New study shows the toll industrial farming takes on bird diversity

UBC researchers found that increased farm sizes resulted in a 15 per cent decline in bird diversity.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

A new UBC-led study looking into the impacts that large industrial farming has on biodiversity found that increased farm size causes a decline in bird diversity.

“Wildlife is a good indicator of a healthy agroecosystem and one thing we wanted to understand was the link between farm size and biodiversity in surrounding areas,” says Frederik Noack, Assistant Professor in the Food and Resource Economics Group, part of UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems.

To understand this relationship, the researchers studied how different farming indicators impact the diversity of local birds in the farmland bordering the former Iron Curtain in Germany.

Researchers found that increased farm sizes resulted in a 15 per cent decline in bird diversity.

Although the former inner German border has lost its political implications after the German reunification, farms are still five times larger on the eastern side of the border compared to the western side as a legacy of the former farm collectivization in East Germany.

Farms in East Germany have been privatized for 30 years now, but the sharp differences in farm sizes remains along the former border. This provides an ideal setup to study the impact of farm size on biodiversity in an otherwise ecological and politically similar environment.

A diverse bird population provides natural pest control and maintenance of an overall healthy ecosystem.

“Surprisingly, we found that larger farms are not damaging themselves, but their typical characteristics tend to harm bird diversity,” Noack explains. “Larger farms have typically larger fields and create more homogenous landscapes with less diverse bird habitats.”

He says these results suggest that maintaining diverse habitats within the agricultural landscape plays a crucial role for conserving bird diversity.

“Providing a mix of different crop type and other land uses such as forests and grassland within the agricultural landscape is crucial for biodiversity conservation and can mitigate the negative impact of agricultural industrialization,” he said.

Noack says that their findings highlight the importance of analyzing the agricultural changes in a landscape context.

The study used a biodiversity database along with citizen science observations, and layered this on top of satellite farm images to make correlations between farm size, crop cover, land cover diversity and land use intensity.

Combining geolocalized bird diversity data from systematic bird surveys and opportunistic citizen science data with high resolution satellite images allowed researchers to study the mechanisms that relate farm size to biodiversity.

“The high resolution land cover data allowed us to characterize the bird habitat for each bird diversity observation including field size, crop type, and land use intensity. Based on our results we can then provide the information for policies to mitigate the negative impact of agricultural industrialization on biodiversity.”

Noack says agri-environmental policies play an important role in harmonizing agricultural intensification with biodiversity conservation targets.

“Our results show that the negative impact of increased farm size can be mitigated by conserving land cover diversity within the agricultural landscape. In practice, this could mean incentivizing riparian buffer strips, forest patches, hedgerows, or agroforestry.”

Other researchers involved include Ashley Larsen, Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara; Johannes Kamp, Department of Conservation Biology, University of Göttingen, Germany; and Christian Levers, Department of Environmental Geography, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Click to read the American Journal of Economics study A bird’s eye view of farm size and biodiversity: The ecological legacy of the Iron Curtain.

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Agricultural Economics

DOI

10.1111/ajae.12274 

We conclude' or 'I believe'? Rationality declined decades ago

The use of rationality related words has been on the rise since 1850, but started an accelerating decline around 1980

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY AND RESEARCH

 

IMAGE: EXAMPLES OF TRENDS IN THE USE OF WORDS RELATED TO RATIONALITY (TOP PANEL) VERSUS INTUITION (BOTTOM PANEL) view more 

CREDIT: MARTEN SCHEFFER INGRID VAN DE LEEMPUT JOHAN BOLLEN

Scientists from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Indiana University discovered that the increasing irrelevance of factual truth in public discourse is part of a groundswell trend that started decades ago.

While the current ‘post-truth era’ has taken many by surprise, the study shows that over the past forty years public interest has undergone an accelerating shift from the collective to the individual, and from rationality towards emotion.

From ratio to sentiment

Analysing language from millions of books the researchers found that words associated to reasoning such as ‘determine’ and ‘conclusion’ rose systematically since 1850, while words related to human experience such as ‘feel’ and ‘believe’ declined. This pattern reversed over the past 40 years paralleled by a shift from a collectivistic to an individualistic focus as reflected by the ratio of singular to plural pronouns such as ‘I’/‘we’.

