Unique voice print in parrots

Individual voice could help birds be recognized in a flock, no matter what they say

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT

 

IMAGE: MONK PARAKEETS IN BARCELONA HAVE BEEN INDIVIDUALLY TAGGED AS PART OF A LONG-TERM MONITORING PROGRAM. view more 

CREDIT: SIMEON SMEELE

Parrots are exceptional talkers. They can learn new sounds during their entire lives, amassing an almost unlimited vocal repertoire. At the same time, parrots produce calls so they can be individually recognized by members of their flock—raising the question of how their calls can be very variable while also uniquely identifiable. A study on monk parakeets conducted by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona might have the answer: individuals have a unique tone of voice, known as a voice print, similar to that in humans. This finding in a wild parrot raises the possibility that a voice print might also be present in other vocally flexible species, such as dolphins and bats.

“It makes sense for monk parakeets to have an underlying voice print,” says the Max Planck’s Simeon Smeele, first author on the paper. “It’s an elegant solution for a bird that dynamically changes its calls but still needs to be known in a very noisy flock.”

Humans have complex and flexible vocal repertoires, but we can still recognize each other by voice alone. This is because humans have a voice print: our vocal tract leaves a unique signature in the tone of our voice across everything that we say.

Other social animals also use vocal cues to be recognized. In birds, bats, and dolphins, for example, individuals have a unique “signature call” that makes them identifiable to members of the group. But signature calls encode identity in only one call type. To date, almost no evidence exists for animals having unique signatures that underly all calls made by an individual. In other words, almost no animals are known to have a voice print.

That surprised Smeele, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior who studies how parrots use their exceptional vocal abilities to socialize in large groups. Like humans, parrots use their tongue and mouth to modulate calls, meaning that “their grunts and shrieks sound much more human than a songbird’s clean whistle,” he says. Also, like humans, parrots live in large groups with fluid membership. “There could be tens of birds vocalizing at the same time,” he says. “They need a way of keeping track of which individual is making what sound.”

Smeele wondered if parrots, possessing the right anatomy coupled with a need to navigate complex social lives, might have evolved voice prints, too. To find out he travelled to Barcelona where the largest population of individually marked parrots exists in the wild. The monk parakeets there are invasive and swarm the city’s parks in flocks that number hundreds of birds. A monitoring program run by Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona has been marking the parakeets for 20 years, with 3000 birds individually identified so far—a boon for Smeele and his study on individual voice recognition.

Armed with shotgun microphones, Smeele and colleagues recorded the calls of hundreds of individuals, collecting over 5000 vocalizations in total, making it the largest study of individually-marked wild parrots to date. Importantly, Smeele re-recorded the same individuals over two years, which revealed how stable the calls were over time.

They then used a set of models to detect how recognizable individuals were within each of the five main call types given by this species. Surprisingly, they found high variability in the so-called “contact call” that birds use to broadcast their identity. This overturned a long-held assumption that contact calls contain a stable individual signal—and suggested that the parakeets are using something else for individual recognition.

To test if voice prints were at play, Smeele turned to a machine learning model widely used in human voice recognition, which detects the identity of the speaker using the timber of their voice. They trained the model to recognize calls of individual parrots that were classed as “tonal” in sound. Once the model was trained on an individual, they then tested to see if the model could detect the same individual from a different set of calls that were classed as “growling” in sound. The model was able to do this three times better than expected by chance, providing evidence that monk parakeets have a voice print, which Smeele says “could allow individuals to recognize each other no matter what they say.”

The authors caution that the evidence is still preliminary. “Before we can speak of a true voice print, we need to confirm that the model can repeat this result when it is trained with more data from more individuals, and that birds can also recognize this timbre in the vocalizations,” says Smeele.

The Barcelona team would complement the future experiments and analyses with an ecological study, tagging parrots with GPS devices to determine how much individuals overlap in their roaming areas.

“This can provide insight into the species' remarkable ability to discriminate between calls from different individuals,” says Juan Carlos Senar from the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona.

And if it turns out that monk parakeets have a true voice print, Smeele says this would provide an answer to the question of how parrots can both be so vocally flexible and social at the same time. The implications would go beyond parrots, too: “I hope that this finding prompts more work to uncover voice prints in other social animals that can flexibly modify their vocalization, such as dolphins and bats,” he says.

