Reducing food waste is a smaller environmental win

New CU Boulder-led study finds gains in food security would come at cost for the environment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

 

IMAGE: A NEW CU BOULDER STUDY SUGGESTS THAT ELIMINATING FOOD LOSS AND WASTE WOULD NOT FULLY ELIMINATE THE ENVIRONMENTAL COST OF THAT WASTE; IT WOULD, HOWEVER, IMPROVE FOOD SECURITY, GLOBALLY. view more 

CREDIT: WIKIMEDIA, CREATIVE COMMONS CC0 1.0

Decreasing food loss and food waste may not have the environmental benefits researchers, advocates, and policymakers expect, but it could increase access to more affordable food for people worldwide, a new University of Colorado Boulder study suggests.

For years, eliminating food loss and food waste has been promoted as one of the most important actions humans can take to reduce the environmental impacts of the food system. And not without reason: food loss and waste along the supply chain account for as much as 24% of global food system GHG emissions and 6% of total emissions worldwide. The total loss and waste worldwide amount to an average of 527 calories per person per day.

The paper, published in Nature Food, suggests decreasing food loss and waste will have less of an environmental benefit than previously thought. Instead, food prices will go down, and people will eat more.

For the new work, a CIRES-led team considered the full impacts of reducing food loss and food waste, using guidelines set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2021. The study looked at food loss (damaged or spoiled before reaching retailers) with waste (spoiled or thrown away by consumers or retailers). Using these definitions, loss occurs on the supply side, while waste takes place on the demand side.

Margaret Hegwood, lead author of the study, and a CIRES/CU Boulder PhD candidate, explained to understand the environmental benefits of reducing food waste and food loss, one must also consider the full picture of reducing waste: More food available would lead to lower prices, and that would create predictable changes in people’s behavior. 

“Let's say the price of cereals goes down because of improvements in food system efficiency, now you can afford to eat the same amount more often,” said Hegwood. “Consumers respond to these price decreases, purchasing more than they had before, which offsets some of the benefits of reducing the food loss and waste.” 

The authors used a simple model that looked at supply and demand responses to reducing food waste and food loss. 

“Our model basically formalized ECON 101: reducing food loss and waste shifts the supply and demand curves, respectively,” says Matt Burgess, co-author of the study and CIRES/CU assistant professor.  “How sensitive supply and demand are to prices–which we get from previous research–then determines how much we project food prices and consumption will change” 

The offset is significant, and the authors found that reducing food loss and waste by 100%, decreases 1/2 to 2/3 of the predicted environmental benefits.

While the study modeled what might happen if food waste and loss are reduced, the authors don’t make assumptions about how both will be reduced. There are various solutions, and they all depend on food type, region, consumption habits, access to technology, politics, and dietary needs. 

Similar studies have looked at the impacts of decreasing food loss and food waste at the regional or country scale, but Hegwood and Burgess say it’s the first study they know of that looks at the global level. 

Overall, Hegwood hopes this study can shift the conversation from its focus on the environmental benefits of reducing food waste and loss to recognizing the food security benefits.

“And I think likely, at least to some extent, that this could mean that our efforts to reduce food loss and waste could actually not be as beneficial for the environment as we think they could be, but it’s super beneficial in terms of food security,” said Hegwood. “And I think that is very important for people to think about.”

 

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JOURNAL

Nature Food

DOI

10.1038/s43016-023-00792-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Rebound effects could offset more than half of avoided food loss and waste

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Jul-2023

Buzzing down the primrose path: Specialist bee species prefer abundant host plants

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

 

IMAGE: A BEE ON A WILLOW NEAR OTTAWA. PLANTS IN THE WILLOW GENUS SUPPORT BOTH GENERALIST BEE SPECIES, AS WELL AS POLLEN SPECIALISTS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY JESSICA FORREST

How do bees choose which flowers to visit? Some bees will visit almost any bloom, while others are more discerning. How, and whether, bees choose to specialize in one kind of flower or pollen is a question entomologists and ecologists have puzzled over for years.

Now, a team of scientists led by ecologist Colleen Smith – who is currently based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but conducted the research while working at the University of Ottawa – is deciphering why some species of bees specialize in visiting one type of plant over others. They concluded that bees who specialize tend to focus on the most abundant species in an ecosystem – at least in the eastern United States. The findings were published last month in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Ecology.

“Most environments have a few common species that are really abundant, so most plants that a bee encounters will be from a few common plants,” Smith explained. “Bees are much less likely to encounter rare plants. Plant abundance could be a mechanism that promotes specialization – and thus speciation.”  

Of the thousands of bee species in the United States, about one-quarter of them are pollen specialists that only use pollen from plants in one genus, species or family. Only a tiny percentage of plants are hosts to these pollen specialists.

“Some plant taxa, like willows and sunflowers, support tons of bee species, and most don’t support any species of specialist bees,” Smith said. “Why do some plants support specialists? What causes a bee to specialize in one plant type? That’s what we set out to measure.”

Two competing hypotheses held sway in the field: One proposes that bees might specialize when the plants they favor have low pollen quality. The other posits that bees specialize on the most abundant taxa or types of plants in their ecosystem.

To decide between the two, Smith’s team tested each hypothesis. First, they conducted a field study in Ottawa to see if generalist bees also collected pollen from the host plants of specialist bees. If specialist bees target host plants with low quality or actively toxic pollen, generalists would avoid those plants. That’s not what they found, indicating that pollen quality did not affect specialization.

To test the plant-abundance hypothesis, they turned to a large public data source: citizen scientists uploading pictures to the iNaturalist app.

“It’s hard to get standardized measures of plant abundance of all the plant genera in the Eastern United States if you’re going out sampling yourself,” Smith said. “We used data from a phone app, iNaturalist. Because people are recording where they see different plant species, we were opportunistically able to use this data to get regional plant abundance.

“Our research showed that specialist bees are more likely to use abundant plants than rare plants,” Smith said. “This is strong support for what many people had suspected anecdotally. This is the first time, though, that there has been a quantitative test of a broad range of plants. One of the things that is interesting about this study is that it supports some ecological theories suggesting why specialization evolves in the first place.”

Future research might test the same hypotheses in the western United States – a hotspot for specialist bee diversity – to see if the pattern holds true there as well.

For non-researchers the implication for boosting bee species is clear: Plant your garden with those plants that host both specialists and generalist bees.

“By planting these abundant host plants that both the specialists and the generalist species visit, you're supporting these potentially more vulnerable bee species in addition to the largest number of bees,” Smith said. “By paying attention to what plants specialists need, you’ll be helping more bee species.”

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Press registration is open for the 2023 annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, August 6-11, in Portland, Oregon. To register, please contact ESA Public Information Manager Heidi Swanson (heidi@esa.org). Learn more on the meeting website.

The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 9,000 member Society publishes five journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society’s Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at http://www.esa.org.

Follow ESA on social media:

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JOURNAL

Ecology

DOI

10.1002/ecy.4122 

ARTICLE TITLE

Regional plant abundance explains patterns of host use by pollen-specialist bees in eastern North America

 

New advances in integrating mechanisms of multiple stress response in conifers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NANJING AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE

The proper response to various abiotic stresses is essential for plants’ survival to overcome their sessile nature, especially for perennial trees with very long-life cycles. However, in conifers, the molecular mechanisms that coordinate multiple abiotic stress responses remain elusive.

This article has been published on Horticulture Research with title: An ethylene-induced NAC transcription factor acts as a multiple abiotic stress responsor in conifer.

Here, the transcriptome response to various abiotic stresses like salt, cold, drought, heat shock and osmotic were systematically detected in Pinus tabuliformis (P. tabuliformis) seedlings. We found that four transcription factors were commonly induced by all tested stress treatments, while PtNAC3 and PtZFP30 were highly up-regulated and co-expressed. Unexpectedly, the exogenous hormone treatment assays and the content of the endogenous hormone indicates that the upregulation of PtNAC3 and PtZFP30 are mediated by ethylene. Time-course assay showed that the treatment by ethylene immediate precursor, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC), activated the expression of PtNAC3 and PtZFP30 within 8 hours. We further confirm that the PtNAC3 can directly bind to the PtZFP30 promoter region and form a cascade. Overexpression of PtNAC3 enhanced unified abiotic stress tolerance without growth penalty in transgenic Arabidopsis, and promote reproductive success under abiotic stress by shortening the lifespan, suggesting it has great potential as a biological tool applied to plant breeding for abiotic stress tolerance.

This study provides novel insights into the hub nodes of the abiotic stress response network as well as the environmental adaptation mechanism in conifers, and provides a potential biofortification tool to enhance plant unified abiotic stress tolerance.

###

References

Authors

Fangxu Han, Peiyi Wang, Xi Chen, Huanhuan Zhao, Qianya Zhu, Yitong Song, Yumeng Nie, Yue Li, Meina Guo, Shihui Niu

Affiliations

Beijing Forestry University

About Shihui Niu

Professor Niu from Beijing Forestry University has extensive experience in conducting research on the genetic regulation of essential traits in conifers. In recent years, he has made substantial contributions to the field by applying genetic research strategies and methods to overcome the bottleneck of conifer giga-genomes assembly and gene annotation. He has also established a high-quality genetic information platform for Pinus tabuliformis, successfully solved several difficulties in the genetic analysis of important conifer traits, and expanded the research area focusing on the genetic regulation of conifer juvenility and reproduction. Professor Niu's research has advanced of the academic frontier in this field.

Now, Professor Niu serves as deputy director of the National Engineering Research Center of Tree Breeding and Ecological Restoration, deputy secretary general and standing member of the Pine Branch of the Chinese Society of forestry. He was selected as the national young top-notch talent of "Ten Thousand Talents Program", leading talent of forest and grassland and technology innovation of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration (NFGA), outstanding young scholarship of "Beilin Scholars Program" of Beijing Forestry University, etc. He also served as an evaluation committee member of the General Project meeting of the Life Science Department which belongs to the National Natural Science Foundation of China. His research findings have been published in prestigious academic journals in the field of biology, such as Cell, Plant Physiology, Trends in Genetics, and New Phytologist. His achievements exert extensive influence in the scientific community. He has been awarded as the author of  "ESI Highly cited Papers", "Research Advances on Plant Science in China in 2015", "Achievements and Advances in the Plant Sciences Field China in 2021", "Ten Major Events in Forests and Grasslands Science and Technology in 2021", and "Ten Major Advances in Forests and Grasslands Science and Technology during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period", etc.

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JOURNAL

Horticulture Research

DOI

10.1093/hr/uhad130 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

An ethylene-induced NAC transcription factor acts as a multiple abiotic stress responsor in conifer

 

Engineering plants for a changing climate

Special issue of PLOS Biology explores plant engineering as a tool to improve the climate resilience and carbon capture potential of crops

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: CROPS GROWING IN DRY GROUND. AS THE CLIMATE CHANGES, CROP CULTIVATION BECOMES MORE CHALLENGING. THIS COLLECTION OF ARTICLES EXPLORES STRATEGIES TO HELP PLANTS ADAPT TO A CHANGING CLIMATE. view more 

CREDIT: JOANNA CLARKE (CC-BY 4.0, HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Climate change is affecting the types of plant varieties we can cultivate, as well as how and where we can do so. A new collection of articles in the open access journal PLOS Biology explores the twin challenges of engineering plants for resilience to climate change and enhancing their carbon-capture potential. PLOS Biology Editors Pamela Ronald & Joanna Clarke provide a summary editorial, and details regarding the other papers may be found below.

To meet the agricultural challenges caused by climate change and a growing population, we need to improve crop production. This Perspective from industry leaders including Catherine Feuillet calls for more and better public–private partnerships to accelerate discoveries in crop research.

How can we sustainably feed our growing population as the climate changes? This Perspective from Megan Matthews argues that by engineering photosynthesis to increase carbon capture, we can mitigate climate change and increase food production.

As climate change affects weather patterns and soil health, agricultural productivity could decrease substantially. Synthetic biology can be used to enhance climate-resilience in plants and create the next generation of crops, if the public will accept it, according to this article from Jennifer Brophy.

The microbiome of cropland soils could be manipulated to accelerate soil carbon sequestration. This Perspective from Noah Fierer suggests how this could be achieved and outlines the general steps required to develop, implement, and validate such microbial-based strategies.

Of all crop species, rice has the most genetic potential for adaptation to climate change, and Genebank accessions have been critical in developing improved stress-tolerant rice varieties. This Community Page from Kenneth McNally highlights new tools and resources from the International Rice Research Institute for accelerating the identification and deployment of genes conferring climate-change resilience.

Our basic understanding of carbon cycling in the biosphere remains qualitative and incomplete, precluding our ability to effectively engineer novel solutions to climate change. How can we attempt to engineer the unknown? This Essay from Patrick Shih proposes that the main contributions of plant synthetic biology in addressing climate change will lie not in delivering desired genotypes but in enabling the predictive understanding necessary to design target genotypes in the first place.

Cultivated species have reduced genetic diversity relative to their closest wild relatives. Preserving the rich genetic resources that crop wild relatives offer while avoiding detrimental variants and maladaptive genetic contributions is a central challenge for ongoing crop improvement. This Essay from Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra supports the use of traditional varieties as an intermediate between wild relatives and modern cultivars to increase genetic diversity in crops.

As the climate changes, so too will the relationship between humans and the plants we use for food, medicine, shelter, fuel and clothing. What, how and where we cultivate plants will change, as will the potential biotic and abiotic stresses faced by cultivated plants. This collection of articles explores strategies to help plants adapt to a changing climate, including ancient and modern breeding techniques, genome engineering, synthetic biology and microbiome engineering. 

#####

The full Collection is available in PLOS Biology here: https://collections.plos.org/collection/engineering-plants-for-a-changing-climate/

In your coverage, please use these URLs to provide access to the freely available papers in PLOS Biology:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002243

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002181

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002183

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002208

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002207

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002215

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002190

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002235

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JOURNAL

PLoS Biology

DOI

10.1371/journal.pbio.3002243 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

Billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving baby food containers

Exposure to plastic particles kills up to 75% of cultured kidney cells

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN

 

IMAGE: KAZI ALBAB HUSSAIN (LEFT) HOLDS HIS SON WHILE REMOVING A PLASTIC CONTAINER OF WATER FROM A MICROWAVE. HUSSAIN AND COLLEAGUES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN HAVE FOUND THAT MICROWAVING SUCH CONTAINERS CAN RELEASE UP TO BILLIONS OF NANOSCOPIC PARTICLES AND MILLIONS OF MICROSCOPIC ONES. view more 

CREDIT: CRAIG CHANDLER, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN

The fastest way to heat food and drink might also rank as the fastest route to ingesting massive quantities of minuscule plastic particles, says new research from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Experiments have shown that microwaving plastic baby food containers available on the shelves of U.S. stores can release huge numbers of plastic particles — in some cases, more than 2 billion nanoplastics and 4 million microplastics for every square centimeter of container.

Though the health effects of consuming micro- and nanoplastics remain unclear, the Nebraska team further found that three-quarters of cultured embryonic kidney cells had died after two days of being introduced to those same particles. A 2022 report from the World Health Organization recommended limiting exposure to such particles.

“It is really important to know how many micro- and nanoplastics we are taking in,” said Kazi Albab Hussain, the study’s lead author and a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. “When we eat specific foods, we are generally informed or have an idea about their caloric content, sugar levels, other nutrients. I believe it’s equally important that we are aware of the number of plastic particles present in our food.

“Just as we understand the impact of calories and nutrients on our health, knowing the extent of plastic particle ingestion is crucial in understanding the potential harm they may cause. Many studies, including ours, are demonstrating that the toxicity of micro- and nanoplastics is highly linked to the level of exposure.”

The team embarked on its study in 2021, the same year that Hussain became a father. While prior research had investigated the release of plastic particles from baby bottles, the team realized that no studies had examined the sorts of plastic containers and pouches that Hussain found himself shopping for, and that millions of other parents regularly do, too.

Hussain and his colleagues decided to conduct experiments with two baby food containers made from polypropylene and a reusable pouch made of polyethylene, both plastics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In one experiment, the researchers filled the containers with either deionized water or 3% acetic acid — the latter intended to simulate dairy products, fruits, vegetables and other relatively acidic consumables — then heated them at full power for three minutes in a 1,000-watt microwave. Afterward, they analyzed the liquids for evidence of micro- and nanoplastics: the micro being particles at least 1/1,000th of a millimeter in diameter, the nano any particles smaller.

The actual number of each particle released by the microwaving depended on multiple factors, including the plastic container and the liquid within it. But based on a model that factored in particle release, body weight, and per-capita ingestion of various food and drink, the team estimated that infants drinking products with microwaved water and toddlers consuming microwaved dairy products are taking in the greatest relative concentrations of plastic. Experiments designed to simulate the refrigeration and room-temperature storage of food or drink over a six-month span also suggested that both could lead to the release of micro- and nanoplastics.

“For my baby, I was unable to completely avoid the use of plastic,” Hussain said. “But I was able to avoid those (scenarios) which were causing more of the release of micro- and nanoplastics. People also deserve to know those, and they should choose wisely.”

With the help of Svetlana Romanova from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the team then cultured and exposed embryonic kidney cells to the actual plastic particles released from the containers — a first, as far as Hussain can tell. Rather than introduce just the number of particles released by one container, the researchers instead exposed the cells to particle concentrations that infants and toddlers might accumulate over days or from multiple sources.

After two days, just 23% of kidney cells exposed to the highest concentrations had managed to survive — a much higher mortality rate than that observed in earlier studies of micro- and nanoplastic toxicity. The team suspects that kidney cells might be more susceptible to the particles than are other cell types examined in prior research. But those earlier studies also tended to examine the effects of larger polypropylene particles, some of them potentially too large to penetrate cells. If so, the Hussain-led study could prove especially sobering: Regardless of its experimental conditions, the Husker team found that polypropylene containers and polyethylene pouches generally release about 1,000 times more nanoplastics than microplastics.

The question of cell infiltration is just one among many that will require answers, Hussain said, before determining the true risks of consuming micro- and nanoplastics. But to the extent that they do pose a health threat — and that plastics remain a go-to for baby food storage — parents would have a vested interest in seeing that the companies manufacturing plastic containers seek out viable alternatives, he said.

“We need to find the polymers which release fewer (particles),” Hussain said. “Probably, researchers will be able to develop plastics that do not release any micro- or nanoplastics — or, if they do, the release would be negligible.

“I am hopeful that a day will come when these products display labels that read ‘microplastics-free’ or ‘nanoplastics-free.’”

The team reported its findings in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Hussain and Romanova authored the study with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Yusong Li, Mathias Schubert, Yongfeng Lu, Lucía Fernández-Ballester, Bing Wang, Xi Huang, Jesse Kuebler, Dong Zhang and Ilhami Okur. The researchers received support from the National Science Foundation and the Buffett Early Childhood Institute.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.3c01942 

Paleontologists identify two new species of sabertooth cat

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT view more 

CREDIT: ISCIENCE JIANGZUO ET AL.

Sabertooth cats make up a diverse group of long-toothed predators that roamed Africa around 6-7 million years ago, around the time that hominins—the group that includes modern humans—began to evolve. By examining one of the largest global Pliocene collections of fossils in Langebaanweg, north of Cape Town in South Africa, researchers present two new sabertooth species and the first family tree of the region’s ancient sabertooths on July 20 in the journal iScience. Their results suggest that the distribution of sabertooths throughout ancient Africa might have been different than previously assumed, and the study provides important information about Africa’s paleoenvironment.

“The known material of sabertooths from Langebaanweg was relatively poor, and the importance of these sabertoothed cats has not been properly recognized,” says senior author Alberto Valenciano (@paleo_alberto), a paleontologist at Complutense University. “Our phylogenetic analysis is the first one to take Langebaanweg species into consideration.”

The study described a total of four species. Two of these species, Dinofelis werdelini and Lokotunjailurus chimsamyae, were previously unknown. Dinofelis sabertooths are globally distributed, and their fossils have been found in Africa, China, Europe, and North America. The researchers were expecting to identify a new Dinofelis species from Langebaanweg based on prior research. However, Lokotunjailurus has only ever been identified in Kenya and Chad before this analysis. This suggests that they may have been distributed all throughout Africa between 5–7 million years ago.

Valenciano was a postdoctoral fellow at the Iziko Museums of South Africa, which houses all the sabertooth fossils that were analyzed in this study. A team of colleagues from China, South Africa, and Spain put the final project together. To construct a family tree, the researchers classified the physical traits of each sabertooth species—such as presence or absence of teeth, jaw and skull shape, and tooth structure—and coded this information into a matrix that could determine how closely related each sabertooth was to its evolutionary cousins.

The resulting population composition of Langebaanweg sabertooths (Machairodontini, Metailurini, and Feline) reflects the increasing global temperatures and environmental changes of the Pliocene epoch. For instance, the presence of Machairodontini cats, which are larger in size and more adapted to running at high speeds, suggests that there were open grassland environments at Langebaanweg. However, the presence of the Metailurini cats suggests that there were also more covered environments, such as forests. While the fact that researchers found both Metailurine and Machairodonti species suggests that Langebaanweg contained a mixture of forest and grassland 5.2 million years ago, the high proportion of Machairodonti species compared with other fossil localities from Eurasia and Africa confirm that southern Africa was transitioning toward more open grasslands during this period.

“The continuous aridification throughout the Mio-Pliocene, with the spread of open environments, could be an important trigger on the bipedalism of hominids,” the authors write. “The sabertooth guild in Langebaanweg and its environmental and paleobiogeographic implications provide background for future discussion on hominid origination and evolution.”

Interestingly, the researchers also note that the composition of sabertooths in Langebaanweg closely mirrors that of Yuanmou, China. Yuanmou’s Longchuansmilus sabertooths might even have a close evolutionary relationship with Africa’s Lokotunjailurus species.

 “This suggests that the ancient environment of the two regions was similar or that there was a potential migration route between the Langebaanweg and Yuanmou,” says first author Qigao Jiangzuo, a paleontologist at Peking University.

More fossil evidence could help paleontologists understand exactly how these two sites are related. “The two new sabertooths are only an example of the numerous unpublished fossils from Langebaanweg housed at Iziko in the Cenozoic Collections,” says Romala Govender, a curator and paleontologist at the Iziko Museums in South Africa. “This brings to the fore the need for new and detailed studies of Langebaanweg fauna.”

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This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Chinese Natural Science Foundation Program, the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the NRF, the Government of Aragon, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, the Research Group UCM, The GENUS, and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. The authors declare no competing interests.

iScience, Jiangzuo et al. “Langebaanweg’s sabertooth guild reveals an African Pliocene evolutionary hotspot for sabertooths (Carnivora; Felidae)” https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(23)01289-0 

iScience (@iScience_CP) is an open-access journal from Cell Press that provides a platform for original research and interdisciplinary thinking in the life, physical, and earth sciences. The primary criterion for publication in iScience is a significant contribution to a relevant field combined with robust results and underlying methodology. Visit: http://www.cell.com/iscience. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.  

An array of sabertooth teeth from Dinofelis, Lokotunjailurus, and Adeilosmilus CREDIT iScience Jiangzuo et al.

A sabertooth tiger family tree CREDIT iScience Jiangzuo et al.

CREDIT

iScience Jiangzuo et al.

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JOURNAL

iScience

DOI

10.1016/j.isci.2023.107212 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Langebaanweg’s sabertooth guild reveals an African Pliocene evolutionary hotspot for sabertooths (Carnivora; Felidae)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Jul-2023