Inequality and COVID-19

Barcelona's poorest districts were the most affected by school confinement during the pandemic

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

 

IMAGE: THE EXPERTS MARIA GRAU I CARLES PERICAS, FROM THE FACULTY OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH SCIENCES. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the educational systems. It is estimated that approximately 1.6 billion children worldwide were affected by school closures, which had a major impact on their learning. In Catalonia, one of the measures to control the spread of this virus was the confinement of class groups when a case of positive COVID-19 was detected. Now, a study conducted by the University of Barcelona has found that, during the academic year 2020-2021, the risk of closing public schools was higher in the poorer districts of Barcelona. Given these results, the researchers stress the need to consider socioeconomic inequalities when designing public policies for future pandemics or similar health crises. 

“The link between a low socioeconomic level and a poor health state explains these results, and if this vicious circle is not broken, the local health inequity problems will go on and could even worsen in future pandemics. Therefore, the efforts to contain an epidemic or future health emergencies cannot ignore the equity problems regarding health, and this requires a coordinated and transdisciplinary work between different areas such as social services, housing, education and urbanism, among others”, notes Maria Grau, coordinator of the study published in the Journal of Public Health, and Serra Hunter professor at the Department of Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB, researcher at the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS) and member of the Biomedical Research Networking Center for Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP).

The study, conducted in collaboration with professionals from the Catalan Institute of Health, is also signed by the researchers of the same Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Carles Pericas, Gülcan Avcii, Diana Toledo and Carles Vilaplana, as well as Professor Àngela Domínguez.

Six times more likely to close in Ciutat Vella than in Sant Gervasi

The study was based on data from the Department of Education on the primary education public schools in Barcelona, from September 2020 — the beginning of the academic year after the first COVID-19 outbreak — to February 2022, when the regulation on school confinements changed.

The researchers counted, by district, the number of children in isolation or quarantine and the number of days each child stayed home due to the confinement of the school class. Then, this information was compared to the average income of each district, obtained from the per capita disposable family income, an index that measures the income of the residents of a territory for consumption or savings.

The results of the academic year 2020-2021 show a “sustained and significant” upward tendency of the risk of closing a classroom in the districts with lower incomes, to the extent that the probability in Ciutat Vella, the most underprivileged district, was six times higher than in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, the wealthiest one. “Therefore, children in areas below the average annual income were at a greater risk of a classroom confinement”, notes Carles Pericas, first author of the study. 

The pandemic, a catalyst for inequalities

Given the results, the study highlights the importance of learning from the experience of the pandemic and rethinking public policies to deal with similar situations. “Any future measure in public health, whether in a context of a pandemic or a specific transmissible disease control measures, must be approached considering these inequalities and with an understanding of what can magnify them”, they say.  

Along with these lines, the researchers note that “it is necessary to understand that the health impact of COVID-19 does not result from morbidity and mortality associated with the infection directly, but the pandemic also acts as a catalyst for all the previously existing inequalities and it magnifies synergies between them, apart from adding its effects: the more vulnerable an individual or population is, the worse health results they will get”.

Guaranteeing the access to canteen services and promoting health literacy

An example of this interrelation between disease and inequality is the fact that the school closures led to the end of essential services in the educational centers, such as the canteen service or the mental health support programs, which —as the researchers say— “could have had a negative impact on the health of most disadvantaged children and students”.

Therefore, according to the new study, in future situations that require school confinement measures, access to complementary services offered by the schools should be guaranteed, as well as equity in accessing the virtual learning sessions. “The initial shift to exclusively online formats during the beginning of the pandemic brought inequalities in access to new technologies and led to an educational loss of students from low-income families”, the researchers note.

Finally, the researchers highlight the need to boost the health literacy of the citizens, in order to “improve appropriate decision-making, which could help reduce the risk of the spread of infections and increase the understanding and adherence to disease-prevention measures”.