 

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JOURNAL

Royal Society Open Science

DOI

10.1098/rsos.230835 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Evidence for vocal signatures and voice-prints in a wild parrot

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Oct-2023

Birders & AI push bird conservation to the next level

New method untangles interactions in complex systems

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

THESE TWO SPECIES OF WARBLER ARE NOT LIKELY TO BE FOUND TOGETHER IN THE SAME HABITAT. 

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CREDIT: (L) BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER BY IAN DAVIES. (R) YELLOW WARBLER BY BRIAN E. KUSHNER.

I

thaca, NY—For the first time, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are being used to model hidden patterns in nature, not just for one bird species, but for entire ecological communities across continents. And the models follow each species’ full annual life cycle, from breeding to fall migration to nonbreeding grounds, and back north again during spring migration. It begins with the more than 900,000 birders who report their sightings to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's eBird program, one of the world's largest biodiversity science projects. When combined with innovations in technology and artificial intelligence–the same innovations that power self-driving cars and real-time language translation–these sightings are revealing more than ever about patterns of bird biodiversity, and the processes that underlie them.

The development and application of this revolutionary computational tool is the result of a collaboration between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Cornell Institute for Computational Sustainability. This work is now published in the journal Ecology.

"This method uniquely tells us which species occur where, when, with what other species, and under what environmental conditions," said lead author Courtney Davis, a researcher at the Cornell Lab. "With that type of information, we can identify and prioritize landscapes of high conservation value — vital information in this era of ongoing biodiversity loss."

"This model is very general and is suitable for various tasks, provided there's enough data," Gomes said. "This work on joint bird species distribution modeling is about predicting the presence and absence of species, but we are also developing models to estimate bird abundance—the number of individual birds per species. We’re also aiming to enhance the model by incorporating bird calls alongside visual observations."

Cross-disciplinary collaborations like this are necessary for the future of biodiversity conservation, according to Daniel Fink, researcher at the Cornell Lab and senior author of the study.

"The task at hand is too big for ecologists to do on their own–we need the expertise of our colleagues in computer science and computational sustainability to develop targeted plans for landscape-scale conservation, restoration, and management around the world."

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation, The Leon Levy Foundation, The Wolf Creek Foundation, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship—a Schmidt Future program, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Reference:
Courtney L. Davis, Yiwei Bai, Di Chen, Orin Robinson, Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, Carla P. Gomes, and Daniel Fink. Deep learning with citizen science data enables estimation of species diversity and composition at continental extents. Ecology. September 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4175

 

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JOURNAL

Ecology

DOI

10.1002/ecy.4175 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Deep learning with citizen science data enables estimation of species diversity and composition at continental extents

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Oct-2023

 

Meadow Spittlebug’s record-breaking diet also makes it top disease carrier for plants

New study finds that the meadow spittlebug can feed on more than 1,300 plants, revealing scope of its capacity to spread incurable plant disease to crops

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

 

IMAGE: 

AN ADULT MEADOW SPITTLEBUG (PHILAENUS SPUMARIUS). THIS IS THE MOST COMMON OF SEVERAL COLOR FORMS.

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CREDIT: © CLAIRE HARKIN

New research fueled in part by citizen scientists reveals that the meadow spittlebug—known for the foamy, spit-like urine released by its nymphs—can feed on at least 1,300 species of host plants, more than twice the number of any other insect.

The study, which is published today in the journal PLOS ONE, could be especially important in the effort to stop the bug from spreading a type of bacterium that has caused the death of crops across the world, including olive trees in Italy, grapevines in California, citrus trees in South America, and almond trees in Spain.

“Thirteen hundred host plants means 1,300 opportunities to spread pathogenic bacteria in natural and agricultural environments, a sobering wake-up call,” said the study’s lead author Vinton Thompson, a research associate in the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology.

