Birds and bee lessons as Pacific field trips also solve 'Michener's mystery'

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

LAKE TAGIMOUCIA AS SEEN FROM DES VOEUX PEAK ON TAVEUNI, FIJI. BOTH THE LAKE AND THE PEAK HAVE BEEN THE SITES WHERE NEW SPECIES WERE FOUND. THE PEAK IN PARTICULAR IS WHERE THE FIRST FIJIAN HYLAEUS WERE COLLECTED FOR THIS PROJECT.

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CREDIT: COURTESY AMES DOREY PHOTOGRAPHY

Eight new Pacific bee species and new insights into Fijian bird behaviour on Viti Levu Island have been described in new scientific studies led by Flinders University. 

The studies, both funded by field work supported by the Australian Government’s New Colombo Mobility Plan Program, highlight the potential for species discovery, ecological and conservation knowledge and cultural engagement from Asia-Pacific research collaborations.

In the past 10 years, Australian Government-funded Flinders University field trips have worked closely with the University of the South Pacific, government agencies and other researchers to support important ecology and conservation work in Fiji.

Flinders PhDs Dr James Dorey and Dr Ben Parslow joined researchers from Fiji, Hawaii and Australia to study a totally new group of bees in forest canopies.

“Our investigations have discovered an extra group of endemic bees in Fiji that have remained ‘hidden’ in the forest canopy despite years of looking and sampling,” says Australian native bee expert Dr Dorey, now a lecturer at the University of Wollongong.

“Through our local collaborations, we also know that these bees are widespread in the Pacific.

“Happily, this also solves ‘Michener’s mystery’ about how these tiny (3-5mm) Hylaeus made it to French Polynesia, dispersing over time from their closest relatives which were 4000km north in Hawaii and 6000km west in Australia.”

Six Fijian species found foraging in trees are only the second native genus on the archipelago. One was found in French Polynesia (“more than 3000km as the bee flies”) and one in Micronesia – further highlighting their value of forests to pollinators – and the potential for many more species to be found across the Pacific.

“Unlike the super-generalist Homalictus bees that inhabit Fiji and likely benefitted from ancient human-clearing, the Fijian Hylaeus are likely very vulnerable to anthropogenic clearing and may be critical pollinators in forest habitats,” says Dr Dorey.

Co-author Dr Parslow, South Australian Museum taxonomist, says the study emphasises the benefits of long records of sampling in understanding diversity and conservation measures required for bee and other pollinators – particularly for land and environmental managers.

The study references the pioneering work of US entomologist Charles Michener who wrote the seminal work Bees of the World in 2007, including studies on the social evolution of the Halictidae bee family in the 1960s.

In another study, Flinders University and University of South Australia (UniSA) researchers worked with University of the South Pacific (USP) researchers to understand more about native forest birds in Fiji.

USP Dr Alivereti Naikatini, with Flinders Professor Sonia Kleindorfer (now University of Vienna) and UniSA Associate Professor Gunnar Keppel, have recently published on the insect foraging and territorial defence of Fiji’s forest birds – focusing on the impacts of human disturbance and other threats to their survival.   

Common bird species silvereye, Fiji white-eye, Vanikoro flycatcher and the Slaty monarch were studied in community-managed national parks on Viti Levu Island were studied over three years, from 2017 and 2019. 

This kind of information can be useful to plan habitat refuge and protection under conditions of climate change or further human activity, says Flinders Professor Kleindorfer.

Read more in ‘Elevational differences in territory defence response in native (endemic and non-endemic) forest birds on Viti Levu Island, Fiji’ (2023) by Alivereti N Naikatini, Gunnar Keppel, Gilianne Brodie and Sonia Kleindorfer  in the New Zealand Journal of Zoology. DOI: 10.1080/03014223.2023.2268533 https://doi.org/10.1080/03014223.2023.2268533

and

‘Canopy specialist Hylaeus bees highlight sampling biases and resolve Michener’s mystery’ (2024) by James B Dorey, Olivia K Davies, Karl N Magnacca, Michael P Schwarz, Amy-Marie Gilpin, Thibault Ramage, Marika Tuiwawa, Scott VC Groom, Mark I Stevens and Ben A Parslow just published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2024.1339446 (available when embargo lifts).

James Dorey Photography images and captions at the link

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.3389/fevo.2024.1339446 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

‘Canopy specialist Hylaeus bees highlight sampling biases and resolve Michener’s mystery’

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Feb-2024

How did a tiny bee get to French Polynesia? Eight new species help solve a scientific mystery

Scientists discover a previously unknown species radiation of masked bees, restricted to the tree canopies of Pacific islands

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

 

IMAGE: 

HYLAEUS DERECTUS MALE. THIS LITTLE BEE (3–5 MM) BEE IS ONLY KNOWN THUS FAR FROM NEAR MT NADARIVATU ON VITI LEVU, FIJI. IT WAS COLLECTED FROM A CANOPY-FLOWERING MISTLETOE.

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CREDIT: JAMES DOREY PHOTOGRAPHY

In 1934, American entomologist Elwood Zimmerman, then an undergraduate student at Berkeley, participated in the ‘Mangarevan expedition’ to Polynesia. Among the samples he collected were three tiny (4 mm long), orange-brown solitary bees found on tahetahe flowers in the Tuamotu Archipelago.

The specimens rested undisturbed in the Bernice P Bishop Museum of Honolulu until 1965, when the famous bee specialist Prof Charles Michener examined them. He described them as a species new to science: Hylaeus tuamotuensis, or Tuamotu’s masked bee, in the family Colletidae.

How these tiny bees had reached French Polynesia was a mystery: its nearest known relatives lived in Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand, more than 3,000 km west of Tuamotu. What’s more, the new species had never been collected again and was feared extinct – until the present day.

Now, 59 years later, the puzzle has been answered in a new study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

“Here we show that, despite almost a decade of sampling for bees in Fiji, there is a whole group of species that flew right over our heads until now. By exploring new sampling techniques, we discovered an unknown species radiation of Hylaeus masked bees in the forest canopy,” said Dr James Dorey, a lecturer at the University of Wollongong and an adjunct lecturer at Flinders University and lead author of the study.

“With these bees we can solve the mystery: the ancestors of H. tuamotuensis reached French Polynesia by island-hopping via Fiji and the southwest Pacific!”

New to science

There, the team of authors describe eight new species of Hylaeus, discovered between 2014 and 2019 in the Pacific and shown by DNA barcoding and morphology to be relatives of Tuamotu’s masked bee – no longer an anomaly.

Six of the newly discovered species are from the Fijian archipelago: named the straight-faced, little yellow-spotted, and Navai’s Hylaeus from the island of Viti Levu, and the white-spotted, open-faced, and veli’s Hylaeus from Taveuni. Chuuk’s Hylaeus was discovered on Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia, and the golden-green Hylaeus on Tahiti in French Polynesia, 450 km southwest of Tuamotu.

The team were only able to discover the new species by sampling from the tree canopy on these islands. Previous sampling efforts had focused on flowering plants at ground level, which the new species seem to avoid. Also surprising was that that the new species seem to prefer red flowers, as the sensitivity of most bees to red light is poor.

“It wasn’t until we brought very long nets to Fiji and started collecting from the trees that we started to find our mysterious little bees. Maybe we should not be surprised when the etymology of Hylaeus might mean ‘belonging to the forest’,” said Dorey.

More discoveries expected soon

Hundreds of islands lie between Fiji and French Polynesia, for example Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, and Wallis and Futuna. Now that the scientists know to look for them in the canopy, they expect to discover many more Hylaeus species on those islands.

But how did the bees hop between islands? Their typical flight range is unknown, but likely only a few kilometers.

“Because most masked bees nest in wood, it’s likely that they rafted between islands, especially when tropical cyclones wash masses of plant materials down rivers and out to sea. It is also possible that they were blown by high winds, but that would have been a much more perilous journey for our little bees,” said Dorey.

Guardians of the forests

How long ago these dispersal events happened can’t be resolved yet from the available DNA data. Nor do the authors know how common the new species are on the islands to which they appear to be endemic.

“[We named veli’s Hylaeus] for the veli of Fijian folklore who are powerful little people associated with forests. Accounts of the veli are varied and they were often seen in a positive light, but they could also be dangerous, for example, if you chopped down their favorite trees. Hence, the name is meant to invoke a sense of responsibility for protecting these new forest-specialist species and their trees,” reminded the authors.

Hylaeus navai female. Found on the Viti Levu and Taveuni islands of Fiji, this species is still only known from the females, but is named in honour of Navai Village and their long-term support of Fijian bee research

Navai Village on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji. Including locals, guides, hosts, and Flinders University/University of South Australia students that were funded by the Government’s New Colombo Plan in 2019.

