2>‘Surprising and disappointing’</h2> <p>The EPBC Act was recently reviewed by Professor Graeme Samuel, who was commissioned by the federal government. His <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au/resources/final-report">final report</a> in 2020 found the law was failing in many ways.</p> <p>Samuel recommended a suite of reforms. Among other goals, they aimed to “respect and harness the knowledge of Indigenous Australians”. One year on and <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7591429/a-year-on-from-a-landmark-report-nature-and-law-reform-is-floundering/">progress</a> on implementing the 38 recommendations is slow.</p> <p>Among the recommendations were that the EPBC Act adopt a set of legally enforceable “national environmental standards” – clear rules that protect the environment and enable sustainable development. The standards <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/28/australia-urged-to-overhaul-environment-laws-and-reverse-decline-of-our-iconic-places">would cover</a> matters such as threatened species, compliance, environmental data and <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au/resources/final-report/appendix-b2-indigenous">Indigenous engagement</a> and participation in decision-making.</p> <p>It was both surprising and disappointing that Indigenous knowledge was not embedded across all proposed environmental standards. The omission means Indigenous perspectives will continue to be relegated to a stand-alone standard of “participation”.</p> <p>In particular, the national standard pertaining to threatened species made no reference to Indigenous knowledge or the Indigenous estate. And proposed <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/pages/44b768d8-75ad-417d-84cc-dfb0e069e97e/files/national-environmental-standard-mnes-2021-draft.pdf">interim standards</a> completely omit Indigenous engagement, participation and values.</p> <p>Without a mandate to include Indigenous people in threatened species planning and recovery, biodiversity will remain at risk. What’s more, significant gaps in the application of Indigenous Knowledge and protection of the Indigenous estate will continue.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434973/original/file-20211201-27-tg1guw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434973/original/file-20211201-27-tg1guw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="hands with green turtle eggs" /></a> <span class="caption">Rangers collecting green turtle eggs on Yanyuwa Country in the Gulf of Carpentaria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Rakotopare</span></span></p> <h2>A new kind of recognition</h2> <p>During the submission process of the review, <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-06/ANON-QJCP-UGT1-F%20-%20Indigenous%20Working%20Group%20-%20Threatened%20Species%20Recovery%20Hub.pdf">many</a> Indigenous and <a href="https://www.ecolsoc.org.au/news/esa-response-to-epbc-interim-report/">non-Indigenous</a> organisations <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au/submissions/anon-qjcp-ugt1-f">lobbied</a> for the recognition of “culturally significant entities”. These groups include the government’s own <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au/submissions/bhlf-qjcp-ug3c-z">Indigenous Advisory Committee</a> and <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au/submissions/anon-k57v-xf2u-j">Threatened Species Scientific Committee</a>.</p> <p>“Culturally significant entities” are species and sites of great or exceptional cultural importance to Indigenous Australians. They might be a source of identity, a medicine, lore, an important traditional food or required for cultural practices. They usually feature prominently in Indigenous knowledge, language and ceremonies.</p> <p>Submissions to the review called for these entities to be formally recognised under the EPBC Act and afforded a far higher level of protection. They also called for the mandatory participation of Indigenous Australians in threatened species nominations, listings, policy and management.</p> <p>Many Indigenous Australians were disappointed this measure was not mentioned in Samuel’s final report. Without proper legal protection, culturally significant entities will not be assessed and can be damaged by threats such as climate change, inappropriate land management and poorly conceived development proposals.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434970/original/file-20211201-13-1b11i3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Man holds lizard" /> <span class="caption">A yellow-spotted monitor – a culturally significant bush tucker species – on Karajarri Country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Legge</span></span></p> <h2>From engagement to empowerment</h2> <p>It’s time for governments and conservation groups to recognise the enduring value of the Indigenous estate and knowledge in curbing Australia’s parlous record of biodiversity loss.</p> <p>While many of Samuel’s recommendations attempted to address issues raised by Indigenous Australians, they fall short of true empowerment and global best practice.</p> <p>As the size and scale of the Indigenous estate continues to <a href="https://minister.awe.gov.au/ley/media-releases/australia-signs-international-biodiversity-declaration">grow</a>, so to does the opportunity to arrest biodiversity decline. Rather than sitting in the back seat, Indigenous Australians must be up front in managing the recovery of Australia’s unique and precious environment.</p> <p><em>The authors acknowledge and thank the following people for their contributions to this work and article: Oliver Costello, a Bundjalung man; and Cissy Gore-Birch, a Jaru, Nyikina and Balanggarra woman, and Executive Manager Aboriginal Engagement at Bush Heritage Australia.</em><!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172760/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/teagan-goolmeer-1288819">Teagan Goolmeer</a>, PhD Candidate, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne-722">The University of Melbourne</a></em>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/assoc-prof-bradley-j-moggridge-400729">Assoc Prof Bradley J. Moggridge</a>, Associate Professor in Indigenous Water Science, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-canberra-865">University of Canberra</a></em>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/professor-stephen-van-leeuwen-1289086">Professor Stephen van Leeuwen</a>, BHP / Curtin Indigenous Chair of Biodiversity &amp; Environmental Science, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/curtin-university-873">Curtin University</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-knowledge-is-lost-when-a-species-disappears-its-time-to-let-indigenous-people-care-for-their-country-their-way-172760">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Rakotopare/Karajarri Traditional Lands Association</span></span></em></p>

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Invasive species may travel trade routes

<div> <div class="copy"> <p>Invasive species could increase their global presence via China’s developing trade routes, researchers warn.</p> <p>A new study models the distribution and likelihood of invasion of terrestrial vertebrate species along China’s Belt and Road Initiative (<a rel="noopener" href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/regional-integration/brief/belt-and-road-initiative" target="_blank">BRI</a>), a massive infrastructure development project involving six proposed economic corridors and 121 countries.</p> <p><span style="font-family: inherit;">The largest project of its kind ever attempted, the BRI has an estimated cost of an unprecedented US$4 trillion for road development, shipping routes and ports. </span></p> <p>A research team led by Yiming Li from the Chinese Academy of Sciences used species distribution modelling to assess the introduction risks for a suite of 816 known invasive terrestrial vertebrate species, as well as habitat suitability across the BRI regions.</p> <p>Habitat suitability is an indicator of the likelihood a species will become established after introduction.</p> <p>The findings, reported in a <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31670-1" target="_blank">paper</a> published in the journal Current Biology, reveal that more than two thirds of BRI countries have a lethal combination of introduction risk and high habitat suitability.</p> <p><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Of particular concern, we find that the majority of both introduction hotspots and areas with high habitat suitability fall along the six proposed Economic Corridors,” says Li.</span></p> <p>The team identified 14 “invasion hotspots” where biosecurity efforts might best be directed. They are located across the BRI countries, from the Caribbean Islands, northern Africa and Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia and New Zealand. Australia is not a member country or signatory to the scheme.</p> <p>One of the 816 <a rel="noopener" href="http://www.iucngisd.org/gisd/100_worst.php" target="_blank">species of concern</a> is the large North American bullfrog, (Lithobates catesbeianus or Rana catesbeiana), which is originally from east of the Rocky Mountains. It is a voracious predator of local frogs and other reptiles, and a carrier of chytrid fungus, which decimates local frog populations. The bullfrog is now established in over 40 countries, and very <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2004/09/news-bullfrogs-invading-nearly-unstoppable/" target="_blank">difficult to eradicate</a> once established.</p> <p><span style="font-family: inherit;">The findings have prompted the researchers to urgently recommend “the initiation of a project targeting early prevention, strict surveillance, rapid response and effective control of alien species in BRI countries to ensure that this development is sustainable.” This proposed biosecurity plan and its implementation could be funded by the establishment of a dedicated fund, they suggest.</span></p> <p>In separate <a rel="noopener" href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0452-8" target="_blank">correspondence</a> to the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, Alex Lechner from the University of Nottingham Malaysia and two colleagues suggest that as the 50-year BRI is still only five years old, there is an opportunity to incorporate biodiversity conservation as one of its core values.</p> <p><span style="font-family: inherit;">For example, they suggest, the Chinese government could plan and implement a network of protected areas and wildlife corridors across Eurasia, as well as preventing and/or controlling alien species invasion effectively. </span></p> <p>China has embraced renewable energy and technology enthusiastically, and could potentially be a world leader in biodiversity conservation, they write.</p> <em>Image credits: Getty Images </em></div> <div id="contributors"> <p><em>This article was originally published on <a rel="noopener" href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/sustainability/invasive-species-may-travel-chinas-new-trade-routes/" target="_blank">cosmosmagazine.com</a> and was written by Tanya Loos.</em></p> </div> </div>

