It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, July 12, 2021
Social norms influence willingness to protect the climate
People contribute only very little to climate protection, because they underestimate the willingness of others to contribute. This is the central result of a new study by the behavioral economists Peter Andre, Teodora Boneva, Felix Chopra and Armin Falk, members of the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne, published as an ECONtribute Discussion Paper.
The researchers show that information aboutsocial normsand behaviors increases thewillingnessto contribute toclimate protection. The study also shows the extent to which economic preferences and moral values are decisive for individual attitudes towardclimateprotection. The results are based on an extensive survey experiment in the U.S.
Proportion of climate protection supporters significantly underestimated
Around 8.000 representatively selected adults in the U.S. had the opportunity to win $450 in the experiment. In advance, they had to indicate how much of this amount they would be willing to donate to a climate protection organization in case they win. With the total sum, they could offset the annual CO2 emissions of an average American. Based on the amounts given, the scientists were able to measure the extent to which people were willing to support the fight against climate change at their own expense.
On average, respondents said they would donate half of the money they won to climate protection. The participants were also asked to estimate the proportion of their compatriots that actively engage in climate protection or consider the fight against climate change to be important, according to surveys. They significantly underestimated the actual proportion of those actively involved in climate protection (62 percent) and those in favor of climate protection (79 percent). If participants were informed about these figures before making their decision, their willingness to donate was five to six percent higher. The effect is particularly large among people who deny climate change or are at least doubtful about it.
Women donate more than men on average
On average, women donate $17 more to climate protection causes than men do.
Democrats contribute $45 more than Republicans do. The willingness to donate increases in household income, but actually declines for Republicans with higher educational attainment. The analysis of personality traits shows that patience and the intent to contribute to the welfare of others have a positive effect on willingness to protect the climate. Participants whose moral values apply universally to all people are more willing to donate than those who feel more committed to their own group.
"Climate protection is a matter of cooperation. But people tend to be cooperative to a certain extent only: If you cooperate, I'll cooperate. That's why it's especially important to uncover and correct misconceptions about others' willingness to cooperate in the fight against climate change," explains Armin Falk, professor at ECONtribute at the University of Bonn and director of the briq Institute on Behavior & Inequality. In order to achieve behavioral changes and acceptance for climate policy measures, he states that it is crucial that climate protection is perceived as a social norm.
Broad-based information campaigns could have a self-reinforcing effect here, according to the researchers.
Deforestation in Brazil will be hard to stop, no matter who's in charge
by Larissa Basso and Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, The Conversation
Credit: Tarcisio Schnaider / shutterstock
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon made global headlines in 2019, thanks to massive wildfires and the election of anti-environmentalist president Jair Bolsonaro. Brazilians took to the streets against it, and retailers and consumers threatened to boycott Brazilian products. But while the pandemic has dominated the headlines in 2020 and 2021, deforestation continues to rise.
With polls showing Bolsonaro couldlose the 2022 election, would a change in government help? To understand why deforestation is increasing in Brazil we must look at changes inenvironmental protectionsince Bolsonaro came to office, but we must also delve into some structural issues that won't be resolved easily—even by a different president.
Ups and downs
In the late 1960s, the federal government made a strategic decision to occupy the Amazon region. It wanted to guarantee sovereignty over the territory, while reducing pressure for land reform in southern Brazil and integrating the country's remaining frontier region into modern capitalism. People were encouraged with fiscal incentives and new land property rules to replace the forest with pasture for livestock.
Deforestation increased faster around newly built roads and dams, as well in areas better connected to consumer markets. Between 1988 and 2004, an average of 20,000km² of forest was cut each year.
In the mid-2000s, a new federal administration, led in the ministry of the environment by ex-rubber tapper Marina Silva, took office, with a different agenda for the forest. It created new conservation areas and strengthened law enforcement. Transnational initiatives such as the soy moratorium, the UN's Redd (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) program and the Amazon Fund added incentives to keep the forest standing. By the end of the 2000s, the amount of deforestation had substantially declined, reaching its lowest point of 4,571km² in 2012.
10,000km² – Amazon deforestation in 2020 – is about the size of Lebanon or Jamaica. Credit: TerraBrasilis / INPE, CC BY-SA
Numbers start to increase again by 2015, partly because a rising economic crisis and the Car Wash corruption scandal meant there were different domestic priorities. Bolsonaro was elected and he appointed people aligned to his anti-environment rhetoric to key positions in the ministries and governmental agencies.
They defunded deforestation monitoring, halted deforestation law enforcement and left offenders unpunished, arguing that it had created an "industry of fines". Bolsonaro and his appointees acted continuously to revoke environmental protection policies, including those for indigenous land.
Two different views on development underline the different positions on deforestation. The first says that the forest is an obstacle to development. Development in this view requires modern activities—including agriculture and mining—to replace the wild, allowing income for local populations and furthering the country's position in the global economy. The second view says that the forest has value in itself, both locally and globally. It is home to biodiversity and traditional living styles that cannot be replaced. In addition, it plays a role in regional climatic patterns and Earth systems regulation so should be preserved.
‘The Amazon can’t take it anymore’: sign at a protest in Rio de Janeiro, 2019. Credit: Andre Luiz Moreira / shutterstock
Most groups in Brazilian society defend a combination of both views. This is true even of a substantial part of the agribusiness sector, which is aware of consumer pressure and the long-term consequences of deforestation.
Yet minority groups aligned with an extreme interpretation of the first view have always played a role in Brazilian politics. In 2018, these groups, represented by the likes of extreme-right party PSL, won more seats in the federal parliament. Combined with Bolsonaro's election, this meant their voice and agenda gained priority in policy-making.
Is replacing Bolsonaro the solution?
Replacing Bolsonaro would likely reduce the rate of deforestation in the short term. None of the other candidates expected to run in the 2022 election share his extreme views on science, the environment and the law, while Brazil's president does have considerable power to set political priorities and appoint key environmental roles. However to reduce deforestation in the long run, at least three structural issues need to be tackled.
The first concerns enforcement of land tenure rules. In rural private properties in the Amazon, native vegetation should be kept in 80% of the land. The law requires all private rural properties in Brazil to be registered with georeferencing and to restore native vegetation if needed, but more than a third of farmland is yet to be registered in the system, part of it in the Amazon.
Land grabbing also needs to be punished, not rewarded. A substantial amount of land in the Amazon is still non-designated, meaning its legal status as public or private land is not yet determined, and no law applies to it. Land grabbers invade these areas, deforest them and later claim it as their property—these claims are usually granted due to lax monitoring and laws.
Finally, traditional and indigenous populations need better protection, while Brazil must take a new development path that inserts the region in the contemporary economy without cutting the forest, like Amazonia 4.0. The latter will weaken support for old-fashioned ideas of forest versus development, reducing the appeal of Bolsonaro's anti-environmental rhetoric for many people.
New June record for deforestation of Brazilian Amazon
This file photo taken on August 16, 2020, shows a burnt area of Amazon rainforest reserve in Para, Brazil.
Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon reached a record in June for the fourth consecutive month, according to official data released Friday.
A total of 1,062 square kilometers of forest was destroyed—an area almost the size of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
This was up from 1,043 km2 in the same month last year, said the INPE research institute, which uses satellite images to measure forest cover.
In total, 3,609 km2 of Amazon was lost in the first quarter of 2021, up 17 percent from the same period last year.
The figure was the highest for a month of June since the INPE started gathering data in 2015.
Since coming to power in 2019, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has promoted the commercialization of the Amazon and described NGOs trying to protect the jungle as a "cancer."
However, he recently pledged to eliminate Brazil's illegal deforestation by 2030, some 10 years ahead of target, though environmentalists say he is insincere.
Last month, vice president Hamilton Mourao announced a military operation against Amazonian deforestation.
Two weeks ago, Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles resigned after the Supreme Court ordered an investigation into allegations he was involved in a timber trafficking scheme.
He was replaced by Joaquim Alvaro Pereira Leite, allied to one of the country's largest agricultural lobby groups.
The Brazilian Amazon also marked its worst June for forest fires since 2007 this year, with some 2,308 fires detected—an increase of 2.3 percent from the same month last year.
For livestock diseases, like foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and swine flu, rapid culling and carcass disposal are well-established strategies for halting an outbreak and limiting its impact. However, even when infection is quickly detected delays in these interventions may permit pathogen transmission from infected farms.