Meadow spittlebugs (Philaenus spumarius), also called froghoppers, suck sap from plants with straw-like mouthparts, picking up bacteria along the way and becoming vectors for plant diseases. Most recently, the bugs have been found to spread the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, a pathogen that has decimated olive groves in the Apulia region of Italy. To predict what other plant species and ecosystems are at risk, scientists must understand the vector’s host range. Thompson, who has been studying and documenting host plants of spittlebugs for 50 years, set out to do that along with collaborators in the United Kingdom.

The scientists combined data from published literature, host records associated with museum specimens, observations, and data from a citizen science effort carried out in Britain called BRIGIT, which ran from 2019-2021 to help prepare for the possible introduction of X. fastidiosa to the UK.

Meadow spittlebugs have a wide geographical range and can thrive in drastically different climates, from Hawaii to just south of the Arctic Circle. Scientists have suspected for some time that this bug had more hosts than any other insect, but the number they calculated was startling: the meadow spittlebug feeds on more than 1,300 species of plants across 117 families—a world record for insects. These plant species include ferns, herbs, shrubs, vines and trees, annuals and perennials, grasses and forbs, plants of the tropics, subtropics, temperate and boreal zones, and conifers. The researchers found that the insect with the second-highest number of plant hosts is the fall webworm, a moth that is known to feed on 636 different plant species.

“The spittlebug is the ultimate herbivore champion,” said study author Claire Harkin, from the University of Sussex. “It will feed on just about every imaginable kind of vascular plant except those submerged in aquatic environments.”

Why do meadow spittlebugs have so many more host plants? More research is needed, but the scientists suspect it’s due to the bugs’ preference for sap from the xylem, which is the main water-carrying structure of the plant. Most sap-eating bugs feed from the plant’s phloem, which is the tissue that transmits sugar and other metabolic compounds. Unlike sap from the phloem, the liquid in the xylem is similar across a diverse range of host plants.

“These bugs feed on almost anything they can get at with their mouth parts,” Thompson said. “Unfortunately, that means there is tremendous potential for the spread of X. fastidiosa in natural ecosystems if it’s introduced. This review is just the first step in thinking about how to control this bug and the diseases it spreads.”

The meadow spittlebug is no stranger to superlatives: it is the highest jumping insect proportional to body size and has the largest measured sucking power of any bug—strong enough that it could suck the water out of a cup at the base of the Statue of Liberty while perched on its crown. It also is exceptional at urination, excreting the human equivalent of 2,500 gallons of urine a day.

Frothy spittle mass on one of the meadow spittlebug’s common host plants, the legume Lotus corniculatus. bird's-foot trefoil. The nymph is hidden within.

A nymph meadow spittlebug (Philaenus spumarius) surrounded by spittle mass.

CREDIT

© Claire Harkin

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 with a dual mission of scientific research and science education, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses more than 40 permanent exhibition halls, galleries for temporary exhibitions, the Rose Center for Earth and Space including the Hayden Planetarium, and the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. The Museum’s scientists draw on a world-class permanent collection of more than 34 million specimens and artifacts, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum offers two of the only free-standing, degree-granting programs of their kind at any museum in the U.S.: the Ph.D. program in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Earth Science residency program. Visit amnh.org for more information.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0291734 

ARTICLE TITLE

The most polyphagous insect herbivore? Host plant associations of the Meadow spittlebug, Philaenus spumarius

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Oct-2023

 

Invertebrate biodiversity is improving in England’s rivers, long-term trends show

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UK CENTRE FOR ECOLOGY & HYDROLOGY

Rivers across England have seen a significant improvement in river invertebrate biodiversity since 1989, shows a study led by UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) researchers.

The study, which involved one of the largest and most wide-ranging analyses of long-term monitoring data in the world – spanning over 30 years, found improvements in invertebrate biodiversity across all regions and river types in England.

This improvement is all the more surprising given English rivers are amongst the most highly exposed to wastewater and other pressures in Europe. The recent State of Nature report shows that the overall abundance of species in Great Britain has declined on average by 19%. For terrestrial invertebrates the decline is unequivocal, but this is not the case for freshwater invertebrates.

Published in Science of the Total Environment, this latest analysis adds weight to a growing body of evidence showing that freshwater invertebrate species have been moving towards recovery across England and Europe since the 1990s.

The study analysed data from up to 223,300 routinely collected freshwater records from the Environment Agency across England between 1989 and 2018. The researchers looked at the presence of invertebrate families like dragonflies, snails, mayflies, shrimp and worms which respond to changes in water quality. They examined how the presence and numbers of each family changed over time at each location.

Nationally, the long-term trend is positive. The average number of families of freshwater invertebrates found at each site increased from 15 to 25 between 1989 and 2018. Overall, this is an average 66% increase in the number of invertebrate species observed in England’s rivers over the past 30 years. However, this rate of improvement began to slow for some groups from 2003 onwards.

These trends are seen across every river type, from upland to lowland, from rural to urban, and in areas with low to high levels of arable farming. Rivers with higher exposure to wastewater or pesticides were less rich in invertebrates, yet these sites also showed improvement. Given the universality of this improvement and its timing, which coincide with declines in some key chemical pollutants, these trends across England’s rivers may be linked.

Crucially, the data show that families that are particularly sensitive to river pollution, like mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies, are recovering most strongly of all. The diversity of these species improved by 300% overall, rising from an average of 3 families recorded at each site in 1989 to 10 families in 2018. This recovery continued until 2003 when the rate of biodiversity improvement for some other families started to level off.

While there is still room for improvements and there are many local issues still to tackle, at the national scale England’s rivers now provide far better habitats for invertebrates than they did 30 years ago. To an extent where, for some invertebrate species, England’s rivers have reached the target ecological standard for populations to thrive.

Lead author Professor Andrew Johnson, principal scientific officer at UKCEH, said: “Long-term monitoring has shown us a dramatic improvement in the biodiversity of freshwater invertebrates over the past 30 years across all river types at the national scale. Similar trends are also observed across Europe, and in the decades during which changes in legislation around water treatments and restoration projects have been introduced driven by EU policies. This suggests that water quality improvements have been effective at allowing freshwater biodiversity to recover. Since these trends are also observed across Europe, it suggests that water quality improvements, consistent with changes in legislation around wastewater treatments and associated restoration projects, have been effective at improving freshwater biodiversity. The implication is that given good legislation, resources and regulation, we can reverse biodiversity decline.

“We now need to understand more about the role chemical changes or conservation measures have had in achieving this recovery in England’s freshwater invertebrates, and to what degree current levels of pollution affect wildlife in relation to other issues.”

The analysis accounted for geographical factors like latitude, altitude and the slope of the waterway, alongside wastewater exposure and the type of land each river flowed through. It also considered the effect of invasive species, finding the increase in the distribution of such species across the sample sites was only modest and could not on its own account for the overall trend in biodiversity.

The study included researchers from UKCEH and Brunel University London. It was funded by the National Environment Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.

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JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167144 

ARTICLE TITLE

Significant improvement in freshwater invertebrate biodiversity in all types of English rivers over the past 30 years

Advancing biodiversity research: new initiative bridges biodiversity and omics data standards

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENSOFT PUBLISHERS

Biodiversity observation and research rely more and more on biomolecular data.The standardization this data, encompassing both primary and contextual information (metadata), is crucial for enabling data (re-)use, integration, and knowledge generation. While both the biodiversity and the omics research communities have recognized the urgent need for (meta)data standards, they each have historically developed and adopted their own standards, making collaboration and data integration challenging.

To address the pressing need for interoperability between biodiversity and omics (meta)data standards, the Task Group (TG) for Sustainable DwC-MIxS Interoperability was formed. Its primary mission is to bridge the gap between the (meta)data standards of two distinct organizations, the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)’s Darwin Core (DwC) standard and the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC)’s Minimum Information about any (x) Sequence (MIxS) checklist, providing a sustainable framework for data integration.

The Task Group assembled a team of experts to build semantically precise and sustained interoperability between TDWG’s DwC standard, and the MIxS checklist from the GSC.

This collaborative effort culminated in a methods paper, in which they report on building sustainable interoperability between DwC and MIxS. The paper was published in the open-access, peer-reviewed Biodiversity Data Journal, as part of a special collection, supported by the EU-funded project BiCIKL (Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library), and looking to demonstrate the advantages and novel approaches in accessing and (re-)using linked biodiversity data. 

“With representatives from established biodiversity data infrastructures, domain experts, data generators, and publishers, we - ab initio - bridged the conceptual to the application space,” write the task group members in their paper.

To ensure the sustainability and lasting impact of this initiative, TDWG and GSC have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on creating a continuous model to synchronize their standards.

“We trust that the activities of this TG will inspire similar activities between other metadata standards in this space, to break down silos and open a path to a more collaborative and interoperable future,” they say in conclusion.

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Original source:

Meyer R, Appeltans W, Duncan WD, Dimitrova M, Gan Y-M, Stjernegaard Jeppesen T, Mungall C, Paul DL, Provoost P, Robertson T, Schriml L, Suominen S, Walls R, Sweetlove M, Ung V, Van de Putte A, Wallis E, Wieczorek J, Buttigieg PL (2023) Aligning Standards Communities for Omics Biodiversity Data: Sustainable Darwin Core-MIxS Interoperability. Biodiversity Data Journal 11: e112420. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e112420

***

You can find all contributions published in the “Linking FAIR biodiversity data through publications: The BiCIKL approach” article collection in the open-access, peer-reviewed Biodiversity Data Journal on: https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.coll.209.

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JOURNAL

Biodiversity Data Journal

DOI

10.3897/BDJ.11.e112420 

ARTICLE TITLE

Aligning Standards Communities for Omics Biodiversity Data: Sustainable Darwin Core-MIxS Interoperability

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Oct-2023

 

Growth of coral reefs likely cannot keep pace with rising sea level

International research team’s mapping of 9,000 years of coral growth using drill cores from Belize shows decreasing accretion rate over recent earth history

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT

 

IMAGE: 

THE UPPER PANEL SHOWS A CORAL REEF MARGIN IN BELIZE WITH LIVING BRANCHED ACROPORA (ELKHORN) AND PLATY MILLEPORA (FIRE) CORALS, WHICH ARE BOTH COMPETITIVE AND FAST-GROWING. THE LOWER PANEL SHOWS BROKEN BRANCHES OF DEAD ACROPORA CORALS OVERGROWN BY WEEDY, FERTILE HILL AND FINGER CORALS (PORITES) AS WELL AS FLESHY ALGAE.

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CREDIT: PHOTOS: E. GISCHLER

FRANKFURT. Tropical coral reefs could end up being one of the first victims of climate change. The marine diversity hotspots are threatened by and declining as a result of global warming, ocean acidification, a deterioration of water quality, as well as diseases of reef-building organisms, and their growth is unable to keep up with the projected rise in sea levels. These are some of the conclusions drawn by an interdisciplinary team of scientists from Goethe University Frankfurt’s Institute of Geosciences, the company ReefTech Inc., the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center of Ocean Research, the University of Ottawa’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the GSI Helmholtz Center of Heavy Ion Research. Their findings are based on an examination of 22 drill cores collected from the Belize barrier reef and atolls, the largest reef system in the Atlantic Ocean, which focused on identifying and dating coral growth and accretion rates over the past 9,000 years.

Professor Eberhard Gischler, head of the biosedimentology working group at Goethe University Frankfurt’s Institute of Geosciences, and other scientists reexamined the specimens Gischler and Dr. J. Harold Hudson, Miami, USA, had collected between 1995 and 2002 . Studying the drill cores – which taken together measure a total of 215 meters – “enables us to develop both detailed and systematic reconstructions of the environmental conditions that prevailed during the Holocene, based on which previous ecological and environmental conditions can be reconstructed, allowing us to determine whether the current coral and coral reef declines are in fact unprecedented,” Gischler says. Pooling their expertise, they identified and dated 127 coral fragments using radioisotope methods, and statistically analyzed the changes in coral community structure over time based on more than 1,100 fossil corals. Radioisotope dating allows scientists to determine the age of a material by referring to the decay rates of radioactive samples present in the sample.

Having dated the corals, the team then identified the distances between them in the drill cores to estimate their growth rates. “Our data show that coral accretion rates in Belize decreased during the Holocene. While at 3.36 millimeters per year, the average accretion rates of reef margins are in the same range as other regions in the western Atlantic, they are somewhat lower than those in the Indo-Pacific.” This has both an important impact on the future of tropical island-nations especially, which are either based on or protected by coral reef structure, and is also interesting in the context of climate change, Gischler explains. “The growth rates are at the lower end of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) predictions of future sea-level rise until 2100.”

The research confirms the drastic decline in live coral in the Caribbean, where many reefs are no longer dominated by corals, but fleshy algae as well as weedy, generalistic taxa. Looking at the evolution over time, Gischler and his colleagues found that stress-tolerant, reef-building corals predominate in the older sections. “At the base of our cores, directly overlying Pleistocene reef limestone, Pseudodiploria brain corals and Orbicella star corals are most common, illustrating that members of the stress-tolerant taxa are clearly dominating,” Gischler explains. Once the reef pedestal was fully inundated and environmental conditions improved, however, the abundance of this type of coral decreased.

The study’s authors point out that the shift from stony corals to fleshy algae and from common reef-builders to weedy taxa underlines the increasing importance of fecundity for the coral community, a trait which it seems helps them cope with increasing environmental stress.

Pre-Anthropocene gaps in growth

Another interesting detail unearthed in the drill cores is the existence of three centennial-scale gaps in the fossil record of the fast-growing, competitive “elkhorn coral” Acropora palmata in Belize – about 2,000, 4,000, as well as 5,500-6,000 years before today. The first and last of the gaps coincide with the two Acropora gaps in the Virgin Islands and the wider Caribbean, the researchers say, and likely point to periods of higher temperatures and increased storm activity as well as lower nutrient supply as possible causes.

By contrast, the gap around 4,000 years before today coincides with a potential mass mortality of grazing echinoids in the region, which might have caused an increase in the abundance of fleshy algae during this time window. Another possible cause advanced by the study’s authors is that the mortality was connected to the so-called 4.2 k-event, thought to have resulted in mid-latitude drought in North America as well as elevated sea surface temperature in tropical oceans.

Publication: Eberhard Gischler, J. Harold Hudson, Anton Eisenhauer, Soran Parang & Michael Deveaux: 9000 years of change in coral community structure and accretion in Belize reefs, western Atlantic. Scientific Reports 13:11349 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-38118-5.

Eberhard Gischler (left; on winch), Harold Hudson (center; on tripod) and Belizean assistant Eric Vasquez coring using a hydraulic rotary drill on the pavement of the Belize Barrier Reef. .

CREDIT

Photo: G. Meyer

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-38118-5 

ARTICLE TITLE

9000 years of change in coral community structure and accretion in Belize reefs, western Atlantic

 

“Hope is hard” - Shedd Aquarium’s recent research expedition reveals alarming extent of coral mortality in Florida

Business Announcement

SHEDD AQUARIUM

 

IMAGE: 

SHEDD SCIENTIST SURVEYS EXTEND OF CORAL MORTALITY IN FLORIDA REEFS THROUGH SCUBA DIVE OBSERVATION

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CREDIT: ©SHEDD AQUARIUM/GAVIN WRIGHT

Scientists from Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, a leader in conservation research, returned from a multi-institutional research expedition to survey coral bleaching impacts from Miami and the Florida Keys to the Dry Tortugas, following an unprecedented rise in ocean temperatures. The week-long trip revealed that 90-95 percent of corals showed signs of extreme bleaching, and some coral species, such as endangered staghorn and elkhorn coral, were nearly all dead – a testament to how quickly water temperatures soared. Researchers at Shedd, who have long been studying coral heat tolerance, stress that Florida may be a bellwether for the future of coral reefs globally, if the climate continues to warm.

“With record high temperatures since July, we were expecting severe bleaching and prepared ourselves for the worst-case scenario, and that is unfortunately what we witnessed,” said Dr. Ross Cunning, research biologist at Shedd Aquarium. “For Shedd Aquarium, this trip begs two big questions: how do we prepare and safeguard other corals for future warming, and how can we accelerate efforts to enhance heat tolerance and give corals a chance for survival in hotter oceans?”

Aboard Shedd’s research vessel, the Coral Reef II, Shedd researchers hosted partners from the University of Miami, Palm Beach Zoo and the University of Southern California who collaborated to visit and survey 76 coral sites and report their findings to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). The group witnessed the effects of the bleaching get worse the further they ventured south. What was once colorful, thriving coral a few months prior is now stark white, indicating severe bleaching or worse – covered in algae – an indicator that the living coral tissue is gone.

While the team had hoped to bring back hundreds of genetically unique staghorn corals from the Dry Tortugas to the University of Miami’s land-based facilities for gene banking and restoration, they found that the abundant populations they had seen and studied on a previous research expedition just two months earlier suffered almost complete mortality from the extreme heat stress. The few living fragments that remained were severely bleached, and researchers believe their chances of recovery are extremely low.

Even after searching extensively throughout the Dry Tortugas – down to depths of 60 feet where researchers hoped for a greater chance for survivors – not a single viable staghorn coral was found.

“In moments like this it can feel difficult to tell a story with hope,” said Dr. Shayle Matsuda, research biologist at Shedd Aquarium. “This drastic bleaching may spread globally in the next one to two years. Our research efforts to find and save corals with higher levels of heat tolerance is more critical now than it has ever been before.”

Ocean temperatures across the globe have been steadily increasing as a direct result of climate change. These high, sometimes record-setting temperatures are sustained for months – in this case leading to the fast and expansive coral mortality event. El Nino, a climate pattern that is characterized by unusually high ocean temperatures, exacerbated conditions in the Florida Keys, which registered temperatures well above their seasonal peak early in the summer.

For the past several years, Shedd Aquarium’s research team has been focused on learning more about the natural variance of heat tolerance in coral to determine how interventions harnessing genetics or microbial conditions can help corals withstand higher ocean temperatures. Unfortunately, large colonies of elkhorn and staghorn coral that were the focus of various research and restoration efforts were wiped out by this mass bleaching.

“Tragically, our mission turned from rescue to witness," said Cunning. “This is the worst bleaching event in history, and the impacts the high temperatures have had on Florida’s genetic coral diversity cannot be overstated.”

Despite this setback, Shedd Aquarium remains more committed than ever to working with partners in Florida and beyond to monitor native reefs and advocate for stronger coral safeguards and intervention strategies as ocean temperatures continue to rise.

What You Can Do

• Commit to stopping climate change: Combating the effects of climate change is the most impactful effort we can make individually and as a society to ensure the longevity of our planet and the future of coral populations. Anyone interested in learning more about climate change and how to make an impact can join Surge, Shedd’s free, premier digital advocacy community that includes conservation-focused news and action alerts that provide tangible and timely ways to act and advocate for wildlife.
• Help protect corals from local stressors like dredging: In 2019, Shedd published a paper with colleagues from Miami Waterkeeper and the University of Miami describing widespread coral mortality caused by dredging at the PortMiami that was done to make way for larger cargo ships. Years later, NOAA has released a report on the impacts of the dredging with some new analysis and data, affirming the findings in 2019 — that millions of corals were likely killed. With more potential dredging on the horizon, Shedd is asking the public to support Miami Waterkeeper in calling for the Army Corps of Engineers to fix the impacts from the last dredging, document lessons learned and direct any mitigation funding to scale up coral restoration at industrial levels.
• Encourage Funding for Coral Futures: Making a donation to organizations like Shedd Aquarium can directly fuel ongoing coral research and intervention efforts.

VISUALS: High-res photos and video from Shedd Aquarium’s recent coral monitoring trip to the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas can be viewed and downloaded here: https://personal.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=8e6e678d596176bba968. 

Photo credit: ©Shedd Aquarium/Gavin Wright
Coral side-by-side credit: ©Shedd Aquarium/Ross Cunning
Video credit: ©Shedd Aquarium/Sam Cejtin

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About Shedd Aquarium  

The John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago sparks compassion, curiosity and conservation for the aquatic animal world. Home to 32,000 aquatic animals representing 1,500 species of fishes, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, birds and mammals from waters around the globe, Shedd is a recognized leader in animal care, conservation education and research. An accredited member of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA), the organization is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and supported by the people of Chicago, the State of Illinois and the Chicago Park District. www.sheddaquarium.org    

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals