New look at climate data shows substantially wetter rain and snow days ahead

Research shows that by the end of the century the biggest rain and snow days will be 20 to 30% wetter than they are today

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: THE LOCA2 DATA ESTIMATE HOW OFTEN A “ONCE-IN-A-CENTURY” DAY OF RAIN OR SNOW WILL HIT IN DIFFERENT CLIMATE CHANGE SCENARIOS BETWEEN NOW AND 2100. COLORS ON THE MAPS SHOW HOW FREQUENTLY RESEARCHERS EXPECT SUCH AN EXTREME PRECIPITATION EVENT TO OCCUR, WITH THE DARKEST BROWN INDICATING EVERY 30 TO 40 YEARS. view more 

CREDIT: DAVE PIERCE/SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY

A key source of information underpinning the upcoming National Climate Assessment suggests that heavy precipitation days historically experienced once in a century by Americans could in the future be experienced on several occasions in a lifetime. 

Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) report that extremely intense days of rain or snow will be more frequent by the end of this century than previously thought – as often as once every 30 or 40 years in the Pacific Northwest and southeastern United States.

The conclusions come from analyzing a 30-terabyte data set that models temperature and precipitation at scales roughly the size of urban ZIP codes: six kilometers (3.9 miles). Researchers developed the data set, called Localized Constructed Analogs Version 2 (LOCA2), to provide climate information that is useful for local planners. In contrast, most of the existing advanced climate models look at regions that range from 50 to 250 kilometers (30 to 400 miles).  

“With this data set, we’re able to look at the impacts of actual weather pattern changes across the United States at an extremely granular level,” said Dan Feldman, staff scientist at Berkeley Lab and the project’s principal investigator. “We see that there is a lot more extreme weather that is likely to happen in the future – and by looking at actual weather patterns, we show that changes in extreme precipitation will actually be more extreme than previously estimated. Land use managers and planners should expect more extremes, but location matters.” 

The LOCA2 data set updates a similar analysis conducted in 2016 in advance of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), which was released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The NCA is intended to assist the U.S. government with planning for, mitigating, and adapting to changes in climate that will affect the country. The Fifth NCA is expected to be issued later this year.

LOCA2 projections cover the lower 48 states of the United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico. The data set draws on more than 70 years of weather data and incorporates 27 updated climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), the latest iteration of an international effort to simulate climate that includes the “coupling” of natural systems such as the ocean and atmosphere to understand how they will act in concert as climate changes. 

“We've spent a lot of effort improving the representation of extreme wet days, which is important for understanding both the likelihood of flooding and the availability of water for agricultural, commercial, and residential use,” said David Pierce, a scientist at Scripps Oceanography and the developer of LOCA and LOCA2.

The LOCA2 climate projections are available through the end of the century down to the daily level, and for three different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios known as SSPs, or Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. The three scenarios are a medium level of emissions that is slightly less than current levels (SSP 245), medium-high (SSP 370), and high, where emissions greatly increase (SSP 585). The data set is freely available for planners and decision makers to use. 

The projection reinforces what climate scientists have long predicted: Future weather events will become more extreme in a warming world. LOCA2 finds that the heaviest days of rain and snowfall across much of North America will likely release 20 to 30 percent more moisture than they do now. Much of the increased precipitation will occur in winter, potentially exacerbating flooding in regions such as the upper Midwest and the west coast. 

“The big picture is clear: it’s getting warmer and wetter,” Feldman said. “This research translates that bigger picture into more practical data for infrastructure and operations planning. With this more detailed look at local impacts, we can help local officials make better-informed decisions, such as how long to make an airport runway, how much resilience to include for constructing buildings or bridges, or where to put crops or culverts.”

The improved set of LOCA2 data was created by better identifying and preserving extreme weather events in the past, training models to more accurately reflect extremes in simulations of the future. 

“We undertook a Herculean effort of personnel and computer time not just to produce a bunch of numbers, but to produce local projections that are relevant and useful,” Feldman said. “We do so by recognizing how heat waves and storms have occurred and will occur at the local level, and projecting those forward.”

