Surveys show full scale of massive die-off of common murres following the ‘warm blob’ in the Pacific Ocean

University of Washington

 

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Group of common murres on a breeding colony in Alaska. These seabirds dive and swim through the water to feed off small fish, then fly to islands or coastal cliffs to nest in large colonies.

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Credit: Sarah Schoen/U.S. Geological Survey

Murres, a common seabird, look a little like flying penguins. These stout, tuxedo-styled birds dive and swim in the ocean to eat small fish and then fly back to islands or coastal cliffs where they nest in large colonies. But their hardy physiques disguise how vulnerable these birds are to changing ocean conditions.

A University of Washington citizen science program — which trains coastal residents to search local beaches and document dead birds — has contributed to a new study, led by federal scientists, documenting the devastating effect of warming waters on common murres in Alaska.

In 2020, participants of the UW-led Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, or COASST, and other observers first identified the massive mortality event affecting common murres along the West Coast and Alaska. That study documented 62,000 carcasses, mostly in Alaska, in one year. In some places, beachings were more than 1,000 times normal rates. But the 2020 study did not estimate the total size of the die-off after the 2014-16 marine heat wave known as "the blob."

In this new paper, published Dec. 12 in Science, a team led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service analyzed years of colony-based surveys to estimate total mortality and later impacts. The analysis of 13 colonies surveyed between 2008 and 2022 finds that colony size in the Gulf of Alaska, east of the Alaska Peninsula, dropped by half after the marine heat wave. In colonies along the eastern Bering Sea, west of the peninsula, the decline was even steeper, at 75% loss.

The study led by Heather Renner, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, estimates that 4 million Alaska common murres died in total, about half the total population. No recovery has yet been seen, the authors write.

“This study shows clear and surprisingly long-lasting impacts of a marine heat wave on a top marine predator species,” said Julia Parrish, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and of biology, who was a co-author on both the 2020 paper and the new study. “Importantly, the effect of the heat wave wasn’t via thermal stress on the birds, but rather shifts in the food web leaving murres suddenly and fatally without enough food.”

The “warm blob” was an unusually warm and long-lasting patch of surface water in the northeast Pacific Ocean from late 2014 through 2016, affecting weather and coastal marine ecosystems from California to Alaska. As ocean productivity decreased, it affected food supply for top predators including seabirds, marine mammals and commercially important fish. Based on the condition of the murre carcasses, authors of the 2020 study concluded that the most likely cause of the mass mortality event was starvation.

Before this marine heat wave, about a quarter of the world’s population, or about 8 million common murres, lived in Alaska. Authors estimate the population is now about half that size. While common murre populations have fluctuated before, the authors note the Alaska population has not recovered from this event like it did after previous, smaller die-offs.

While the “warm blob” appears to have been the most intense marine heat wave yet, persistent, warm conditions are becoming more common under climate change. A 2023 study led by the UW, including many of the same authors, showed that a 1 degree Celsius increase in sea surface temperature for more than six months results in multiple seabird mass mortality events.

"Whether the warming comes from a heat wave, El Niño, Arctic sea ice loss or other forces, the message is clear: Warmer water means massive ecosystem change and widespread impacts on seabirds," Parrish said.

“The frequency and intensity of marine bird mortality events is ticking up in lockstep with ocean warming,” Parrish said.

The 2023 paper suggested seabird populations would take at least three years to recover after a marine heat wave. The fact that common murres in Alaska haven’t recovered even seven years after “the blob” is worrisome, Parrish said.

"We may now be at a tipping point of ecosystem rearrangement where recovery back to pre-die-off abundance is not possible."

Other co-authors are Brie Drummond and Jared Laufenberg at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices in Alaska; John Piatt, a former federal scientist now with the World Puffin Congress in Port Townsend; and Martin Renner at Tern Again Consulting in Homer.

 

For more information, contact Parrish at jparrish@uw.edu and Renner at heather_renner@fws.gov.

  

Common murre colony on the South Island of Semidi Islands, in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge south of the Alaska Peninsula, in 2014, before the marine heat wave.

Common murre colony on South Island of Semidi Islands, in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge south of the Alaska Peninsula, in 2021, after the marine heat wave.

Dead murres are seen washed up on a beach near Whittier, Alaska, on Jan. 1, 2016, after unusually warm Pacific Ocean conditions of 2014-16.

Dead murres are seen washed up in Prince William Sound’s Pigot Bay in the Gulf of Alaska on Jan. 7, 2016, after unusually warm Pacific Ocean conditions of 2014-2016.

Credit

David B. Irons/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adq4330 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Catastrophic and persistent loss of common murres after a marine heatwave

Article Publication Date

13-Dec-2024

 

UH researchers characterize keys to successful pregnancy in humpback whales

University of Hawaii at Manoa

 

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Aerial image of a newborn humpback whale calf off Maui, Hawaiʻi.

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Credit: Photo by Lars Bejder (Marine Mammal Research Program; NMFS permit 20311-01).

In a breakthrough study published this week in The Journal of Physiology, researchers at the Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa's Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) demystify the energetic cost of humpback pregnancy and shed light on the unique vulnerabilities of migratory humpback mothers-to-be. With an arsenal of tools that range from cutting-edge technology to historical whaling records, the research was done in close partnership with Alaska Whale Foundation, Pacific Whale Foundation and other partners, and highlights key factors that will help inform future conservation of this sentinel marine species.

Humpbacks are found in oceans throughout the world, and are among the largest of aquatic mammals. They feed in polar waters and then must fast and migrate up to 5000 km to the tropical waters where they breed and give birth. Proper intake of food is essential for humpbacks to pull off the extreme physical feat of annual migration, and the added demands of pregnancy make that energetic balance all the more critical, if a healthy humpback calf is to enter the world.

“We know a calf’s survival is linked to maternal characteristics like body size and condition, and that the calf’s size and energy stores determine its resilience and likelihood of survival,” explains Martin van Aswegen, MMRP PhD candidate and lead author of the study. “It is therefore important to understand how female humpbacks use energy for reproduction and how such energy use can impact survival of their offspring, and ultimately their population.”

Using a combination of body length measurements of mother-fetus pairs from historical whaling records, length estimates of mother-calf pairs using drones, and tissue samples from deceased whales retrieved at sea, the study yielded a few key takeaways. Researchers confirmed that fetal growth rates and birth size increased with maternal length, and made the new discovery that fetal length, volume, and mass increased exponentially throughout the pregnancy. The research team determined that the energetic cost of the first two thirds of the pregnancy were negligible, comprising only .01-1.08% of the energy used throughout the pregnancy. The majority of the energetic needs came in the final third of the pregnancy, when energetic requirements ticked up to a whopping 98.2%. This means that the most demanding period of a humpback pregnancy occurs right when the females must fast and migrate thousands of miles across the ocean.

“It was surprising to see how the peak of energy requirements coincided with the onset of fasting in pregnant females, ultimately highlighting how crucial those final 100 days of pregnancy are for this migratory species,” notes van Aswegen. “Late-pregnant females are therefore particularly vulnerable to disruptions in energy balance, given periods of greatest energetic stress coincide with fasting and migration to sub-tropical breeding grounds,” explains van Aswegen. “Our study highlights a particularly vulnerable period for pregnant humpback whales. This is important, because once these whales leave their high-latitude feeding grounds, they have a finite amount of energy available to invest in their offspring over a 3-5 month fasting period, with energy requirements being even higher after calf birth.”

Humpback whales in Hawaiʻi have been widely celebrated as a success story, following decades of population growth and subsequent delisting from endangered species status. However, marked declines in abundance and reproductive output and survival in recent years have caused concern. A 75.6% decline in mother-calf encounter rates was documented off Hawaiʻi between 2013-2018. In Southeast Alaska, a principal foraging ground for Hawaiian humpback whales, a recent study shows calf production was approximately six times lower between 2015-2019 compared to pre-2015 years, with mid-summer calf-mortality increasing tenfold from 2014-2019. These observations coincided with extended periods of intense warming anomalies across the Gulf of Alaska, reflecting the convergence of the 2014-2016 Pacific Marine Heatwave, a strong El Niño phase, and a positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Studies have subsequently reported significant and prolonged shifts in the distribution of the marine food web, resulting in poor feeding conditions for humpback whales. With the intensity and frequency of extreme climate events anticipated to increase, improving our understanding of the energetic cost of reproduction is a critical step in quantifying the effects of natural and anthropogenic perturbations on breeding humpback whales.