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Garden birds are struggling: four ways to help

<p>More than a quarter of Britain’s birds are now on the RSPB’s <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/uk-conservation-status-explained/" target="_blank">red list</a>, meaning that their numbers are in severe decline.</p> <p>Some of the recent additions to the red list are thought of as common garden birds, such as the greenfinch. Others, such as the swift and house martin, only spend spring and summer visiting the UK before migrating to warmer climes. But the environment they encounter in the UK, as well as along their migration routes, affects their survival significantly.</p> <p>Many of the species that we feed in our gardens and on balconies are under threat. Here are four ways to help them.</p> <p><strong>1. Clean your bird feeders and bird baths</strong></p> <p>In the wild, with a few exceptions such as starlings, birds don’t come into close contact with each other much. This lack of contact makes it harder for diseases to spread.</p> <p>Bird feeders change this dynamic. The presence of a bird feeder means that many individual birds from many different species feed in the same area. This leads to the <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.bto.org/community/news/201803-feed-birds-scientists-highlight-risks-disease-garden-bird-feeders" target="_blank">spread of disease</a>, because birds often poo where they eat, leaving pathogens to infect the next visitor.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438076/original/file-20211216-23-13tbwiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Two birds on a house shaped feeder" /> <em><span class="caption">Greenfinches on a bird feeder.</span> <span class="attribution"><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/greenfinches-perching-on-bird-feeder-spring-1667803654" target="_blank" class="source">Chamois huntress/Shutterstock</a></span></em></p> <p>The greenfinch, a once common garden bird now added to the red list, has suffered because of this. The disease <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/gbw/gardens-wildlife/garden-birds/disease/trichomonosis" target="_blank">trichomonosis</a>, which used to just infect pigeons and doves, has spread to greenfinches with deadly consequences. Regular cleaning of your garden bird feeders and bird baths can reduce this risk.</p> <p><strong>2. Install bird nesting boxes</strong></p> <p>Many people help birds by putting up nest boxes in their gardens. But these boxes are mostly made for robins and tits who nest in open boxes, or ones with small holes. These nest boxes mimic the crevices and holes that would be available in mature trees.</p> <p>Swifts and house martins are new entrants to the red list, and both of these will readily use man-made nesting places if we provide them – with a few modifications for their needs.</p> <p>House martins will nest in a pre-made or home-made <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/how-you-can-help-birds/nestboxes/how-to-attract-house-martins/" target="_blank">nest cup</a> which mimics the mud nests house martins make for themselves.</p> <p>Swifts will <a rel="noopener" href="http://www.saveourswifts.co.uk/attractswifts.htm" target="_blank">nest in boxes</a>, but they take a bit more work to attract. The best way to do this is to play their screeching call from a speaker placed close to the nest box, to get them to investigate and hopefully nest.</p> <p>You can make nest boxes attractive to these species by installing them in the eaves of your home, as they need them to be up high so they can take flight from them easily.</p> <p><strong>3. Add some insect-friendly plants</strong></p> <p>Many of the species entering the red list, such as the house martin and house sparrow, feed on insects. Insects numbers have <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/february/the-world-s-insect-populations-are-plummeting-everywhere-we-look.html" target="_blank">declined rapidly</a>, so it is no surprise that these avian predators are finding it hard to feed themselves and their chicks.</p> <p>You may love a neat and tidy garden or balcony, but set aside an area to be a bit messier and weedier to attract insects. Adding <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/conservation-biodiversity/wildlife/plants-for-pollinators" target="_blank">pollinator-friendly plants</a>, such as lavender, foxglove and sedum, could really boost insect numbers – natural bird food – in your garden.</p> <p><strong>4. Reduce dangers to birds</strong></p> <p><a rel="noopener" href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049369" target="_blank">Pet cats are predators</a> and can target species like house sparrows, which remain on the red list. Even the presence of cats could be enough to <a rel="noopener" href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.12025" target="_blank">scare birds</a>, reducing the number of young they may be able to have. This may have a more damaging impact on bird populations than the number of birds killed by cats.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438077/original/file-20211216-17-10dzdgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Cat stalking along fence under roses" /> <em><span class="caption">Cats are predators and their presence affects bird populations.</span> <span class="attribution"><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cat-burglar-front-roses-on-prowl-1503499694" target="_blank" class="source">Lilly P. Green/Shutterstock</a></span></em></p> <p>If you own a cat, there are ways for you to reduce its effect on bird numbers. A collar with a bell is an effective way to warn birds and other animals about a cat’s presence.</p> <p>In addition, you could consider restricting when cats are allowed outside to just the daytime, as birds can be more vulnerable in the very early morning when they wake and start to look for food. Alternatively, you could keep cats inside entirely. It is very common in Australia and the US for cats to remain indoors.</p> <p>These changes may seem small and your garden or outdoor space may not be big, but gardens in the UK <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/habitats/towns-and-gardens" target="_blank">cover more area</a> that all of our nature reserves put together. Encouraging wildlife in these garden habitats can make a big difference.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173025/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/becky-thomas-506528" target="_blank">Becky Thomas</a>, Senior Teaching Fellow in Ecology, <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/royal-holloway-university-of-london-795" target="_blank">Royal Holloway University of London</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/garden-birds-are-struggling-four-ways-to-help-173025" target="_blank">original article</a>.</em></p> <p><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

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Hibbert’s flowers and Hitler’s beetle – what do we do when species are named after history’s monsters?