Seasonal and regional predictions

While the data varies at the local level, researchers found substantial trends across the area covered by LOCA2 at the end of the century.  

Across most seasons, a major part of North America will see roughly the same or fewer number of days with precipitation, roughly the same or fewer number of days with light and medium amounts of precipitation, and a large increase in the number of days with the most extreme precipitation (the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent of storms).

“People will be more affected by the really rare and most extreme events, because those are showing the biggest increase,” said Pierce, who is the lead author of the paper on extreme precipitation published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology. “The wettest day you would expect to see in five years, or 50 years, or 500 years – those extreme events are going to be substantially wetter, and that’s a really big issue, because it has implications for flooding and run-off.”

Southern Canada and most of the United States will see increases in extreme precipitation days that occur primarily in winter. The wettest days of precipitation will increase by 20-30 percent, depending on the emissions scenario and how extreme the storm is.

Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico can expect increases in extreme precipitation days that occur primarily in autumn. The wettest days of precipitation increase by 10-30 percent, depending on which emissions scenarios come to be and how extreme the storms are. While the region becomes drier overall, the number of days with extreme precipitation events still goes up, meaning the precipitation that does come will often do so in larger storms.

“It’s quite interesting that you see the same kind of pattern of fewer low- and medium- precipitation days and more extreme precipitation days across pretty much the entire country,” Pierce said. Knowing the changing character of precipitation and the frequency of extreme events is useful in two ways, Pierce added. “One is for building new infrastructure in the future, and one is for understanding impacts upon existing facilities already there.”

Funding for this research was provided by the Department of Defense and Department of Energy through the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). The NASA High-End Computing Capability (HECC) Program provided resources supporting this work through the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), Earth Science Division, and the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center.

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Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Hydrometeorology

DOI

10.1175/JHM-D-22-0194.1 

ARTICLE TITLE

Future Increases in North American Extreme Precipitation in CMIP6 downscaled with LOCA

One brain, multiple and simultaneous alternative decision strategies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHAMPALIMAUD CENTRE FOR THE UNKNOWN

Choosing a checkout line in a supermarket might seem like a no-brainer, but it can actually involve a complex series of cerebral computations. Maybe you count the number of shoppers in each line and pick the shortest, or estimate the number of items on each conveyor belt. Perhaps you quickly weigh up both shoppers and items and maybe even the apparent speed of the cashier... In fact, there are a multiplicity of strategies for solving this problem. 

So how does the brain know how to make decisions in situations like this where there are multiple possible strategies to choose from?

A study published today, April 13th, in the journal Nature Neuroscience provides a surprising answer to this question by showing that, rather than committing to a single strategy, the brain can compute multiple alternative decision strategies simultaneously. The study, led by Fanny Cazettes and senior authors Zachary Mainen and Alfonso Renart, at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal, performed a specially-designed experiment which used a kind of “virtual reality” setup for mice, in which the animals were tasked with searching for water in a virtual world. 

Specifically, the authors’ designed a "virtual mouse world" containing the kind of foraging problem that animal brains have evolved to be good at, allowing them to study the complex decision strategies used by mice. Any given location in the virtual world could provide water unreliably and, at some point, would “dry up” and cease giving water altogether. The mice had to decide when to leave a given location and move to another in search of more water. 

To solve the task optimally, the best strategy would be for the mice to learn to count the number of consecutive missed attempts to get water at a given site, and to switch locations when the number of consecutive misses was sufficiently large. But there were multiple alternative strategies for processing the series of successful and unsuccessful tries, including, for instance, calculating the difference between the number of successful and unsuccessful attempts. Each strategy combines misses and successful tries across time in a particular way, and thus has a signature time course – which is called the “decision variable” – that can be matched against the time course of brain activity patterns.

The researchers recorded activity from large ensembles of individual brain cells in a part of the brain known as the premotor cortex while the mice performed the task. They then looked for combinations of the temporal profiles of activity of recorded premotor neurons which resembled the decision variables associated with the different strategies.