A team of researchers has discovered that by neglecting to include response delays in their analyses, modelers grossly underestimate epidemic severity and its long-term consequences. The findings could also have implications for human diseases, including COVID-19.
"Livestock disease outbreaks can have devastating consequences economically, socially and politically," said Matthew Ferrari, associate professor of biology. "For example, preventing FMD outbreaks incurs an annual cost of $1.5 billion worldwide in FMD-free countries and an order of magnitude more in countries where the disease is endemic. This cost could be dramatically reduced if diseased herds are quickly detected and removed to prevent transmission to other animals."
Using the 2001 FMD outbreak in the United Kingdom as a case study, Ferrari, along with lead author Yun Tao, a former postdoctoral fellow at Penn State who is now an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara, and their colleagues, created a model to simulate how different response times would have affected the overall outbreak outcome.
"The United Kingdom government set ambitious targets for preventing the spread of FMD, yet there were still significant response lags that exacerbated the outbreak outcomes," said Ferrari.
The researchers used individual farm records collected by the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs during the outbreak to explore the effects of three factors—farm size, control demand and farm density—on response delays. They defined farm size as the number of livestock on a farm to be culled, control demand as the number of farms scheduled for control and farm density as the number of infected farms within a geographical radius of 5 kilometers. Next, they simulated different delay times within a variety of contexts, including infected farms that were not yet culled and farms that were culled but with carcasses remaining.
"Our results demonstrated that farm size and control demand were key factors correlated with culling and disposal activities on individual farms," said Tao. "Specifically, veterinary response teams took longer to initiate responses on larger farms, which are major sources of potential spread. They also took longer when the outbreak was at its worst, likely because the system was overburdened."
For farm size, the team's model predicted that a farm that was larger by 100 animals was culled 3.7% slower, and the carcasses disposed of 2.2% slower. The number of farms that were waiting in the queue to be culled also correlated with drops in both culling and disposal efficiencies. For every 10 farms in the queue, the daily culling rate was reduced by 13% and the daily disposal rate by 8.4%.
The findings published March 3 in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface.
"Our results suggest that models that assume fixed, timely responses grossly underestimate epidemic severity and its long-term consequences," said Tao. "Including response dynamics and recognition of partial controllability of interventions in our models can help inform management priorities during epidemics of livestock diseases."
Ferrari added that the findings could have also implications for modeling human infectious diseases. "For a variety of reasons, we have seen healthcare and testing delays during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing how operational delays may be exacerbated by the outbreak itself is a first step to developing robust strategies that could reduce the number of people who become sick in an outbreak."
More information: Yun Tao et al, Causes of delayed outbreak responses and their impacts on epidemic spread, Journal of The Royal Society Interface (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0933
Passive revegetation (left) following thin-layer placement by a low-ground pressure excavator (right) at a tidal marsh at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, MD. This "direct" strategy confronts ecosystem transformation from sea-level rise. Credit: D Curson/Audubon Society (left) and Middleton Evans (right).
Major ecosystem changes like sea-level rise, desertification and lake warming are fueling uncertainty about the future. Many initiatives—such as those fighting to fully eradicate non-native species, or to combat wildfires—focus on actively resisting change to preserve a slice of the past.
However, resisting ecosystem transformation is not always a feasible approach. According to a new paper published today in the Ecological Society of America's journalFrontiers in Ecology and the Environment, accepting and directing ecosystem change are also viable responses, and should not necessarily be viewed as fallback options or as last resorts. The paper presents a set of guiding principles for applying a "RAD" strategy—a framework that involves either resisting, accepting or directing ecosystem changes.
"We are facing the harsh reality that in some locations, ecosystems are transforming at such a pace that we won't be able to restore or rehabilitate them to what they once were," said Abigail Lynch, the paper's lead author and a research fish biologist at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Climate Adaptation Science Center. "The RAD framework provides a common language for starting productive conversations about what comes next—when we need to consider options to accept and direct change in addition to just trying to resist it."
The paper was a collaborative effort by 20 federal, state and academic researchers from across the United States. It zeroes in on three National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs) along the East Coast, where sea-level rise is increasing at three to four times the global average rate and transforming ecosystems and local communities. Managers of the three NWRs have applied all three of the responses outlined in the paper:
John H Chafee NWR (Rhode Island): managers are resisting the effects of sea-level rise by depositing dredged sediment on waterlogged salt marshes and securing the sediment with bags of recycled oyster shells.
Chincoteague NWR (Virginia): After years of resisting dune overwash, managers are now allowing storm-induced waves to fill in waterfowl impoundments, accepting the landward transport of sand and moving National Park Service visitor infrastructure.
Blackwater NWR (Maryland): Managers are directing the effects of sea-level rise by facilitating marsh migration upwards. Assisted marsh migration is ten times cheaper than trying to restore marsh in situ.
According to Erik Beever, a research ecologist at the USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, research affiliate faculty at Montana State University and a coauthor of the paper, the importance of considering costs and benefits is paramount when selecting a course of action within the RAD framework.
"A 'resist' approach may involve less cost in the immediate term or may allow the persistence of a culturally treasured species, but it may involve substantially higher costs over the course of a period as short as 10-15 years," said Beever. "For example, if that treasured species' bioclimatic niche no longer occurs within the management area, facilitating its persistence will require more intensive and more costly efforts."
Accepting ecosystem change can involve a fundamental shift in the way of life for communities that rely on an ecosystem's goods and services. However, solutions that focus on resisting change are becoming increasingly impractical as ecological changes occur more frequently and more dramatically. The paper contends that three broad feasibility criteria—ecological, societal, and financial—must be considered when deciding which RAD strategy is most suitable.
Natural resource managers are using options from within the RAD framework to tackle a variety of problems across many different systems, including:
Loss of corals in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo
Spruce bark beetle epidemic and wildfires on Alaska's Kenai peninsula, where white spruce forests are transforming into grasslands
Projected decline of cisco populations under warming conditions in Minnesota lakes
In the RAD framework, accepting change is not a passive approach; rather, it is a deliberate course of action geared toward a defined set of objectives. While the framework still needs to be tested and fine-tuned, the authors ultimately view it as a strategy of empowerment.
"It might be tempting to throw one's hands up in the air when faced with drastic and transformative environmental change, but there are options available," said Laura Thompson, a coauthor who is a research ecologist at the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center and adjunct faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. "This RAD framework provides the full range of strategies."
More information: Abigail J Lynch et al, Managing for RADical ecosystem change: applying the Resist‐Accept‐Direct (RAD) framework, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1002/fee.2377
'Return to normal' travel and research may bring hazards to northern, Indigenous communities
by Christina Goldhar, Arielle Frenette, Crystal Gail Fraser and Julia Christensen, The Conversation
Nain, Nunatsiavut. Credit: Christina Goldhar, Author provided
Throughout the pandemic, many have longed for a "return to normal." When the threat of COVID-19 subsides, we look forward to resuming our research and travel schedules, and reclaiming the elements of our lives that were disrupted over a year ago. However, for southern-based researchers and travelers, returning to northern, Indigenous communities either for leisure or research fieldwork in summer 2021 is premature.
We are a group of scholars—Indigenous and settler northerners and southern-based researchers—who share a commitment to the development of respectful,non-extractive research relationships. We question the harm that some researchers bring with them when they enter northern communities from their southern homes.
All of these place the affected communities at increased risk of the spread and harmful effects of COVID-19.
Trauma and living memory
The legacies of Indian Residential Schools continue in the living memories of survivors (direct and intergenerational) and through trauma that has yet to be met with substantive supports to address the many issues resulting from these genocidal, colonial programs that targeted Indigenous peoples.
The recent recoveries of the remains of Indigenous people at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools has retraumatized entire communities. Clearly, the grief and harm caused by these policies cannot be contained by the bounds of "history."
Kuujjuaq, Nunavik. Credit: Arielle Frenette
The coronavirus pandemic reframes our understanding of the potential harm that research can bring to northern communities. It forces us to place the well-being and needs of northern communities ahead of the needs of our research. The pandemic presents us with an opportunity to pause and reflect on these relationships, and to consider how we will maintain these practices of care as we move into a post-pandemic world.
The restrictions of the pandemic have encouraged us to be less wasteful with the knowledge that has already been produced and documented. For example, we have turned to data and other research materials that have not been fully explored due to the drive to always be in search of new questions, new projects and original outcomes.
It has also encouraged us to consider how research capacity within the North can be strengthened and supported by southern researchers, and new partnerships can be fostered, instead of southern researchers traveling North to collect data.
Current research practices are embedded in academic expectations and funding systems. They impose increasing pressure on communities to engage in, and collaborate with research on their territories, and northern Indigenous communities have been collaborating with research for decades.
There is an incredible amount of labor that community members must perform to facilitate even the most hands-off research, while projects often offer little benefit to the community.
As research projects are designed to center academic priorities, they often fail to meaningfully address community research needs. This results in colonial, extractive research relationships, where researchers arrive from outside of a community, extract knowledge, data, labor and expertise for their benefit, and leave.
Makenzie River, N.W.T. Credit: Indigenous Consulting Services Inc.
Practices of care
The pandemic has also offered a moment to consider and respond to the changing landscape of Indigenous research ethics in this country.
Indigenous northerners have long drawn attention to the coloniality of research occurring on their homelands and the need to move towards greater degrees of autonomy in Indigenous research. Responding to these needs requires considering the harm caused by even the most common "best-practice" research approaches. It requires reconsidering the governance and funding structures that shape northern research.
Approaching research as a conscientious practice of care involves questioning the intent, as well as the various negative effects brought forward by a research agenda. This must be done in a way that reaches beyond ethical considerations or "good intentions." As we know from Canada's long history of colonialism, even "good intentions" can be harmful.
Caring means a context-based, selfless and affectionate reflection that takes into account all individuals, communities and environments affected by one's actions. Community health and well-being must take precedence over research careers and the agendas of funding agencies. Every researcher who chooses not to travel to the North this summer, reduces the risk of bringing COVID-19 and its variants into the community.
In other words, practices of care are not about research, but about all living things involved in the research process and choices of methodology. We argue that, before choosing fieldwork in this early post-pandemic present, researchers must adopt a caring attitude. This means not returning to the northern research status quo, but instead centring community health and well-being, including the climate, in the design and implementation of future research projects.
During the pandemic, the Canadian government has provided funding for Indigenous communities—such as through the Indigenous Community Support Fund—to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. While these short-term funding programs are certainly welcome, there is a need for sustained commitments to address the critical gap in social and economic infrastructure.
Advocating for the continued funding of COVID-19-related programming, and a meaningful address of long-standing social and economic infrastructure deficits in northern and Indigenous communities would be a welcome alternative to fieldwork this summer. Ultimately, for southern-based researchers, there is a continued need to maintain distance as a practice of care for the well-being of northerners.
A coral disease called growth anomalies (GAs) is depicted here in the coral species Porites compressa, a reef building species found off the coast of Hawaii. GAs are a tumor-like disease that can cause tumor-like protrusions that affect both the coral skeleton and its soft tissues. Credit: E. Andersson/NIST
Coral reefs are a favorite spot for scuba divers and are among the world's most diverse ecosystems. For example, the Hawaiian coral reefs, known as the 'rainforests of the sea', host over 7,000 species of marine animals, fishes, birds and plants. But coral reefs are facing serious threats, including a number of diseases that have been linked to human activity.
To understand the connection between human activity and a type of tumorlike disease called growth anomalies (GAs), researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have collaborated with the U.S Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to use an emerging molecular profiling method to identify 18 small molecules that promise to help them better understand the series of molecular reactions that lead to the disease.
GAs affect both the coral skeleton and its soft tissues. Scientists don't know the cause of the disease or how it spreads but have hypothesized that there is a strong correlation between GA prevalence in coral colonies and human population density nearby.
Almost all types of corals are made of hundreds to millions of individual soft-bodied animals called polyps. The polyps secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton that lays the foundation for the coral colony. GAs affect corals through irregular and accelerated growth of their skeleton, causing it to be less dense and filled with holes. This results in a tumorlike mass in the skeleton of a coral colony with fewer polyps and a diminished ability to reproduce.
Shallow water corals receive food like carbohydrates and oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis from the symbiotic relationship they have with zooxanthellae, photosynthetic algae that live inside coral tissues. GAs can lead to fewer symbiotic zooxanthellae and therefore less energy being absorbed from photosynthesis.
Even though GAs do not typically directly lead to coral death, they do affect the overall health of coral colonies and can pose an ecological threat to coral populations. To analyze the disease, NIST researchers chose the coral species Porites compressa as their target sample.
This coral species is known as the 'finger' or 'hump' coral and is part of the stony coral family, which is "one of the important reef-building species in Hawaii," said NIST chemist Tracey Schock. "They lay the foundation for the coral reef."
P. compressa is found in shallow lagoons off the Hawaiian Islands, and the researchers obtained their coral samples from Kaneohe Bay, Oahu. The bay has been studied widely as a site affected by human activity such as sewage discharge and metal pollution. GAs have previously been observed in the coral species there.
In order to analyze and study GAs in P. compressa, researchers turned to the field of metabolomics, which is the study of small molecules, such as those making up living organisms found in tissues, blood or urine. These small molecules, known as metabolites, are the intermediate and end products in a linked series of biochemical reactions known as molecular pathways in an organism.
Some examples of such small molecules include sugars like glucose, amino acids, lipids and fatty acids. Their production can be influenced by genetic and environmental factors and can help researchers better understand the biochemical activity of tissue or cells. In this case, chemical analysis of metabolites provides significant information that helps researchers understand the physiology of the disease.
Two different field images depicting the coral species Porites compressa, a reef building coral off of the coast of Hawaii. The corals are affected by growth anomalies (GAs), a disease that can cause tumor-like protrusions that affect both the coral skeleton and its soft tissue. The GAs are the "larger protrusions" on the corals. Credit: R. Day/NIST
For their study, researchers sampled a coral colony that had both healthy and diseased tissue. They split up their samples so they could assess the healthy coral and diseased coral separately. They also had a separate adjacent sample that was free of diseased tissue.
The samples were frozen in liquid nitrogen, and then freeze-dried for practical sample processing while maintaining metabolic integrity. The researchers then separated the diseased parts from the healthy colony using a hammer and stainless-steel chisel and collected the tissue from the skeleton with a brush. In one of the final stages of the sample preparation, they chemically extracted the metabolites from the coral tissue using a combination of methanol, water and chloroform.
"The method is novel for coral studies," said Schock. "With metabolomics, it is critical to preserve the state of all metabolites in a sample at the time of collection. This requires halting all biochemical activity using liquid nitrogen and maintaining this state until chemical extraction of the metabolome. The complexity of a coral structure necessitates stringent collection and processing protocols."
The researchers then produced a metabolomic analysis of the coral samples by using a reproducible profiling technique known as proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR).
The 1H NMR technique exposes the coral extract to electromagnetic fields and measures the radio frequency signals released by the hydrogens in the sample. The various kinds of metabolites are revealed by their unique signals which inform of their chemical environment. NMR detects all signals from the magnetic nuclei within a sample, making it an unbiased "all-in-one" technique. Two-dimensional NMR experiments that can identify both hydrogens (1H) and their directly bound carbon (13C) atoms provide more chemical information, giving confidence in the accuracy of the identities of the various metabolites within a sample.
The study identified 18 different metabolites and a new GA morphological form in P. compressa. The researchers found that GA tumors have distinct metabolite profiles compared with healthy areas of the same coral colony and detected specific metabolites and metabolic pathways that may be important for these profile differences. They also discovered that the loss of internal pH regulation is seemingly responsible for the hollow skeletons that are a characteristic of GAs.
"We have not only characterized new aspects of GA physiology, but have also discovered candidate pathways that provide a clear path forward for future research efforts aiming to further understand GA formation and coral metabolism, in general," said Schock.
As studies of this type accumulate, the researchers envision a database that could pull together coral metabolite information from multiple coral species into an accessible location for all scientists.
Collaborating with other researchers in different fields could increase understanding of the biological impacts of this disease on coral colonies. "We are going to learn which species are tolerant and which species are sensitive to stresses, and the physiological adaptations or mechanisms of both types will be important to conservation efforts," said Schock.
For now, the researchers hope these findings will be helpful for other scientists analyzing coral species and ultimately be beneficial for the coral reefs themselves, potentially aiding efforts to better preserve them.
More information: Erik R. Andersson et al, Identifying metabolic alterations associated with coral growth anomalies using 1H NMR metabolomics, Coral Reefs (2021). DOI: 10.1007/s00338-021-02125-7