“This research underpins future studies on humpback whale energy demands,” explains Lars Bejder, co-author of the study and Director of the Marine Mammal Research Program. “Our drone-collected whale health database, developed in partnership with the Alaska Whale Foundation, includes over 11,000 measurements from 8,500 individual North Pacific whales. Its extensive temporal and spatial scale offers invaluable insights into the effects of large-scale climatic events on this iconic sentinel species. Sustaining such long-term, wide-scale studies is crucial for understanding these impacts within the context of natural variability in whale health.”

The success of this study, and many to follow, hinges on close partnerships among researchers.

“This research underscores the value of collaboration in tackling complex questions about the lives of humpback whales,” emphasizes Jens Currie, MMRP PhD candidate, Chief Scientist at Pacific Whale Foundation, and co-author of the study. “Through large-scale collaborations, we’re able to gain critical insights into the challenges migratory whales face during pregnancy to better inform conservation strategies. Together, we can address large-scale ecological challenges that no single institution could achieve alone.”

Cetaceans throughout the globe face a slough of threats that include habitat degradation, climate change, fisheries, and chemical and noise pollution. One quarter of the 92 known cetacean species are at risk of extinction, and there is a clear and urgent need to implement effective conservation strategies on their behalf. The animals’ ability to successfully reproduce is key to their survival, and carefully tracking and understanding nuances in this essential behavior makes resource managers better poised to adeptly monitor and conserve humpback feeding and breeding grounds.

A number of generous donors made this work possible. Hawaiʻi fieldwork was funded through the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; DoD’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program; 'Our Oceans,' Netflix, Wildspace Productions and Freeborne Media; Office of Naval Research; Omidyar Ohana Foundation; the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation; PacWhale Eco-Adventures as well as members and donors of Pacific Whale Foundation. Southeast Alaska research was funded through awards from the National Geographic Society (NGS), Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic (LEX-NG) Funds, and North Pacific Research Board. Graduate Assistantships for Martin van Aswegen were funded by a Denise B. Evans Oceanography Fellowship, North Pacific Research Board grant, and the Dolphin Quest General Science and Conservation Fund. Stranding response, necropsy and tissue processing of the humpback whale calf was supported by the NOAA John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program.

Aerial image of a young humpback whale calf off Kona, Hawaiʻi.

Credit

Photo by Martin van Aswegen (Marine Mammal Research Program; NMFS permit 21476).

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Journal

The Journal of Physiology

DOI

10.1113/JP287304 

 

New study shows spillover benefits from large marine protected areas

No-fishing zones protect species and possibly lead to increases in catch rates

University of Hawaii at Manoa

 

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Spillover Benefits from Large Scale Marine Protected Areas

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Credit: Science

Increases in catch rates for fish such as tuna have been demonstrated near recently created Large-Scale Marine Protected Areas (LSMPAs), including Revillagigedo in Mexico. This shows that LSPMAs are large enough to protect highly migratory species such as tuna, especially bigeye tuna. Those are the findings of two research scientists, including an economics professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, who analyzed publicly available data. The findings were published in Science on December 12.

“In 2004, there was only one Large-Scale MPA in the world, the Galápagos Marine Reserve in Ecuador. Today there are more than 20, including Papahānaumokuākea in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. Most of these protected areas are in waters where tuna fisheries operate,” said lead author John Lynham, a professor in the Department of Economics at UH Mānoa’s College of Social Sciences. “This means that we can now test, for the first time, the impact of these marine protected areas, especially on tuna species like ʻahi and skipjack, which support a global industry worth over $40 billion.”

Understanding the interactions between LSMPAs, tuna stocks and tuna fisheries is timely given international goals to protect 30% of the world’s ocean area by 2030 and the United Nations’ Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement, an international treaty aimed at protecting biodiversity on the high seas.

Lynham and report co-author Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez, a professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, reviewed data from nine LSMPAs across the Pacific and Indian oceans.

“We found that the spillover benefits, measured as the change in catch rates, are strongest just outside the boundaries of these MPAs and get stronger over time,” said Villaseñor-Derbez. “The effects were strongest for the MPAs that were heavily fished prior to protection and are now well-enforced.”

Key findings:

• The research team found multiple examples from around the world of spillover benefits, resulting in an increase in catch rates outside of marine protected areas. On average, this spillover benefit resulted in a 12% to 18% increase in catch-per-unit-of-fishing-effort in the waters near protected areas.
• Results across tuna species are relatively consistent, with all species showing some evidence of positive spillover ranging from 2% to 11%, with the strongest benefits for bigeye tuna.
• The research finds nations that engage in conservation are also reaping the majority of the economic benefits. For example, close to 100% of the spillover benefits from the Revillagigedo protected area in Mexican waters flow to Mexican fishing vessels.

“While protected areas in Hawaiʻi were not the main focus of this paper, our research also reveals that the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the world’s largest no-fishing zone, has caused a 10% increase in bigeye tuna (ʻahi) catch rates near the monument, in line with a recent finding of a 13% increase by researchers from the University of Washington and the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council,” said Lynham.

“A unique aspect of this research is that we built a global database on tuna catch using only publicly available data,” said Villaseñor-Derbez. “Anyone in the world can download the same dataset we used and replicate our analysis. That hasn’t been possible with previous studies on large-scale MPA impacts.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adn1146 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Evidence of spillover benefits from large-scale marine protected areas to purse seine fisheries

Article Publication Date

12-Dec-2024

 

Floods, insufficient water, sinking river deltas: hydrologists map changing river landscapes across the globe

New research by the UMass Amherst and University of Cincinnati shows a rapid shift of water upstream over 35 years

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Massachusetts Amherst

 

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This map illustrates significant changes in 6,167 reaches of the largest rivers on earth—44.2% saw decreases in streamflow and 11.9% saw increases over 35 years.

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Credit: Dongmei Feng, Colin Gleason

AMHERST, Mass. — A new study in Science by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and University of Cincinnati has mapped 35 years of river changes on a global scale for the first time. The work has revealed that 44% of the largest, downstream rivers saw a decrease in how much water flows through them every year, while 17% of the smallest upstream rivers saw increases. These changes have implications for flooding, ecosystem disruption, hydropower development interference and insufficient freshwater supplies.

Previous attempts to quantify changes in rivers over time have only looked at specific outlet reaches or a rear basin part of a river, explains Dongmei Feng, lead author, assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati and former research assistant professor in the Fluvial@UMass lab run by the paper’s co-author Colin Gleason, Armstrong Professional Development Professor of civil and environmental engineering at UMass Amherst.

“But as we know, rivers are not isolated,” she says. “So even if we are interested in one location, we have to think about how it’s impacted both upstream and downstream. We think about the river system as a whole, organically connected system. The takeaway from this paper is: The rivers respond to factors — climate change or human regulation — differently [and] we provide the finer detail of those responses.”

River flow rate, also known as discharge, describes how much water flows through a river, measured in cubic meters per second or gallons per day. Currently, flow rate is measured by manually dragging a tool (called an acoustic doppler current profiler) across the surface of a river and then combining it with another automatic measurement of river depth to calculate flow rate over time. Because this approach and only measures flow rate at a specific location, at a specific time, data on flow rates are extremely limited.

“There are about 10-15,000 infinitesimally small slices around the world where we know river discharge — that’s it — out of millions and millions of miles of rivers,” says Gleason.

So Feng and Gleason developed a new approach using satellite data and computer modeling to capture this flow rate across 3 million stream reaches worldwide. “That’s every river, every day, everywhere, over a 35-year period,” Gleason says. “Some of these are changing by 5 or 10% per year. That’s rapid, rapid change. We had no idea what those flow rates were or how they were changing — which rivers are not like they used to be — now we know.”

The significant decreases found in downstream rivers mean that less fresh water is available on the largest parts of many rivers worldwide. This has significant impacts on drinking water and irrigation.

“Communities that use river water for irrigation and drinking water, if that’s dropping, then is there a sustainable use?” says Gleason. “Can you grow your town? Can you grow your city? Can you increase your number of [acres] in production? Can the river support it? We don’t know exactly why [this is happening], but we do know that’s what it might mean.”

The decrease in flow rate also means that the river has less power to move dirt and small rocks in the river bed. The movement of this sediment downstream builds deltas and is an important process in countering sea rise, so this loss of power is detrimental to deltas, especially in light of modern dam building limiting how much sediment is available to move.

Smaller, upstream rivers (typically closer to mountains) are showing an inverse pattern: 17% are seeing an increase in flow. (Though, Gleason points out, this is not uniform, as 10% are decreasing.) This increase in volume in these small rivers can have big impacts on their surrounding communities. The researchers found a 42% increase in large floods of these small streams. Gleason cites those that have occurred in Vermont in recent summers as an example.

“Floods are disastrous for humans, but for upstream species, they may be advantageous,” adds Feng. Flooding provides important nutrients and a means of travel for migrating fish. “The local people [near the western Amazon River], for example, have reported that the fish migration has increased in that region because the flooding is more frequent, which means the high flow required for fish migration is more frequent.”

This increase in upstream flow rate may also throw an unexpected wrench in hydropower plans, particularly in High Mountain Asia for places like Nepal and Bhutan. “The increased flow of the river channel means erosion power is much more significant than before and it’s transporting more sediment downstream,” says Feng. This becomes an issue for countries looking to develop more clean energy because this sediment can clog up hydropower plants.

While the paper cannot quantify the exact cause and effect, the researchers know that the general drivers of these changes are largely climate change and human activity. “Upstream river regions have increasing precipitation in general,” says Feng. “And the snow melt in the high elevation, which is typically cold, is probably more sensitive to climate change, so the  snow melt has been increasing in these  regions.” Human activity includes sourcing water from rivers for drinking or agriculture or wastewater dumping.

And Gleason adds that this paper is an important step: “If you don’t know what it is, you can’t figure out why it is. People who live along these rivers, of course, know there are problems, but if you’re a policy analyst and you’re trying to determine the best location for a new hydropower plant out of 100 candidates, it’s hard to measure 100 different rivers accurately. [Colleagues in water systems say] you would be shocked at how many places, particularly those that are resource-limited, make major decisions about climate futures, water resources, and infrastructure projects with almost no data on hand. My hope is that everyone can use these data, understand them, and maybe make a more informed decision.”

Of nearly 1.5 million of the smallest, upstream rivers on earth, 17% of rivers saw a 1-5% increase in streamflow (blue) while 9.9% saw a decrease (red) over 35 years.

Credit

Dongmei Feng, Colin Gleason

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adl5728 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

More flow upstream and less flow downstream: The changing form and function of global rivers

Article Publication Date

12-Dec-2024

Do animals get jealous like people? Researchers say it’s complicated.

New UC Berkeley research looks at years of studies into whether non-human animals have a similar sense of fairness. The answer is more nuanced than it may seem.

University of California - Berkeley

It’s a question that has puzzled thinkers for centuries: Are we humans alone in our pursuit of fairness and the frustration we feel when others get what we want?

In recent years, evolutionary psychologists have suggested that we’re not all that special. Animals, from corvids to capuchin monkeys, express what humans might recognize as jealousy when, for example, they are passed over for a sought-after snack. Many argue this is evidence we are not alone in our aversion toward unfairness. 

But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, makes the case that humans might be unique after all. 

Using data from 23 studies of what psychologists call “inequity aversion,” Berkeley researchers combed through results of more than 60,000 observations involving 18 animal species. In what they said was the “largest empirical investigation of non-human inequity aversion to date,” the team reconstructed data analyses and used a new metric that adds depth to the concept of fairness. 

“We can’t make the claim that animals experience jealousy based on this data,” said Oded Ritov, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in UC Berkeley’s Department of Psychology. “If there is an effect, it’s very weak and might show up in very specific settings. 

“But it’s nothing like what we see in humans in terms of our deep-seated sense of fairness.”  

The meta-analysis was published Nov. 27 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Ritov, the paper’s first author, studies how human behaviors have evolved, how much of it is baked into our big brains and what is learned through our complicated cultures. He also researches non-human animals to better understand what makes humans special. 