To the authors’ surprise, data showed that, while each mouse focused on their own strategy, their brains did not. Fanny Cazettes explains, “We found that, while activity in the premotor cortex reflected the computation that the mouse was actually using, it also reflected alternative decision variables useful for the same task, and even decision variables useful for other tasks.” Zach Mainen, one of the study’s senior authors, adds that, “Contrary to our experience in checkout lines, we found that the brain can actually perform several different counting strategies at the same time, which is reminiscent of the concept of superposition in quantum mechanics."

Although there is still much to be explored in this area, this study provides an important foundation for future research, "Our findings suggest the need for new ways of thinking about the core processes involved in decision-making and action selection. One of our next steps will be to investigate how the brain selects between different decision variables and how these decisions are translated into action”, says Fanny Cazettes. 

What could be the usefulness of representing both used and unused strategies simultaneously? “This arrangement might facilitate cognitive flexibility and learning, because changing strategies only requires attending to the right precomputed decision variable, rather than having to construct it from scratch”, argues Alfonso Renart, the other senior author. “These findings have important implications for our understanding of how the brain processes and selects decision variables in complex environments. There could be implications for the development of more flexible and adaptable machine learning systems, which might be particularly useful in situations where there is a high degree of uncertainty or complexity”, concludes Zach Mainen.

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JOURNAL

Nature Neuroscience

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Apr-2023

Stop signals reduce dopamine levels and dancing in honeybees

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

 

IMAGE: A STOP SIGNALER IS ATTACKING WAGGLE DANCERS view more 

CREDIT: DONG SHIHAO

Researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California San Diego have revealed that receiving an inhibitory signal (stop signal) associated with negative food conditions can decrease brain dopamine levels in dancing honeybees.

The study was published in Current Biology on April 13.

Dopamine is known as the feel-good neurotransmitter—a chemical that ferries information between neurons. In multiple animals, dopamine is involved in arousal, cognition, and sensitivity to stimuli. It is also associated with seeking and wanting behavior, particularly with the pleasurable experiences of reward.

Honeybees communicate to nestmates the location of resources by performing a waggle dance (i.e., a repetition of movements consisting of a waggle "run" and a return "run" that is unique to each particular resource location). Their behavior type is significantly correlated with dopamine levels in bee heads. Waggle dancers have significantly higher dopamine levels than all other bees.

Honeybees have a sophisticated mechanism for communicating peril. For example, foragers use the stop signal—an inhibitory signal targeted at waggle dancers—to warn of a dangerous or declining food source and to counteract the positive feedback generated by the waggle dance.

According to Dr. DONG Shihao of XTBG, it was unclear, however, how predators affected the honeybee food-wanting system.

"We were wondering whether a signal about danger at a food source could, by itself, decrease foraging motivation and thus reduce brain dopamine levels," said Dr. DONG.

The researchers decided to test the effects of predator threat on the waggle dance and stop signal. They observed that foragers produced no stop signals when they were not attacked. In contrast, when attacked by hornets, foragers completely ceased waggle dancing. Attacked bees also abandoned the dangerous feeder and spent more time in the hive. In both whole-colony and individual measurements, stop signaling sharply increased when bees were attacked by hornets.

"Our study provides the first evidence that receiving a signal associated with negative food conditions (the stop signal) is sufficient to decrease brain dopamine levels in waggle dancers, even when these dancers have not experienced peril," said Prof. TAN Ken from XTBG, corresponding author of the study.

Moreover, the researchers discovered that increasing bee dopamine levels reduced the aversiveness of hornet attacks. Bees that fed on dopamine sucrose solution spent significantly more time staying on the feeder after being attacked by a hornet, produced fewer stop signals when they returned to the hive, and performed more waggle dances than bees that were also attacked but fed pure sucrose solution. Therefore, the fear-inducing effects of an attack could be countered by pharmacologically increasing bee dopamine levels.

"Attacks by hornet predators can reduce brain dopamine levels and cause foragers to pass on such stressful information via stop signals that also reduce brain dopamine levels in recipients. Artificially increasing dopamine levels by feeding bees dopamine would reduce the aversive effects of hornet attacks," said Prof. TAN.

A hornet is preying on honeybees

CREDIT

DONG Shihao

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

ARTICLE TITLE

An inhibitory signal associated with danger reduces honeybee dopamine levels

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Apr-2023

Air pollution is not just a human problem – it’s also changing the gut of British bumblebees

Research finds that exposure to air pollution changes bumblebee gut bacteria.

Reports and Proceedings

MICROBIOLOGY SOCIETY

Recent research from the University of Leicester, UK, has identified that air pollution affects the intricate web of microbes that are all around us. Populations of bees are also declining worldwide, so the Leicester team are investigating whether these two factors are connected. Researchers are now looking into the effects of air pollution on the bee gut microbiome, a community of beneficial bacteria vital to maintaining bee health.

The team are researching how air pollution affects bee’s beneficial gut bacteria and microbiome composition, and the subsequent impact on bee health. Dr Hannah Sampson, first author on the study, explains “We know that pollution is a massive issue globally and we know that bee decline seems to be increasing over the last few years. Maybe they’re linked, as bees are constantly exposed to these pollution particulates in the air.” 

The bumblebee has a delicate gut microbiome, that has coevolved with bee species over millions of years. The balance of the bacteria in the bee gut microbiome is vital to maintaining bee health, and any disruption to this microbiome could pose a risk not only to bee health but to pollination and global food security. Snodgrassella alvi is a beneficial member of the bee gut microbiome, that colonises bees’ large intestine in a structure called a biofilm. A biofilm is a protective matrix that promotes bacterial colonisation on surfaces (e.g. like plaque on teeth). S. alvi is especially important as it is one of the initial colonisers of the bee gut microbiome.

Dr Sampson, part of the air pollution bacteria team led by Professor Morrissey at the University of Leicester, grew S. alvi in lab conditions and exposed it to black carbon air pollution. She found that exposure to black carbon changed the behaviour of S. alvi and the structure and formation of the bacteria’s biofilm. This is worrying as any disruption to this could have knock-on effects to the overall composition and function of the bee gut microbiome.  

Researchers also looked at the effects of black carbon pollution on live bumblebees. They sampled bees before and after exposure and measured the abundance of bacteria in their gut to observe any differences. The researchers found that there was a significant change in the abundance of two beneficial bacteria that are vital to the health of the bee gut microbiome.  

Whilst Dr Sampson urges caution on concluding that air pollution directly contributes to bee population decline from this initial study, she is clear on the importance of understanding this interaction to learn how to better protect our planet: “More research needs to take place as air pollution is having a much greater impact than we think. Air pollution affects microbial communities. Changes to these important communities could have detrimental effects on lots of different ecosystems that affect bees and also directly affect humans.”  

Why orchid bees concoct their own fragrance

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUHR-UNIVERSITY BOCHUM

 

IMAGE: MALE OF THE ORCHID BEE EUGLOSSA DILEMMA PERFORMING TYPICAL COURTSHIP DISPLAY AT A PERCH IN A FLIGHT CAGE IN FLORIDA. THEIR SCENT POCKETS ARE LOCATED ON THE THICKENED HIND LEGS. view more 

CREDIT: THOMAS ELTZ

Male bees display a remarkable passion for collecting scents: they deposit scents from various sources in special pockets on their hind legs, thus composing their own fragrance. This behaviour has been known since the 1960s. The reason why they do it has been the subject of much speculation just as long. Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of California at Davis and the University of Florida at Fort Lauderdale, have finally solved the mystery. The bee fragrance serves as a sex attractant and increases the reproductive success of the males, as the team found out after three years of experiments in flight cages. The group headed by PhD student Jonas Henske and Dr. Thomas Eltz from the Bochum Department of Animal Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity describes their findings in the journal “Current Biology”, published online on 12 April 2023.

There’s been a lot of theorising about the purpose of the fragrance: some have suggested that it could be an attractant or a wedding gift for the females, or that the scent is used to communicate with rivals. In a previous paper, the group around Thomas Eltz had already shown that the male bees transport the fragrance out of the pockets on their hind legs during the courtship ritual. “What we didn’t know, however, was who was supposed to receive this signal,” says Eltz. “The females? Or rival males?”

The researchers pursued this question in the current project. For three years, they studied orchid bees in an experiment in Florida. In a 15 by 15 by 4 metre cage, they had two male bees each compete for a female – one with fragrance and one without. They then tracked whether the female mated and, if so, with which male.

Mating activities difficult to observe

“The mating of orchid bees is very rarely observed in the wild, and even in experiments it’s been almost impossible to get them to mate,” as Thomas Eltz describes the challenge. This is why the Bochum-based researchers and their US colleagues tried to offer the bees optimal conditions; for example, they used a particularly large cage and provided the animals with the perfect pollen plants.

For the experiment, the researchers first lured male bees to artificial scent sources, which the bees then used to create a fragrance. The scientists extracted this fragrance from the pockets on the hind legs using a microcapillary and subsequently transferred it to one of the bees that they tested in the experiment. Here, two males, which had been kept under identical conditions, competed for the favour of females.

Typical courtship behaviour with varying degrees of success

The males – with or without fragrance – displayed typical courtship behaviour. Mating occurred with 27 females, which each mated with a single mate. Male bees that had been equipped with fragrance were involved in 26 of these cases. In one case, a male reproduced that belonged to the control group, which should have been fragrance-free; however, the researchers found hints that this individual had also acquired a scent mixture – fragrance theft does occasionally occur.

In order to be able to prove beyond doubt which males had mated, Jonas Henske carried out paternity analyses. He compared the genetic make-up of the brood with that of the male bees.

“It’s become clear that the fragrance is an attractant for females and triggers mating behaviour in them,” as Thomas Eltz sums up the findings. “Our results also prove that the fragrance is probably not used as a status signal among males. Indeed, a male was not more likely to defend his courtship site when he was in possession of fragrance.”

About orchid bees

There are about 250 known species of euglossine bees that are important pollinators in the tropics of Central and South America. Many orchid species rely on male euglossine bees for pollination, which is why these insects are commonly known as orchid bees. These orchids produce specific flower scents as a reward, which are collected by the male bees. There are five different genera of orchid bees, and they can vary greatly in size and appearance. The male bees collect the scents with tufts of hair on their front legs, which they wring out into the pockets on their hind legs.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.060 

ARTICLE TITLE

Function of environment-derived male fragrances in orchid bees

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Apr-2023

The 2020 election saw fewer people clicking on misinformation websites, Stanford study finds

Stanford scholars find a smaller percentage of Americans visited unreliable websites in the run-up to the 2020 U.S. election than in 2016 – which suggests mitigation and education efforts to identify misinformation are working.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

In the run-up to the 2020 election, people appear to have become savvier in spotting misinformation online: clicks onto unreliable websites have declined, according to a new Stanford study published April 13 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. According to prior research, some 44.3 percent of Americans visited websites during the 2016 U.S. election that repeatedly made false or misleading information. 

During the 2020 election, Stanford scholars saw that number drop by nearly half to 26.2 percent.

While these findings are promising, the scholars are cautious in interpreting the study’s results. Exposure even among fewer people can still have serious consequences, they noted in the paper. Extrapolating their results, the scholars estimated that nearly 68 million Americans made a total of 1.5 billion visits to untrustworthy websites during the 2020 election.

“Although we saw a serious reduction in the overall number of people exposed to misinformation on the web, misinformation remains a serious problem in the information ecosystem for some populations, especially older adults and diverse communities,” said Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and senior author of the study.

The scholars found that those who did visit websites touting false claims tended to be older and lean more to the right of the political spectrum, a finding consistent with 2016 data. They did however visit fewer untrustworthy websites and spend less time on them than they did in 2016.

How the study worked

The study builds on previous research conducted by Andrew Guess at Princeton University. In 2016, Guess compiled a list of some 490 untrustworthy websites that included pages that prominent researchers in the disinformation research community had previously identified, including Stanford economist Matthew Gentzkow.