A change in contagion patterns during the academic year 2021-2022

The analysis of the academic year 2021-2022 data did not find a relationship between the confinements and the socioeconomic indicators of the districts. The infections in this second period were caused by the Delta and Omnicron variants, which were highly contagious but which only caused mild symptoms or were asymptomatic in many cases. “Incidences from the summer of 2021 to early 2022 reached previously unseen levels and generated unexpected changes in infection patterns”, notes Carles Pericas.

In this sense, the UB researcher thinks the cause of the differences between the two periods is mainly “the great protective effect of previous infections in the most underprivileged communities”, which had suffered most of the infections in the first stages of the pandemic.

 

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Public Health

DOI

10.1093/pubmed/fdad084 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

“Risk of partial school closure for COVID-19 by socio-economic level in the period 2020-22

 

Democrats’ perceptions of immigrants largely favorable while Republicans hold positive and negative views

New study looks beyond issue of “immigration” to reveal opinions on immigrants themselves

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Views of immigrants vary by political party affiliation, with Republicans holding both negative and positive perceptions of immigrants and Democrats expressing uniformly positive ones, finds a new study that sheds additional light on the complexities of immigration polarization. 

“While there has been a lot of research on immigration, not much is known about what people think about immigrants themselves,” says Victoria Asbury-Kimmel, a New York University sociologist, who conducted the research. “By focusing on attitudes Americans hold towards immigrants rather than immigration, this study adds depth and nuance to our understanding of public opinion on immigration issues—and how they vary by political party.” 

The paper, which appears in the journal Social Psychology Quarterly, also revealed differences in how Democrats and Republicans respond to messages about immigrants.  Specifically, Republicans tend to interpret anti-immigrant political rhetoric as commentary about unauthorized immigrants and pro-immigrant discourse as messaging about immigrants in general—and about legal immigrants in particular. Democrats, however, interpret both anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant narratives to be about immigrants in general—rejecting the former type of messaging while embracing the latter.

To gauge Americans’ views of immigrants specifically, Asbury-Kimmel surveyed, as a doctoral student at Harvard University, more than 2,000 participants in 2021 using NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel, which is composed of a representative sample of the US population and deployed by researchers for tailored studies.

To measure attitudes toward immigrants, Asbury-Kimmel posed both pro- and anti-immigrant messages. These messages were informed by text analyses of nearly 28,000 press releases and “issues” web pages from both Republicans and Democrats in the US House of Representatives, as well as from the Trump and Obama White House websites. The messages themselves were drawn from actual political speeches from Democratic and Republican lawmakers. 

Participants read either a pro- or an anti-immigrant message, then provided, on a 7-point scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” their response to the message.

To get a better understanding of what drove the participants’ responses, Asbury-Kimmel also asked subsets of those surveyed specific follow-up questions, such as: Was the message “mostly fact” or “mostly opinion”? Others were asked to provide an open-ended, one-sentence summary of the message they read. The text of these summaries was coded for the inclusion or exclusion of legal status-related (e.g. “legal,” “illegal,” “undocumented”, and “unauthorized”) and immigration-related (e.g. “immigrant,” “immigration,” “migrant,” and “refugee”) terms.

In addition to accounting for political party, the study also considered self-identified Independents.

Overall, Republicans agreed with the anti-immigrant narrative while Democrats rejected this characterization, with Independents also disagreeing with this message—though only narrowly so. 

By contrast, there was alignment between the parties when it came to positive messaging about immigrants in general (i.e., the “worthy immigrant” narrative). Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all tended to agree to some extent with the pro-immigrant narrative, even if Republicans agreed with the message less strongly than did Democrats and Independents. 

These findings raised an obvious question: How is it possible to agree with both anti- and worthy-immigrant narratives, as was the case with Republicans? To address this question, Asbury-Kimmel turned to the responses in her follow-up questions, which offered some clarity on these seemingly conflicting responses. 

Overall, one-third of the respondents believed the anti-immigrant narrative is mostly factual; in contrast, a greater number—half of those surveyed—believed the worthy-immigrant narrative as mostly factual. 

Second, a majority of Democrats and Independents believed the anti-immigrant narrative to be mostly opinion, while most Republicans believed it to be mostly factual. Conversely, a majority of Democrats believed the worthy-immigrant narrative was factual, while most Republicans saw it as opinion. Notably, Independents were split 50-50, with the majority of those who lean Democratic indicating the message was fact and a majority of those who lean Republican indicating the worthy-immigrant narrative was mostly opinion. 

Third, Republicans were significantly more likely to include immigration status in their written summaries of the anti-immigrant narrative than were Democrats. By contrast, Democrats were significantly more likely to mention immigrants without including legal status than were Republicans and Independents. 

“In other words, Republicans were more likely to state that the anti-immigrant message was about unauthorized immigrants and Democrats were more likely to state that the message was about immigrants in general,” explains Asbury-Kimmel.

“Democrats and Republicans have different interpretations of the same messages,” she adds. “These interpretative differences can help us understand why Republicans agree with negative and positive characterizations of immigrants and why Democrats strongly embrace positive and firmly reject negative characterizations.”

# # #

 

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JOURNAL

Social Psychology Quarterly

DOI

10.1177/01902725231184201 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Attitudes toward Immigrants and Partisan Differences in Information Evaluation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jul-2023

 

Ambitious global $1 billion per year ‘mission science’ model needed to win on sustainable development in time, warns experts

From the climate emergency and global health to the energy transition and water security, new report argues the global science and science funding efforts must be fundamentally redesigned and scaled up to meet complex needs of humanity and the planet.

Reports and Proceedings

INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE COUNCIL

Ambitious global $1 billion per year ‘mission science’ model needed to win on sustainable development in time, warns experts  

From the climate emergency and global health to the energy transition and water security, new report argues the global science and science funding efforts must be fundamentally redesigned and scaled up to meet complex needs of humanity and the planet. 

July 17, 2023, NEW YORK – The current sustainability science model requires a fundamental redesign to keep up with the pace and complexity of the challenges facing the planet, argues the high-level Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainability. 

In a new report launched at the UN’s High-Level Political Forum, the Commission warns that prevailing science design, funding and practice fail to address complex global issues at the speed and scale required.  

To rectify the issue, the Commission recommends setting up an ambitious $1 billion per year ‘mission science’ network of Regional Sustainability Hubs around the world. These Hubs would tackle context-specific and complex issues – from climate change and malnutrition to water security and clean energy – through a systematic engagement process, from problem definition to implementation, with key stakeholders in regions wherever they are needed, particularly in the Global South. 

A collective investment of this size is not even one percent of the global annual R&D budget, yet it would significantly accelerate the progress towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.  

“Sustainability is no longer an aspiration; it has become an imperative,” said Ambassador Csaba Kőrösi, President of the UN General Assembly. “To seek integrated and sustainable solutions, policy and political decisions at the United Nations must be supported by science-based evidence.” 

As described in the report Flipping the Science Model: A Roadmap to Science Missions for Sustainability, the Commission calls for a ‘mission science’ approach, meant to overcome the fragmented, compartmentalized scientific knowledge that often fails to connect with and to address society’s most immediate needs. It seeks to work in a transdisciplinary, collaborative way that is demand-driven and outcome-oriented. 

Convened by the International Science Council (ISC), the Commission includes the former heads of UN agencies and government ministries as well as heads of national science academies and foundations. 

“Just as the global community has used big science approaches to build infrastructure like CERN and the Square Kilometer Array, a similar mindset should be applied, particularly in the Global South, to address sustainable development challenges,” said Commission co-Chair Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO. “Unless funders accept the need to transform their funding instruments to promote transdisciplinary stakeholder-engaged research, science will continue to be under-exploited in addressing the challenges of the 2030 Agenda.” 

“Actionable scientific knowledge can be generated only through frank dialogues between scientists and funders based on trust,” said Peter Gluckman, President, ISC and Salvatore Aricò, CEO, ISC. “The same applies to the interaction of scientists with policy-makers on the one hand and with local and indigenous communities on the other, as both sides are exposed to the need to find solutions to complex sustainability challenges at multiple scales.” 

As a proof of concept, the Commission is calling for financial support for a series of pilots over an 18-month period to demonstrate the delivery of mission-led research through these Hubs and refine their approach further, with the ultimate goal of around 20 Hubs operating thereafter. 

Real-life interventions 

The Hubs would provide a framework to do science for the SGDs differently. They would allow to develop context-specific solutions to sustainability challenges, at the local and global scales – ensuring that science is fit-for-purpose, inclusive and results-driven to address the complex real-world situations it seeks to transform. In Nepal, for example, increased damming of rivers that drain from the Himalayas to India is intended to provide for the growing energy needs of multiple regions across national boundaries as well as a source of economic growth. Likewise, building roads and railways to connect with neighboring countries in the north and the south could provide not just economic benefits at national scales but also access to facilities for remote communities. 

 

Similarly, the Zambezi River basin in southern Africa is a critical resource in providing the food, energy, water and ecosystems support of the surrounding population. All these developments would require a science-based understanding of trade-offs, unintended consequences and risks that may arise with such developments, with important implications for the short- and long-term wellbeing of economies, communities and ecosystems. 

 

ENDS 

Notes to editors 

For an embargoed copy of the report, further information or interview requests, contact: 

Matthew Stafford 

Marchmont Communications 

matthew@marchmontcomms.com 

+44 (0) 7788 863 692 

 

About the International Science Council 
The International Science Council (ISC) is a non-governmental organization that convenes the scientific expertise and resources needed to lead on catalyzing, incubating and coordinating impactful international action. It is the largest organization of its kind to bring together natural and social sciences for the global public good. 

 

About the Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainability 
In response to the insufficient progress made on the SDGs, the Global Commission on Science Missions for Sustainability was established in 2021 by the International Science Council and tasked with operationalizing the core conclusions and recommendations of an earlier report, Unleashing Science.  

ROBOTICS

First robotic liver transplant in U.S. performed by Washington University surgeons

Groundbreaking surgery performed at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis

Business Announcement

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

 

IMAGE: TRANSPLANT SURGEON ADEEL KHAN, MD, CONTROLS A SURGICAL ROBOT. A SURGICAL TEAM FROM WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE IN ST. LOUIS LED BY KHAN RECENTLY PERFORMED THE FIRST ROBOTIC LIVER TRANSPLANT IN THE U.S. IN MAY AT BARNES-JEWISH HOSPITAL. view more 

CREDIT: KATIE GERTLER/WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

A surgical team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently performed the first robotic liver transplant in the U.S. The successful transplant, accomplished in May at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, extends to liver transplants the advantages of minimally invasive robotic surgery: a smaller incision resulting in less pain and faster recoveries, plus the precision needed to perform one of the most challenging abdominal procedures.

The patient, a man in his 60s who needed a transplant because of liver cancer and cirrhosis caused by hepatitis C virus, is doing well and has resumed normal, daily activities. Typically, liver transplant recipients require at least six weeks before they can walk without any discomfort. The patient was not only walking easily one month after surgery but also cleared to resume golfing and swimming.

“The transplant was a success: The operation went smoothly, the new liver started working right away, and the patient recovered without any surgical complications,” said transplant surgeon Adeel Khan, MD, the leader of the team that conducted the trailblazing surgery. Khan is an associate professor of surgery at the School of Medicine. “Liver transplantation is one of the most complex abdominal operations and heavily relies on a specialized team for good outcomes. Here at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, we are very fortunate to have the support needed to develop a world-class robotic-transplant team that allows us to safely perform complex operations. This team is a big part of our success.”