Our sense of fairness in distributing resources may be a key reason we were able to build shelters, share food and develop more complex societies. To be sure, humans have differing perceptions of fairness. But core to the concept is what psychologists call “inequity aversion,” a disinclination for the unequal distribution of resources and judgments on how things should be shared. 

Examples are all around us, as siblings or parents of young children can attest. When one child is given something nicer than the other, outbursts often follow. It’s not just that the youngster didn’t get a toy or treat; someone else did instead. This reaction shows aversion toward inequity.

It’s long been debated just how different that perception of fairness is for non-human animals.

Primatologist Frans de Waal’s landmark study and accompanying viral video of an endearing capuchin monkey lashing out made the case that such animals show an understanding of inequity aversion that’s remarkably similar to that of human children. All was well and good when both monkeys were given a slice of cucumber. But when researchers gave one a grape, the cucumber-munching chimp seemed to grow jealous, flung the cucumber back at the researcher and rattled the cage wall in protest. 

De Waal and others said this and subsequent experiments supported the claim that humans are not alone in our sense of fairness. Similar studies on corvids, dogs and mice have likewise been reported to show inequity aversion.

Ritov said that might be the “straightforward, and perhaps anthropomorphic, interpretation.” But that doesn’t mean it’s the only one. 

He said many of these studies have been hampered by a replication crisis that has long plagued psychology and other disciplines. Findings might be compelling, but they’re based on small sample sizes and are difficult to repeat, clouding their broader contributions to science. 

“We thought it’d be a valuable contribution to try to pull together as much data as we can on this question and see what kind of pattern emerges with the larger dataset,” Ritov said.

The pattern that emerged after rerunning the data with a new variable suggests the animals weren’t displaying jealousy. They were actually disappointed after expecting a grape based on past research behavior. Follow-up studies elicited similar outrage in monkeys, even when the grapes were placed in an empty cage — where there was no other monkey to be jealous of. 

“We think that the rejections are a form of social protest,” Ritov said. “But what animals are protesting isn’t receiving less than someone else. Rather, it seems like they’re protesting the human not treating them as well as they could.”

Perhaps the reaction was never about inequity aversion, Ritov argues. It was about unmet expectations. And that’s something that humans and non-human animals alike can relate to.

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Journal

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms

 

Examining gender inequality in academic publishing

A new study from Syracuse University indicates a growing gap of scholarly articles written by women

Syracuse University

Editors of academic journals hold an influential position in their field. They have decision-making power over which authors and papers get published, set journal policy, and help shape the trajectory of their discipline. It is also a role in which women are frequently underrepresented.

Assistant professor of accounting Sebastian Tideman-Frappart and several colleagues set out to fill a knowledge gap about this issue in the field of management science by tracking gender diversity in world-leading management journals over time. The resulting article – co-authored by Brooke Gazdag, associate professor of management at Kühne Logistics University; Jamie Gloor, assistant professor of management, and Eugenia Bajet Mestre, Ph.D. candidate, both at the University of St. Gallen; and Cécile Emery, senior lecturer of organizational behavior at the University of Exeter – was just published in The Leadership Quarterly.

Through substantial efforts involving archives and libraries across five countries, the researchers constructed a comprehensive dataset. It lists 21,510 unique authors and 4,173 unique leaders in 11 top management journals from 1990 to 2022. “It’s a cool, novel dataset,” Tideman-Frappart said.

Analysis of the data showed that management science remains a male-dominated discipline at all levels. Only 32 of 135 editors, or close to 24 percent, were women. They were similarly underrepresented farther down the hierarchy as associate editors, editorial board members, and authors – and having a woman editor did not appear to create a trickle-down effect. While the number of women in leading positions has increased over the past decades, this may be due simply to broader societal trends toward better representation.

“There has been progress, but it’s been slow, and there’s still a long way to go,” Tideman-Frappart summarized. “So if you want to have fair representation of women in the discipline sooner rather than later, it looks like we need intervention to get there.” The authors recommend that editors and publishers aim to mitigate network effects, increase inclusion, and recognize and circumvent invisible barriers, for example by setting targets and transparency standards for women in leadership positions or providing training and support for aspiring women editors. This study, they hope, shows the importance of tracking data and will provide a benchmark for academic journals and starting point for changes to the discipline. “Our data is open access, so anybody can use it,” Tideman-Frappart said. “We really view our study as a conversation opener.”

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Journal

The Leadership Quarterly

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Women in academic publishing: Descriptive trends from authors to editors across 33 years of management science

Article Publication Date

12-Dec-2024

 

Scientists collect ‘microbial fingerprints’ found in household plumbing

Washington University in St. Louis

By Leah Shaffer

The plumbing systems in households can teem with generally harmless microbial life, but scientists have not had an opportunity to fully document the bacterial communities within people’s homes.

The Safe Drinking Water Act requires monitoring by public water utilities, but those samples are taken outside property lines of individual households. Once inside a home, microbial communities can change and evolve in ways that are generally not monitored or even understood.

Fangqiong Ling, an assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is working to change that, along with her colleagues and students within the school’s cluster of water quality researchers.

For a paper published Dec. 10 in Nature Water, Ling and colleagues shared results from sampling the bathroom faucets of eight households in the St. Louis metro area. They sampled the homes for seven days to see the flow and change of different bacteria populations. They found that, though houses generally shared major categories of bacteria, down to the species level, there was wide variation from house to house.

“The houses have their own unique signature compared to the rest,” Ling said.

All public tap water is subject to stringent treatment and disinfectants, so the number of microbial cells they detected was very small — another challenge for monitoring.

But the survivors they find are tough. The researchers anticipated seeing antibiotic resistance genes in tap water microbiomes, and they did find that pattern.

Using the same common disinfectant means that a recognizable group of microbes can potentially pick up resistance to that disinfectant. The researchers found a pattern of that “resistome” across households. But what accounts for the huge variety in species?

Computer modeling suggests that microbes initially establish their communities through both deterministic and stochastic processes, meaning random events, which could account for why there is huge variation at the species level, household to household.

For household water, these processes could involve the random timing for microbes’ arrival at the house, their growth dynamics and a variety of factors that aren’t yet understood.

The research aims to be able to monitor, anticipate and prevent outbreaks of opportunistic pathogens and bacteria that spread disease. This kind of monitoring is under development for large buildings and institutions such as hospitals, but it’s scarce for individual households.

“Houses are still the place where the majority of our interactions with water take place, so we want to study households,” Ling said.

While researchers found illness-causing pathogens or bacteria (in small quantities) in houses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that household water is unsafe — but public health regulators should keep a closer watch, she said.

Ling’s PhD student Lin Zhang, lead author on the Nature Water paper, has set up a way to crowd-source the sampling by recruiting high school students to serve as “community scientists.” Those students collected samples from about 100 households in the St. Louis metro area, data Zhang is analyzing for her final PhD project.

While plumbing-associated bacteria are generally harmless, the resistance genes they carry can be transferred to pathogens when individuals are undergoing antibiotic treatments. Because people have frequent contact with these bacteria through activities like showering and using water, there is a strong incentive to better understand the microbiome and “resistome” in plumbing systems, as well as how they interact with humans.

In the meantime, Zhang is gratified that she gets to do research that can have a local benefit and to work with students.

“I like that we were able to give high school students a glimpse into real-world research and the scientific method,” she said. “Hopefully, this might motivate them to pursue a future in environmental engineering.”

Fixing the pipes

This fall, the Environmental Protection Agency instituted a rule that all municipalities that provide water will be required to replace lead pipes within the next decade. With the changeover in infrastructure, there also may be opportunities to improve monitoring beyond metals and institute mitigation measures for microplastics and the microbiome.

It’s all “on tap” for Dan Giammar, the Walter E. Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering, who is heading up a number of projects to monitor and improve drinking water sources over the next few years.

“Aspects of drinking water quality that can change between the treatment plant and the customer’s tap have been frustratingly difficult to monitor,” Giammar said. “This innovative work provides new insights into how microbes grow and what microbes are present in premise plumbing.”

As Ling and Zhang delve into better testing of household plumbing, more questions will likely arise because when it comes to microbial life, nothing is as it seems.

“The more houses we sample, the more diversity we’re seeing,” Ling said.

Zhang L, Ning D, Mantilla-Calderon D, Xu Y, Liu B, Chen W, Gao J, Hamilton K, Liu J, Zhou J, Ling F. Daily sampling reveals household-specific water microbiome signatures and shared antimicrobial resistomes in premise plumbing. Nature Water, online Dec. 10, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00345-z

This work was supported by a McKelvey School of Engineering Startup Fund and a Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities to F.L. This research was also partially supported by the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) of the National Science Foundation under award 2047470 to F.L.

 

Journal

Nature Water

DOI

10.1038/s44221-024-00345-z 

 

Innovative biomimetic superhydrophobic coating combines repair and buffering properties for superior anti-erosion

Higher Education Press

 

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Inspired by the structure of human enamel, a biomimetic coating with enhanced viscoelasticity was constructed layer by layer. The underlying amylose hydrogel serves as both a buffering layer and a self-repairing filler. Using multiple spin-coating processes, TiO2@LA combined with CNTs was applied, followed by hot pressing to create a durable, wear-resistant superhydrophobic surface atop the hydrogel. This layered structure effectively disperses energy under impact loads and prevents crack propagation. Its exceptional mechanical durability and corrosion resistance make it highly promising for protecting oil pipelines against erosion and corrosion.

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Credit: Xuerui Zang

The long-term erosion and corrosion issues during the development of offshore oil and gas fields pose significant threats to the safe and efficient operation of these facilities. Superhydrophobic coatings, known for their ability to reduce interactions between corrosive substances and substrates, have garnered considerable attention. However, their poor mechanical properties often hinder their long-term application in practical working environments. To address this challenge, a research team led by Prof. Yuekun Lai from Fuzhou University and Prof. Xuewen Cao from China University of Petroleum (East China) has developed a biomimetic dental enamel coating with the amylose hydrogel layer (DEA coating). This innovative coating, characterized by strong erosion–corrosion resistance, is designed for use in complex underwater pipeline systems.

This coating material, known as biomimetic enamel, integrates three protective strategies. First, a multi-layer gradient structure is created by combining lauric acid (LA)-modified TiO2 particles with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to enhance the tensile strength and impact resistance of the coating surface. Second, an amylose hydrogel layer is utilized as an intermediate buffer to effectively disperse impact energy. Additionally, the hydrogel’s fluidity allows it to spontaneously fill gaps on damaged surfaces, preventing water penetration and mitigating local corrosion issues.

Repair tests demonstrate that, unlike conventional hydrophilic hydrogels, the amylose hydrogel can fully repair cracks up to 50 μm wide after they occur, effectively preventing coating failure caused by cracking or delamination.

Further validation was provided by a 24-hour erosion loop experiment, demonstrating that the DEA coating significantly reduced erosion rates to 39.52–55.88 nm/s. Compared to 316L stainless steel, the erosion rate was reduced by 57.6%, confirming the effectiveness of its enamel structure and hydrogel repair strategy. Additionally, electrochemical corrosion tests and chemical stability analyses highlighted the coating’s excellent resistance to corrosive media penetration.

By incorporating innovative repair and buffering structures, the impact resistance and corrosion resistance of the DEA coating have been significantly enhanced. The development of DEA coatings by the research team offers novel insights into improving the mechanical durability of such coatings. This study establishes a theoretical foundation for erosion–corrosion inhibition and introduces new technologies for erosion–corrosion protection, particularly in pipeline safety and erosion–corrosion prevention.

The paper “A Biomimetically Constructed Superhydrophobic Coating with Excellent Mechanical Durability and Chemical Stability for Gas Transmission Pipelines,” authored by Xuerui Zang, Yan Cheng, Yimeng Ni, Weiwei Zheng, Tianxue Zhu, Zhong Chen, Jiang Bian, Xuewen Cao, Jianying Huang, Yuekun Lai. Full text of the open access paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2024.03.024. For more information about the Engineering, follow us on X (https://twitter.com/EngineeringJrnl) & like us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/EngineeringJrnl).

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Journal

Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.eng.2024.03.024 

Article Title

A Biomimetically Constructed Superhydrophobic Coating with Excellent Mechanical Durability and Chemical Stability for Gas Transmission Pipelines