“Interpreting this synchronous sea-change in book language remains challenging.” says co-author Johan Bollen of Indiana University. “However, as we show, the nature of this reversal occurs in fiction as well as non-fiction. Moreover, we observe the same pattern of change between sentiment and rationality flag words in New York Times articles, suggesting that it is not an artefact of the book corpora we analysed.”

Causes

“Inferring the drivers of long-term patterns seen from 1850 until 1980 necessarily remains speculative.” Says lead author Marten Scheffer of WUR. “One possibility when it comes to the trends from 1850 to 1980 is that the rapid developments in science and technology and their socio-economic benefits drove a rise in status of the scientific approach, which gradually permeated culture, society, and its institutions ranging from the education to politics. As argued early on by Max Weber, this may have led to a process of ‘disenchantment’ as the role of spiritualism dwindled in modernized, bureaucratic, and secularized societies.”

What precisely caused the observed reversal of the long-term trend around 1980 remains perhaps even more difficult to pinpoint. However, according to the authors there could be a connection to tensions arising from  changes in economic policies since the early 1980s, which may have been defended on rational arguments but the benefits of which were not equally distributed.

Social media

The authors did find that the shift from rationality to sentiment in book language accelerated around 2007 with the rise of social media, when across languages the frequency of fact-related words dropped while emotion-laden language surged, a trend paralleled by a shift from collectivistic to individualistic language.

Co-author Ingrid van de Leemput from WUR: “Whatever the drivers, our results suggest that the post-truth phenomenon is linked to a historical seesaw in the balance between our two fundamental modes of thinking: reasoning versus intuition. If true, it may well be impossible to reverse the sea-change we signal. Instead, societies may need to find a new balance, explicitly recognizing the importance of intuition and emotion, while at the same time making best use of the much needed power of rationality and science to deal with topics in their full complexity.”

Notes for editors

Full scientific article: “The rise and fall of rationality in language”: PNAS December 2021

Original news article on website Wageningen University & Research

For interviews and further information, please contact:

Europe:

Marten Scheffer, marten.scheffer@wur.nl  (English, Dutch and Spanish)

Ingrid van de Leemput, ingrid.vandeleemput@wur.nl (English, Dutch)

USA:

Johan Bollen jbollen@indiana.edu (English, Dutch)

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DOI

10.1073/pnas.2107848118 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Should e-cigarettes be licensed as medicines?

As the UK announces support for medicinal licensing of electronic cigarettes, experts debate the issue in The BMJ

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Nicholas Hopkinson at Imperial College London welcomes the move, saying this will give doctors another means to help smokers quit.

E-cigarettes are currently regulated as consumer products so cannot be promoted as smoking cessation aids, he explains. Yet a Cochrane review already supports existing e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid, as does recently updated guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

The introduction of e-cigarettes that have been through a stricter medicinal licensing process “should provide further reassurance to healthcare professionals that they can help their patients to quit smoking in this way, particularly in mental health settings where smoking rates remain high,” he writes.

It is also likely to improve confidence among smokers who so far have been reluctant to try this approach, as well as reversing false beliefs about relative harm when compared with smoking, he adds.

He emphasises that medically licensed e-cigarettes, as and when they become available, will be only one among many tools to support smoking cessation, all ideally delivered alongside psychological support for behaviour change. 

It is also important to ensure that debate around e-cigarettes does not distract from other necessary tasks to achieve the UK’s ambition to be smoke free by 2030, such as introducing a “polluter pays” levy on tobacco industry profits and raising the age of sale from 18 to 21, he adds.

There are still more than six million people who smoke in the UK: medicinal licensing of e-cigarettes could help many of them to live longer, healthier lives, he concludes.

But Jørgen Vestbo at the University of Manchester and colleagues say that the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in helping people to quit is unproved and potentially harmful.

They point to trial evidence showing that people using e-cigarettes tend to continue vaping, whereas most people using medicinal nicotine products quit, and many restart smoking while they continue vaping (known as “dual use”). The widespread use of e-cigarettes also carries a substantial societal risk of accepting addiction, they add.

What’s more, many e-cigarettes are produced and marketed by companies owned by the tobacco industry - an industry with a history of lying to the public and spending fortunes on marketing, including to teenagers. “We should protect children and adolescents from these cynical marketeers and allow them to be the first generation in a century not addicted to nicotine,” they write.

To disguise e-cigarettes as a sensible harm reduction strategy “will risk weakening sustainable smoking cessation strategies,” they argue. 

“Instead, doctors should help to revive a decent NHS funded smoking cessation service, lobby politicians to increase taxes on products containing nicotine, and restrict smoking - as well as vaping - even more.” 

[Ends]

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj.n2912 

ARTICLE TITLE

Head to Head: Should e-cigarettes be licensed as medicines?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jan-2022

What will it take to save the regent honeyeater from extinction?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: NESTING REGENT HONEYEATER. IMAGE: NATHAN SHERWOOD. view more 

CREDIT: NATHAN SHERWOOD

New research from The Australian National University (ANU) shows unless conservation actions are urgently stepped up, one of our most beautiful songbirds, the regent honeyeater, will be extinct within 20 years.  

The new study reveals current, already intensive, conservation efforts are not sufficient, and a huge redoubling of effort is needed if we are to save these birds from extinction.  
 
“The regent honeyeater population has been decimated by the loss of over 90 per cent of their preferred woodland habitats,” lead author Professor Rob Heinsohn from ANU said. 

"Less than 80 years ago, it was one of the most commonly encountered species, ranging from Adelaide to Rockhampton. Now it is on track to follow the dodo into extinction.” 

Today there are fewer than 300 regent honeyeaters left, making it one of our rarest bird species. Habitat loss has forced them to compete with larger species for remaining habitat. 

The ANU team commenced a large-scale project in 2015 to better understand the regent honeyeater population decline, but found they are an exceptionally difficult bird to study in the wild. As nomads, they wander long distances in search of nectar. After 6 years of intensive fieldwork, the team discovered that the birds’ breeding success has declined due to predation at the nest by species such as pied currawongs, noisy miners and possums. 

In their new publication the team built population models utilising all available knowledge to predict what will happen to the wild population. 

“Our models show that current conservation efforts have provided essential life support for the regent honeyeaters, but do not go far enough," co-author Dr Ross Crates said. 

“We were able to isolate the three key conservation priorities necessary to secure the birds’ future."  

First, the models show nest success rates of both wild and released zoo-bred birds must nearly double. This requires protecting nests from predation.  

​Second, the number of zoo-bred birds released into the Blue Mountains must increase and be sustained for at least 20 years alongside nest protection. Taronga Conservation Society have been breeding the birds in captivity and are working hard to increase the numbers for release into the wild. 

Third, the models stress that the regent honeyeater population can only be secured into the future if more habitat can be protected and restored. 

“Without more habitat, reintroductions and nest protection efforts will be futile, because the flock sizes will never reach the critical mass needed for the birds to breed safely without our protection," Professor Heinsohn said.  

"Our study provides both hope and a dire warning – we can save these birds, but it will take a lot of effort and resources over a long time to pull it off.” 

The research is published in Biological Conservation. It was co-authored by members of the Regent Honeyeater Recovery team including Birdlife Australia and Taronga Conservation Society. 

CAPTION

Regent honeyeater. Image: Murray Chambers

CREDIT

Murray Chambers

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JOURNAL

Biological Conservation

DOI

10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109430 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Population viability in data deficient nomadic species: What it will take to save regent honeyeaters from extinction

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Jan-2022

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Emotionally manipulative political ads fail at swaying new voters, but excel at ensuring party loyalty

Results of study that examined 2018 US midterm election video ads suggests that even inspirational messages are unlikely to sway voters from the other side

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

Both Democrats and Republicans in US elections are more likely to be emotionally moved or angered by political advertising produced by the party to which they identify. This suggests that most ads today do little to sway the other side, but rather help motivate a party’s faithful to support a candidate through actions such as making a campaign donation or showing up at the ballot box.

While it may seem that the two major political parties in the United States don’t have much in common, the ways both types of voters respond emotionally to political advertising is very much influenced by their party affiliation. A first-of-its-kind study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, investigated this behavior based on short political video ads intended to either emotionally move or anger voters, with implications for how parties communicate their messages and spend their ad dollars.

The comparative study involved 146 participants who viewed eight videos from the 2018 midterm US elections – four each from Democratic and Republican candidates – with content explicitly designed to evoke either anger or kama muta. The latter is a specific positive emotion related to social relationships. It is similar to the concept of ‘being moved’ but in the context of intensifying or building unity within a particular community.

Are political ads effective?

Not surprisingly, the researchers found people get moved and angered by political ads, which motivates them to support their side, but only by the ads that fit their prior political preference. In other words, the ads did not manage to arouse much emotion in people who favored the opposing party, and what feelings were aroused didn’t have much of an effect.

“At a very general level, it may be surprising to some people that political ads are not all attack ads,” said lead author David Grüning, a research scientist at Heidelberg University in Germany. “Even in today’s polarized political climate, many ads attempt to inspire and move their target audience.”

However, while previous research implied that political appeals to kama muta could help cross party lines, the new paper finds scant evidence for that.

“Feeling moved by an ad from the party you prefer to begin with has a stronger effect than if the other party moved you,” Grüning noted.

Grüning said it is unclear why there is a discrepancy to past findings. He suggested that perhaps the ads from the 2016 US elections, which included the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, featured stronger messages.

“We now see that this is possible and need to test this better in future work,” he said, “but, yes, it’s clear now that sometimes, kama muta can be discounted and disregarded.”

Effects of political advertising

The study has several implications based on the findings. For instance, party affiliation in the videos used by the study was not explicit, so participants were left to guess an ad’s affiliation –  sometimes incorrectly. In those cases, the video still had more emotional influence on viewers if they believed it was created by their political party of choice, even if the opposite was true.

That suggests campaign ads would do well to “unambiguously communicate their political affiliation to prevent unwillingly feeding the support of political competitors,” according to Grüning and co-author Thomas W Schubert at the University of Oslo. Unless, of course, candidates want to distance themselves from their own party, they added.

The results of the study would also imply that political ads in modern politics have little effect in actually winning over voters from the other side. Rather, they may influence party faithful to give donations or turn out on election day.

“So far, we have only looked at motivation and intention to support, which is much easier to measure,” Grüning said. “An essential next step would be to examine supportive behavior as an outcome of being moved or angered by political ads.”

Perhaps, most importantly, the research demonstrates that voters on both sides of the issues are emotional human beings, which is sometimes lost in today’s acrimonious atmosphere.

“So there is a perhaps unexpected bipartisan unity in what divides the parties,” Grüning said.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Psychology

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.781851 

Researchers discover earliest ant mimics in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

 

IMAGE: REPRESENTATIVE TAXA OF ALIENOPTERIDAE AND UMENOCOLEIDAE view more 

CREDIT: NIGPAS

Myrmecomorphy is a phenomenon in which some animals mimic ants morphologically and behaviorally. It is an example of the broader biological phenomenon of mimicry, which is widely distributed in nature.

LUO Cihang, a graduate student supervised by Prof. WANG Bo, and his colleagues from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) have discovered a new type of alienopterid nymph from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber of Myanmar. The discovery shows that ant mimicry already existed in the mid-Cretaceous, thereby extending its geological range by approximately 50 million years.

This study was published in Earth-Science Reviews on Dec. 30.

Myrmecomorphy has evolved in more than 2,000 living species of 11 different arthropod orders. However, the fossil record of myrmecomorphy is extremely sparse and researchers know little about its origin and evolution. 

By using quantitative geometric morphometric analysis, the researchers discovered that the body shape of these alienopterid nymphs is very close to that of sphecomyrmine ants (a kind of extinct ant). Moreover, the antennae shape and legs of these alienopterid nymphs are close to that of ants, and the ratios of the antennae and legs to body length are approximately the same as in some sphecomyrmine ants.

CAPTION

Reconstruction drawings of Alienopteridae

CREDIT

LI Jiahao

The researchers confirmed that thoraco-abdominal waist-like constrictions of some of the alienopterid adults (adults of those ant mimics) resemble Hymenoptera. The strongly shortened forewings of some alienopterid adults closely resemble the tegulae of Hymenoptera and the hind wing is structurally similar to hymenopteran wings. But the body shape and size of some of these alienopterid adults are similar to some large aculeate Hymenoptera from the same deposit, especially ampulicid wasps.

CAPTION

Alienopterid nymphs and ants; ants are marked with “M”

CREDIT

NIGPAS

CAPTION

Ecological reconstruction of Alienopteridae. A: Ecological reconstruction of alienopterid nymphs; the brown insects with two cerci are alienopterid nymphs, and the other brown insects are ants. B: Ecological reconstruction of alienopterid adults.

CREDIT

YANG Dinghua

These results thus suggest that the nymphs and adults of this mid-Cretaceous alienopterid imitate entirely different hymenopteran models. Therefore, according to Prof. WANG, this research probably provides the first fossil record of transformational mimicry, i.e., mimicking different organisms during different stages of development. 

This research was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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JOURNAL

Earth-Science Reviews

DOI

10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103914 

Green-Med Diet Seems to Slow Age-Related Neurodegeneration

Data based on 18 month Ben-Gurion University-led DIRECT PLUS brain MRI trial

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, January 13, 2022 – A green Mediterranean diet, high in polyphenols and low in red and processed meat, seems to slow age-related brain atrophy, according to a new Ben-Gurion University of the Negev-led international study. The DIRECT PLUS 18-month long randomized control trial among ~300 participants is one of the longest and largest brain MRI trials in the world.

Their findings were published Tuesday in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The effect of diet on age-related brain atrophy is largely unproven. Participants were divided into three groups according to diet, and whole brain MRI measurements were taken before, and after the trial. Hippocampal-occupancy (HOC) and lateral-ventricle-volume (LVV) were measured as indicators of brain atrophy and predictors of future dementia. Brain MRI-derived data were quantified and segmented using NeuroQuant, an FDA (Food and Drug Administration) authorized fully automated tool.

Two hundred eighty-four men and women (88% men) aged 31-82 were randomly divided into three groups: A healthy dietary guidelines group, a Mediterranean diet group and a green Mediterranean diet. In the Mediterranean diet group, the participants were further provided walnuts rich in polyphenols. In the green- Mediterranean group the participants were further provided high polyphenol green components: 3-4 daily cups of green tea and a daily green shake of Mankai duckweed, as a substitute for dinner, with minimal consumption of red and processed meat. In addition, all three groups participated in physical activity programs based on aerobic exercise, including free gym memberships.

The trial was performed by Dr. Alon Kaplan and Prof. Iris Shai, professor at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and adjunct professor at Harvard University, together with several international teams of brain experts. The researchers were surprised to identify dramatic changes in MRI-related brain atrophy within 18-24 months, whereas the rate of brain atrophy markers (i.e., hippocampal occupancy decline and lateral ventricle volume expansion) were significantly accelerated from the age of 50 years and up.

The researchers discovered a significant attenuation in brain atrophy over the 18 months in those who adhered to both Mediterranean diets; with greater magnitude in the green-MED group, specifically among participants over age 50. In addition, the researchers noticed that an improvement in insulin sensitivity was independently associated with attenuated brain atrophy.    

Greater Mankai, green tea, and walnuts consumption and less red and processed meat consumption were significantly associated with lower hippocampal occupancy decline.

Participants were initially chosen based on abdominal girth size or dyslipidemia. They were all employees at a remote workplace in Israel (Nuclear Research Center in Dimona) where they did not leave the premises during the workday, and the lunch provided was monitored.

"The beneficial association between the green Mediterranean diet and age-related neurodegeneration might be partially explained by the abundance of polyphenols in plant-based food sources which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory metabolites. Polyphenols can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), reduce neuroinflammation, and induce cell proliferation and adult-onset neurogenesis in the hippocampus," writes Prof. Shai, the lead author.

 “Our findings might suggest a simple, safe, and promising avenue to slow age-related neurodegeneration by adhering to a green-Mediterranean diet,” adds Dr. Alon Kaplan.

This study was funded by grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG), (project number 209933838 - SFB 1052; B11), Israel Ministry of Health grant 87472511; Israel Ministry of Science and Technology grant 3-13604; and the California Walnuts Commission.

None of the funding providers were involved in any stage of the design, conduct, or analysis of the study, and they had no access to the study results before publication.

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

DOI

10.1093/ajcn/nqac001 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The effect of a high-polyphenol Mediterranean diet (GREEN-MED) combined with physical activity on age-related brain atrophy: the DIRECT PLUS randomized controlled trial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Jan-2022

Touch induces rapid floral closure in gentians

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

VIDEO: MECHANICAL STIMULATION APPLIED TO A FLOWER OF GENTIANA PSEUDOAQUATICA (BLUE MORPH) AND THE PROCESS OF INDUCED FLORAL CLOSURE. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.14822652 view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Dr. Can Dai (Hubei University), Dr. Yanbing Gong (Wuhan University), and Dr. Qingfeng Wang (Wuhan Botanical Garden, the Chinese Academy of Sciences). During the second Tibetan plateau scientific expedition in 2020, the research team accidentally found that the corollas of Gentiana clarkei and G. pseudoaquatica (white morph) (Gentianaceae) closed within seconds after they touched the flowers at Xiongmuco, Nagqu. “It was startling to witness with naked eyes. The flowers disappeared momentarily in front of you,” Dai says. After visiting more than twenty sites, they found four species of Gentiana that responded to mechanical stimulation with rapid corolla contraction and full closure (see the video below). It only took 7–210 s for flowers of G. pseudoaquatica (both blue and white morphs), G. prostrata var. karelinii, G. clarkei, and an unidentified gentian species to exhibit such movements.

What selective pressures might have given rise to the evolution of rapid thigmonastic petal movements in gentians? The researchers firstly looked into abiotic factors, since rain (hail) or wind is very common at plateaus and can interact with flowers in the form of mechanical perturbation. In the field observation, however, the flowers of Gentiana were typically well closed before a thunderstorm, rain, or hail could physically hit the corolla. Previous studies have shown that environmental cues, particularly temperature, are the key factors controlling flower opening and closure in gentians. It is evident that when the sunlight disappears and precipitation approaches plateaus, the temperature drops dramatically. Thus, it seems that flowers are well protected by temperature induced closure other than mechano-sensitivity. As to the possibility of wind, although the researchers have not caught any evidence of induced floral closure by wind in nature, they conducted experiments using artificial wind and found that only very strong wind (24-27 m/s) could elicit responsive petal behaviors in gentians. However, wind of such power is devastating and very unlikely to take place during summer (anthesis) in Tibet.

A type of large floral visitors, bumblebees, perhaps lies in the kernel of floral thigmonasty in gentians. The researchers noticed that three species of bumblebees visited flowers of G. clarkei and made slits in floral tubes in order to obtain nectar illegitimately. Due to bumblebees’ large body sizes and vigorous manipulations, 98.8 % of the flowers they visited displayed induced floral closure (see the video below). The injuries caused by nectar robbing were substantial. Nearly 80% of flowers experienced exterior damage, of which 6% showed injuries in ovary. Hence, the touch-response machinery in gentian flowers might be useful in escaping from further visits when a robber still hovered nearby. The relatively low incidence of ovary damages likely implied effective protection against lethal injuries caused by repeated floral larceny.

To add another level of complexity, some bumblebees also displayed regular legitimate visiting behavior to flowers of G. clarkei, resulting in rapid floral closure as well. If the bumblebees can transfer pollen among flowers, it is then reasonable to extrapolate that induced floral closure may also play roles in promoting pollen deposition, stimulating pollen germination, or encouraging outcrossing. “Undoubtedly, further examinations on fecundity consequences are needed,” Wang says, “without which, we won't be able to disentangle the adaptive significance of thigmonastic corolla behaviors.” An induced defense? A pollination stimulator? Both explanations sound very exciting and call for in-depth studies.

See the article:

Touch induces rapid floral closure in gentians

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scib.2021.12.026

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JOURNAL

Science Bulletin

DOI

10.1016/j.scib.2021.12.026 

Citizen science data from Berlin show that urban areas can be a refuge for bats, if certain conditions are met

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE FOR ZOO AND WILDLIFE RESEARCH (IZW)

 

IMAGE: CITIZEN SCIENTIST WITH A BAT DETECTOR IN BERLIN view more 

CREDIT: CHRISTOF HÄBERLE / LEIBNIZ-IZW

Urbanisation is a notable threat to bat populations all over the world, especially through artificial light and the reduction of habitat and food supply. If certain conditions are met, some spaces within metropolitan areas can be suitable for bats, so managing these spaces appropriately could contribute to bat conservation. With the help of more than 200 citizen scientists in Berlin, a team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) examined these conditions and investigated how they affect the abundance and distribution of bat species. They conclude that maintaining a low level of artificial light at night is important for all bats in cities. In addition, access to vegetation and water bodies is essential for many of them. The results and conclusions are published in the scientific journal “Environmental Pollution”.

Biodiversity loss jeopardises important ecosystem functions and hence human health and well-being at magnitudes comparable to other processes of global change such as climate change. Major drivers of biodiversity loss are habitat loss and degradation through agriculture and logging, but also through urbanisation, which causes a dramatic transformation from natural to extremely anthropogenic landscapes. These processes continue to have severe detrimental effects on many of the more than 1400 species of bats, a substantial proportion of the entire mammalian diversity. “Increasing our knowledge about the conditions under which bats suffer or thrive in these different ecosystems – including cities – is crucial for bat conservation”, says Dr Daniel Lewanzik from the Leibniz-IZW Department of Evolutionary Ecology. Lewanzik and his colleagues teamed up with more than 200 citizen scientists to record ultrasonic vocalisations of five bat species up to six times at 600 sampling sites in Berlin over the course of two years. “This large dataset allowed us to investigate how features of the urban landscape influenced the presence of bats. This helped us to identify those environmental variables which are favourable for bat populations”, explains PD Dr Christian Voigt, head of the Leibniz-IZW Department of Evolutionary Ecology and senior author of the paper.

The results underpin the suspicion that artificial light at night negatively affects all bat species, even decreasing the occurrence of species previously considered “light tolerant”. Soprano pipistrelles were particularly light sensitive: Already at medium light levels they were rarely detected in urban areas and they disappeared completely at higher levels of illumination. Additionally, soprano pipistrelles were almost four times more likely to occur in areas with white light than with orange light, whereas Nathusius’ pipistrelles and mouse-eared bats did not show a preference for any light colour. In addition, the response of mouse-eared bats to increasing light levels was subject to seasonal influences: While their activity decreased with increasing light levels in summer, this was not the case in autumn.

Canopy cover, open water and the level of impervious surfaces such as streets and buildings also had a significant effect on some species which was modulated by their foraging habits. Species that forage along vegetation edges (such as pipistrelles) require trees for commuting and foraging, those that hunt directly above water surfaces (e.g. Daubenton’s bat) depend on the presence of open water. Most investigated species, particularly open-space foraging species, avoided high levels of impervious surfaces, for example streets framed by building blocks.

“Our findings highlight the importance of an extensive reduction of artificial light at night to the absolute minimum needed for human activities and of using dimming protocols, for example triggered by motion sensors wherever and whenever applicable”, Lewanzik and Voigt summarise. They further recommend maintaining existing and creating new vegetation patches where possible. It is essential to connect these fragments with each other and with water bodies via uninterrupted vegetation and dark corridors (e.g. residential gardens and tree lines). The investigation shows that even cities can provide suitable habitat for protected and threatened species when these recommendations are followed.

Collecting data together with citizen scientists had different positive effects, the authors say. “Collaborating with more than 200 highly motivated helpers made it possible to collect data simultaneously over the entire urban area of Berlin”, says Dr Miriam Brandt, head of the Leibniz-IZW unit Science Management unit and leader of the project “WTimpact”. WTimpact, in the frame of which the research on bats in Berlin was conducted, is a collaborative project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2017 to 2021. “At the same time, we were able to introduce interested citizens to a part of urban nature that usually remains unnoticed - many participants were surprised to find bats in urban environments where they would not have expected them.”

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JOURNAL

Environmental Pollution

DOI

j.envpol.2021.118785