A liver transplant traditionally is performed as an “open” procedure, with a surgeon making a 3- to 4-inch vertical and 12- to 16-inch horizontal incision just below the rib cage to remove a patient’s diseased liver and place the healthy donated liver. There has been a push by transplant surgeons to shift the procedure to one that is minimally invasive – with smaller incisions that typically result in less pain and faster recoveries. Yet, most transplant surgeries have been thought to be too complicated for a minimally invasive approach – whether performed laparoscopically or robotically — and liver transplants are particularly challenging. Diseased livers are prone to excessive bleeding during surgery to remove them, and attaching the new liver to the patient’s circulatory system requires delicately sewing several tiny blood vessels together.

Robotic surgeries are a kind of minimally invasive surgery. Surgeons maintain complete control of the robot’s tools and perform the operations remotely — usually just a few feet away from the patient — using joystick-like controls. High-resolution cameras provide a magnified, 3D view of the surgical site viewable via a large monitor. The high-tech instrumentation allows for very precise, fine manipulations that would be impossible using traditional techniques.

For this robotic liver transplant, the surgeons operated through several half-inch keyhole incisions and made a single 6-inch vertical incision between the abdominal muscles for removing the diseased organ and placing the new liver, which is about the size of a football, inside the abdomen. This incision is considerably smaller than the one used traditionally and does not require cutting through abdominal muscles, enabling a faster recovery.

While the patient’s physical recovery has been on schedule, he did require extra time in the hospital due to cognitive symptoms that are not unusual in older patients after major surgery.

The robotic liver transplant took just over eight hours — on the high end but within the expected time frame for traditional open liver transplants, which usually take six to eight hours. Future robotic liver transplants likely will be completed faster as the OR team gains experience and gets more used to the subtleties of the new surgical technique, Khan said.

A South Korean team reported the first robotic liver transplant in the world in 2021. That surgery involved transplanting half a liver from a living donor instead of the whole organ, and the surgery was partially robotic; the diseased liver was removed laparoscopically and the new liver implanted robotically. Khan said his team is the first to perform a robotic liver transplant in which a whole liver was transplanted.

“Liver transplantation is the most difficult of the abdominal organs to consider for a minimally invasive approach — given the difficulty of removing a failing liver and successfully implanting the new organ — but Dr. Khan has shown that this is possible,” said William Chapman, MD, the Eugene M. Bricker Professor of Surgery, director of Washington University’s Division of General Surgery and chief of the transplant surgery section. “Further experience with this technique will be needed to establish the extent of the benefits of performing liver transplant as a minimally invasive approach.”

Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital have focused heavily on robotic surgery as part of a concerted effort to advance minimally invasive surgeries and improve patient outcomes. The robotic transplant team was formed five years ago, with an initial focus on kidney transplants. To date, the team has performed more than 30 robotic kidney transplants, all with good outcomes. The team also performs living-donor kidney removal surgery, and other robotic surgeries involving the liver, bile ducts, pancreas and stomach.

“Over the span of several years, we have built a dedicated robotic transplant team that is second to none and has been instrumental to our success,” Khan said. “Once we had this team in place, it allowed us to grow in both number and complexity of the cases while maintaining very good patient outcomes. We have five surgeons on the transplant service doing robotic surgery, and this number will increase to seven by the end of the summer. Since starting our program, we have mentored over 30 transplant centers around the country in building successful robotic programs of their own. Transplant teams from other centers come to observe our process, and we also visit their sites and mentor them as they develop their skills. We are probably one of the very few places in the country that has the support, expertise and team to take robotic transplant surgery to this level.”

Robotics: New skin-like sensors fit almost everywhere

Automated production for different objects

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH (TUM)

“Detecting and sensing our environment is essential for understanding how to interact with it effectively,” says Sonja Groß. An important factor for interactions with objects is their shape. “This determines how we can perform certain tasks,” says the researcher from the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) at TUM. In addition, physical properties of objects, such as their hardness and flexibility, influence how we can grasp and manipulate them, for example.

Artificial hand: interaction with the robotic system

The holy grail in robotics and prosthetics is a realistic emulation of the sensorimotoric skills of a person such as those in a human hand. In robotics, force and torque sensors are fully integrated into most devices. These measurement sensors provide valuable feedback on the interactions of the robotic system, such as an artificial hand, with its surroundings. However, traditional sensors have been limited in terms of customization possibilities. Nor can they be attached to arbitrary objects. In short: until now, no process existed for producing sensors for rigid objects of arbitrary shapes and sizes.

New framework for soft sensors presented for the first time

This was the starting point for the research of Sonja Groß and Diego Hidalgo, which they have now presented at the ICRA robotics conference in London. The difference: a soft, skin-like material that wraps around objects. The research group has also developed a framework that largely automates the production process for this skin. It works as follows: “We use software to build the structure for the sensory systems,” says Hidalgo. “We then send this information to a 3D printer where our soft sensors are made.” The printer injects a conductive black paste into liquid silicone. The silicone hardens, but the paste is enclosed by it and remains liquid. When the sensors are squeezed or stretched, their electrical resistance changes. “That tells us how much compression or stretching force is applied to a surface. We use this principle to gain a general understanding of interactions with objects and, specifically, to learn how to control an artificial hand interacting with these objects,” explains Hidalgo. What sets their work apart: the sensors embedded in silicon adjust to the surface in question (such as fingers or hands) but still provide precise data that can be used for the interaction with the environment.

New perspectives for robotics and especially prosthetics

“The integration of these soft, skin-like sensors in 3D objects opens up new paths for advanced haptic sensing in artificial intelligence,” says MIRMI Executive Director Prof. Sami Haddadin. The sensors provide valuable data on compressive forces and deformations in real time – thus providing immediate feedback. This expands the range of perception of an object or a robotic hand – facilitating a more sophisticated and sensitive interaction. Haddadin: “This work has the potential to bring about a general revolution in industries such as robotics, prosthetics and the human/machine interaction by making it possible to create wireless and customizable sensor technology for arbitrary objects and machines.”

Further information

• Scientific video showing the entire process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i43wgx9bT-E
• Sonja Groß and Diego Hidalgo are currently serving as research associates and leading authors of the paper “Soft Sensing Skin for Arbitrary Objects: An Automatic Framework” at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), TUM. Working alongside them are senior scientists Dr.-Ing. Amartya Ganguly and Dr.-Ing. Abdeldjallil Naceri, who bring their extensive expertise to contribute to the research conducted at MIRMI. With MIRMI, TUM has created an integrative research centre for science and technology to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for key challenges of our time. Led by Prof. Sami Haddadin as Executive Director, the institution has leading expertise in key areas of robotics, perception and data science. More information: https://www.mirmi.tum.de/.

Additional editorial information:

Photos for download: http://go.tum.de/679599; http://go.tum.de/838963; http://go.tum.de/816901; http://go.tum.de/289008

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DOI

10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10161344 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Soft Sensing Skin for Arbitrary Objects: An Automatic Framework

 

Picky green sea turtle has travelled to the same place to eat for generations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN

 

IMAGE: THIS IS DR WILLEMIEN DE KOCK, FIRST AUTHOR OF THE PNAS PAPER, WHO DISCOVERED THAT GENERATIONS OF GREEN SEA TURTLES HAVE RETURNED TO THE SAME PLACE TO EAT FOR APPROXIMATELY 3,000 YEARS. view more 

CREDIT: LEONI VON RISTOK, UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN

For approximately 3,000 years, generations of green sea turtles have returned to the same seagrass meadows to eat. This was discovered by Willemien de Kock, a historical ecologist at the University of Groningen, by combining modern data with archaeological findings. Sea turtles migrate between specific breeding places and eating places throughout their lives–this much was known. But the fact that this stretches over many generations highlights the importance of protecting seagrass meadows along the coasts of North Africa. The results were published in PNAS on July 17.

When young green sea turtles hatch, their parents have already left for a long journey. The little turtles clumsily make their way off the beach into the ocean and, not yet able to navigate the long migration of their parents, float around for years. During this time, they are not very picky eaters, omnivores even. Then, at about five years of age, they swim to the same area where their parents went, to eat a herbivore’s diet of seagrass. 

Along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, volunteers are active to protect the nests of the endangered green sea turtles. However, as Willemien de Kock explains: ‘We currently spend a lot of effort protecting the babies but not the place where they spend most of their time: the seagrass meadows.’ And crucially, these seagrass meadows are suffering from the effects of the climate crisis. 

Analysing sea turtle bones

In the attic of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology at the University of Groningen, De Kock had access to boxes full of sea turtle remains from archaeological sites in the Mediterranean Sea area. The excavations were already done by her supervisor, Dr Canan Çakırlar. ‘All I had to do was dig in some boxes,’ De Kock says. By analysing the bones, De Kock was able to distinguish two species within the collection of bones: the green sea turtle and the loggerhead turtle. 

De Kock was also able to identify what the sea turtles had been eating. This relied on a substance called bone collagen. By inspecting the bone collagen with a mass spectrometer, De Kock could detect what kind of plants the sea turtles must have eaten. ‘For instance,’ De Kock explains, ‘one plant might contain more of the lighter carbon-12 than another plant, which contains more of the heavier carbon-13. Because carbon does not change when it is digested, we can detect what ratio of carbon is present in the bones and infer the diet from that.’

Combining old and new

Modern satellite tracking data from the University of Exeter then provided De Kock with information on the current travelling routes and destinations of sea turtles. Researchers from Exeter had also been taking tiny samples of sea turtles’ skins, which revealed similar dietary information as De Kock found in bones. De Kock was, therefore, able to draw conclusions, connecting diets of millennia ago to specific locations. She found that for approximately 3,000 years, generations of green sea turtles have been feeding on sea grass meadows along the coasts of Egypt and West Libya. The results for loggerhead turtles were less specific because they had a more varied diet.  

So, why is it relevant to know the eating habits of a species over many past generations? Because we collectively suffer from the shifting baseline syndrome: slow changes in a larger system, such as an animal population, go unnoticed because each generation of researchers redefines what the natural state was, as they saw it at the start of their careers. ‘Even long-term data goes back only about 100 years,’ says De Kock. ‘But tracing back further in time using archaeological data allows us to better see human-induced effects on the environment. And it allows us to predict, a bit.’ In fact, recent models have shown a high risk of widespread loss of seagrass in precisely these spots where green sea turtles have been going for millennia. Which could be detrimental to the green sea turtle, precisely because of its high fidelity to these places.

Reference: Willemien de Kock, Meaghan Mackie, Max Ramsøe, Morten E. Allentoft, Annette C. Broderick, Julia C. Haywood, Brendan J. Godley, Robin T. E. Snape, Phil J. Bradshaw, Hermann Genz, Matthew von Tersch, Michael W. Dee, Per J. Palsbøll, Michelle Alexander, Alberto J. Taurozzi, Canan Çakırlar. Threatened North African seagrass meadows have supported green turtle populations for millennia. PNAS, 17 July 2023.

Collaboration: This study was carried out by Willemien de Kock, using modern data from The Centre for Ecology and Conservation of the University of Exeter and archaeological material from Canan Çakırlar of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology at the University of Groningen.  Lab work was carried out at the University of Copenhagen and the University of York.

Sea turtle bones from excavations in the Mediterranean Sea area were used to determine where sea turtles have been feeding in the past.

CREDIT

Leoni von Ristok, University of Groningen

The migration routes of green sea turtles (red and white stripes) between their nesting grounds (circles) and the seagrass meadows where they eat (triangles).

CREDIT

S.E. Boersma, University of Groningen

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2220747120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Threatened North African seagrass meadows have supported green turtle populations for millennia

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jul-2023

 

In Florida, endangered coral finds a way to blossom

Best conditions for elkhorn coral found in Dry Tortugas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – In a new study, researchers have found that the restoration efforts of the critically endangered species elkhorn coral depend largely on the animal’s location, microbiome, and the right conditions to provide an abundance of food. 

Their findings showed that the unique oceanographic conditions in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park provided corals with an opportunity to flourish, enhancing both coral growth and survivorship while positively influencing the coral’s microbiome – the thousands of diverse microbes that are naturally associated with them. The research also indicates that restoration efforts for the species would be most successful in areas that exhibit higher food availability, or places rife with zooplankton, a key source of nutrition that aids in coral tissue building and repair.

Over the last few decades, marine disease, climate change and a number of other environmental stressors have caused the elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) population – once a major engineer of the reef ecosystem in the Caribbean – to experience a dramatic decline. Although small patches of these corals are still found in the Caribbean, today the species appears to be functionally extinct in Florida, said Andréa Grottoli, senior author of the study and a professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University. While there are coral colonies left, there aren’t enough of them to effectively reproduce. 

“In other parts of the Caribbean, there are little pockets where there are enough of them, but in general, elkhorn coral is a highly sensitive species,” said Grottoli. “It’s no longer the primary coral on the Florida and Caribbean reefs, and that’s a huge loss to that reef ecosystem function.”

In the Florida Keys, healthy coral reefs help minimize coastal erosion and contribute greatly to the region’s economic stability through federally managed fisheries and other tourism-based ventures, providing motivation for government agencies and scientists alike to find the best strategies for restoring the vital species. 

The study, published today in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, describes how researchers aimed to do this by studying environmental variables that might contribute to the species’ survival. In 2018, researchers at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) placed replicated elkhorn colonies in five different locations along Florida’s offshore coral reef. After two years, Grottoli’s team sampled the coral’s physiology to compare how the colonies fared.

Grottoli’s team measured a number of physiological traits important to the coral’s survival, including biomass, fat content and various markers for coral feeding. 

Overall, the health profiles of the elkhorn coral greatly differed among the five areas, but only the coral samples in the Dry Tortugas thrived compared to all the other sites, said Grottoli, as certain biological traits indicated that the Dry Tortugas corals were eating more zooplankton.

The favorable conditions these corals experienced are likely due to the site’s propensity for periodic upwellings, a wind-driven oceanographic phenomenon that can bring bursts of nutrient-rich water up to the surface from colder, deeper waters. These events stimulate zooplankton production and bring large quantities of the food source into the region, making the area a veritable oasis for elkhorn coral.  

“These little pulses of extra food can make a big difference in coral survival and the things we measured are consistent with that interpretation,” said Grottoli. 

Grottoli said their research was challenged by early COVID-19 travel constraints and bad weather, but the results add to a growing body of evidence that the Dry Tortugas would be a logical place to attempt to restore elkhorn coral. The study notes that restoring elkhorn corals in the Dry Tortugas may also provide a source population for new coral recruits throughout the Florida Keys, but further research is needed to determine if other at-risk species of coral may also thrive there, Grottoli said. Still, it won’t solve all the issues facing endangered coral populations. 

“We’re trying to make smart conservation and restoration decisions, but at the core of this work is that coral reefs are declining because of climate change and local stressors like overfishing and pollution,” said Grottoli. “Until we address those two things, no matter how smart we are about coral restoration and conservation, we’re always just putting a band-aid on it.”

This work was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program and the National Science Foundation. Other Ohio State co-authors were Leila Chapron and Ann Marie Hulver, as well as Ilsa Kuffner, Lucy Bartlett, Anastasios Stathakopoulos and Erin Lyons from the U.S. Geological Survey, and Dustin Kemp and Elise Keister from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. 

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Contact: Andrea Grottoli, Grottoli.1@osu.edu

Written by: Tatyana Woodall, Woodall.52@osu.edu

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s43247-023-00888-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Heterotrophy, microbiome, and location effects on restoration efficacy of the threatened coral Acropora palmata

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jul-2023