Here, Hancock, along with Stanford PhD students Ryan Moore and Ross Dahike, augmented the list with an additional 1,240 unreliable domains from NewsGuard, an organization that rates the credibility of news and information websites. Their rankings are done manually by experienced journalists and editors who rigorously review and rank websites on a variety of criteria, including whether they repeatedly publish false content, issue corrections on errors in their reporting, and distinguish between news and opinion.

The Stanford researchers then recruited a representative sample of 1,151 American adults through the polling firm, YouGov. Participants completed an online survey and installed a browser plugin that allowed the researchers to passively track web activity between Oct. 2, 2020, and Nov. 9, 2020. In sum, they gathered some 7.5 million website visits on users’ desktop and mobile devices.

So, who reads false news online and how did they find it?

The scholars found that in 2020, 5.6 percent of visits to untrustworthy websites were referred to by Facebook – in 2016, it was 15.1 percent. The scholars credit this decrease to efforts the social media platform took to mitigate the issue of false news on the website.

“The drop in visits referred by Facebook may reflect investment in trust and safety efforts to decrease the prevalence of misinformation on their platform, such as flagging, content moderation, and user education, which they and other platforms weren’t doing as much of in 2016,” said Moore.

While the scholars found that the average number of times a person visited a misinformation website decreased from an average of 32 visits in 2016 to 23 visits in 2020, there are a few individuals who still consumed misinformation online at extremely high clicks. “There are some people still consuming hundreds of misinformation websites,” said Dahlke. “We need more research to understand the effect of this type of exposure on people’s beliefs and actions.”

The scholars also found that older adults were twice as likely to visit a misinformation website compared to those aged 18-29 years old. While a smaller percentage of Americans 65 and older were exposed in 2020 (56.2 percent) than in 2016 (37.4 percent), they continue to consume misinformation at much higher rates than younger adults.

“Older adults continue to be targeted by misinformation purveyors because that generation tends to be wealthier and more civically engaged than other generations, making them prime targets for bad actors trying to make money or change election outcomes,” said Hancock.

Misinformation evolves, mutates

Misinformation is pernicious, it morphs and mutates quickly, the scholars said.

“While one could interpret our findings as evidence that the problem of online misinformation is improving in some way, they could also be interpreted as evidence that the nature of the problem is changing,” the scholars write in the paper.

The scholars only studied web browsing activity, and misinformation could have been displaced to other social media platforms or encrypted messaging services, such as WhatsApp or Signal. Moreover, a click is not the only metric of fake news consumption; people could have still consumed untrustworthy information passively online through a meme or even just skimming a headline when scrolling through news feeds. All of these factors make it a difficult topic to study.

Looking ahead to the 2024 election

Hancock, Moore, and Dahike are already thinking about what their findings might reveal about how misinformation will spread in the next general election in 2024.

They anticipate that older adults will continue to be vulnerable to fake news, an issue that Hancock’s Social Media Lab has separately been working to address with support from the Stanford Impact Lab program. In 2020, Hancock and Moore collaborated with the nonprofit news organization Poynter to create a digital media literacy intervention to help seniors identify misinformation online.

They are also concerned about the role of misinformation in under-resourced areas, such as non-English speaking communities, as highlighted in a recent paper Hancock and Moore co-authored with Stanford PhD student Angela Y. Lee on the topic.

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JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-023-01564-2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2020 US election

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Apr-2023

Conservation: Red-throated loons avoid North Sea windfarms

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS

Offshore wind farms in the North Sea reduce the population of loons –fish-eating aquatic birds also known as divers – by 94% within a one-kilometre zone, according to new research published in Scientific Reports. The findings highlight the need to minimise the impact of offshore wind farms on seabirds, while balancing this effort with the demand for renewable energy.

Previous research has found that different seabird species respond to offshore windfarms differently – they may avoid the area which can lead to habitat displacement or they may be attracted to the area which can increase mortality via collisions with the turbines. However, it is difficult to estimate the long-term population impacts of offshore windfarms on seabird populations.

