HWY. BR-319: The beginning of the end for Brazil’s Amazon forest (commentary)

Mongabay Series: Amazon Infrastructure

Commentary by Philip M. Fearnside on 3 November 2020

Brazil’s planned reconstruction of the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway paralleling the Purus and Madeira rivers would give deforesters access to about half of what remains of the country’s Amazon forest, and so is perhaps the most consequential conservation issue for Brazil today.

The highway route is essentially a lawless area today, and the lack of governance is a critical issue in the battle over licensing the highway reconstruction project.

The BR-319 upgrade would link the current “arc of deforestation” to central Amazonia, allowing movement of deforestation actors to all forest locations with road links to Manaus, while a planned BR-319 connecting road would open the vast forest area between the BR-319 and the Peruvian border.

The BR-319 Environmental Impact Assessment has many flaws, including ignoring impacts beyond those adjacent to the highway. The EIA also contains passages admitting to some disastrous project impacts. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay

.

The BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway passes through large areas of intact rainforest, seen here in 2018 with road “maintenance” underway. Source: Folha de São Paulo.

The text of this commentary is updated from an earlier Portuguese-language version of the author’s column at Amazônia Real.

The BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway was built in the early 1970s by Brazil’s military dictatorship, but was abandoned in 1988. In 2016, a “maintenance” program was authorized, and the highway is now passable during the dry season.

The currently proposed “Reconstruction” of BR-319, which would build a new paved road atop the old dirt roadbed, is certainly among the most consequential decisions facing Brazil today. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the project has been submitted to the licensing agency (IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency), where it is receiving accelerated treatment for what appears to be a foreordained approval. The hasty authorization of a project that implies a major expansion of the area in Amazonia that is exposed to deforestation is extremely unwise.

So far, deforestation has been almost entirely limited to the “arc of deforestation” along the southern and eastern edges of the Amazon forest in Brazil, and to the eastern half of the region where road access is already implanted.

Brazil’s Legal Amazon region. The “arc of deforestation” is the red area along the southern and eastern edges of the forest. The BR-319 cuts the remaining Amazon basin forest in half, providing access to vast areas of standing forest by those who have deforested the eastern and southern portions of the region. Deforestation data courtesy of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

Large-scale impacts

The impact of the BR-319 will extend far beyond the strip along the highway route that is the subject of the EIA.

The BR-319 opens the central and northern portions of Amazonia to the migration of land grabbers (grileiros), loggers, cattlemen, individual squatters (posseiros) and organized landless farmers (sem-terras). These actors are already present in the “arc of deforestation” and have moved into areas in the southern portion of the state of Amazonas where there is road access, including Apuí, Igarapé Realidade and Lábrea (see black and white map below).

Critically, BR-319 is associated with plans for additional roads, such as AM-366, that would open the vast area of intact rainforest in the western part of the state of Amazonas.

Opening this “Trans-Purus” region in western Amazonas to deforestation would be catastrophic for Brazil, leading to loss of critical environmental services. These include water supply to the city of São Paulo: the Trans-Purus area is the last great block of intact forest in Brazilian Amazonia, and losing this area means losing the Amazon forest’s function of recycling the water that is carried in the “flying rivers” to Brazil’s major urban and agricultural areas (see here, here, here, here and here). Amazonia is supplying 70% of the water during the peak of the rainy season in São Paulo, when the reservoirs that supply the city fill. São Paulo has nearly run out of water several times, even with Amazonia’s water cycling function still intact.

The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for reconstructing the “middle stretch” of the BR-319 is now publicly available. The EIA defines an “area of direct impact” (ADA) and an “area of indirect impact” (AIA) that excludes the wider impacts of the highway, including the critical “Trans-Purus” region to the west of the Purus River.

The BR-319 Highway and its planned side roads, including AM-366 that would open the vast intact forest area between the highway and Brazil’s border with Peru (Source: Fearnside & Graça, 2006).

Despite the many deficiencies of the EIA, buried in the document’s 3735 pages there are passages that recognize many of the project’s true impacts, for which the authors should be congratulated. Among these is the threat that reconstructing the BR-319 poses to the Trans-Purus region by unleashing a chain of events that would result in opening the planned AM-366 road, thus allowing deforesters to enter this critical region:

The repaving and full operation of the BR-319 along its entire length may encourage regional politicians to pressure the government of Amazonas to resume the project to implement the AM-366 highway. This risk is very concrete in that, a few years after the opening of BR-319, a “picadão” [big trail] linking BR-319 to the city of Tapauá was opened by an initiative that was probably from private agents. (ECI-Apurina, p. 119).

The EIA also mentions the relevance of Brazil’s current presidential administration to the increased danger of the AM-366 being built:

In the political-institutional conditions now present in the region and in the country, added to the initiatives of the executive branch of the federal government to review environmental protection measures and to facilitate the advance of agribusiness in southern Amazonas — as previously noted — it is quite possible that the AM-366 could obtain sufficient political support for its implementation. (ECI-Apurina, p. 119).

The potential for invasion of the areas opened up by the AM-366 road and the illegal side roads along its route between Tapauá and the BR-319 is mentioned:

[AM-366] would offer migrants from the south and southeast regions, and especially those from Rondônia, an open route for opening lots in government lands — at zero cost. (ECI-Apurina, p. 83).

The EIA also mentions the likelihood of the AM-366 sprouting side roads (ramais) to provide access to oil and gas production areas planned for exploitation under the massive “Solimões Sedimentary Area Project”:

The question of the exploration of the blocks in the Solimões [Upper Amazon] basin. ,,, gains greater relevance due precisely to the possible interconnection between the BR-319 and the municipalities of Tefé and Coari via the AM-366 highway, from which ramais [side roads] could “branch off” to the locations of the oil installations … (ECI-Apurina, p. 106).

Illegal side roads (ramais) branching off BR-319 are already being built, such as one begun in February 2020 entering a protected area, the Lago do Capanã Grande Extractive Reserve. There are also illegal roads being built in the opposite direction, starting from towns on the Purus River and progressing towards the BR-319. In addition to the illegal side road being built from Tapauá (ECI-Apurina, pp. 119-121), the EIA mentions a similar illegal road being built to connect Canutama to the BR-319, which is already 40 kilometers long (EIA, p. 2565). The obvious lack of governance in the area is a key issue in the battle over licensing.

Bridge built across a stream in February 2020 on an illegal side road (ramal) branching off of BR-319 and penetrating a protected area, the Lago do Capanã Grande Extractive Reserve. Image courtesy of Indigenous leader whose identity is withheld.

The oil and gas project is a major threat to the forests of the Trans-Purus region because the scale of the project means that the companies exploiting the oil and gas would have a major motive for pressuring the government to provide road access.

The EIA touches on the responsibility of DNIT, Brazil’s National Department of Transportation Infrastructure, for the disastrous outcome that would result from the BR-319’s role in increasing the likelihood of the AM-366 being built:

….this chain of events…, in a certain way, gives the entrepreneur some degree of responsibility for the eventual terrestrial connection of BR-319 to the city of Tapauá …. (ECI-Apurina, p. 120).

Despite some passages in the EIA recognizing the BR-319’s wider impact, this does not translate into recommendations about what to do about it. Instead, the focus is restricted to the ADA and AIA, and the recommendations are limited to pointing out that governance is needed to minimize impacts. Questioning the existence of the project, or delaying it for a substantial period of years while governance is established, are not presented as serious options.

Instead, the recommendations for avoiding the massive impacts are limited to the standard call for “governance,” but the chances of such a program being implemented on a scale that would avoid disaster are near zero. The BR-319 area is essentially lawless today, with land grabbing (grilagem) and illegal land invasions, logging and building of side roads occurring with impunity. It is simply fictitious that “BR-319 will be an example of sustainability for the World,” as the members of the Legislative Assembly of the state of Amazonas claim.

The BR-319 is now passable in the dry season due to a “maintenance” program begun in 2016. (Photo: P.M. Fearnside).

Impacts on Indigenous peoples

The Indigenous component is critical. This project element was apparently submitted to the licensing agency (IBAMA) some time after the rest of the EIA. Although the separation in time was relatively short in this case, it is an important irregularity, repeating the scandal that surrounded the 2015 EIA for the São Luis do Tapajós Dam. As with that controversial dam, the Relatório de Impacto Ambiental (RIMA), which is the document that serves for public discussion of the BR-319 project (including the public hearings), was obviously completed before the Indigenous component was available and contains no information on Indigenous peoples.

The question of consultation of Indigenous peoples affected by the BR-319 highway project represents a key test of Brazil’s legal system. Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry (a public prosecutor’s office established by Brazil’s 1988 constitution to defend the rights of the people) has long been trying to bring the rule of law to Brazil in this regard, but these efforts have so far failed, as in the cases of the Belo Monte and São Manoel Dams (see here, here and here).

The EIA for the BR-319 mentions the fact that Brazilian law and Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO-169), of which Brazil is a signatory, require prior consultation of affected Indigenous peoples. This legally required consultation needs to not only occur before the construction work begins, but rather before any decision is made on whether or not to go ahead with the project:

And Article 15 of the Convention makes it explicit that this consultation must take place before governments undertake or authorize any program for prospecting or exploiting resources that exist in the habitat of Indigenous peoples. (ECI-Apurina, p. 27).

In the case of BR-319, no Indigenous people have been consulted, despite the project’s bidding already having been opened and its initiation being immanent in violation of ILO-169 and by Brazilian law (10.088, de 5 de novembro de 2019, formerly 5.051, de 19 de abril de 2004), which implements the convention.

However, DNIT plans to do its “consultation” while the road construction is underway. The plan is to only consult five Indigenous areas, despite the road’s impact extending much farther. IBAMA’s internal regulations (Portaria Interministerial Nº 419, de 26 de outubro de 2011, Anexo II) consider all Indigenous areas within 40 kilometers of a highway in Amazonia to be “directly impacted” and requires them to be included in the Indigenous component of the EIA. In the case of the entire BR-319 highway (not only the “middle stretch”), there are 13 Indigenous areas within the 40-kilometer limit.

Reconstruction of the middle stretch is what would trigger the socio-environmental impacts from the entire road by opening the floodgates for traffic and migration. ILO-169 and its replication in Brazilian law have no distance limit for impacts requiring consultation. These impacts clearly go far beyond the area considered in the EIA. In addition to adversely affecting Indigenous peoples already living within the areas of migration flow that the highway would stimulate, such as those in the state of Roraima, deforestation from the highway route itself can spread far beyond 40 kilometers. If a 150-kilometer limit is considered, 63 Indigenous areas would be considered impacted.

In conclusion, reconstructing the BR-319 highway would have enormous impacts and few benefits. In addition to the need to comply with legal requirements such as obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples, Brazil’s leaders should pause to consider the wisdom of the project itself, given the threat it represents to the country’s national interests. Risking the loss of Amazonia’s environmental services, such as supplying water to São Paulo, is no small matter for Brazil.

How to fix the movement for fossil fuel divestment

by Texas A&M University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Bankers and environmentalists alike are increasingly calling for capital markets to play a bigger role in the war on carbon. In the absence of a meaningful global price on carbon, however, capital continues to flow freely toward fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive industries. The movement for fossil fuel divestment has been trying since 2012 to reverse this trend. A strong media presence and divestment pledges from high-profile investors notwithstanding, the movement has had little, if any, impact on the market valuation or bottom line of fossil fuel companies to date. A recent Nature Climate Change comment by Felix Mormann, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law, reveals a number of critical shortcomings that prevent the movement from achieving its stated goals of delegitimizing the fossil fuel industry and reducing its access to capital.


The most fundamental shortcoming lies in the divestment movement's failure to properly differentiate among companies based on their relative contributions to global warming and climate change. "Drawing a binary divestment line between fossil and non-fossil stocks misses the reality that, when it comes to climate action, there are good actors and bad actors on both sides of the divide," notes Mormann. "The current focus on extractive and energy companies has undoubtedly proven media-effective. But it misrepresents the complex push-and-pull dynamics across the value chain of energy and other climate-relevant products and services."

If the divestment movement can be faulted for being under-inclusive as regards non-fossil companies with excessive carbon footprints, then a similar critique can be extended to the movement's investor reach. The latest divestment tally lists more than 1,200 commitments from pension funds, philanthropic foundations, faith-based organizations, and other institutional investors, managing over $14 trillion in assets. Individual investors who hold stocks and other securities for their personal account, however, account for fewer than 60,000 commitments worldwide, representing just over $5 billion in assets. Compared to the nearly $25 trillion in equities owned by individual investors in the United States alone, the latter numbers reveal the divestment movement's egregious failure to mobilize a key contingent of the global financial market—not to mention potential jurors in the court of public opinion.

"The divestment movement deserves huge credit for shining a spotlight on the crucial role that capital markets have to play in the war on carbon," emphasizes Mormann, who also holds an appointment in Texas A&M University's College of Engineering. "But the more I studied it, the clearer it became that major reforms are needed if the movement is to achieve its stated goals and move the needle on corporate climate action."

One such reform that Mormann suggests in his comment is to rebrand beyond fossil fuel divestment toward a more nuanced campaign for low-carbon (re-)investment. To do so, the overly crude fossil vs. non-fossil distinction should be abandoned in favor of a more sophisticated assessment of companies' climate impact and governance, modeled after the ratings of creditworthiness that have long been a staple of capital markets. "Think of a rating agency à la Moody's or Standard & Poor's, only for climate change," explains Mormann. The international non-profit CDP, formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project, has begun to rate thousands of companies annually on their climate impact and action. Substituting such ratings for the binary fossil vs. non-fossil divestment criterion could go a long way toward mobilizing capital markets, companies, and investors in the quest to combat global climate change.


Explore furtherCombating climate change: Why investors should keep their shares in fossil fuel companies

More information: Felix Mormann, Why the divestment movement is missing the mark, Nature Climate Change (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-00950-2

Journal information: Nature Climate Change


Provided by Texas A&M University

PHONE HOME —VGER

NASA calls Voyager 2, and the spacecraft answers from interstellar space

The spacecraft is so far south it can only talk to one Earth-bound antenna.

ERIC BERGER - 11/3/2020, 11:27 AM

Enlarge / DSS43 is a 70-meter-wide radio antenna at the Deep Space Network's Canberra facility in Australia. NASA

The Voyager 2 spacecraft has been gone from Earth for more than 43 years, and it now lies 125 astronomical units from our planet. That is 125 times the distance between the Earth and Sun.

Understandably, this distance makes it rather difficult for NASA to communicate with its far-flung spacecraft—there is a time delay of more than 17 hours. However, with Voyager 2, there is another complication in talking to the spacecraft.


FURTHER READINGThe Sun in its rearview mirror, Voyager 2 is in interstellar space

After flying by Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, Voyager 2 made its final planetary flyby in August 1989 past Neptune. Scientists were also interested in flying by Neptune's intriguing moon Triton, so they commanded Voyager 2 to do so on its way beyond Neptune, flying over the north pole of Triton. This trajectory carried it along a southward path relative to the plane of the Solar System, and it has kept on booking it south.

This has consequences for communicating with NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth, which consists of three large radio antenna facilities around the world, in California, Spain, and Australia. Typically, this geographical spread allows for all of NASA's spacecraft still active to have the capability to communicate with at least one of these facilities at all times.

But because Voyager 2 has dipped so far south of the plane of the Solar System, it can now only communicate by line of sight with the 70-meter-wide antenna in Canberra, Australia. Because this facility is about five decades old, it needed to undergo refurbishment and upgrade work beginning in March, and it had been offline since that time. This work is expected to conclude in February, so NASA has been unable to send signals to Voyager 2 since that time.Advertisement

Last week, to test new hardware recently installed on the large dish, Voyager mission managers were able to send a series of signals to the spacecraft for the first time since March. Voyager 2 replied that it had, indeed, received the signals and executed NASA's commands, the space agency says.

That's good for NASA and science in general, as Voyager 2 (along with Voyager 1) is now venturing beyond the Solar System, into interstellar space. Out in the great black beyond, Voyager 2 will continue to return data about the speed, density, temperature, and pressure of charged particles in the interstellar medium.

ERIC BERGER is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 

Gentoo penguins are four species, not one, say scientists

by University of Bath

South Georgia Gentoo penguins (P. poncetii) live in more northerly habitats where conditions are milder, than their Southern Gentoo cousins which live on the Antarctic ice. Credit: Gemma Clucas

Gentoo penguins should be reclassified as four separate species, say scientists at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, after analysing the genetic and physical differences between populations around the southern hemisphere.


The researchers say that counting them as four separate species will aid in their conservation because it will make it easier to monitor any decline in numbers.

Gentoo penguins, with the Latin name Pygoscelis papua, live in a range of latitudes in the southern hemisphere and are currently split into two subspecies, P. p. ellsworthi and P. p. papua.

The researchers suggest these two sub species should be raised to species level and two new species created, which they have named P. poncetii after the Australian seabird conservationist Sally Poncet, and P. taeniata in recognition of a former proposal for this name dating to the 1920s.

Their study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, looked at the genomes of populations living in the Falkland Islands and South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic and Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean.

They used genome data to create an evolutionary tree to understand the relationship between the different populations. When they combined these data with measurements of museum specimens from each of the populations, they found clear morphological (physical) and genetic differences between the four populations.

The four species of Gentoos look very similar, but do not interbreed and have adapted to live in significantly different habitats. Credit: Gemma Clucas

Dr. Jane Younger, Prize Fellow from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, led the study. She said: "For the first time, we've shown that these penguins are not only genetically distinct, but that they are also physically different too.

"Gentoos tend to stick close to their home colonies, and over hundreds of thousands of years have become geographically isolated from each other to the point where they don't interbreed with each other, even though they could easily swim the distance that separates them.

"The four species we propose live in quite different latitudes—for example P. ellsworthi lives on the Antarctic continent whereas P. poncetii, P. taeniata and P. papua live further north where conditions are milder, and so it's not that surprising that they have evolved to adapt to their different habitats."


Ph.D. student Josh Tyler said: "They look very similar to the untrained eye, but when we measured their skeletons we found statistical differences in the lengths of their bones and the sizes and shape of their beaks.

"It's a similar story to giraffes, which were revealed in 2016 to be four genetically distinct species."

Northern Gentoos live on the Faukland Islands in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Credit: Gemma Clucas

The scientists say that regarding the four populations as separate species, gives conservationists a better chance of protecting their diversity because if there's a decline in one of them it will change the threat status as defined by the IUCN Red List.

Dr. Younger said: "Currently gentoo penguins are fairly stable in numbers, however there is some evidence of the northern populations moving further south as the climate gets warmer, so we need to watch them closely."

The proposed changes to the classification of gentoos will be reviewed by an international committee of scientists which will assess all the evidence in the scientific literature before the new taxonomy is accepted.


Explore further

First genome comparison gives insight into penguin origins, evolution
More information: Joshua Tyler, Matthew T. Bonfitto, Gemma V. Clucas, Sushma Reddy, Jane L. Younger (2020) "Morphometric and genetic evidence for four species of gentoo penguin" is published in Ecology and Evolution.

DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6973
Journal information: Ecology and Evolution

When a drought is over, here is what happens to forested areas where trees have died

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Drought-related mortality of Cedrus atlántica and its replacement by Quercus rotundifolia, Middle Atlas, Morocco. Credit: Enric Batllori

A large international team of researchers has found that forested areas that experience tree loss due to drought have a wide range of regrowth possibilities after the drought ends. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of forested areas around the globe that experienced drought and what happened to them when it was over.


As global warming continues seemingly unabated, scientists are attempting to predict what increased temperatures might do to the planet. Current models suggest rainfall will shift, with some areas receiving more rain and others less. They also show that many areas will likely experience both long- and short-duration droughts. In this new effort, the researchers wondered what might happen to drought-afflicted forested areas when a drought ends.

Prior research has shown that extended droughts can lead to widespread tree death in forested areas. Prior research has also shown that in some instances, the trees will grow back after the drought is over but in other situations, trees do not grow back; instead, they are replaced by shrubs and other plants. In this new effort, the researchers took a fresh look at forest regrowth after drought by analyzing data describing the impact of drought on forested areas from 131 sites across the globe and then compared what they found to see if any patterns emerged.

In comparing the data, the researchers found that only 21 percent of the forests grew back into their prior state. They also found that 10% of them shifted to non-forested plant growth, from shrubbery to grasslands. In those sites where the trees did not grow back, two-thirds of them were taken over by shrubs and 10% were taken over by non-wood-type vegetation.

Lack of replacement by woody vegetation after drought-related mortality in Pinus edulis forests, New Mexico, USA. Credit: Francisco Lloret

The researchers also found that areas that experienced average or greater amounts of rainfall after the drought ended were more likely to return to tree cover. In other areas where there was less rainfall, there were many instances of trees of one type being replaced by another that needed less water to survive. They also found that in areas where pests infected trees during times of drought, contributing to tree death, the area was much less likely to return to its forested state. The researchers also found other factors contributed to growth after a drought, such as community composition, human management and shade tolerance. They conclude by suggesting the variety of changes likely means that it may not be possible to predict what might occur in forested areas as future droughts become longer and more frequent.


Explore further  Small trees offer hope for rainforests

More information: Enric Batllori et al. Forest and woodland replacement patterns following drought-related mortality, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2002314117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

© 2020 Science X Network

THIRD WORLD USA
Study shows over 1.1 million urban people in US live in homes without proper indoor plumbing

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Map of households without piped water access in the USA, 2013-2017. Note: lighter areas indicate areas with higher numbers of households without piped water. Clusters of plumbing exist in major cities and particular regions across the country. Credit: Katie Meehan.

A team of researchers from King's College London, the University of Arizona and ECONorthwest has found that an estimated 1.1 million urban people in the U.S. live in homes without proper indoor plumbing. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis of census data for 50 of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. and what it showed them about people living without standard indoor plumbing and associated facilities.


In advanced countries such as the U.S., it is assumed that most people have basic amenities such as access to clean water and associated facilities. In this new effort, the researchers have found that is not the case for many people living in some of the biggest cities in the country. In reality, many people, especially minorities, are living without proper indoor plumbing facilities.

The work involved analyzing data obtained by the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal government entity responsible for carrying out nationwide surveys every 10 years. Wanting to know more about access to running water, the researchers focused on data from questions about whether people had access to "complete plumbing" which was described as residences that had both hot and cold running water piped into their home, along with at least one bath or shower. They found that for approximately 500,000 households in large urban areas, the answer was no.

In drilling down further into the data, the researchers found that such households accounted for approximately 1.1 million people. They also found a connection between the wealth gap of a given city and the number of people living without piped water. They found, for example, that percentage-wise, wealthy cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Austin had some of the highest rates of what they describe as plumbing poverty. In looking at sheer numbers, they found New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco had the most people living with plumbing poverty. They also found that race played a role. On average, black people were 35 percent more likely to be living with plumbing poverty than white people. They also found that plumbing poverty was most often found in rented facilities, particularly in mobile homes.


Explore further

High rates of COVID-19 on American Indian reservations—water and language barriers affect risk

More information: Meehan et al., Geographies of insecure water access and the housing–water nexus in US cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2007361117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

© 2020 Science X Network

Crown-of-thorns eat themselves out of house and home

by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

A close-up of a crown-of-thorns starfish. The creatures eat Acropora corals until they're effectively homeless. Credit: Morgan Pratchett.

A world-first study on the Great Barrier Reef shows crown-of-thorns starfish have the ability to find their own way home—a behavior previously undocumented—but only if their neighborhood is stocked with their favorite food: corals.


Australian researchers observed the starfish emerging from their shelters in the afternoons so they could feed on coral during the night before returning home at dawn.

"The crown-of-thorns starfish often partied all night, slept-in and only those with a well-stocked larder found their way home—so it's very much a teenager model of behavior," said lead author Dr. Scott Ling from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania.

"Their preferred prey is Acropora corals," said co-author Professor Morgan Pratchett from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (CoralCoE at JCU). Acropora is an important coral species—for the past two million years they have been the building blocks of reefs across the world.

"When populations of Acropora dropped, the starfish didn't return home," Prof Pratchett said. "Their behavior is directly linked to the local abundance of Acropora."

The results of the study show healthy reefs with a high cover of these corals may encourage crown-of-thorns aggregations and outbreaks. The outbreaks cause extensive, widespread and sustained coral loss throughout the Indo-Pacific region.


Play Credit: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Similar examples of predator infestations driving environmental devastation include sea urchins overgrazing on kelp forests and coral reef fishes munching through patches of seagrass.

The researchers used in-situ time-lapse photography to track the movements of 58 starfish in the northern and southern Great Barrier Reef during an outbreak in 2015. In the absence of their preferred Acropora coral prey, starfish were typically homeless and instead roamed up to 20 meters per day.

"Unlike sea urchins that can switch diet once they overgraze kelp forests, results of the time-lapse monitoring indicate that the starfish will consume available Acropora and ultimately eat themselves out of house and home before dispersing in search of new feeding grounds," Dr. Ling said.

Previous outbreaks on the Great Barrier Reef were recorded in 1962, 1979, 1993 and 2009. Though mass-coral bleaching due to global warming is now the greatest threat to coral reefs worldwide, the combined impact of mass-bleaching and crown-of-thorns outbreaks is potentially catastrophic for coral reefs.

"By better understanding the behavior of these starfish we can help prevent and control their outbreaks, which will help alleviate the pressures on coral reefs," Prof Pratchett said.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.


Explore further

Hidden army: How starfish could build up numbers to attack coral reefs

More information: Homing behaviour by destructive crown-of-thorns starfish is triggered by local availability of coral prey, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, rspb.royalsocietypublishing.or … .1098/rspb.2020.1341
Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Provided by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Lion genetics study uncovers major consequences of habitat fragmentation

by Aubrey Bloom, Texas A&M University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Over the course of only a century, humanity has made an observable impact on the genetic diversity of the lion population. That's the conclusion of a recently published study by Drs. Caitlin Curry and James Derr from the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences.


By comparing the DNA of lions today to lions from 100 years ago, they found that there is clear genetic evidence of recent population fragmentation, which is when groups of a species are isolated from each other. This fragmentation could ultimately have a long-term impact on the genetic health of the iconic species. The research was published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

"I was surprised at what we found—surprised and disappointed, because it's not what I wanted to see," Derr said. "I really wanted to be able to tell everyone that the management we've been doing for the last 100 years is perfect and to keep doing what we've been doing and everything will be fine. But that's not the take-home lesson; unfortunately, that's not the story we can tell.

Curry and Derr started their study with one overarching question: Has the genetic structure of lion populations changed over the last 100 years?

There have been several studies on modern lions, so gathering data for the modern populations was straightforward. Curry pulled together DNA data from three previously published studies on lions that lived between 1990-2012.

The historical populations, against which they wanted to compare the modern lion DNA, provided more of a challenge. Fortunately, scientists have a way to turn back time. Many of those lion remains still reside perfectly preserved in collections around the world. Curry used DNA extracted from bones, teeth and hides of 143 lions that lived between 1880-1949 to create a historical population data set.

Both population data sets cover the same geographical range from India to Southern Africa where lions are found. Scientists call this type of analysis, comparing data from the same space at different times, a spatiotemporal study.

No Room To Roam

It has been understood for a long time that female lions tend to stay close to the pride in which they were born, while males travel great distances to find new prides. Therefore, males are almost exclusively responsible for the movement of genes in the population, which helps keep genetic diversity within the species high.


As the human population continues to rapidly grow across Africa and more and more barriers to lion movement have gone up in the form of cities, fences and farmland, male lions haven't been able to travel the distances they once could.

According to Curry, while lions are still genetically diverse right now, the results in the DNA were more pronounced than she expected.

"In the historical population, you couldn't easily identify where a lion was from based on its nuclear DNA. This is due to high historical levels of gene flow across the population," she said. "But in the modern population, you can determine the general area, or sub-population, for most of the lions. But, even with sub-populations being more isolated, the overall level of genetic diversity is still considered high across all lion populations."

Consequences Of Low Genetic Diversity

If lions are still generally genetically healthy today, then why does this matter?

"Over the last 100 years or so, we have restricted the natural movements of many species," Derr said. "This isolation leads to reduced gene flow and ultimately may result in reducing genetic diversity to a level that threatens the survival of local populations."

Perhaps the most well-known example of what happens with a lack of genetic diversity is another large cat, the African cheetah.

According to genetic analysis, scientists believe cheetahs have suffered two large bottleneck events, or events that lead to a rapid shrinking of the gene pool. When these events happen, it results in the breeding of closely related individuals in the population, or inbreeding, creating very low genetic diversity.

This has led to a current cheetah population that, even in the wild, struggles to fend off new diseases, has difficulty breeding, and faces other significant health problems.

A Story Of Hope

But that fate can still be avoided in lions, especially now that experts are armed with proof that lion populations have been significantly impacted by isolation and subdivision.

"This should not be a disheartening story but rather one of hope," Curry said. "Yes, we see a decrease in genetic diversity across lion populations over the past century. But, currently, compared with other mammalian species, lion genetic diversity is still considered high across all lion populations.

"With responsible management focused on giving prides enough space to breed and allowing males to move more freely between isolated pockets, it is possible to increase the genetic diversity and reduce population sub-division across lion populations."

There have been multiple reintroduction programs bringing lions back to areas where lions once roamed, and coexistence strategies are increasingly being integrated into wildlife conservation programs.

"The positive take-home message is now that we've documented this and we understand it, policies can be tailored to manage these populations differently," Derr said. "We know now that you can't treat all lions the same. Now we have the responsibility to manage these animals, and many other managed wildlife species, in ways that better reflects their current biology."


Explore further

New genetic study of lions may help to prevent them going extinct

More information: Caitlin J Curry et al, Spatiotemporal Genetic Diversity of Lions Reveals the Influence of Habitat Fragmentation across Africa, Molecular Biology and Evolution (2020). DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msaa174

Journal information: Molecular Biology and Evolution


Provided by Texas A&M University

Mammals have been 'cuddling' for longer than previously thought: 

Scientists discover 75 million-year-old burrow containing fossilised rodents snuggled-up together

Researchers found 22 fossils of the small, rodent-like 'Filikomys primaevus'

They were unearthed at 'Egg Mountain', a dinosaur nesting site in Montana 

The creatures were preserved together in small, multi-generational groups

It was thought mammals did not become social until after the dinosaurs died

By IAN RANDALL FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 3 November 2020

Cuddling may date back further than we thought, as scientists have unearthed the remains of a 75.5 million-year-old burrow containing the fossils of snuggling rodents.

US palaeontologists made the find — the oldest evidence of social behaviour among mammals — in a noted dinosaur nesting site called Egg Mountain, in Montana.

The small mammals — dubbed 'Filikomys primaevus', which translates to 'youthful, friendly mouse' — represent a new genus of the so-called multituberculates.


Previously, it had been thought that social behaviour first appeared in mammals following the asteroid-induced mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs.

Furthermore, it was also assumed that it was largely confined to the Placentalia — the group in which mothers carry their foetus to a late stage before birth.

However, the find — of multigenerational group nesting and burrowing — expands our notion of how such sociality developed.


Cuddling may date back further than we thought, as scientists have unearthed the remains of a 75.5 million-year-old burrow containing the fossils of snuggling rodents. Pictured, an artist's impression of a social group of Filikomys primaevus nesting in their shared burrow

'These fossils are game changers,' said paper author Gregory Wilson Mantilla of the University of Washington and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

'As palaeontologists working to reconstruct the biology of mammals from this time period, we're usually stuck staring at individual teeth and maybe a jaw that rolled down a river,' he added.

'But here we have multiple, near complete skulls and skeletons preserved in the exact place where the animals lived.'

'We can now credibly look at how mammals really interacted with dinosaurs and other animals that lived at this time.'

In their study, Professor Wilson Mantilla and colleagues analysed the fossilised remains of 22 individuals of F. primaevus — the majority of which were found clustered together in groups of between two and five.

In fact, 13 of the specimens were found in one single 323 square feet (30 square metre) area of rock — and the groupings contained mixtures of both mature and young adults, suggesting the finds do not just represent parents and their young.

Based on the nature of the surrounding rock, the preservation of the fossils and their' powerful shoulders and elbows, the team concluded the mammals lived in burrows.

The remains represent the most complete mammal fossils ever from the Mesozoic — the time period spanning from 252–66 million years ago — of North America.


The small mammals — dubbed 'Filikomys primaevus', which translates to 'youthful, friendly mouse' — represent a new genus of the so-called multituberculates. Pictured, the fossilised remains of two adult and one juvenile Filikomys primaevus


'Multituberculates are one of the most ancient mammal groups, and they've been extinct for 35 million years, yet in the Late Cretaceous they were interacting in groups similar to what you would see in modern-day ground squirrels,' said Luke Weaver of the University of Washington

'It was crazy finishing up this paper right as the stay-at-home orders were going into effect,' commented paper author and biologist Luke Weaver, also of the University of Washington.

'Here we all are trying our best to socially distance and isolate, and I'm writing about how mammals were socially interacting way back when dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth,' he added.

'It is really powerful, I think, to see just how deeply rooted social interactions are in mammals.'

'Because humans are such social animals, we tend to think that sociality is somehow unique to us, or at least to our close evolutionary relatives, but now we can see that social behaviour goes way further back in the mammalian family tree.'

'Multituberculates are one of the most ancient mammal groups, and they've been extinct for 35 million years, yet in the Late Cretaceous they were interacting in groups similar to what you would see in modern-day ground squirrels.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

US palaeontologists made the find — the oldest evidence of social behaviour among mammals — in a famous dinosaur nesting site called Egg Mountain, in Montana

Read more:

Early mammalian social behaviour revealed by multituberculates from a dinosaur nesting site | Nature Ecology & Evolution

Palaeontology: 75 million-year-old burrow contains fossilised rodents snuggled-up together

Fossils reveal mammals mingled in age of dinosaurs

3-Nov-2020 11:55 AM EST, by Yale University

— The fossil remains of several small mammals discovered in tightly packed clusters in western Montana provide the earliest evidence of social behavior in mammals, according to a new study co-authored by a Yale scientist.

The fossils, which are about 75.5 million years old but exquisitely preserved, offer a rare glimpse into mammalian behavior during the Late Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs dominated, and indicate that mammals developed sociality much earlier than previously thought, said Eric Sargis, professor of anthropology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and a co-author of the study.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

"It's an exceptional set of fossils -- the most complete and well-preserved mammal specimens from the Mesozoic Era ever discovered in North America," said Sargis, curator of mammalogy and vertebrate paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

"They provide a wealth of information about how these animals lived. They tell us that they burrowed and nested together. It's multiple mature adults and subadults congregating, which we'd never seen before from this period."

Excavated from Egg Mountain in Montana --a well-known dinosaur nesting site -- the fossils include skulls or skeletons of at least 22 individuals of Filikomys primaevus, a newly named genus of multituberculate. The small mammal, which was omnivorous or herbivorous, was as abundant in the Mesozoic Era as rodents are today. (The genus name translates to "neighborly mouse.") Multituberculates existed for more than 130 million years from the Middle Jurassic to the late Eocene epoch, the longest lineage of any mammal. The fossils were discovered in groups of two to five specimens. At least 13 of the specimens were located in the same rock layer within a 344 square-foot area, a space smaller than an average-sized studio apartment.

"These fossils are game changers," said Gregory Wilson Mantilla, professor of biology at the University of Washington, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture in Seattle, and the study's senior author. "As paleontologists working to reconstruct the biology of mammals from this time period, we're usually stuck staring at individual teeth and maybe a jaw that rolled down a river, but here we have multiple, near complete skulls and skeletons preserved in the exact place where the animals lived. We can now credibly look at how mammals really interacted with dinosaurs and other animals that lived at this time."

The researchers found no evidence that the fossils had accumulated through some natural phenomena, such as by being transported by a river, or that they were deposited by predators. The specimens were extracted from suspected burrows where the animals had lived. The bones show no signs of bite marks from predation, and the skeletons are too complete and well-preserved to have been moved by water or accumulated on the surface, according to the study.

An analysis of the specimens' teeth -- the level of wear and whether they had fully erupted into the oral cavity -- and their skeletons -- the degree of fusion in cranial and long bones -- showed that the individuals were either mature adults or subadults, not nursing infants. The groupings of multiple mature adults and subadults strongly suggests social behavior, Sargis said.

Social behavior occurs in about half of today's placental mammals, which bear live young that are nourished in the mother's uterus into late stages of development. Some marsupials, such as kangaroos, also behave socially. The trait was thought to have evolved following the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction that killed off most dinosaur species about 66 million years ago, but the study shows that sociality occurred earlier than that, the researchers concluded.

"Because humans are such social animals, we tend to think that sociality is somehow unique to us, or at least to our close evolutionary relatives, but now we can see that social behavior goes way further back in the mammalian family tree," said Luke Weaver, the study's lead author and a graduate student in biology at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Multituberculates are one of the most ancient mammal groups, and they've been extinct for 35 million years, yet in the Late Cretaceous they were apparently interacting in groups similar to what you would see in modern-day ground squirrels."

The fossils also provide the earliest evidence of burrowing behavior in multituberculates, the study states. The skeletons indicate that F. primaevus could move its shoulders, elbows, and paws similarly to today's burrowing species, such as chipmunks. The researchers found that its hips and knees had flexibility adapted for maneuvering in tight, confined spaces, such as burrows, rather than running on open ground.

###

The study's other co-authors are David J. Varricchio and William J. Freimuth of Montana State University, and Meng Chen of Nanjing University and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China.

 Rescuers save dozens of beached whales in Sri Lanka

Over 100 short-finned pilot whales were stranded on Panadura beach in Sri Lanka. Officials and local residents worked together to save the vast majority of the animals.

Nov. 3, 2020