Much of our research would be impossible without the help of locals who act as guides, hosts, and friends. Here, guides and researchers pause for a break while hiking up to Lake Tagimoucia in tropical heat.

Mount Tomanivi is Fiji’s highest peak at 1,324 m above sea level. It is home to unique bee species, although it has yet to be specifically sampled for new Hylaeus bees.

Namosi Village on Viti Levu Island, Fiji, shows an incredible mixture of anthropogenic and forested habitats with a backdrop of wild mountains.

Lake Tagimoucia as seen from Des Voeux Peak on Taveuni, Fiji. Both the lake and the peak have been the sites where new species were found. The Peak in particular is where the first Fijian Hylaeus were collected for this project.

CREDIT

James Dorey Photography

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.3389/fevo.2024.1339446 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Canopy specialist Hylaeus bees highlight sampling biases and resolve Michener's mystery

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Feb-2024

 

First-in-humans discovery reveals brain chemicals at work influencing social behavior

International team decodes intricate dance of dopamine and serotonin in human brains, shedding light on social decisions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VIRGINIA TECH

 

AUDIO: 

SETH BATTEN, A RESEARCH ASSOCIATE AT THE FRALIN BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, BUILT THE ELECTRODES USED TO RECORD THE DOPAMINE-SERATONIN DANCE

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CREDIT: CLAYTON METZ/VIRGINIA TECH

In a study in today’s (Monday Feb. 26) Nature Human Behavior, scientists delve into the world of chemical neuromodulators in the human brain, specifically dopamine and serotonin, to reveal their role in social behavior. 

The research, conducted in Parkinson's disease patients undergoing brain surgery while awake, homed in on the brain’s substantia nigra, a crucial area associated with motor control and reward processing. 

Led by Virginia Tech computational neuroscientist Read Montague, the international team revealed a previously unknown neurochemical mechanism for a well-known human tendency to make decisions based on social context — people are more likely to accept offers from computers while rejecting identical offers from human players. 

Insight from an ultimatum game

In the study, four patients receiving deep brain stimulation surgery for Parkinson’s disease were immersed in the “take it or leave it” ultimatum game, a scenario where they had to accept or reject varying splits of $20 from both human and computer players. For instance, one player may propose to keep $16, whereas the patient gets the remaining $4. If the patient rejects the split, then neither of them receives anything.

“You can teach people what they should do in these kinds of games — they should accept even small rewards as opposed to no reward at all,” said Montague, the Virginia Tech Carilion Mountcastle professor with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and the senior author of the study. “When people know they're playing a computer, they play perfectly, just like mathematical economists – they do what they should do. But when they're playing a human being, they cannot help themselves. They are often driven to punish the smaller bid by rejecting it.”

Dopamine-serotonin dance

The idea that people make decisions based on social context is not a new one in neural economic games. But now, for the first time, researchers show the impact of the social context may spring from the dynamic interactions of dopamine and serotonin.

When people make decisions, dopamine seems to closely follow and react to whether the current offer is better or worse than the previous one, as if it were a continuous tracking system. Serotonin, meanwhile, appears to focus only on the current value of the specific offer at hand, suggesting a more case-by-case evaluation.

This fast dance happens against a slower backdrop, where dopamine is overall higher when people play other human beings – in other words, when fairness comes into play. Together, these signals contribute to our brain's overall assessment of value during social interactions.

“We are shining a spotlight on various cognitive processes and finally receiving answers to questions in finer biological detail,” said study shared first author Dan Bang, associate professor of clinical medicine and Lundbeck Foundation Fellow at Aarhus University in Denmark, and an adjunct associate professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute.

 “Dopamine levels are higher when people interact with another human as opposed to a computer,” Bang said. “And here it was important that we also measured serotonin to give us confidence that the overall response to social context is specific to dopamine.”

Seth Batten, a senior research associate in Montague’s lab and shared first author of the study, built the carbon-fiber electrodes that were implanted in patients receiving Deep Brain Stimulation surgery and helped collect the data at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.

“The unique twist with our method is that it allows us to measure more than one neurotransmitter at a time — the impact of that should not be lost,” Batten said. “We’ve seen these signaling molecules before, but this is the first time we’ve seen them dance. No one has ever seen this dance of dopamine and serotonin in a social context before.”