<p>“What’s in a name?”, <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/70/3822.html">asked Juliet of Romeo</a>. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”</p> <p>But, as with the Montagues and Capulets, names mean a lot, and can cause a great deal of heartache.</p> <p>My colleagues and I are <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-the-science-of-tax-and-five-other-things-you-should-know-about-taxonomy-78926">taxonomists</a>, which means we name living things. While we’ve never named a rose, we do discover and name new Australian species of plants and animals – and there are a lot of them!</p> <p>For each new species we discover, we create and publish a Latin scientific name, following a set of international rules and conventions. The name has two parts: the first part is the genus name (such as <em>Eucalyptus</em>), which describes the group of species to which the new species belongs, and the second part is a species name (such as <em>globulus</em>, thereby making the name <em>Eucalyptus globulus</em>) particular to the new species itself. New species are either added to an existing genus, or occasionally, if they’re sufficiently novel, are given their own new genus.</p> <p>Some scientific names are widely known – arguably none more so than our own, <em>Homo sapiens</em>. And gardeners or nature enthusiasts will be familiar with genus names such as <em>Acacia</em>, <em>Callistemon</em> or <em>Banksia</em>.</p> <p>This all sounds pretty uncontroversial. But as with Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, history and tradition sometimes present problems.</p> <h2>What’s in a name?</h2> <p>Take the genus <em><a href="http://www.flora.sa.gov.au/cgi-bin/speciesfacts_display.cgi?form=speciesfacts&amp;name=Hibbertia">Hibbertia</a></em>, the Australian guineaflowers. This is one of the largest genera of plants in Australia, and the one we study.</p> <p>There are many new and yet-unnamed species of <em>Hibbertia</em>, which means new species names are regularly added to this genus.</p> <p>Many scientific names are derived from a feature of the species or genus being named, such as <em>Eucalyptus</em>, from the Greek for “well-covered” (a reference to the operculum or bud-cap that covers unopened eucalypt flowers).</p> <p>Others <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-funny-to-name-species-after-celebrities-but-theres-a-serious-side-too-95513">honour significant people</a>, either living or dead. <em>Hibbertia</em> is named after a wealthy 19th-century English patron of botany, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hibbert">George Hibbert</a>.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="George Hibbert by Thomas Lawrence" /> <span class="caption">George Hibbert: big fan of flowers and slavery.</span> <span class="attribution"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Hibbert_by_Thomas_Lawrence,_1811.JPG" class="source">Thomas Lawrence/Stephen C. Dickson/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" class="license">CC BY-SA</a></span></p> <p>And here’s where things stop being straightforward, because Hibbert’s wealth came almost entirely from the transatlantic slave trade. He profited from taking slaves from Africa to the New World, selling some and using others on his family’s extensive plantations, then transporting slave-produced sugar and cotton back to England.</p> <p>Hibbert was also a prominent member of the British parliament and a <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/16791">staunch opponent of abolition</a>. He and his ilk argued that slavery was economically necessary for England, and even that slaves were better off on the plantations than in their homelands.</p> <p>Even at the time, his views were considered abhorrent by many critics. But despite this, he was handsomely recompensed for his “losses” when Britain finally abolished slavery in 1807.</p> <p>So, should Hibbert be honoured with the name of a genus of plants, to which new species are still being added today – effectively meaning he is honoured afresh with each new publication?</p> <p>We don’t believe so. Just like statues, buildings, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/was-first-governor-james-stirling-had-links-to-slavery-as-well-as-directing-a-massacre-should-he-be-honoured-162078">street or suburb names</a>, we think a reckoning is due for scientific species names that honour people who held views or acted in ways that are deeply dishonourable, highly problematic or truly egregious by modern standards.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="Anophthalmus hitleri" /> <span class="caption">This beetle doesn’t deserve to be named after the most reviled figure of the 20th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anophthalmus_hitleri_HabitusDors.jpg" class="source">Michael Munich/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" class="license">CC BY-SA</a></span></p> <p>Just as Western Australia’s King Leopold Range <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-03/wa-king-leopold-ranges-renamed-wunaamin-miliwundi-ranges/12416254">was recently renamed</a> to remove the link to the atrocious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium">Leopold II of Belgium</a>, we would like <em>Hibbertia</em> to bear a more appropriate and less troubling name.</p> <p>The same goes for the Great Barrier Reef coral <em><a href="http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/elegance-coral/">Catalaphyllia jardinei</a></em>, named after Frank Jardine, a brutal dispossessor of Aboriginal people in North Queensland. And, perhaps most astoundingly, the rare Slovenian cave beetle <em><a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/773804">Anophthalmus hitleri</a></em>, which was named in 1933 in honour of Adolf Hitler.</p> <p>This name is unfortunate for several reasons: despite being a small, somewhat nondescript, blind beetle, in recent years it has been reportedly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fans-exterminate-hitler-beetle-6232054.html">pushed to the brink of extinction</a> by Nazi memorabilia enthusiasts. Specimens are even being stolen from museum collections for sale into this lucrative market.</p> <h2>Aye, there’s the rub</h2> <p>Unfortunately, the official rules don’t allow us to rename <em>Hibbertia</em> or any other species that has a troubling or inappropriate name.</p> <p>To solve this, we propose a change to the international rules for naming species. Our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/tax.12620">proposal</a>, if adopted, would establish an international expert committee to decide what do about scientific names that honour inappropriate people or are based on culturally offensive words.</p> <p>An example of the latter is the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/tax.12622">many names of plants</a> based on the Latin <em>caffra</em>, the origin of which is a word so offensive to Black Africans that its use is <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/k-word-south-africa-and-proposed-new-penalties-against-hate-speech">banned in South Africa</a>.</p> <p>Some may argue the scholarly naming of species should remain aloof from social change, and that Hibbert’s views on slavery are irrelevant to the classification of Australian flowers. We counter that, just like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Colston">toppling statues in Bristol Harbour</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/18/goodbye-cecil-rhodes-house-renamed-to-lose-link-to-british-empire-builder-in-africa">removing Cecil Rhodes’ name from public buildings</a>, renaming things is important and necessary if we are to right history’s wrongs.</p> <p>We believe that science, including taxonomy, must be socially responsible and responsive. Science is embedded in culture rather than housed in ivory towers, and scientists should work for the common good rather than blindly follow tradition. Deeply problematic names pervade science just as they pervade our streets, cities and landscapes.</p> <p><em>Hibbertia</em> may be just a name, but we believe a different name for this lovely genus of Australian flowers would smell much sweeter.</p> <p><em>This article was co-authored by Tim Hammer, a postdoctoral research fellow at the State Herbarium of South Australia.</em><!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172602/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kevin-thiele-136882">Kevin Thiele</a>, Adjunct Assoc. Professor, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-western-australia-1067">The University of Western Australia</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hibberts-flowers-and-hitlers-beetle-what-do-we-do-when-species-are-named-after-historys-monsters-172602">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: John Tann/Wikimedia Commons</em></p>

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Hibbert’s flowers and Hitler’s beetle – what do we do when species are named after history’s monsters?

<p>“What’s in a name?”, <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.bartleby.com/70/3822.html" target="_blank">asked Juliet of Romeo</a>. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”</p> <p>But, as with the Montagues and Capulets, names mean a lot, and can cause a great deal of heartache.</p> <p>My colleagues and I are <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-the-science-of-tax-and-five-other-things-you-should-know-about-taxonomy-78926" target="_blank">taxonomists</a>, which means we name living things. While we’ve never named a rose, we do discover and name new Australian species of plants and animals – and there are a lot of them!</p> <p>For each new species we discover, we create and publish a Latin scientific name, following a set of international rules and conventions. The name has two parts: the first part is the genus name (such as <em>Eucalyptus</em>), which describes the group of species to which the new species belongs, and the second part is a species name (such as <em>globulus</em>, thereby making the name <em>Eucalyptus globulus</em>) particular to the new species itself. New species are either added to an existing genus, or occasionally, if they’re sufficiently novel, are given their own new genus.</p> <p>Some scientific names are widely known – arguably none more so than our own, <em>Homo sapiens</em>. And gardeners or nature enthusiasts will be familiar with genus names such as <em>Acacia</em>, <em>Callistemon</em> or <em>Banksia</em>.</p> <p>This all sounds pretty uncontroversial. But as with Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, history and tradition sometimes present problems.</p> <p><strong>What’s in a name?</strong></p> <p>Take the genus <em><a rel="noopener" href="http://www.flora.sa.gov.au/cgi-bin/speciesfacts_display.cgi?form=speciesfacts&amp;name=Hibbertia" target="_blank">Hibbertia</a></em>, the Australian guineaflowers. This is one of the largest genera of plants in Australia, and the one we study.</p> <p>There are many new and yet-unnamed species of <em>Hibbertia</em>, which means new species names are regularly added to this genus.</p> <p>Many scientific names are derived from a feature of the species or genus being named, such as <em>Eucalyptus</em>, from the Greek for “well-covered” (a reference to the operculum or bud-cap that covers unopened eucalypt flowers).</p> <p>Others <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/its-funny-to-name-species-after-celebrities-but-theres-a-serious-side-too-95513" target="_blank">honour significant people</a>, either living or dead. <em>Hibbertia</em> is named after a wealthy 19th-century English patron of botany, <a rel="noopener" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hibbert" target="_blank">George Hibbert</a>.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="George Hibbert by Thomas Lawrence" /></p> <p><em><span class="caption">George Hibbert: big fan of flowers and slavery.</span> <span class="attribution"><a rel="noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Hibbert_by_Thomas_Lawrence,_1811.JPG" target="_blank" class="source">Thomas Lawrence/Stephen C. Dickson/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a rel="noopener" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" class="license">CC BY-SA</a></span></em></p> <p>And here’s where things stop being straightforward, because Hibbert’s wealth came almost entirely from the transatlantic slave trade. He profited from taking slaves from Africa to the New World, selling some and using others on his family’s extensive plantations, then transporting slave-produced sugar and cotton back to England.</p> <p>Hibbert was also a prominent member of the British parliament and a <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/16791" target="_blank">staunch opponent of abolition</a>. He and his ilk argued that slavery was economically necessary for England, and even that slaves were better off on the plantations than in their homelands.</p> <p>Even at the time, his views were considered abhorrent by many critics. But despite this, he was handsomely recompensed for his “losses” when Britain finally abolished slavery in 1807.</p> <p>So, should Hibbert be honoured with the name of a genus of plants, to which new species are still being added today – effectively meaning he is honoured afresh with each new publication?</p> <p>We don’t believe so. Just like statues, buildings, and <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/was-first-governor-james-stirling-had-links-to-slavery-as-well-as-directing-a-massacre-should-he-be-honoured-162078" target="_blank">street or suburb names</a>, we think a reckoning is due for scientific species names that honour people who held views or acted in ways that are deeply dishonourable, highly problematic or truly egregious by modern standards.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="Anophthalmus hitleri" /></p> <p><em><span class="caption">This beetle doesn’t deserve to be named after the most reviled figure of the 20th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><a rel="noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anophthalmus_hitleri_HabitusDors.jpg" target="_blank" class="source">Michael Munich/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a rel="noopener" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" class="license">CC BY-SA</a></span></em></p> <p>Just as Western Australia’s King Leopold Range <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-03/wa-king-leopold-ranges-renamed-wunaamin-miliwundi-ranges/12416254" target="_blank">was recently renamed</a> to remove the link to the atrocious <a rel="noopener" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium" target="_blank">Leopold II of Belgium</a>, we would like <em>Hibbertia</em> to bear a more appropriate and less troubling name.</p> <p>The same goes for the Great Barrier Reef coral <em><a rel="noopener" href="http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/elegance-coral/" target="_blank">Catalaphyllia jardinei</a></em>, named after Frank Jardine, a brutal dispossessor of Aboriginal people in North Queensland. And, perhaps most astoundingly, the rare Slovenian cave beetle <em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/773804" target="_blank">Anophthalmus hitleri</a></em>, which was named in 1933 in honour of Adolf Hitler.</p> <p>This name is unfortunate for several reasons: despite being a small, somewhat nondescript, blind beetle, in recent years it has been reportedly <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fans-exterminate-hitler-beetle-6232054.html" target="_blank">pushed to the brink of extinction</a> by Nazi memorabilia enthusiasts. Specimens are even being stolen from museum collections for sale into this lucrative market.</p> <p><strong>Aye, there’s the rub</strong></p> <p>Unfortunately, the official rules don’t allow us to rename <em>Hibbertia</em> or any other species that has a troubling or inappropriate name.</p> <p>To solve this, we propose a change to the international rules for naming species. Our <a rel="noopener" href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/tax.12620" target="_blank">proposal</a>, if adopted, would establish an international expert committee to decide what do about scientific names that honour inappropriate people or are based on culturally offensive words.</p> <p>An example of the latter is the <a rel="noopener" href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/tax.12622" target="_blank">many names of plants</a> based on the Latin <em>caffra</em>, the origin of which is a word so offensive to Black Africans that its use is <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/k-word-south-africa-and-proposed-new-penalties-against-hate-speech" target="_blank">banned in South Africa</a>.</p> <p>Some may argue the scholarly naming of species should remain aloof from social change, and that Hibbert’s views on slavery are irrelevant to the classification of Australian flowers. We counter that, just like <a rel="noopener" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Colston" target="_blank">toppling statues in Bristol Harbour</a> or <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/18/goodbye-cecil-rhodes-house-renamed-to-lose-link-to-british-empire-builder-in-africa" target="_blank">removing Cecil Rhodes’ name from public buildings</a>, renaming things is important and necessary if we are to right history’s wrongs.</p> <p>We believe that science, including taxonomy, must be socially responsible and responsive. Science is embedded in culture rather than housed in ivory towers, and scientists should work for the common good rather than blindly follow tradition. Deeply problematic names pervade science just as they pervade our streets, cities and landscapes.</p> <p><em>Hibbertia</em> may be just a name, but we believe a different name for this lovely genus of Australian flowers would smell much sweeter.</p> <p><em>This article was co-authored by Tim Hammer, a postdoctoral research fellow at the State Herbarium of South Australia.</em><!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172602/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kevin-thiele-136882" target="_blank">Kevin Thiele</a>, Adjunct Assoc. Professor, <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-western-australia-1067" target="_blank">The University of Western Australia</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/hibberts-flowers-and-hitlers-beetle-what-do-we-do-when-species-are-named-after-historys-monsters-172602" target="_blank">original article</a>.</em></p> <p><em><span class="attribution">Image: <a rel="noopener" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hibbertia_procumbens_(6691568261).jpg" target="_blank" class="source">John Tann/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a rel="noopener" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" class="license">CC BY-SA</a></span></em></p>

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With commercial galleries an endangered species, are art fairs a necessary evil?

<p>Although record numbers of people are flocking to exhibitions in the major public art galleries, foot traffic into commercial art galleries is dwindling at an alarming rate. Embarrassed gallery directors of well-established and well-known commercial art galleries will quietly confess that frequently they scarcely get more than a dozen visitors a day. Outside the flurry of activity on the day of the opening, very little happens for the duration of the show.</p> <p>This is not a peculiarity of the Australian art scene, I have heard similar accounts in London, Manhattan and Paris. The art public has largely ceased visiting commercial art galleries as a regular social activity and art collectors are frequently buying over the internet or through art fairs. In fact, many galleries admit that most of their sales occur via their websites, through commissions or at art fairs, with a shrinking proportion from exhibitions or their stockroom by actual walk-in customers.</p> <p>The commercial art galleries have become an endangered species and their numbers are shrinking before our eyes. Leaving aside China and its urban arts precincts, such as <a href="http://www.798district.com/">798 Art Zone in Beijing</a>, again this is a trend that can be noted in much of Europe, America and Australasia.</p> <p>At the same time, the art market is relatively buoyant, albeit somewhat differently configured from the traditional one. The art auction market in many quarters is thriving and, as persistent rumours have it, not infrequently auction houses leave their role as purely a secondary market and increasingly source work directly from artists’ studios. This seeps into their lavish catalogues.</p> <p>The other booming part of the art trade is the art fairs. Here I will pause on a case study of the <a href="http://www.artfair.co.nz/">Auckland Art Fair 2019</a>. Started by a charitable trust about a dozen years ago and run as a biennial, in 2016 the fair, with new sponsorship and a new management team of Stephanie Post and Hayley White, was reorientated. As of 2018, it has become an annual art fair with a focus on the Pacific Rim region. It remains the only major art fair in New Zealand.</p> <p>Situated in The Cloud, a scenic setting on Queens Wharf in central Auckland, this location also limits its size to create an intimate, friendly, human-scale fair, unlike the vast expanses of the <a href="http://www.expochicago.com/">Chicago Art Fair</a> or even <a href="http://www.sydneycontemporary.com.au/">Sydney Contemporary</a> in the Carriageworks.</p> <p>The nuts and bolts of the Auckland Art Fair is that galleries from the Pacific Rim region can apply to exhibit and a curatorial committee of four curators, two from public galleries and two from commercial ones, select about 40 galleries for participation. The event, which is held over five days, attracts about 10,000 visitors and generates between $6-7 million in art sales.</p> <p>The fair costs about $1 million to stage with 90% of this sum raised from sponsorship, ticket sales and gallery fees and the rest a grant from Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development. The public pays an admission fee of between $25-30, depending on when they book.</p> <p>Art fairs are popular with local governments as they invariably attract people and businesses into the city. In Auckland Art Fair 2019, held in the first week in May, there were 41 galleries participating, almost 30 from various parts of NZ, the rest from Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Shanghai, Jakarta, Rarotonga (Cook Islands) and Santiago.</p> <p>According to Stephanie Post, a major purpose of the fair is to build a new art audience and, by extension, a new generation of art collectors. The fair is designed to fill the gap between the primary and secondary art markets. For this reason, there is a whole series of “projects” that generally promote new art, frequently by emerging artists, many currently without representation by a commercial art gallery. In 2019 there were ten of these non-commercial projects at the fair.</p> <p>These projects, for the past three art fairs, have been curated by Francis McWhannell, who now plans to step aside to be replaced by a new set of curatorial eyes. There are also various lectures, talks, panel discussions and related exhibitions. This year, most notably, there is “China Import Direct”, a curated cross-section of digital and video art from across China with some stunning and quite edgy material by Yuan Keru, Wang Newone and Lu Yang, amongst others.</p> <h2>A mixed bag</h2> <p>Predictably, art at the Auckland Art Fair 2019 is a mixed bag, but the stronger works do outnumber those that are best passed over in silence. In terms of sales, within the first couple of hours quite a number of the big-ticket items were sold, such as work by the Australians Patricia Piccinini and Dale Frank.</p> <p>Looking around this year’s fair, some of the highlights included Seraphine Pick at Michael Lett; Robert Ellis at Bowerbank Ninow; Max Gimblett at Gow Longsford Gallery; Anne Wallace and Juan Davila at Kalli Rolfe; Christine Webster at Trish Clark; Daniel Unverricht and Richard Lewer at Suite, Toss Woollaston at Page Blackie Gallery, Dame Robin White and Gretchen Albrecht at Two Rooms; Robyn Kahukiwa at Warwick Henderson Gallery; Geoff Thornley at Fox Jensen McCrory; Simon Kaan at Sanderson; James Ormsby at Paulnache and Kai Wasikowski at the Michael Bugelli Gallery.</p> <p>This selective list of names, to which many others can be added, indicates something of the spread and diversity of the artists being presented at the fair – not only in style and medium, but in the whole range of languages of visualisation and conceptualisation. Although there are a few deceased artists included, like Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori and Colin McCahon (neither represented by a particularly strong work), like most art fairs there is a predominance of well-established blue chip artists, a scattering of art market darlings plus a few unexpected newcomers.</p> <p>A criticism of art fairs is that they are an expensive market place with high overhead costs, which discourage too much experimentation with “untested” emerging artists. Despite the welcome initiatives of the “projects”, Auckland in this respect falls into line with the pattern of most fairs.</p> <p>The oft-repeated claim that they create a new art audience is also difficult to quantify. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that many who go to fairs may not have ever entered a commercial art gallery before, this does not appear to be followed up by a conversion of this audience into regular gallery goers.</p> <h2>A spectacle</h2> <p>Art fairs and blockbuster exhibitions in public art galleries have become popular people magnet events. They are a form of entertainment that is becoming more of a surrogate for consuming art than some sort of conduit for a return to more traditional patterns of art appreciation and acquisition. They are noisy, crowded and colourful spectacles – more like a party than a quiet arena for the contemplation of art.</p> <p>Is this such a bad thing? Observing the spectacle in Auckland, I was struck by the youthfulness of the thousands of visitors. For many, it seemed the idea that they could afford to purchase an original artwork came as a revelation. Perhaps this was not a $100,000 painting by a major artist, but something more modest and frequently more to their tastes. Nevertheless, new buyers are being introduced to original art and this in itself has to be a positive development.</p> <p>Art fairs globally are breeding a cult of dependency with some “commercial” art galleries increasingly divesting themselves of a physical existence and living from fair to fair. For a while, this was a complete no-no and fairs insisted that participant galleries had a bricks-and-mortar existence, but in many instances the borders are fudged and to be a gallery you need only be an established art trading entity.</p> <p>Art fairs are here to stay; the future of commercial art galleries is far more problematic.</p> <p><em>Image credit: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article first appeared on <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/with-commercial-galleries-an-endangered-species-are-art-fairs-a-necessary-evil-116680" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

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Swimming With Whale Sharks

<p><strong>Snorkelling in the Indian Ocean</strong> just off Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia means blue infinity in every direction – but what’s that eerie pale oval approaching under the surface? Widening and narrowing and growing larger by the second, it resolves into the enormous gulping mouth of a whale shark. Stand by – or rather, swim by – for one of Australia’s grandest marine spectacles.</p> <p>Unsurpassed globally for regular, reliable and accessible whale shark encounters, World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef runs 260 km along Western Australia’s remote North West Cape, about 1300 km north of Perth. Every year – from April to July – these normally elusive filter-feeders arrive for an annual mass-spawning of coral, which, aided by fortuitous currents, turns the outer reef into a nutrient-rich soup of plankton and krill. A relatively recent addition to this prehistoric dinner engagement are gatecrashing, snorkelling <em>Homo sapiens</em>, drawn to feed their sense of wonder on sharing salt water with the largest of all shark species.</p> <p>The adventure begins on very dry land. Although flanked by vast tracts of water – Exmouth Gulf on one side, the Indian Ocean the other – North West Cape is an arid, baked wilderness bisected by the rocky heights of Cape Range, an extinct limestone reef from the region’s deeper past. Anchored off a lonely desert boat ramp 38 km from Exmouth township, the 17 m <em>Draw Card</em> is amid a tiny gaggle of whale-shark boats (there are eight Exmouth-based tour operators) ferrying their patrons aboard by inflatable Zodiac.</p> <p>First on the agenda is a morning snorkel on the reef, a handy acclimatisation and a superb experience in itself. Amid a kaleidoscope of colourful sea life, the crew’s two whale-shark ‘spotters’ – Ellece Nicholls and Emma Goodfellow – and videographer Meg Green, free-dive with mermaid-like agility, pointing out creatures of interest. Usual Ningaloo suspects include parrotfish in all hues of green and blue, frilly orange lionfish, giant clams, tawny nurse and leopard sharks, whitetip and blacktip reef sharks, barracuda and bull rays. The easily found sailfin catfish (small, black and fantailed) is one of 50 endemic species.</p> <p>The <em>Draw Card</em> cruises south through shallow turquoise waters, heading for one of only three navigable passages to the open ocean – soon revealed by a gap in the white line of offshore surf. The shark-spotting plane radios success and the deck ripples with excitement. As we power into position several kilometres out to sea, the 19 tourists aboard are divided into two snorkel groups and re-briefed on protocols – no touching, no duck-diving, keep 3 m clear of any whale shark (and 4 m from the tail).</p> <p>Whale-shark watching works for one simple reason. “They’re sun worshippers,” spotter and marine biologist Ellece Nicholls says. On clear days plankton rises to the light, attracting whale sharks to the surface where they linger to hoover up the bounty. The biggest enemy is heavy cloud cover, rarely a problem at Ningaloo.</p> <p>Think of it as a game of marine leap-frog. The boat stops ahead of a shark and the first snorkellers tag along as it passes, with the Zodiac deployed to aid any stragglers. Group two drops in further along the shark’s probable path. After the whale shark leaves its first escorts, the boat collects them and moves ahead of group two (now in shark conference) to repeat the process.</p> <p>Group one don fins and stride off the duckboard, looking for the spotter’s hand signal. Ellece points and faces go under – nothing. Then a casual over-shoulder, underwater glance reveals a blue-grey speckled bulk the size of a van. Veering before reaching us, the silent giant had almost slipped by unobserved behind our backs.</p> <p><strong>Gentle titans</strong></p> <p>Wondrous as it is, there’s no time to stop and wonder. Admiring a whale shark is not a passive activity. It’s time to snorkel as fast as humanly possible, which inevitably falls short of any whale shark in middle gear. But following its wake is unforgettable. The towering column of tail sweeps with effortless power, slowly shrinking and dissolving a gentle titan into the deep blue curtain of ocean ahead.</p> <p>Minutes later, adrift in the open sea, we regroup for pick-up. Ellece says we saw a juvenile male, “only” 4 m long but with a barrel-like girth. While 12-m whale sharks have been seen here, the typical Ningaloo visitor is a 4-7 m male.</p> <p>Far sooner than expected, we’re ready for another dip into his world. “This is what we call a blind drop,” Ellece says, meaning no-one knows exactly where the shark is. But in we go and there he is. Afterwards comes an unexpected bonus, a hefty green turtle flapping through the blue nearby, a marine bumblebee in flight.</p> <p>Leaving our teenage shark to another nearby boat – the industry here is amiably co-operative – we shift closer to the reef wall for whale shark number two. Here the seabed is dimly visible, with shadowy coral clusters far below, the length of a tall building away. Festooned with remoras and trailed by a retinue of golden trevallies, this slightly larger shark gives a clear view of its white-spotted, ridged back, the starlike pattern imitating sunlight dappling the surface.</p> <p>The day’s final shark is further out. Over the abyss again, a diffuse star of light beams from below, but it’s only a trick of the sun. Our largest (5 m-plus) specimen’s head-on approach is signalled by the flattened white oval of Exmouth’s biggest mouth. Dipping gently up and down, feeding at a leisurely cruising pace, it scoops invisible fare with every rise. From the corner of the sack-like maw, a much smaller eye watches its watchers keeping pace for those few precious minutes. Afterwards on deck, we’re treated to a topside view when it skirts the boat ahead of group two, its broad head emerging from the deep like a submarine milky way.</p> <p>Five swims with three individuals filled an hour of shark time (the maximum allowed). The exhilaration of eye contact with our planet’s biggest fish lingers throughout lunch and the post-shark reef snorkel. The lasting impression is one of great peace and beauty, the awe of approaching creation writ truly large.</p> <p><strong>Endangered species</strong></p> <p>Plenty of mystery accompanies this majesty. While Exmouth is a leading centre for tagging and research, the whale shark life-cycle remains largely unknown – and if they really do migrate north from Ningaloo to breed in Asian waters, as some experts contend, why do so many travel south along the reef? South is definitely the safer option for them right now, given their popularity as a soup garnish in several Asian countries – a single whale shark can fetch thousands of dollars for its fins. In March 2016 the species’ Red List conservation status was altered from vulnerable to endangered (a ‘very high’ risk of extinction). The example of Exmouth, however, gives hope that countries still slaughtering whale sharks will be inspired by the economics of ecotourism – and the sheer wonder of the creature itself – to spare the world’s biggest fish.</p> <p><strong><em>For more info go to </em></strong><a href="https://www.whalesharkdive.com/"><strong><em>www.whalesharkdive.com</em></strong></a><strong><em> or </em></strong><a href="http://www.visitningaloo.com.au"><strong><em>www.visitningaloo.com.au</em></strong></a></p> <p><em>By David Levell</em></p> <p><em>Image: Reader’s Digest</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on </em><a href="mailto:https://www.readersdigest.com.au/travel/activities/swimming-whale-sharks"><em>Reader’s Digest</em></a></p> <p><em> </em></p> <p><em> </em></p> <p><em> </em></p> <p><em> </em></p> <p><em> </em></p>

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Climate change is flooding the remote north with light – and new species

<p>At just over 14 million square kilometres, the Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans. It is also the coldest. An expansive raft of sea ice floats near its centre, expanding in the long, cold, dark winter, and contracting in the summer, as the Sun climbs higher in the sky.</p> <p>Every year, usually in September, the sea ice cover shrinks to its lowest level. The tally in 2020 was a meagre 3.74 million square kilometres, the second-smallest measurement in 42 years, and roughly half of what it was in 1980. Each year, as the climate warms, the Arctic is holding onto less and less ice.</p> <p>The effects of global warming are being felt around the world, but nowhere on Earth are they as dramatic as they are in the Arctic. The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than any other place on Earth, ushering in far-reaching changes to the Arctic Ocean, its ecosystems and the 4 million people who live in the Arctic.</p> <p>Some of them are unexpected. The warmer water is pulling some species further north, into higher latitudes. The thinner ice is carrying more people through the Arctic on cruise ships, cargo ships and research vessels. Ice and snow can almost entirely black out the water beneath it, but climate change is allowing more light to flood in.</p> <p><strong>Artificial light in the polar night</strong><br />Light is very important in the Arctic. The algae which form the foundation of the Arctic Ocean’s food web convert sunlight into sugar and fat, feeding fish and, ultimately, whales, polar bears and humans.</p> <p>At high latitudes in the Arctic during the depths of winter, the Sun stays below the horizon for 24 hours. This is called the polar night, and at the North Pole, the year is simply one day lasting six months, followed by one equally long night.</p> <p>Researchers studying the effects of ice loss deployed moored observatories – anchored instruments with a buoy — in an Arctic fjord in the autumn of 2006, before the fjord froze. When sampling started in the spring of 2007, the moorings had been in place for almost six months, collecting data throughout the long and bitter polar night.</p> <p>What they detected changed everything.</p> <p><strong>Life in the dark</strong><br />At that time, scientists assumed the polar night was utterly uninteresting. A dead period in which life lies dormant and the ecosystem sinks into a dark and frigid standby mode. Not much was expected to come of these measurements, so researchers were surprised when the data showed that life doesn’t pause at all.</p> <p>Arctic zooplankton — tiny microscopic animals that eat algae — take part in something called diel vertical migration beneath the ice and in the dead of the polar night. Sea creatures in all the oceans of the world do this, migrating to depth during the day to hide from potential predators in the dark, and surfacing at night to feed.</p> <p>Organisms use light as a cue to do this, so they shouldn’t logically be able to during the polar night. We now understand the polar night to be a riot of ecological activity. The normal rhythms of daily life continue in the gloom. Clams open and close cyclically, seabirds hunt in almost total darkness, ghost shrimps and sea snails gather in kelp forests to reproduce, and deep-water species such as the helmet jellyfish surface when it’s dark enough to stay safe from predators.</p> <p>For most of the organisms active during this period, the Moon, stars and aurora borealis likely give important cues that guide their behaviour, especially in parts of the Arctic not covered by sea ice. But as the Arctic climate warms and human activities in the region ramp up, these natural light sources will in many places be invisible, crowded out by much stronger artificial light.</p> <p><strong>Artificial light</strong><br />Almost a quarter of all land masses are exposed to scattered artificial light at night, as it’s reflected back to the ground from the atmosphere. Few truly dark places remain, and light from cities, coastlines, roads and ships is visible as far as outer space.</p> <p>Even in sparsely populated areas of the Arctic, light pollution is noticeable. Shipping routes, oil and gas exploration and fisheries extend into the region as the sea ice retreats, drawing artificial light into the otherwise inky black polar night.</p> <p>No organisms have had the opportunity to properly adapt to these changes – evolution works on a much longer timescale. Meanwhile, the harmonic movements of the Earth, Moon and Sun have provided reliable cues to Arctic animals for millennia. Many biological events, such as migration, foraging and breeding are highly attuned to their gentle predictability.</p> <p>In a recent study carried out in the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, between mainland Norway and the north pole, the onboard lights of a research vessel were found to affect fish and zooplankton at least 200 metres down. Disturbed by the sudden intrusion of light, the creatures swirling beneath the surface reacted dramatically, with some swimming towards the beam, and others swimming violently away.</p> <p>It’s difficult to predict the effect artificial light from ships newly navigating the ice-free Arctic will have on polar night ecosystems that have known darkness for longer than modern humans have existed. How the rapidly growing human presence in the Arctic will affect the ecosystem is concerning, but there are also unpleasant questions for researchers. If much of the information we’ve gathered about the Arctic came from scientists stationed on brightly lit boats, how “natural” is the state of the ecosystem we have reported?</p> <p>Arctic marine science is about to enter a new era with autonomous and remotely operated platforms, capable of operating without any light, making measurements in complete darkness.</p> <p><strong>Underwater forests</strong><br />As sea ice retreats from the shores of Greenland, Norway, North America and Russia, periods with open water are getting longer, and more light is reaching the sea floor. Suddenly, coastal ecosystems that have been hidden under ice for 200,000 years are seeing the light of day. This could be very good news for marine plants like kelp – large brown seaweeds that thrive in cold water with enough light and nutrients.</p> <p>Anchored to the sea floor and floating with the tide and currents, some species of kelp can grow up to 50 metres (175 feet) – about the same height as Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London. But kelp are typically excluded from the highest latitudes because of the shade cast by sea ice and its scouring effect on the seabed.</p> <p>These lush underwater forests are set to grow and thrive as sea ice shrinks. Kelp are not a new arrival to the Arctic though. They were once part of the traditional Greenlandic diet, and polar researchers and explorers observed them along northern coasts more than a century ago.</p> <p>Some species of kelp may have colonised Arctic coasts after the last ice age, or spread out from small pockets where they’d held on. But most kelp forests in the Arctic are smaller and more restricted to patches in deeper waters, compared to the vast swathes of seaweed that line coasts like California’s in the US.</p> <p>Recent evidence from Norway and Greenland shows kelp forests are already expanding and increasing their ranges poleward, and these ocean plants are expected to get bigger and grow faster as the Arctic warms, creating more nooks for species to live in and around. The full extent of Arctic kelp forests remains largely unseen and uncharted, but modelling can help determine how much they have shifted and grown in the Arctic since the 1950s.</p> <p><strong>A new carbon sink</strong><br />Although large seaweeds come in all shapes and sizes, many are remarkably similar to trees, with long, trunk-like but flexible bodies called stipes. The kelp forest canopy is filled with the flat blades like leaves, while holdfasts act like roots by anchoring the seaweed to rocks below.</p> <p>Some types of Arctic kelp can grow over ten metres and form large and complex canopies suspended in the water column, with a shaded and protected understorey. Much like forests on land, these marine forests provide habitats, nursery areas and feeding grounds for many animals and fish, including cod, pollack, crabs, lobsters and sea urchins.</p> <p>Kelp are fast growers, storing carbon in their leathery tissue as they do. So what does their expansion in the Arctic mean for the global climate? Like restoring forests on land, growing underwater kelp forests can help to slow climate change by diverting carbon from the atmosphere.</p> <p>Better yet, some kelp material breaks off and is swept out of shallow coastal waters and into the deep ocean where it’s effectively removed from the Earth’s carbon cycle. Expanding kelp forests along the Earth’s extensive Arctic coasts could become a growing carbon sink that captures the CO₂ humans emit and locks it away in the deep sea.</p> <p>What’s happening with kelp in the Arctic is fairly unique – these ocean forests are embattled in most other parts of the world. Overall, the global extent of kelp forests is on a downward trend because of ocean heatwaves, pollution, warming temperatures, and outbreaks of grazers like sea urchins.</p> <p>Unsurprisingly, it’s not all good news. Encroaching kelp forests could push out unique wildlife in the high Arctic. Algae living under the ice will have nowhere to go, and could disappear altogether. More temperate kelp species may replace endemic Arctic kelps such as Laminaria solidungula.</p> <p>But kelp are just one set of species among many pushing further and deeper into the region as the ice melts.</p> <p><strong>Arctic invasions</strong><br />Milne Inlet, on north Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada, sees more marine traffic than any other port in Arctic Canada. Most days during the open-water period, 300-metre-long ships leave the port laden with iron ore from the nearby Mary River Mine. Between 71 and 82 ships pass through the area annually, most heading to — or coming from ports in northern Europe.</p> <p>Cruise ships, coast guard vessels, pleasure yachts, research icebreakers, cargo supply ships and rigid inflatable boats full of tourists also glide through the area. Unprecedented warming and declining sea ice has attracted new industries and other activities to the Arctic. Communities like Pond Inlet have seen marine traffic triple in the past two decades.</p> <p>These ships come to the Arctic from all over the world, carrying a host of aquatic hitchhikers picked up in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Dunkirk and elsewhere. These species — some too small to see with the naked eye — are hidden in the ballast water pumped into on-board tanks to stabilise the ship. They also stick to the hull and other outer surfaces, called “biofouling.”</p> <p>Some survive the voyage to the Arctic and are released into the environment when the ballast water is discharged and cargo loaded. Those that maintain their hold on the outer surface may release eggs, sperm or larvae.</p> <p>Many of these organisms are innocuous, but some may be invasive newcomers that can cause harm. Research in Canada and Norway has already shown non-native invasive species like bay and acorn barnacles can survive ship transits to the Arctic. This raises a risk for Arctic ecosystems given that invasive species are one of the top causes for extinctions worldwide.</p> <p><strong>Expanded routes</strong><br />Concern about invasive species extends far beyond the community of Pond Inlet. Around 4 million people live in the Arctic, many of them along the coasts that provide nutrients and critical habitat for a wide array of animals, from Arctic char and ringed seals to polar bear, bowhead whales and millions of migratory birds.</p> <p>As waters warm, the shipping season is becoming longer, and new routes, like the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route (along Russia’s Arctic coast), are opening up. Some researchers expect a trans-Arctic route across the North Pole might be navigable by mid-century. The increased ship traffic magnifies the numbers and kinds of organisms transported into Arctic waters, and the progressively more hospitable conditions improve their odds of survival.</p> <p>Prevention is the number one way to keep invasive species out of the Arctic. Most ships must treat their ballast water, using chemicals or other processes, and/or exchange it to limit the movement of harmful organisms to new locations. Guidelines also recommend ships use special coatings on the hulls and clean them regularly to prevent biofouling. But these prevention measures are not always reliable, and their efficacy in colder environments is poorly understood.</p> <p>The next best approach is to detect invaders as soon as possible once they arrive, to improve chances for eradication or suppression. But early detection requires widespread monitoring, which can be challenging in the Arctic. Keeping an eye out for the arrival of a new species can be akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, but northern communities may offer a solution.</p> <p>Researchers in Norway, Alaska and Canada have found a way to make that search easier by singling out species that have caused harm elsewhere and that could endure Arctic environmental conditions. Nearly two dozen potential invaders show a high chance for taking hold in Arctic Canada.</p> <p>Among these is the cold-adapted red king crab, native to the Sea of Japan, Bering Sea and North Pacific. It was intentionally introduced to the Barents Sea in the 1960s to establish a fishery and is now spreading south along the Norwegian coast and in the White Sea. It is a large, voracious predator implicated in substantial declines of harvested shellfish, sea urchins and other larger, slow moving bottom species, with a high likelihood of surviving transport in ballast water.</p> <p>Another is the common periwinkle, which ruthlessly grazes on lush aquatic plants in shoreline habitats, leaving behind bare or encrusted rock. It has also introduced a parasite on the east coast of North America that causes black spot disease in fishes, which stresses adult fishes and makes them unpalatable, kills juveniles and causes intestinal damage to birds and mammals that eat them.</p> <p><strong>Tracking genetic remnants</strong><br />New species like these could affect the fish and mammals people hunt and eat, if they were to arrive in Pond Inlet. After just a few years of shipping, a handful of possibly non-native species have already been discovered, including the invasive red-gilled mudworm (Marenzellaria viridis), and a potentially invasive tube dwelling amphipod. Both are known to reach high densities, alter the characteristics of the seafloor sediment and compete with native species.</p> <p>Baffinland, the company that runs the Mary River Mine, is seeking to double its annual output of iron ore. If the expansion proceeds, up to 176 ore carriers will pass through Milne Inlet during the open-water season.</p> <p>Although the future of Arctic shipping remains uncertain, it’s an upward trend that needs to be watched. In Canada, researchers are working with Indigenous partners in communities with high shipping activity — including Churchill, Manitoba; Pond Inlet and Iqaluit in Nunavut; Salluit, Quebec and Nain, Newfoundland — to establish an invasive species monitoring network. One of the approaches includes collecting water and testing it for genetic remnants shed from scales, faeces, sperm and other biological material.</p> <p>This environmental DNA (eDNA) is easy to collect and can help detect organisms that might otherwise be difficult to capture or are in low abundance. The technique has also improved baseline knowledge of coastal biodiversity in other areas of high shipping, a fundamental step in detecting future change.</p> <p>Some non-native species have already been detected in the Port of Churchill using eDNA surveillance and other sampling methods, including jellyfish, rainbow smelt and an invasive copepod species.</p> <p>Efforts are underway to expand the network across the Arctic as part of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Invasive Alien Species Strategy to reduce the spread of invasive species.</p> <p>The Arctic is often called the frontline of the climate crisis, and because of its rapid rate of warming, the region is beset by invasions of all kinds, from new species to new shipping routes. These forces could entirely remake the ocean basin within the lifetimes of people alive today, from frozen, star-lit vistas, populated by unique communities of highly adapted organisms, to something quite different.</p> <p>The Arctic is changing faster than scientists can document, yet there will be opportunities, such as growing carbon sinks, that could benefit the wildlife and people who live there. Not all changes to our warming world will be wholly negative. In the Arctic, as elsewhere, there are winners and losers.</p> <p class="p1"><em>Written by Jørgen Berge. This article first appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/arctic-ocean-climate-change-is-flooding-the-remote-north-with-light-and-new-species-150157">The Conversation</a>.</em></p>

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