Stefan Garthe and colleagues investigated how red-throated loon abundance changed before and after the construction of five offshore windfarm clusters in the southeastern North Sea dubbed BARD/Austerngrund, Dan Tysk, Butendiek, Helgoland, and North of Borkum. The authors used data on loon numbers from ships, aircraft, and digital aerial surveys collected during March and April between 2010 and 2017. They modelled how the density of loon populations changed within the area up to and beyond ten kilometres away from the windfarm.

The authors report that distribution and abundance of loons changed significantly after the windfarms were built, with a low abundance of loons in the immediate vicinity of the turbines creating a ‘halo effect’. Loon numbers decreased by 94% within one kilometre of the windfarms, and 54% within ten kilometres. In particular, loons completely disappeared from the vicinity of BARD/Austerngrund and North of Borkum windfarm clusters. The birds instead congregated at high densities in an area to the north west of the Helgoland windfarm cluster.  Overall, the total population estimate of loons fell by 29.24% from 34,865 individuals before windfarm construction to 24,672 birds after construction. The authors report that no other seabirds had such a significant negative reaction to the presence of the windfarms.

The authors suggest that the construction of the offshore windfarms will have affected how the loons forage for fish, as their movements are now restricted to smaller areas. They recommend increasing the study of cumulative effects of windfarms throughout the year across the entire region of farms.

Springer Nature is committed to boosting the visibility of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and relevant information and evidence published in our journals and books.  The research described in this press release pertains to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG 13 (Climate Action). More information can be found here.

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-31601-z 

ARTICLE TITLE

Large‑scale effects of offshore wind farms on seabirds of high conservation concern

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Apr-2023

Time out: We all need a three-day weekend

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

 

IMAGE: PEOPLE ARE MORE ACTIVE WHEN THEY WERE ON HOLIDAY, EVEN WHEN THEY ONLY HAVE A THREE-DAY BREAK. view more 

CREDIT: CC BY 2.0 LITTLEYIYE

As a four-day work week is trialled in countries across the globe, health researchers at the University of South Australia say they’re ‘all in’ when it comes to a long weekend, especially as new empirical research shows that the extra time off is good for our health.

 

Assessing changes in daily movements before, during and after holidays, researchers found that people displayed more active, healthy behaviours when they were on holiday, even when they only had a three-day break.

 

Across the 13-month study period, people generally took an average two to three holidays, each being around 12 days. The most common holiday type was ‘outdoor recreation’ (35 per cent), followed by ‘family/social events’ (31 per cent), ‘rest and relaxation’ (17 per cent) and ‘non-leisure pursuits’ such as caring for others or home renovations (17 per cent).

 

Specifically, it showed that on holiday people:

• engaged in 13 per cent more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) each day (or five min/day more)
• were five per cent less sedentary each day (or 29 min/day less)
• slept four per cent more each day (or 21 min/day more).

 

UniSA researcher Dr Ty Ferguson says that the research indicates that people display healthier behaviours when they are on holiday.

“When people go on holiday, they’re changing their everyday responsibilities because they’re not locked down to their normal schedule,” Dr Ferguson says.

“In this study, we found that movement patterns changed for the better when on holiday, with increased physical activity and decreased sedentary behaviour observed across the board.

“We also found that people gained an extra 21 minutes of sleep each day they were on holiday, which can have a range of positive effects on our physical and mental health. For example, getting enough sleep can help improve our mood, cognitive function, and productivity. It can also help lower our risk of developing a range of health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression.

“Interestingly, the size of these changes increased in line with the length of the holiday – so the longer the holiday, the better the health benefits.”

The study used data from the Annual rhythms in adults’ lifestyle and health (ARIA) study where 308 adults (mean age 40.4 years) wore fitness trackers 24 hours a day for 13 months. Minute-by-minute movement behaviour data were aggregated into daily totals to compare movement behaviours pre-holiday, during holiday and post-holiday.

Senior researcher UniSA’s Prof Carol Maher says that the study offers support for the growing movement for a four-day week.

“A shorter working week is being trialled by companies all over the world. Not surprisingly, employees reported less stress, burnout, fatigue, as well as better mental health and improved work-life balance,” Prof Maher says.

“This study provides empirical evidence that people have healthier lifestyle patterns when they have a short break, such as a three-day weekend. This increase in physical activity and sleep is expected to have positive effects on both mental and physical health, contributing to the benefits observed with a four-day work week.

“Importantly, our study also showed that even after a short holiday, people’s increased sleep remained elevated for two weeks, showing that the health benefits of a three-day break can have lasting effects beyond the holiday itself.

“As the world adapts to a new normal, perhaps it's time to embrace the long weekend as a way to boost our physical and mental health.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Contact for interview: Dr Ty Ferguson E: Ty.Ferguson@unisa.edu.au
Media contact: Annabel Mansfield M: +61 479 182 489 E: Annabel.Mansfield@unisa.edu.au 

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity

DOI

10.1186/s12966-023-01416-2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

How do 24-h movement behaviours change during and after vacation? A cohort study

Eastern wolves evolved separately from grey wolves

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA

 

IMAGE: EASTERN WOLVES FROM ALGONQUIN PROVINCIAL PARK, WHITNEY, ONTARIO view more 

CREDIT: DAVE CIUFO/ MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, provides interesting new evidence about the evolution of North American wolves, which has been a subject of debate among conservationists and taxonomists.

Southeastern Canada is home to populations of wolves and coyotes whose origins and genetic relationships have long puzzled scientists. In particular, eastern wolves have been the subject of great dispute, and it remains unknown whether these canids represent a distinct species or if they are the result of recent hybridization between coyotes and grey wolves. The Canidae animal family includes coyotes, foxes, jackals, wolves, and domestic dogs.

In Canada, the eastern wolf (also known as the eastern timber wolf or the Algonquin wolf) has been recognized by some as a distinct species based on genetic and behavioral studies. Eastern wolves are listed as “Special Concern” in Canada under the federal Species at Risk Act and “Threatened” in Ontario under the provincial Endangered Species Act. But whereas previous studies have noted the distinctiveness of eastern wolves from coyotes and grey wolves in Canada, the provincial government currently manages them as a single species across their primary range in central Ontario. This pooling of these three taxonomic entities for management is considered necessary because it is so difficult for humans to visually distinguish between wild canids and their hybrids in central Ontario. This leads to frustration among some hunters, trappers, and farmers, and challenges in enforcing hunting and trapping regulations.

To test hypotheses related to these competing findings for eastern wolves, researchers sequenced whole genomes of 25 animals of known origin and levels of contemporary hybridization, representative of all Canadian wolf-like canid types. The analysis shows that eastern wolves that inhabit the Great Lakes region in southeastern Canada are genetically distinct from other canids in the region. Based on the findings it appears that eastern wolves evolved separately from grey wolves about 67,000 years ago. The scientists here believe that eastern wolves bred with coyotes about 37,000 years ago and continue to mix with both coyotes and grey wolves.

“This manuscript addresses key evolutionary questions among North American wolf-like canids, but also provides data of direct and applied relevance,” said the paper’s lead author, Christopher Kyle. “This work represents a strong international collaboration that culminates from complementary expertise between wolf experts from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and scholars from the University of Ferrara in Italy, and Trent University in Ontario, Canada, with a long-standing interest in North American Canis ancestry and genetics.”

The paper, “Tracing eastern wolf origins from whole-genome data in context of extensive hybridization,” is available (at midnight on April 13th ) at: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/molbev/msad055.

Direct correspondence to: 
Christopher J. Kyle
Professor of Forensic Science
Trent University 
1600 West Bank Drive
Peterborough, ON K9L 0G2 CANADA
christopherkyle@trentu.ca

To request a copy of the study, please contact:
Daniel Luzer 
daniel.luzer@oup.com

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JOURNAL

Molecular Biology and Evolution

DOI

10.1093/molbev/msad055 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Tracing eastern wolf origins from whole-genome data in context of extensive hybridization

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Apr-2023