Teasing out the meaning of the electrochemical signals recorded from patients in surgery was a major challenge that took years to solve.

“The raw data that we’re collecting from patients isn’t specific to dopamine, serotonin, or norepinephrine – it’s a mixture of those,” said Ken Kishida, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of translational neuroscience, and neurosurgery, at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.  “We’re essentially using machine-learning type tools to separate what's in the raw data, understand the signature, and decode what's going on with dopamine and serotonin.”

In the Nature Human Behavior study, researchers showed how the rise and fall of dopamine and serotonin are intertwined with human cognition and behavior.

“In the model organism world, there is a candy store full of fantastical techniques to ask biological questions, but it's harder to ask questions about what makes you, you,” said Montague, who is also the director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research and the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute.

Addressing Parkinson’s

“At some point, after we have evaluated enough people, we're going to be able to address the Parkinson’s disease pathology that's given us this window of opportunity,” said Montague, who is also a professor in the Virginia Tech College of Science.

In Parkinson’s disease, a significant loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the brainstem is a key characteristic that usually coincides with the onset of symptoms.

This loss impacts the striatum, a brain region heavily influenced by dopamine. As dopamine diminishes, serotonin terminals begin to sprout, revealing a complex interaction, as observed in rodent models.

“Already there is pre-clinical evidence that the attrition of the dopamine system is telling the serotonin system, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do something.’ But we’ve never been able to watch the dynamics,” Montague said. “What we’re doing now is the first step, but one would hope that once we get up to hundreds of patients, we'd be able to relate this to symptomatology and make some clinical statements about the Parkinson’s pathology.”

In that respect, researchers said a window is opening to learn about a wide range of brain disorders.

“The human brain is like a black box,” Kishida said. “We have developed one more way to look inside and understand how these systems work and how they have become affected by various clinical conditions.”

Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and a neuroscientist who was not involved in the study, said, “This work is changing the entire field of neuroscience and our ability to query the human mind and brain — with a technology that was just not even imagined not many years ago.”

Psychiatry is an example of a medical field that could benefit by this approach, he said.

“We have an enormous number of people in the world who suffer from a variety of psychiatric conditions, and, in many cases, the pharmacological solutions do not work very well,” said Friedlander, who is also Virginia Tech’s vice president of health sciences and technology. “Dopamine, serotonin, and other neurotransmitters are in some ways intimately involved with those disorders. This effort adds real precision and quantitation to understand those problems. The one thing I think we can be sure of is this work is going to be extremely important in the future for developing treatments.”

More than a decade in the making

The effort to measure neurotransmitters in real-time in the human brain began more than 12 years ago when Montague assembled a team of experts who “think about thinking, a lot.” 

In first-of-their-kind observations in the human brain the scientists published in Neuron in 2020, researchers revealed dopamine and serotonin are at work at sub-second speeds to shape how people perceive the world and take action based on their perception.

More recently, in a study published in October in the journal Current Biology, the researchers used their method of recording chemical changes in awake humans to gain insight into the brain’s noradrenaline system, which has been a longtime target for medications to treat psychiatric disorders.

And, in December in the journal Science Advances, the team revealed that fast changes in dopamine levels reflect a specific computation related to how humans learn from rewards and punishments.

“We've made active measurements of neurotransmitters multiple times in different brain regions, and we have now reached the point where we're touching on crucial elements of what makes us human beings,” Montague said.

What makes us human (AUDIO)

Read Montague, who led the research team who recorded the chemical underpinnings of social decision-making, talks about touching on crucial elements of what makes us human beings.

Scientists discuss their  work to discover insights into the complexities of the brain and mind. Recently, the researchers, including (from left)  Dan Bang of  Aarhus University in Denmark, Ken Kishida of  Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute; Peter Dayan, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, and Read Montague,  director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Center for Human Neuroscience Research, reflected on achievements that have spanned decades.

CREDIT

Clayton Metz/Virginia Tech

CREDIT

Clayton Metz/Virginia Tech

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JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-024-01831-w 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Dopamine and serotonin in human substantia nigra track social context and value signals during economic exchange

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Feb-2024

 

Birth outcomes improve in states that extend driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, research finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

In 2023, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Minnesota joined a growing list of states that allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses if an applicant can provide certain documentation, such as a foreign birth certificate or passport and evidence of current residency in the state. Altogether, 19 states and the District of Columbia have similar legislation in place. And lawmakers in other states, such as Michigan and Oklahoma, have introduced similar legislation.

In many cases, these laws were passed based on the premise that they would keep the roads safer by allowing undocumented immigrants to drive legally and obtain insurance. But new research from Washington University in St. Louis provides evidence that these laws also indirectly improve the overall health and well-being of immigrant mothers and their babies.

The research, published Feb. 26 in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found that implementing license laws is associated with improvements in birth weight — a critical measure of early development with long-term health implications — for babies born to Mexican and Central American immigrants.

The authors also noted a decline in preterm birth rates between 2008-2021 in states that enacted license laws compared with those that did not, though rates in both groups declined over time.

“Our study’s findings underscore how states’ extension of legal rights to immigrants can improve the health of the next generation,” said Margot Moinester, study co-author and an assistant professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences at WashU.

“Previous research has demonstrated that restrictive immigration policies and practices contribute to poor health outcomes for immigrant families, but our study is among the first to demonstrate a positive relationship between inclusive immigration policies and improved health.”

Connecting the dots

To study the connection between license laws and birth outcomes, Moinester and co-author Kaitlyn K. Stanhope, at Emory University, examined birth records for more than 4 million singleton births born to Mexican and Central American immigrants between 2008-2021 living in states that adopted these laws during the study period. They also tracked how many months prior to conception the law was implemented to assess how the relationship between the implementation of a license law and changes in perinatal health — that of pregnant people and their babies before, during and after birth — over time.

Finally, as a control measure, they compared their findings with outcomes for U.S.-born, non-Hispanic white pregnant people living in these states, but found no correlation between the implementation of a license law and birth weight in this population.

The research established a correlation between these laws and improved birth outcomes among babies born to Mexican and Central American immigrants, but stopped short of explaining why the correlation exists. According to Moinester and Stanhope, these laws likely influence perinatal health by lessening deportation fears and stress. It’s well known that stress prior to and during pregnancy can increase risk of adverse birth outcomes, including low birth weight and preterm birth.

“By reducing the criminalization of immigrants, driver’s license laws may lessen deportation fears and subsequent stress, potentially improving birth outcomes,” Stanhope said.

Because stress prior to conception — not just during pregnancy — can affect birth outcomes, it’s likely that the strength of the association would increase over time, she added.

“While we see stress as one key mechanism through which these license laws may improve perinatal health, we also think it is possible that the laws could lead to improved birth outcomes by increasing immigrants’ access to financial resources, including better-paying jobs and more weekly work hours,” Moinester said.

The authors also hypothesized that the laws would improve immigrants’ perinatal health by making it easier to access timely prenatal care. However, contrary to their hypothesis, they observed a slightly lower probability of first-trimester entry into care for individuals in states with license laws. According to the authors, one possible explanation could be that immigrants living in these states already had high rates of early prenatal care, meaning there was little room for improvement. Another possible explanation could be that access to a driver’s license was not enough to counteract other barriers, such as a lack of insurance, language differences and distance to care.

Changing immigration landscape

Over the past two decades, states have emerged as important players in the immigration policy arena, passing immigration legislation at a scale not seen in over a century, the authors said.

“There’s been a lot of focus on the extreme measures taken by some states to keep immigrants out and limit their access to services and benefits, but many states have responded by affirming their support for immigrants,” Moinester said.

“In fact, more than half of the states that have enacted license laws did so after 2015, when Donald Trump began his first campaign and made immigration enforcement a key issue.”

According to Moinester, the findings from this study highlight the potential of an individual state policy to positively shape the lives of Mexican and Central American immigrants and their children amid a highly conflictual federal and state immigration policy climate.

Because government-issued IDs are required to access a range of economic and material resources critical to health, including bank accounts, utilities, prescription medications, housing and safety net programs — plus more job opportunities — it’s likely these laws have other important health implications, Moinester said. More research is needed to better understand the health implications of these policies and to inform future policy decisions.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Health and Social Behavior

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Extending Driver’s Licenses to Undocumented Immigrants: Comparing Perinatal Outcomes Following this Policy Shift

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Feb-2024

Vanishing forests and suffering children: The hidden toll of deforestation in Cambodia

Researcher reveals the health toll of deforestation in Cambodia as forests vanish and children suffer

 NEWS RELEASE 26-FEB-2024

SOPHIA UNIVERSITY

Deforestation, a critical consequence of human activity, has garnered significant attention due to its impact on environmental sustainability, biodiversity and climate change. However, an equally pressing yet less explored aspect is the relationship between deforestation and human health, especially in impoverished regions. Scientists have increasingly recognized the detrimental effects of deforestation on various aspects of human health, particularly among children. Studies reveal that children residing in areas with high deforestation rates are at an elevated risk of malaria, respiratory illnesses, diarrheal diseases, and malnutrition. This is particularly alarming given that these regions are often home to the most economically disadvantaged populations, worsening existing health disparities.

 

Despite the growing body of research on the impact of deforestation on child health, there remains a critical gap in understanding how prenatal exposure to deforestation influences early childhood health outcomes. Cambodia serves as an ideal setting to explore this relationship, given its rapid deforestation rates coupled with prevalent child malnutrition and stunting. Over the past few decades, Cambodia has witnessed a drastic loss of forest cover, totaling millions of hectares. Concurrently, child stunting and underweight prevalence rates remain alarmingly high, underscoring the urgent need to examine the interplay between deforestation and child health in this context.

 

A new study by Associate Professor Gabriel Fuentes Cordoba from Sophia University, made available online on December 18, 2023, and published in Volume 52 of the journal Economics and Human Biology, sheds light on this issue, utilizing data from the Cambodian Demographic Health Surveys and combining it with precise forest loss data.

 

“I find that more persisting outcomes like height and weight are negatively associated with deforestation in critical periods in Cambodia. Also, when exploring the mechanisms, this study shows that the health of a vulnerable population, pregnant individuals, is negatively affected a year after deforestation occurs,” explains Dr. Fuentes Cordoba.

 

By running multiple regression specifications, Dr. Fuentes Cordoba examines critical periods of exposure of deforestation before and after birth, focusing on children under the age of five. Key health indicators, including birth weight, height-for-age z-scores, and weight-for-age z-scores, are examined to assess the impact of deforestation on child nutrition and growth.

 

The findings highlight significant associations between deforestation and child health outcomes. Children born in areas with high levels of deforestation in the year before their conception exhibited poorer health outcomes. Also, they were more likely to be shorter for their age, thinner for their height, and had lower birth weights.

 

Furthermore, the study uncovers a concerning link between prenatal deforestation exposure and maternal health. Pregnant females residing in regions with heightened deforestation rates the year before their pregnancy were more likely to experience anemia, serving as a proxy for malaria infection. This suggests that placental malaria may play a significant role in magnifying child health issues related to deforestation.

 

“The findings of this study reiterate the need to consider the impact of activities such as deforestation on the most vulnerable populations, especially among children and pregnant females,” says Dr. Fuentes Cordoba. The study advocates for targeted interventions to mitigate malaria infections among pregnant females in deforestation-prone areas, such as scaling up bed net distribution and promoting indoor residual spraying.

 

“This research shows a negative impact of deforestation on child health. This negative impact may persist into adulthood and affect other aspects of wellbeing such as education acquisition and even wages. My findings indicate that future research should explore this aspect further,” concludes Dr. Fuentes Cordoba.

 

Reference

Title of original paper	Deforestation and child health in Cambodia
Journal	Economics and Human Biology
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.20k23.101343
Authors	Gabriel Fuentes Cordoba1
Affiliations	1Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University

 

About Sophia University

Established as a private Jesuit affiliated university in 1913, Sophia University is one of the most prestigious universities located in the heart of Tokyo, Japan.  Imparting education through 29 departments in 9 faculties and 25 majors in 10 graduate schools, Sophia hosts more than 13,000 students from around the world.

Conceived with the spirit of “For Others, With Others,” Sophia University truly values internationality and neighborliness, and believes in education and research that go beyond national, linguistic, and academic boundaries. Sophia emphasizes on the need for multidisciplinary and fusion research to find solutions for the most pressing global issues like climate change, poverty, conflict, and violence. Over the course of the last century, Sophia has made dedicated efforts to hone future-ready graduates who can contribute their talents and learnings for the benefit of others, and pave the way for a sustainable future while “Bringing the World Together.”

Website: https://www.sophia.ac.jp/eng/

 

About Professor Gabriel Fuentes Cordoba from Sophia University

Professor Gabriel Fuentes Cordoba is an Associate Professor of Economics at Sophia University, Japan. He completed his doctoral studies from Tohoku University before embarking on his career as an academician and researcher. In the Faculty of Liberal Arts, he teaches development economics, economics of poverty, and introductory microeconomics. He specializes in Development Economics and Applied Microeconomics. His current research interests include: the effects of civil conflict on the formation of political beliefs; empirical studies to understand the reasons why indigenous minorities tend to be the poorest individuals of Latin America; and the determinants of household credit.

 

Funding information

This work was financially supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant Number 22K13396.

 

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JOURNAL

Economics & Human Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.ehb.2023.101343 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Deforestation and child health in Cambodia

 

Poison center calls for ‘magic mushrooms’ spiked after decriminalization, study finds

Tripled for adolescents, doubled for young adults between 2018-2022

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HEALTH SYSTEM

 

IMAGE: 

CHRISTOPHER HOLSTEGE, MD, CO-AUTHORED A STUDY THAT FOUND CALLS TO U.S. POISON CENTERS INVOLVING “MAGIC MUSHROOMS” AMONG ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG ADULTS ROSE SHARPLY AFTER SEVERAL U.S. CITIES AND STATES BEGAN DECRIMINALIZING THE HALLUCINOGEN.

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CREDIT: UVA HEALTH

Calls to U.S. poison centers involving psilocybin, or “magic mushrooms,” among adolescents and young adults rose sharply after several U.S. cities and states began decriminalizing the hallucinogen, University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have found. 

Psilocybin-related calls more than tripled among teens ages 13-19 from 152 to 464 and more than doubled among adults ages 20-25 from 125 to 294 between 2018 and 2022, according to anonymized data gathered from the National Poison Data System. Local and state efforts to decriminalize the possession, use and cultivation of psilocybin began in May 2019. Oregon and Colorado have decriminalized psilocybin, as have several cities, including Washington, D.C., Detroit and Seattle.

By comparison, the number of psilocybin-related calls to poison centers for patients ages 13-25 was largely unchanged between 2013 and 2018, the researchers found.

“It is markedly concerning to me that children are gaining access to these products,” said Christopher Holstege, MD, director of UVA Health’s Blue Ridge Poison Center and chief of the Division of Medical Toxicology at the UVA School of Medicine. “We have limited data on the potential long-term consequences on the developing brains of children when exposed to such compounds that impact the brain’s neurotransmission. We also do not understand fully why some individuals have markedly adverse complications to psilocybin, known as ‘bad trips,’ that can lead to harm to the individual taking or others who may be victims of violent behavior.”

Psilocybin’s Effects

During the 10 years examined in the study, most calls involved intentional consumption of psilocybin (81.1% of calls for ages 13-19 and 78.3% of calls for ages 20-25). Males accounted for about 75% of the calls in both age groups.

Approximately 75% of the youths ages 13-19 and 72% of the young adults required some type of medical attention after being exposed solely to psilocybin. The researchers found that the most common effects of the drug were hallucinations or delusions (36.6% of calls), agitation (27.6%), abnormally fast heart rate (20.2%) and confusion (16%). The powerful psychological effects of psilocybin can, even in moderate doses, cause adverse reactions that can include anxiety, disorientation, fear, grief, paranoia and panic attacks. Psilocybin-induced impairments in judgment and perception can contribute to dangerous behavior, accidents, self-harming and even a risk of suicide. There are reports of deaths from falls or jumps from tall buildings attributed to psilocybin use.  

The researchers note that the increase in psilocybin-related calls among young people from 2018-2022 is “particularly alarming” because the hallucinogen’s use is banned for those ages 21 and younger even in cities and states where it has been decriminalized.

“As psilocybin may become more widely available, it is important for parents to be aware that psilocybin is also available in edible forms such as chocolate and gummies,” said Rita Farah, PharmD, MPH, PhD, the Blue Ridge Poison Center epidemiologist. “And we learned from our experience with edible cannabis that young children can mistake edibles for candy.”

If someone has an adverse reaction to psilocybin or any other substance, trained healthcare providers at the Blue Ridge Poison Center are available to help around the clock. Call 800.222.1222 for assistance. Calls are free and confidential.

Findings Published

The researchers have published their findings in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The research team included Farah, Abigail Kerns, Austin Murray, and Holstege. 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Adolescent Health

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis