Humans aren't the only species whose metabolisms tend to slow down with age

by Robin A. Smith, Duke University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

If you feel like your metabolism just isn't what it used to be, no matter how many hours you spend in the gym, dolphins can relate.

A Duke University-led study finds that bottlenose dolphins burn calories at a lower rate as they get older, just like we do.

It's the first time scientists have measured an age-related metabolic slowdown in another large-bodied species besides humans, said first author Rebecca Rimbach, postdoctoral associate in evolutionary anthropology at Duke.

Rimbach has studied energy expenditure and other aspects of physiology in animals ranging from mice to monkeys. But data on the inner workings of marine mammals such as dolphins and whales have been scant, she says. That's because these ocean dwellers are notoriously difficult to recapture for repeat measurements.

"It can be very tricky to get the animal back when you need it," Rimbach said.

The researchers studied 10 bottlenose dolphins aged 10 to 45 living at two marine mammal facilities, Dolphin Research Center in Florida and Dolphin Quest in Hawaii.

To measure their average daily metabolic rate, the researchers used the "doubly labeled water method." Used to measure energy expenditure in humans since the 1980s, it's a method that involves getting the animals to drink a few ounces of water with naturally occurring "heavy" forms of hydrogen and oxygen added, and then tracking how long the animals take to flush them out.

Like humans present their arms for a blood draw, the dolphins at these facilities voluntarily raise their tail fins out of the water so their caregivers can collect blood or urine as part of their regular checkups.

By analyzing the levels of heavy hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the blood or urine, the team was able to calculate how much carbon dioxide the dolphins produced each day, and thus how many calories they were burning as they went about their lives.

What they found surprised them.

The researchers expected dolphins to have revved-up metabolisms, since dolphins are warm-blooded just like people, and keeping warm requires more energy in water than in air.

But despite living in a watery world, they found that bottlenose dolphins burn 17% less energy per day than expected for a marine mammal of their size.

The scientists also noted some of the same signs of metabolic aging common in people. The oldest dolphins in the study, both in their 40s, used 22% to 49% fewer calories each day than expected for their body weight. And similar to humans, more of those calories ended up as fat rather than muscle. Dolphins in their 40s had body fat percentages that were 2.5 times higher than their under-20 counterparts.

It wasn't for lack of exercise, Rimbach said. Dolphins are amazing athletes, capable of leaping 10 feet into the air and swimming alongside power boats at speeds that would crush Michael Phelps.

The dolphins in the study were observed doing flips and spins, walking on their tails, jumping clear out of the water and going fast enough to leave a wake as often as six to 18 times an hour, and they remained active into their 40s.

But the metabolic pattern remained no matter what their activity level.

"And it's not because they're eating too much," either, Rimbach said. The researchers recorded how much herring and other fish the dolphins gobbled up, and they found that the older, fatter dolphins in the study actually ate fewer calories.

The researchers say such work could shed light on factors besides diet and lifestyle that underlie age-related weight gain in people.

"Further studies into this commonality we share with dolphins may help us understand why human metabolism slows as we age," said co-author Hannah Salomons, a graduate student in professor Brian Hare's lab at Duke.

"Having access to healthy dolphins under human care made this study possible," said co-author Austin Allen of the Duke University Marine Lab.

"We need more data, especially for younger dolphins, since we only looked at 10 individuals," Rimbach said. "But I think it's an exciting first study."Measuring metabolism in dolphins to calculate their caloric needs

More information: Rebecca Rimbach et al, Total energy expenditure of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) of different ages, Journal of Experimental Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1242/jeb.242218

Journal information: Journal of Experimental Biology 

Provided by Duke University 

 

Sex with robots: How should lawmakers respond?

by Flinders University

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Advancements in technology have resulted in the design of hyper–realistic, Wi-Fi–connected, programmable sex robots that can mimic human responses, but what do these developments mean for how we regulate interactions with "sexbots" in the future

In a new article in the The Bulletin: The Law Society of SA Journal, Flinders University law researchers analyzed the factors Australian lawmakers will have to consider when they weigh up whether it should be legal to import, own and use sexbots that resemble human adults.

Critics argue sex robots objectify women and increase the risk of sexual violence by desensitizing people to the way they treat living beings. Some robots can even be programmed to reject a user's sexual advances which mimic a refusal of consent, which is a key element of proving sexual offenses in Australia.

On the other hand, advocates claim benefits of sex robots can include empowering older Australians and people with disabilities, addressing sexual related anxiety, treating dysfunctions, promoting safe sex and creating a safe place for people who feel insecure about their sexual orientation.

A recent study into the therapeutic benefits of sex robots found the top three suggestions for the use of robots were for patients with: social anxiety (50%), people who do not have a partner but still want a sex life without resorting to fleeting acquaintances or prostitution (50%) and premature ejaculation (47%), according to sex therapists.

Madi McCarthy, now an Associate with law firm LK, recently completed her honors research into this topic with the College of Business, Government & Law. She says advancements in technology, coupled with increasing demand and public concern, means Australian policymakers are likely to be confronted with calls for the regulation of sex robots in the near future.

"Legislators will have to balance competing and complex individual and public interests which pose new ethical, regulatory and legal challenges because of advancements in technology."

"While no Australian legislation currently regulates or prohibits sexual intercourse with robots, there are regulations on child-like sex dolls which have been addressed by the Commonwealth, South Australia and Queensland. These statutory provisions may guide any future laws on the use of adult sex robots but there are new factors which have to be considered."

Associate Professor Tania Leiman, Dean of Law at Flinders University, says sex robots challenge existing conceptions of how humans interact with emerging technologies in the most intimate way so regulators will have to balance ethical questions, legal challenges and the real potential for technology to objectify and promote sexual violence.

"Even if sex robots are prohibited in Australia—it's likely that the courts may consider such offenses to be less objectively serious than sexual offenses against humans, and sentences may be more likely to fall at the lower end of the penalty range, even where maximum penalties are equivalent."

"For example, courts have consistently imposed lower end sentences for child-like sex doll offenses despite the maximum penalty range of 10 to 15 years."Design and market sexbots for older adults with disabilities, argues ethicist

More information: issuu.com/lawsocietysa/docs/ls … ?fr=sMWZhNjM5Mzk0NTE

Provided by Flinders University 

 

Raccoon dogs pose a particular threat to ground-nesting birds in Northern Europe

by University of Helsinki

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Duck species in Finland are faring poorly, with more than half of the species listed as threatened to a varying degree, with alien predators as one of the suspected causes.

A new study proves the suspicions well-founded. In experiments carried out over three years by the University of Helsinki, Finland and Aarhus University, Denmark, wildlife cameras recorded an abundance of images of alien species predating artificial nests established by the researchers in Finland and Denmark.

More than 400 artificial nests containing farmed mallard eggs were created, of which roughly 290 were located around southern Finland. The nests were built in natural duck nesting environments.

In Finland, raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) were more common nest predators than red foxes, although in Denmark the situation was reversed, possibly reflecting the species' local relative abundance.

"The raccoon dog was the most common mammalian predator in all of the environments studied in Finland. As expected, raccoon dogs destroyed nests on shorelines, but surprisingly often also in forests close to wetlands," says Postdoctoral Researcher Sari Holopainen from the Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus, University of Helsinki.

Broken eggs attract mammalian predators

Wildlife cameras revealed that many nests were visited by more than one predator. Corvids were often the first to notice the nests. On occasion, they would break an egg in the nest, which would attract mammalian predators to the spot. American minks and raccoon dogs often visited nests previously predated by others.

"Our research shows that predators cohabiting the same area can benefit from one another. Eggs broken by corvids offer a clue to mammalian predators, which, in turn, are a threat to both eggs and female ducks. In other words, the effect of a diverse predator community can exceed the sum of its species," Holopainen says.

The raccoon dog is a genuine habitat generalist

In terms of utilizing their environment, the raccoon dog was found in many ways to be more versatile than native species. The species was commonly observed on shorelines and shore forests, and it was flexible also with regard to agricultural and urban landscapes, whereas the presence of individual native mammal predators was restricted by habitat type. In addition, raccoon dogs were found to be an adaptive part of the predator community, as it was either the only species or a part of a community, rich in species that visited nests during the week-long observation period.

According to the researchers, the artificial nest experiments cannot directly prove that the raccoon dog has an effect on duck populations."What the results do show, however, is that the raccoon dog is a more common nest predator than native mammalian species, and that it is abundant in a range of duck nesting environments," Holopainen explains.

Several reasons for the decline of waterbird populations

In addition to alien predators, the decline of waterbird populations is caused by several factors, of which many are related to excessive eutrophication. However, the results of the artificial nest experiments help to understand the reasons for declining waterbird populations.

"The decline of many waterbird nesting populations, especially in eutrophic lakes, matches temporally the increasing abundance of raccoon dogs and American minks. This came out as we studied long-term changes in aquatic birdlife between the periods 1951–1970 and 1996–2015 using datasets collected in the Häme region by Pentti Linkola, the late fisherman," says Hannu Pöysä, a principal scientist at the Natural Resources Institute Finland.

The datasets provided a unique opportunity to assess, among other things, the role of alien predators in the decline of waterbird populations, since the data from 1951–1970 depicted a period of time when the raccoon dog and the American mink were few in number in Finnish nature.

The raccoon dog in Finland

The raccoon dog is a species indigenous to South-East Asia that was introduced as a fur animal in areas of the Soviet Union close to Europe from the 1920s onwards. From there, the species has spread to the continent, gaining ground thanks to its capacity to travel long distances. The longest migration observed using a GPS collar occurred in early 2016 when a raccoon dog made a 600-kilometer journey.

In Finland, the first raccoon dogs arrived as early as the 1930s. While the regional population is especially dense in southern Finland, the species is also able to live in Lapland. In fact, a relentless battle is being fought on the border between Finland and Sweden to prevent the species from spreading to the latter country.

In Finland, the number of culled raccoon dogs has grown steadily. In the early 1980s, the annual number of slain raccoon dogs was roughly 20,000. In the peak year of 2016, that number had increased tenfold. Indeed, the raccoon dog is Finland's second/third most common prey animal. Additionally, more than 20,000 raccoon dogs are estimated to be killed by road traffic each year.

In 2019, the EU added the raccoon dog to the list of harmful invasive alien species. One of the reasons for this was its impact on avian and amphibian species. The raccoon dog can carry and spread a number of diseases, including rabies, echinococcosis, mange and trichinellosis.Raccoons and raccoon dogs are expected to expand their ranges in Europe

More information: Sari Holopainen et al, Do alien predators pose a particular risk to duck nests in Northern Europe? Results from an artificial nest experiment, Biological Invasions (2021). DOI: 10.1007/s10530-021-02608-

Journal information: Biological Invasions 

Provided by University of Helsinki 

 

Football without the fans: New study reveals effect of empty stadiums during pandemic

by University of Leeds

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Playing professional football games in empty stadiums had a hugely negative effect on the success of home teams, with home advantage almost halved, new research shows. 

The new study, by the University of Leeds and Northumbria University, used the unique opportunity presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to test whether home advantage applies when fans are not present in the stands. Home advantage describes the benefit a sports team playing attheir own venue is said to enjoy over the visiting team. This could be attributed to the effect of fans on the players or referee; playing in familiar surroundings and the effects of travel on the visiting team. 

Researchers used data from Football-Data.co.uk and the FiveThirtyEight online database to assess at 4,844 games across 11 countries, including the England Premier League and Championship, Germany Bundesliga 1 and 2, Spanish La Liga 1 and 2, Italian Serie A and B, Portuguese Primeira Liga, Greek Super League, Turkish Super Lig, Austrian Bundesliga, Danish Superligaen, Russian Premier League and Swiss Super League. 

They found that home teams accrued significantly fewer points and scored fewer goals when crowds were absent.   

The researchers found, on average: 

• With fans present, teams won 0.39 points more per game at home than away 
• With fans absent, the advantage was almost halved when teams won only 0.22 points more at home than away 
• With fans present, home teams scored 0.29 goals more per game than away teams 
• With fans absent, home teams scored just 0.15 goals more than the visitors. 

Furthermore, the lack of crowds affected how referees judged fouls against home and away sides. 

The data showed: 

• Referees gave more fouls against the home team in empty stadiums 
• Referees gave a similar number of fouls against the away team in empty stadiums 
• Referees gave far fewer yellow cards against away teams in empty stadiums 
• Referees gave similar numbers of yellow cards against the home team in empty stadiums—even though they fouled more 
• Red cards followed a similar pattern which was less pronounced, yet still significant 

Lead author Dane McCarrick, from the University of Leeds' School of Psychology, said that "COVID-19 forced football at all levels to an unexpected halt just a quarter of the way through the 2019/2020 season."

"When it returned, the remainder of the games took place behind closed doors with no fans present. This provided an unintentional, and unique, opportunity to examine one of the most talked about and empirically studied phenomena in professional team sport: the home advantage."

"This new knowledge reveals that in the most basic sense, fans attendance matters." 

Dominant play 

Previous studies into home advantage have considered how goals scored and points awarded at home games compared with performance at away matches.  

This study is the first to consider whether home advantage affects a team's dominance over a game. 

The researchers measured dominance by the number of corners, shots and shots on target they had in any given match. 

The study showed home teams were less dominant without their supportive fans, with an average per game of 0.7 fewer corners won, 1.3 fewer shot attempts and 0.4 fewer shots on target. 

But the findings suggested that the lack of crowds made very little difference to away teams' attacking hold on games, with only 0.10 more corners, 0.17 more shots, and 0.20 more shots on target.  

And the researchers discovered that teams' dominance had a much greater influence over referees' decisions than the presence of home fans. 

Mr McCarrick said: "When a team's dominance over the game was included in the analysis, the associations were much weakened for fouls and yellow cards and, remarkably, become non-significant for red cards. This shows, for the first time, that the influence of home fans on referees mostly disappears when the style of play is taken into account." 

Dr. Sandy Wolfson, a sport and exercise psychologist from Northumbria University's Department of Psychology, worked with Dane on this study. Dr. Wolfson has undertaken extensive research exploring the psychological aspects of football for players, referees and fans, working with Premier League clubs and the Football Association. She said that "this is a really important investigation that contributes to the long-standing debate on the main reasons for the home advantage in sport—a worldwide phenomenon affecting team sports at all levels, from recreational to elite." 

"Home advantage during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analyses of European football leagues" is published in the September issue of Psychology of Sport and Exercise. The online version of the paper is peer reviewed.Soccer returns in empty stadiums: Research shows home advantage disappears

More information: Dane McCarrick et al, Home advantage during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analyses of European football leagues, Psychology of Sport and Exercise (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2021.102013

Provided by University of Leeds 

 

How consumer orchestration work creates value in the sharing economy

by American Marketing Association

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Researchers from University of Melbourne and RMIT University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that identifies the key challenges experienced by sharing economy consumers and explains how consumers manage to overcome these challenges and cocreate value in the sharing economy.

Sharing economy platforms (e.g., Uber, Airbnb, Tinder) are common and growing fast across industries. These platforms work as digital marketplaces in which platform consumers (both peer service providers and the service users) collaborate to cocreate value for each other. However, these collaborations are not always seamless. Whereas major issues associated with the sharing economy such as crime often make headlines, platform consumers face many other challenges when cocreating experiences with strangers.

The researchers identify the key challenges experienced by sharing economy consumers that originate in the hybrid communal-transactional principles of the sharing economy. They also explain how consumers manage to overcome these challenges and cocreate value in the sharing economy. To develop these insights, the research team conducted a qualitative study of Couchsurfing, a sharing economy platform launched in 2004. Consumers (hosts and guests) use the platform to share free accommodation and cultural experiences of hospitality. The case of Couchsurfing, with its low level of platform control over consumer cocreation, allows a better understanding of what consumers do to overcome cocreation challenges in the sharing economy.  

The researchers discovered four key challenges for consumers cocreating in the sharing economy. First, platform consumers need to cocreate experiences despite their differences in goals and values (e.g., Airbnb homeowners and guests may have different understandings of what comfortable or convenient means). Second, platform consumers need to reconcile their desires for impersonal transactions and meaningful social interactions when cocreating (e.g., an Uber driver and rider may differ in whether they prefer a quiet ride or a pleasant conversation). Third, platform consumers need to manage the risk of cocreating with strangers (e.g., Couchsurfing hosts and guests must assess whether to sleep near someone they just met). Fourth, platform consumers need to personalize experiences, yet depend on the willingness of strangers to accommodate this need (e.g., TaskRabbit "taskers" need to figure out how to offer their unique skills while attending to the specific needs of those who ask for help). 

Platform consumers navigate these challenges by engaging in orchestration work: four mechanisms and a series of 14 actions that help consumers overcome cocreation roadblocks. The research uncovers what platform firms can do to help consumers navigate these challenges and unlock the full value of the orchestration work that consumers are willing to do in the sharing economy.

The first group of orchestration actions is supported by a mechanism called consumer-to-consumer alignment. These actions (screening, cueing, flexing, buffering) enable platform consumers to navigate the challenge of having to cocreate with others with heterogeneous values and goals. These actions help consumers align their expectations, interactions, and responses to their cocreation partners.  The second group of orchestration actions is supported by a mechanism called rewiring relations.

These actions (interest grouping, lifestyle signaling, enclaving, reconciling) enable consumers to use platform features to navigate and integrate the communal and transactional aspects of their relationships. In other words, these actions help consumers rework relationships in the platform to better suit their individual goals. The third group of orchestration actions is supported by a mechanism called trust investment. These actions (revealing, cultivating reviews, scaffolding) enable platform consumers to manage platform resources to mitigate the risk of engaging in one-off interactions with strangers in the sharing economy. These actions are enacted specifically to navigate the challenge of establishing interpersonal trust with strangers in the platform.  Finally, the fourth group of actions is supported by a mechanism called network experimentation.

Three actions (creative resourcing, role improvising, repurposing) enable platform consumers to try new resources, roles, and goals when cocreating experiences. These actions increase the field of potential expectations, interactions, and responses among cocreation partners in the network, extending the possibilities for the cocreation of unique, personalized, and valuable experiences among platform consumers.  "We explain how these actions and mechanisms can lead to known sources of value creation for platform firms, including complementarities, efficiency, and consumer lock-in. Platform firm managers must identify common cocreation roadblocks for their consumers and provide ways to help consumers overcome these roadblocks," says Scaraboto.

For example, Airbnb consumers appreciate variety in the platform, but user heterogeneity may lead to cocreation misalignments. Drawing on our findings, Airbnb can further support consumers in dealing with the challenge of heterogeneity by encouraging consumer-to-consumer alignment actions. For example, Airbnb can encourage screening through additional filters that more specifically account for expectations and preferred ways of cocreation (e.g., allowing guests to indicate their desired amount of contact/conversation with the host). Figueiredo adds, "By supporting consumer-to-consumer alignment, sharing economy platforms can make cocreation more efficient for consumers and, in turn, bring value to the firm."Trusting strangers: Details matter to millennials using Uber, Airbnb

More information: Daiane Scaraboto et al, EXPRESS: How Consumer Orchestration Work Creates Value in the Sharing Economy, Journal of Marketing (2021). DOI: 10.1177/0022242921102777

Journal information: Journal of Marketing 

Provided by American Marketing Association 

Protecting coral reefs more effectively from climate change

by University of Konstanz

AUGUST 13, 2021
Study sites and temperature tolerance thresholds of corals from the northern and central Red Sea. (a) Map of Red Sea sites, reefs are shown in red. Seven coral colonies of S. pistillata from each of one site in the Gulf of Aqaba (ICN), northern Red Sea, and three central Red Sea sites near each other (AF, ExT, PrT) were collected and examined for heat stress response patterns. (b) Photosynthetic efficiency (Fv/Fm) over temperature curves and determined ED50 thermal tolerance thresholds as a proxy for coral bleaching susceptibility (sensu Evensen et al., 2021) of corals from the ICN, AF, ExT, PrT reef sites. ED50 thermal tolerance thresholds are denoted as vertical bars with temperature values at the top of the respective bar in the respective site color. Solid lines in each curve reflect the mean three parameter log-logistic model fit for each population (n = 7 colonies) with 95% confidence intervals represented by the shaded areas. Statistical differences among sites are indicated by letters in the panel legend with site-specific MMM temperatures denoted thereafter. Symbols denote measurements from individual samples. Blue circles, coral samples from the Gulf of Aqaba ICN site; yellow triangles, coral samples from the central Red Sea AF site; pink squares, coral samples from the Central Red Sea ExT site; dark red diamonds, corals from the Central Red Sea PrT site. Credit: DOI: 10.1111/mec.16064

Thermally tolerant corals have different mechanisms for responding to heat stress. This is the conclusion of a current study by an international team of researchers including the Konstanz biologist Professor Christian Voolstra that was published in Molecular Ecology. The team examined responses to heat stress in the smooth cauliflower coral (Stylophora pistillata) in the Red Sea by combining the Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS) – a mobile rapid heat stress test—with molecular analyses, in order to identify different types of thermal tolerance. The procedure is to be used worldwide, and the respective results could help provide corals with more targeted protection from the effects of climate change.

Death of corals worldwide caused by warming oceans

As a result of climate change, corals all over the world are currently dying. Within just a few decades, the global coral population has dropped by half, and, due to their locally adapted thermal tolerance, many corals are poorly prepared to respond to further increases in ocean temperatures. Some corals, however, are more adept at managing heat stress than others.

In order to elucidate the factors that contribute to higher thermal tolerance in corals, Voolstra and his colleagues introduced a new mobile testing system last year—the Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS). The system makes it possible to quickly identify corals that are particularly resilient. "This test procedure is a small revolution for me, because it allows researchers and conservationists alike to assess coral resilience anywhere on Earth and to find out how endangered each coral reef is, without the need for costly and sophisticated tech", Voolstra described the CBASS system in a previous article.

Different thermal tolerance mechanisms

In the current study, the research team used the testing system to evaluate the thermal tolerance of the smooth cauliflower coral in different regions of the Red Sea. The results show that corals from the Gulf of Aqaba, the most northeastern arm of the Red Sea, demonstrate a remarkable thermal tolerance—up to about 7°C above the respective maximum monthly average for the warmest summer month—just like their peers from the central part of the Red Sea. However, the absolute thermal tolerance of smooth cauliflower corals from the central part of the Red Sea is up to 3°C higher than for the same species in the Gulf of Aqaba, which could suggest that different tolerance mechanisms are at work.

In order to investigate this possibility, the research team conducted molecular analyses to elucidate mechanisms of thermal tolerance in corals from the different locations. Genetic examinations showed that smooth cauliflower corals from the Gulf of Aqaba respond to heat stress with a strongly altered gene expression—for example the increased production of certain proteins. Parallel to this, the composition of the coral-associated bacterial communities changed. By comparison, corals from the central part of the Red Sea did not exhibit any of these changes when exposed to heat stress.

The molecular results support the idea that smooth cauliflower corals have different thermal tolerance mechanisms. "We interpret the response of the corals from the Gulf of Aqaba as that of a "resilient" population that directly and proportionally reacts to increases in temperature. By contrast, the more static expression of genes of the corals from the central part of the Red Sea indicates a fixed reaction norm, irrespective of the heat stress applied, which provides "resistance" to high water temperatures, but at the cost of the ability to flexibly respond to further increases in temperatures", says Voolstra.

Toolbox of methods for protecting coral reefs worldwide

At the moment, it is unclear which of these tolerance mechanisms protects corals better from the global increase in ocean temperatures caused by climate change. The fact that "resilient" and "resistant" tolerance mechanisms can be distinguished using molecular methods could be of great importance for the conservation prioritization of existing coral reefs or for restoration approaches that could use heat-tolerant corals for sexual propagation.

For this reason, the research team is making plans to employ the methodological approach used successfully in the Red Sea study around the world. "Our study shows the tremendous value of an integrative, combined approach: using the CBASS system for the standardized identification of thermal tolerance in corals with subsequent follow-up molecular analyses to identify the underlying tolerance mechanisms and marker genes", concludes Voolstra.

Explore further

Northern Red Sea corals live close to the threshold of resistance to cold temperatures
More information: Christian R. Voolstra et al, Contrasting heat stress response patterns of coral holobionts across the Red Sea suggest distinct mechanisms of thermal tolerance, Molecular Ecology (2021). DOI: 10.1111/mec.16064

Journal information: Molecular Ecology

Provided by University of Konstanz

 

Gorillas in our midst: DR Congo park fetes rare birth

A female eastern lowland gorilla in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. 

The gorillas are one of the world's most endangered species.

DR Congo's Kahuzi-Biega National Park is celebrating the birth of an eastern lowland gorilla, one of the world's most endangered species

"We have the pleasure of announcing the birth of a baby to the female Mwinja," the park announced on Facebook on Friday.

"Our rangers were there and captured this moment of intimacy, on Saturday August 7. She seemed happy to be showing off her baby. Both are in very good healthy."

The birth is "a sign of hope," the park's spokesman, Hubert Mulongoy, told AFP.

The park, located in a deeply troubled part of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, said the birth brought its tally of the apes—Gorilla beringei graueri—from 171 to 172.

Mwinja has already had offspring but this is the first she has had with a well-known male called Nabirembo.

The park's gorilla population includes two tribes who live in so-called habituation, meaning that they are used to human presence nearby.

Kahuzi-Biega covers around 6,000 square kilometres (2,300 square miles) of mountains and rainforests near the western banks of Lake Kivu and the Rwandan border.

It is a magnet for intrepid eco-tourists, who are drawn to its unique landscape and rare species.

The park is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in danger because of the presence of armed groups and settlers, poaching and deforestation

Hope for critically endangered gorillas in eastern DRC

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© 2021 AFP

 

Carbon hidden in soil: Could Chesapeake Bay restoration methods be a model for blunting climate change?

by Katherine Hafner

Ball-and-stick model of carbon dioxide. Credit: Wikipedia

For decades, farmers around the Chesapeake Bay have worked to limit the pollution going from their land into the water, as part of a program to restore the watershed.

But the measures taken to improve water quality have also had unforeseen side benefits for the climate, according to a new analysis from the Chesapeake Conservancy.

Nearly half a million tons of carbon dioxide were removed from Virginia's atmosphere in 2019 through agricultural conservation practices that weren't even intended for that purpose, the nonprofit found.

The findings could have implications for the battle against climate change, the study's authors say. They hope the Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts could serve as a model for another way to target greenhouse gasses.

The bay has long been a target for restoration. In the 1980s, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution was identified as the watershed's main threat.

Officials then formed the Chesapeake Bay Program, a large partnership between federal and state agencies, nonprofits, local governments and academic institutions focused on restoring the bay's health. It has since gone through many iterations.

In 2010, federal officials enacted a "pollution diet" for the bay that limits the nutrients and sediments that can enter the bay. When too much nitrogen and phosphorus—which are found in fertilizers—get in the bay, they can lead to excessive algae that suck up oxygen and block sunlight for underwater plants.

The main way that conservation practices are enacted on farms is through a federal program that gives out money for doing so, said Susan Minnemeyer, vice president of conservation technology at the Chesapeake Conservancy and an author of the recent report.

A farmer can receive money per acre of land on which they implement the practices. It's a way to generate additional income from their fields and some of the practices also increase a farm's productivity, she said.

The practices include silvopasture—adding more trees to land where livestock grazes—better managing the nutrients in fertilizer and setting up cover crops including wheat and rye that improve the soil.

The conservancy, a partner in the Chesapeake Bay Program, got interested in looking at the fringe carbon benefits of the agricultural tactics because local scientists had discussed but never explicitly analyzed them, said Joel Dunn, the nonprofit's president and CEO.

"Our gut told us all these water quality land management practices were actually having a very positive carbon sequestration impact," Dunn said.

Carbon sequestration is the term for when carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere and stored elsewhere. When it comes to agriculture, that means in the soil.

It's become an increasingly prominent topic of conversation among political and environmental leaders who argue removing existing carbon will be an important tool in the arsenal against climate change.

In 2019, the group found, about 459,639 tons of carbon dioxide were removed from the atmosphere through agricultural conservation practices.

That's roughly equivalent to about 0.4% of Virginia's energy emissions from the year before, or about the electricity needed to power more than 50,000 homes for a year.

Most effective for removing carbon? Putting up trees and other vegetation, which pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

The way farmers do that can mean adding trees to areas where livestock graze—which also reduces erosion and provides shade for animals—or planting trees and vegetation lined up along a waterway. The shrubbery also captures fertilizer runoff that could otherwise cause algal blooms in the bay, Minnemeyer said.

Though trees grabbed the most carbon per acre, the study found that soil-focused methods stored the most total, because of the sheer amount of agricultural land across the commonwealth.

That includes planting cover crops and reducing how much a farm's soil is churned up through mechanical digging and overturning. The less the soil is disturbed, the more carbon-rich organic matter it holds, Minnemeyer said.

"You're keeping carbon out of the atmosphere by holding it in the soil," she said.

The organization's leaders hope the report can jumpstart more investment in these methods—not just from the government but from private capital firms interested in promoting sustainability. They'd also like to see increased payments to farmers for implementing the practices, and for more private landowners to get involved on their own properties.

Meanwhile, Virginia's government recently conducted its own analysis and found that the bay restoration efforts since 2009 have resulted in the storing of about 460,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, almost exactly what the conservancy estimated.

State officials expect that figure to grow to more than 2 million per year by 2025.

Dunn, the conservancy's president, said the analysis takes on added importance in light of a jarring international report this week stating that climate change is a "code red for humanity" and that the world only has a few decades left to stop the worst effects of warming.

The millions of tons of carbon removed so far in Virginia happened purely as a side benefit, Minnemeyer noted. Imagine the potential impact, she said, if we actually went all in on the strategy.

Senate OKs bill to certify farm practices limiting emissions

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©2021 The Virginian-Pilot.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Turning off the genes that allow invasive mussels to spread and survive

by Morgan Greene

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

In Lake Michigan, mussels face divers ready to scrape them off rocks, molluscicides pumped underwater capable of tearing apart their digestive systems, another invasive species hungry for their young and any number of death traps researchers dream up next.

Throughout the country, scientists are studying a range of control methods to uproot invasive mussels, hoping that—like the threads that glue the mollusks down—something eventually sticks.

Zebra and quagga mussels hitched a ride into the Great Lakes from Eastern European seas three decades ago, filtering and blanketing their way across much of the freshwater haven, settling down as far away as California.

The search for solutions involves weighing the effect a treatment is likely to have on the mussels with the effect it may have on everything else in an ecosystem. Chemicals have been proven to kill mussels but can also be toxic to native mussels—many of which are already threatened or endangered. Some control methods may work for clearing mussels from a fixed structure but struggle to stand up against the unpredictability of open water. Or else end up being prohibitively expensive.

Now scientists are studying methods of genetic control—an approach that could spare other organisms from becoming collateral damage and potentially solve the scale problem.

"It could provide a way to do what we can't do now, which is to treat an infested body of water," said Scott Ballantyne, a biology professor at University of Wisconsin River Falls who is part of the team that started researching RNA interference and zebra mussels this year. "So that's the hope."

RNA can act as a translator, helping convert the information stored in a cell's DNA into proteins essential to the body's function. RNAi—RNA interference—can essentially block that process and "turn off" a gene.

The revelatory discovery happened by accident after a number of oddities, including an effort to make an especially vibrant petunia. Instead, scientists ended up with white petals—and an enigma.

Turns out, the scientists set off a naturally occurring regulatory mechanism using double-stranded RNA. Normally, RNA in a cell is single-stranded, but many viral genomes are double-stranded. The interference may have developed in response to these foreign appearances.

The discovery has led to treatment for a rare genetic disease in humans—and could potentially be used to treat a range of serious conditions.

RNAi research, which involved injecting double-stranded RNA in the nematode worm, won scientists a 2006 Nobel Prize.

"We probably know more about that little worm than any other living thing on the planet," Ballantyne said.

The work has become personal to Ballantyne—mussels were found in the Wisconsin lake where he and his wife have a cabin.

"I thought, surely in 30-plus years of looking at these mussels, we would have better tools to manipulate their DNA," Ballantyne said. "I was kind of aghast at how little we could do with them compared to a lot of other creatures."

The mussels, nearly impossible to eliminate in open water, are tough to keep alive in a lab, he said.

"We struggle even now to keep them happy and healthy for a few weeks in our lab," Ballantyne said. "In the wild they just thrive."

Daryl Gohl, group leader of the University of Minnesota Genomics Center Innovation Lab, was among the researchers who sequenced the genome of the zebra mussel, published in 2019, and is now working on the RNAi project.

Using an RNAi strategy directly for biocontrol with zebra mussels is still a bit of a moonshot, Gohl said.

"Then there are also the political and social considerations, whether it would make sense to deploy something like this in the wild," Gohl said.

But, with the zebra mussel genome, which includes a map and catalog of its genes, researchers can home in on genes connected to the processes that allow the mussels to spread and survive, including the formation of shells or the threads the mussels use to attach to surfaces.

"We have this list of potential targets that one could exploit to potentially enable some sort of biocontrol down the road," Gohl said.

Genetic control strategies could also combine and supplement more traditional control approaches. Scientists are targeting genes they predict are involved in stress responses—including tolerating heat, or toxins such as copper sulfate.

Researchers could potentially engineer a food source like bacteria, or algae, which would introduce the double-stranded RNA to the mussels, Gohl said. The material could even be distributed to the mussels similarly to Zequanox engineering, which involved a frame and tarp system to pump the molluscicide underwater. For lab tests, they could directly inject the mussels.

While RNAi research is underway on zebra mussels, other scientists are considering a different approach with quagga mussels.

CRISPR is another genetic technology that is most commonly used to directly edit DNA, and can mean a permanent change passed on through generations, unlike the more indirect RNAi.

Researchers with the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water management, have a draft genome of the quagga mussel and are investigating CRISPR technology for future biocontrol.

Biologist Yale Passamaneck is working on the project and analogized sequencing the genome to "the world's most complex jigsaw puzzle."

Now, Passamaneck said, researchers have "a book in a foreign language and you need to be able to decipher it."

Scientists are working on that translation dictionary.

"You can't really think about a genetic biocontrol project with any seriousness until you have a really high quality genome—and a good annotation of it," Passamaneck said.

Researchers are interested in targeting reproduction in the quagga mussel, Passamaneck said.

But while there's information about the mussels' ecology, their impacts on infrastructure and how to control them in dams, when it comes to genetic research, "there's still a pretty big knowledge gap," he said. For example, scientists still don't know how sex determination happens in the mussels.

Figuring out how CRISPR could be implemented in mussels is a challenge, he said, because of how little is known about the mussels compared with many other organisms. But, if the technology could be implemented, it could solve how to control mussels in large bodies of water—an exciting prospect to scientists, Passamaneck said.

With quagga mussels, you're "reinventing the wheel" to an extent, Passamaneck said. "You can take the whole bag of tricks that's available, but then you have to figure out which ones work and which ones don't."

As for the most promising solution, Passamaneck said it may take a collection of different approaches.

"It's going to take a lot of work by a lot of people to get there," he said.

Quagga mussel found to be primary regulator of phosphorus cycling in lower four Great Lakes

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©2021 Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

New evidence about Roman Britain executions revealed

by King's College London

Credit: University of Leicester Archaeological Services

King's research has helped uncover new evidence showing the portrayal of the execution of captives in the arena by throwing them to lions. The evidence follows the discovery of an elaborately-decorated Roman bronze key handle.

The handle, discovered by archaeologists in Leicester, portrays a "Barbarian" grappling with a lion, together with four naked youths cowering in terror.

The key handle was discovered by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), buried below the floor of a late Roman town house excavated in the city in 2016. After conservation, this unique object was studied at King's and the findings are now published in the journal Britannia.

Dr. John Pearce, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, (Classics), is a co-author of the study, and helped decipher the key handle.

Dr. Gavin Speed, who led the excavations at a site off Great Central Street in Leicester, is a co-author on the study and described the moment the find was made. He said, "When first found, it appeared as an indistinguishable bronze object, but after we carefully cleaned off the soil remarkably we revealed several small faces looking back at us, it was absolutely astounding. Nothing quite like this has been discovered anywhere in the Roman Empire before."

Roman law sanctioned the execution of criminals and prisoners of war in the arena through the public spectacle of throwing them to the beasts; defined by the Latin term damnatio ad bestias.

This form of execution was often used to symbolize the destruction of Rome's enemies; members of those tribes who lived outside the Roman Empire and were collectively known as "Barbarians."

The main figure portrayed on the handle displays many of the features associated with such "Barbarians"' including mane-like hair, a bushy beard, bulging eyes, and the wearing of trousers below a naked torso. The lion is wrapped around his body and bites the side of his head. Beneath the struggle, four naked youths stare outwards; the older two appearing to protect their younger compatriots, one of whom may hold a stone. The youths are thought to symbolize the "children of the tribe" and their imminent demise demonstrates what happens when Roman conquest is opposed.

Direct evidence for violent spectacles in Roman Britain is otherwise extraordinarily scarce, a rare exception being the puncture wound inflicted by a large carnivore on the pelvis of a male skeleton from Roman York.

Archaeologists believe the key was probably made a century or more after Britain itself had been conquered, and it is interesting to reflect on the idea that those whose recent ancestors were themselves considered Barbarians, now shared in the Roman contempt and fear of those who remained outside the Empire.

Credit: University of Leicester Archaeological Services

Many Roman towns in Britain possessed either an amphitheater or a theater, where such spectacles could have been witnessed by large crowds. The town house where the key handle was found stands next door to the newly-discovered Roman theater in Leicester, and it is tempting to think that life did indeed imitate art and that the holders of the key had witnessed such scenes at close quarters.

Lions are portrayed on other key handles from Roman Britain and probably symbolized security and the protection of the household. This sense of security extended beyond the life of the key as a functional object, as the detached handle clearly continued to be valued. It was placed upright in the makeup of a new floor laid long after the heyday of the opulent house it had once secured, in the hope that it would still offer protection.

ULAS post-excavation manager and co-author, Nick Cooper, added that the key handle was one of the most significant finds from Roman Leicester and would be displayed to the public at Jewry Wall Museum in Leicester, following completion of major refurbishment work expected to be completed by 2023.Dutch unearth Roman canal, road near UNESCO heritage sites

More information: Pearce, J., Speed, G., & Cooper, N. (2021). At Death's Door: A Scene of Damnatio ad Bestias on a Key Handle from Leicester. Britannia, 1-16. DOI: 10.1017/S0068113X21000118

Provided by King's College London