Through the magnifying glass: advanced imaging technology helps monitor baby corals on Great Barrier Reef

Australian scientists demonstrate how advanced imaging techniques can offer new opportunities to monitor and study the recruitment of corals at an astonishingly fine scale directly on the reef.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOUTHERN CROSS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: MACROPHOTOGRAMMETRY SETUP AT LIZARD ISLAND 2022 WITH DIVER AND LEAD RESEARCHER MARINE GOUEZO OF SOUTHERN CROSS UNIVERSITY. view more 

CREDIT: CSIRO LAUREN HARDIMAN

Keeping a watchful eye on newly settled corals at submillimetre scale on the Great Barrier Reef is now much easier, with Southern Cross University and CSIRO successfully using underwater macrophotogrammetry for the first time.

In a paper published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, a team of scientists from Southern Cross University and CSIRO demonstrates how advanced imaging techniques can offer new opportunities to monitor and study the recruitment of corals, and other sessile (attached) organisms, at an astonishingly fine scale directly on the reef.

This new method is particularly useful to monitor the recruitment success of newly settled corals following coral larval restoration interventions: when microscopic larvae raised in floating coral nursery pools are released en masse on reefs damaged by the impacts of climate change to kickstart their recovery.

“Coral recruitment occurs at a scale invisible to the human eye (less than 1mm) and, up until now, required the use of artificial plates attached to the reef to later be examined under microscopes to quantify newly settled corals,” said Dr Marine Gouezo, the lead author and Post-Doctoral Researcher at Southern Cross University.

“With this new method, observations of the recruitment of organisms 0.5 millimetre in size, such as two-month-old corals, can be documented and tracked through time in their natural habitat: the reef.”

The study demonstrates the application of underwater macrophotogrammetry: a combination of macrophotography (the art of taking close-up photographs at very high resolution to see tiny organisms typically smaller than 1-mm in size) and photogrammetry (a technique that ‘stitches’ these photos together to re-create three-dimensional (3D) models of small portions of the reef).

Unlike traditional methods for observations in the field that rely on artificial devices (like tiles), this innovative approach allows scientists to directly monitor larval settlement and recruitment on a reef, making it valuable for assessing the success of coral larval restoration interventions.

“While reef scale photogrammetry is commonly used in ecological surveys underwater, especially during monitoring programs to document changes through time, such as coral cover, it lacks the resolution to spot baby corals. This macrophotogrammetry technique can complement reef scale photogrammetry by magnifying small portions of the reefs to monitor the reef at submillimetre scale, which is the scale at which recruitment occurs for corals,” Dr Gouezo said.

For large scale projects like Coral Larval Restoration on the Great Barrier Reef, the macrophotogrammetry technique is cost-effective and avoids the need for equipment installation on the reef or access to laboratory microscopes. It provides a permanent three-dimensional (3D) record of small reef areas, characterising reef associated organisms in their natural environment.

Advancements in modern photography combined with the capacity for cameras to operate underwater, along with software for 3D model reconstruction, have revolutionised coral reef research. Digitising this monitoring step opens doors to opportunities for automated processing and machine learning techniques.

“The macrophotogrammetry method provides researchers with a monitoring approach to understand the hidden dynamics of marine life at unprecedented detail. I am excited about its potential to drive marine ecological research and restoration efforts forward,” said Dr Gouezo.

Dr Gouezo is a senior member of Southern Cross University’s Coral Larval Restoration team led by Distinguished Professor Peter Harrison who also authored the paper.

Dr Christopher Doropoulos, a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO Environment, is a co-author.

“This macrophotogrammetry technique enables us to examine the earliest stages of coral recruitment in field settings on the reef for the first time, rather than using proxies such as settlement tiles,” said Dr Doropoulos.

“It will deepen our ecological understandings of what limits and what promotes successful larval settlement and early survival for optimising the application and scale of on reef larval-based coral restoration operations.”

This research was funded by the Moving Corals subprogram of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP).

“Photogrammetry methods like these, are being developed across the RRAP and help us to close critical knowledge gaps in reef recovery,” said RRAP Executive Director Cedric Robillot of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

“It’s an important step on the journey to develop and test novel scientific solutions and make those available to managers to help the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs survive the effects of climate change in the decades ahead.”

Watson plot at Lizard Island o [VIDEO] | 

A coral recruit normally invis [VIDEO] |

2-month-old coral hiding in a reef crevice (centre of image) on a Lizard island reef.

CREDIT

Marine Gouezo

JOURNAL

Methods in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.1111/2041-210X.14175 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Underwater macrophotogrammetry to monitor in situ benthic communities at submillimetre scale

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Jul-2023

COI STATEMENT

This research was funded by the Moving Corals Subprogram of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP). RRAP is funded by the partnership between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

New robot boosts solar energy research

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

Researchers have created a robot capable of conducting experiments more efficiently and sustainably to develop a range of new semiconductor materials with desirable attributes. The researchers have already demonstrated that the new technology, called RoboMapper, can rapidly identify new perovskite materials with improved stability and solar cell efficiency.

“RoboMapper allows us to conduct materials testing more quickly, while also reducing both cost and energy overhead – making the entire process more sustainable,” says Aram Amassian, corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University.

Conventional materials research requires a researcher to prepare a sample and then go through multiple steps to test each sample using different instruments. This involves placing, aligning and calibrating samples as needed to collect the data. Think of it as an assembly line that is both time consuming and requires a lot of electricity to power the relevant instruments.

Previous efforts to automate this process have relied largely on automating the assembly line with one sample per chip moving through the entire data collection process. This improves speed, but each of the steps still has to be done with one sample at a time.

“RoboMapper also automates this process, but places dozens of samples on each chip by miniaturizing the material samples with the help of modern printing,” Amassian says. “It still performs each step of the data collection process, but it does so for multiple materials in parallel, saving time and energy.”

“This makes searching for new materials far more efficient, more cost effective, and more sustainable in terms of our carbon footprint,” says Tonghui Wang, lead author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State. “It’s nearly 10 times faster than previous automated techniques.”

To confirm this, the team evaluated the environmental impact of traditional materials research and data collection and compared it with the RoboMapper.

“It was remarkable to find that characterization is the major source of greenhouse gas emissions in materials research,” says environmental economist Lucía Serrano-Luján, co-author of the paper and a researcher at Rey Juan Carlos University and the Technical University of Cartagena. “The RoboMapper’s ability to streamline the data collection process by placing dozens of materials on the same chip reduced greenhouse gas emissions tenfold.”  

To demonstrate the utility of RoboMapper, the researchers focused first on perovskite materials. Perovskites, which are defined by their crystalline structure, are better than silicon at absorbing light. That means perovskite solar cells can be thinner and lighter than silicon solar cells without sacrificing the cell’s ability to convert light into electricity – making them a focal point for research into next-generation solar technologies.

Specifically, the researchers focused on perovskite stability, which is one of the biggest challenges in the field.

“Basically, the challenge is that perovskite materials tend to degrade when exposed to light, losing the properties that made them desirable in the first place,” Amassian says. “We’re looking for ways to engineer these materials so that they are stable – meaning they retain their desirable properties for a long time, even when exposed to light.”

And the researchers had their first significant finding with RoboMapper during the technology’s proof-of-concept demonstration.

The researchers tasked RoboMapper with making alloys using a defined set of elements. RoboMapper then made samples with 150 different alloy compositions and conducted optical spectroscopy and X-ray structural assessments and stability tests of those samples.

RoboMapper’s tests were designed to identify whether an alloy was suitable for tandem solar cells, meaning: whether it had the crystalline structure of a perovskite; whether it had a desirable set of optical characteristics, known as the band gap; and whether it was stable when exposed to intense light. This experimental data was then used to construct a computational model that identified a specific alloy composition that it predicted would have the best combination of desired attributes.

The researchers then made the desired alloy with RoboMapper and by using conventional laboratory techniques, and tested both.

“We are able to quickly identify the most stable composition from a possible set of perovskite alloys at a target band gap using the specific suite of elements we confined ourselves to for this proof-of-concept work,” Amassian says. “The material we identified using RoboMapper also turned out to be more efficient at converting light into electricity in solar cell devices. Our conventional techniques validated the results from RoboMapper.

“One reason RoboMapper’s experiments were able to produce such useful data is that the specific suite of experiments we used is based on previous work that informs our understanding of the relationship between what we can observe in optical tests and the stability of perovskite materials.

“Next steps for this work include expanding the range of potential alloys for testing in RoboMapper,” Amassian says. “We’re open to working with industry partners to identify new materials for photovoltaics or other applications. And with support from the Office of Naval Research, we are already using RoboMapper to advance our understanding of materials for both organic solar cells and printed electronics.

The paper, “Sustainable Materials Acceleration Platform Reveals Stable and Efficient Wide Bandgap Metal Halide Perovskite Alloys,” will be published July 25 in the journal Matter. Study co-authors include Hossein Ardekani and Robert Epps, former Ph.D. students at NC State; Jiantao Wang and Mahdi Ramezani, former postdoctoral researchers at NC State; Ryan Wilmington, Kasra Darabi and Boyu Guo, Ph.D. students at NC State; Mihirsinh Chauhan, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State; Dali Sun, an associate professor of physics at NC State; Milad Abolhasani, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State; Kenan Gundogdu, a professor of physics at NC State; and Ruipeng Li of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Ten of the paper’s authors are part of the ORganic and Carbon Electronics Laboratories (ORaCEL) group at NC State, which is an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on accelerating the development of new semiconductor materials for a wide range of applications.

The work was done with assistance from Brookhaven National Laboratory and with support from the National Science Foundation, under grants 1936527 and 1741693; the Office of Naval Research, under grant number N00014-20-1-2573; the UNC Research Opportunities Initiative; and the State Research Agency (AEI), Government of Spain (grant number TED-2021-132368A-C22) and Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE) under the grant PID2021-126605NB-I00.

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JOURNAL

Matter

DOI

10.1016/j.matt.2023.06.040 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Sustainable Materials Acceleration Platform Reveals Stable and Efficient Wide Bandgap Metal Halide Perovskite Alloys

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2023

COI STATEMENT

Aram Amassian and Tonghui Wang have filed a provisional patent related to the work.

 

Missing island explains how endemic species on the Miyako Islands emerged

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE MIYAKO KEELBACK SNAKE ABOVE AND THE MIYAKO GRASS LIZARD (BELOW) ARE ENDEMIC TO THE MIYAKO ISLANDS. THERE HAS LONG BEEN DEBATE ABOUT HOW THESE SPECIES ARRIVED ON MIYAKO ISLAND. view more 

CREDIT: S. SEKI

Did an ancient island facilitate migration amongst the Ryukyu Islands? Compiling the latest geological and biological data, a research group from Tohoku University has provided compelling evidence that this was the case.

The Galapagos of Asia

The Ryukyu Islands stretch from the southwestern coast of Kyushu all the way to the eastern part of Taiwan. This island chain is home to an array of endemic species such as the venomous snake Habu, or wild black rabbits know as Amami rabbits.

Even within the differing islands, unique species can be found. Sitting 300 kilometers to the southwest of Okinawa, the Miyako Islands are home to the Miyako keelback snake (Hebius concelarus) and the Miyako grass lizard (Takydromus toyamai).

Despite being separated by the Kerema Gap, these species are closely related to taxa/lineages/populations found on Okinawa and more northern islands and land areas, more so than the Yaeyama Islands, which are located to the southwest of the Miyako Islands and much closer in distance. Additionally, these species have limited ability to travel over water, leading to questions as to when and how they got there.

Inconsistencies

Largely flat, with the highest point stood at 110 metres, the Miyako Islands are entirely covered with a type of limestone known as the Ryukyu Group. Based on their distribution location and ages, scientists know that the Ryukyu Group were deposited between 1.25-0.4 million years ago, during which the sea levels fluctuated, repeatedly submerging the Miyako Islands.

Molecular phylogenetic analysis estimates that the Miyako keelback snake became an independent species around 3.7 - 1.8 million years ago. But this contradicts evidence that Miyako Island was submerged before 2 million years ago, and it was not until roughly 400,000 years ago that it became the land it is today, after which organisms began arriving.

Further muddying the waters is that deposits in limestone caves and fissures have contained Habu fossils, which are not native to the Miyako Islands. These fossils date back to 26,800 - 8,700 years ago.

A New Explanation

Yasufumi Iryu, a professor at Tohoku University's Department of Earth Sciences within the Graduate School of Science who has studied the Ryukyu Group for over 40 years, has proposed a new hypothesis to account for such inconsistencies and in light of the latest geological and biological data.

"We believe that a land area between Okinawa and Miyako existed from 5.5 million years ago to 270,000 years ago. This island served as a transit site for biological migration from Okinawa to the Miyako Islands."

Iryu and his team dub the hypothesis the Okinawa-Miyako Submarine Plateau (OMSP) hypothesis. It incorporates plate tectonics into the mix of evidence, something previous explanations surrounding migratory patterns to the Ryukyu Islands have failed to do. It proports that the vertical component (up to 1000 m displacement) of the right-lateral strike-slip faulting that formed the Kerama Gap and the corresponding Chinen Disturbance Event drove the uplift. Migration from the OMSP landmass to the Miyako Islands occurred after they were uplifted 400,000 years ago and before the OMSP landmass was submerged around 270,000 years ago.

Iryu states that their results rest on the integration of various data sources. "By combining relevant geological and phytogeographic data, we have been able to explain the enigmatic composition of modern and Late Pleistocene terrestrial fauna of the Miyako Islands. The study also highlights the high scientific value of the Miyako Island biota and will hopefully lead to greater protection and conservation of endemic species."

Details of the research were published in the Journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science on July 20, 2023.

Figure 3 (IMAGE)

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

Changes in the paleogeography of the Okinawa-Miyako area and migration of terrestrial vertebrates. Ma = millions of years ago.

A Bathymetric map of the Okinawa-Miyako Submarine Plateau.

CREDIT

Watanabe et al.

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JOURNAL

Progress in Earth and Planetary Science

DOI

10.1186/s40645-023-00567-x 

ARTICLE TITLE

Geological history of the land area between Miyako Jima Island and Okinawa Jima Island of the Ryukyus, Japan, and its phylogeographical significances for the terrestrial organisms of these and adjacent islands

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Jul-2023

ICYMI

Gloomy climate calculation: Scientists predict a collapse of the Atlantic ocean current to happen mid-century.

Important ocean currents that redistribute heat, cold and precipitation between the tropics and the northernmost parts of the Atlantic region will shut down around the year 2060 if current greenhouse gas emissions persist. This is the conclusion based on new calculations from the University of Copenhagen that contradict the latest report from the IPCC.

Contrary to what we may imagine about the impact of climate change in Europe, a colder future may be in store. In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute and Department of Mathematical Sciences predict that the system of ocean currents which currently distributes cold and heat between the North Atlantic region and tropics will completely stop if we continue to emit the same levels of greenhouse gases as we do today.

Using advanced statistical tools and ocean temperature data from the last 150 years, the researchers calculated that the ocean current, known as the Thermohaline Circulation or the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), will collapse – with 95 percent certainty – between 2025 and 2095. This will most likely occur in 34 years, in 2057, and could result in major challenges, particularly warming in the tropics and increased storminess in the North Atlantic region.

"Shutting down the AMOC can have very serious consequences for Earth's climate, for example, by changing how heat and precipitation are distributed globally. While a cooling of Europe may seem less severe as the globe as a whole becomes warmer and heat waves occur more frequently, this shutdown will contribute to an increased warming of the tropics, where rising temperatures have already given rise to challenging living conditions," says Professor Peter Ditlevsen from the Niels Bohr Institute.

"Our result underscores the importance of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible," says the researcher.

The calculations, just published in the renowned scientific journal, Nature Communications, contradict the message of the latest IPCC report, which, based on climate model simulations, considers an abrupt change in the thermohaline circulation very unlikely during this century.

Early warning signals present

The researchers' prediction is based on observations of early warning signals that ocean currents exhibit as they become unstable. These Early Warning Signals for the Thermohaline Circulation have been reported previously, but only now has the development of advanced statistical methods made it possible to predict just when a collapse will occur.

The researchers analysed sea surface temperatures in a specific area of the North Atlantic from 1870 to present days. These sea surface temperatures are "fingerprints” testifying the strength of the AMOC, which has only been measured directly for the past 15 years.

"Using new and improved statistical tools, we’ve made calculations that provide a more robust estimate of when a collapse of the Thermohaline Circulation is most likely to occur, something we had not been able to do before," explains Professor Susanne Ditlevsen of UCPH’s Department of Mathematical Sciences.

The thermohaline circulation has operated in its present mode since the last ice age, where the circulation was indeed collapsed. Abrupt climate jumps between the present state of the AMOC and the collapsed state has been observed to happen 25 times in connection with iceage climate. These are the famed Dansgaard-Oeschger events first observed in ice cores from the Greenlandic ice sheet. At those events climate changes were extreme with 10-15 degrees changes over a decade, while present days climate change is 1.5 degrees warming over a century.

Facts:

• The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is part of a global system of ocean currents. By far, it accounts for the most significant part of heat redistribution from the tropics to the northernmost regions of the Atlantic region – not least to Western Europe.
• At the northernmost latitudes, circulation ensures that surface water is converted into deep, southbound ocean currents. The transformation creates space for additional surface water to be moved northward from equatorial regions. As such, thermohaline circulation is critical for maintaining the relatively mild climate of the North Atlantic region.
• The work is supported by TiPES, a joint-European research collaboration focused on tipping points of the climate system. The TiPES project is an EU Horizon 2020 interdisciplinary climate research project focused on tipping points in the climate system.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-39810-w 

ARTICLE TITLE

Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2023

 

How does El Niño affect precipitation over the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: ANTARCTICA SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION IN 2019 view more 

CREDIT: SHUANGLIN LI

The precipitation in West Antarctica, especially around the Antarctic Peninsula, exhibits large variability on the interannual time scale. In recent years, scientific research activities, tourism and fisheries have been experiencing remarkable growth there. Thus, understanding the variability of precipitation in West Antarctica, including the Antarctic Peninsula, is of substantial importance both for scientific and practical aspects. As the strongest signal of interannual climate variability, El Niño exerts significant impacts on climate in the Antarctic, especially in the West Antarctic. However, a recent study indicated that the effect of ENSO (which stands for El Niño–Southern Oscillation and refers to the broader climate pattern comprising the phases of El Niño and La Niña) on precipitation in West Antarctica is not significant, which is inconsistent with its significant impact on the West Antarctic climate through modulation of the Amundsen Sea low pressure system via Rossby wave trains (atmospheric or oceanic waves that form as a result of Earth’s rotation).

 

In a paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, Prof. Shuanglin Li from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and Xueyang Chen and Dr. Chao Zhang from the China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China, clear up the impacts of different types of El Niño events on precipitation over West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, and explain the uncertain connection between the two.

 

“Previous studies show that precipitation over West Antarctica, especially the Antarctic Peninsula, is less correlated with El Niño. One possible reason is that these studies did not classify El Niño into its two known sub-types: EP [Eastern Pacific] and CP [Central Pacific] El Niño,” explains Prof. Li.

 

EP and CP events have similar impacts on precipitation over the Amundsen–Bellingshausen seas, but opposite impacts on that over the Weddell Sea, including the eastern Antarctic Peninsula, thereby cancelling each other out in terms of the precipitation response they induce. This of course then accounts for the uncertainty in ENSO’s influences on precipitation over the Antarctic Peninsula.

 

“EP events force two branches of Rossby wave trains that propagate southeastward and converge in West Antarctica, which causes an anomalous anticyclone and cyclone over the Ross–Amundsen–Bellingshausen seas and Weddell Sea, respectively. Consequently, anomalous southerly winds occur over the Bellingshausen–Weddell seas, acting to decrease the amount of precipitation there. In comparison, only one weak and westward-shifted Rossby wave train is stimulated under a CP event, which induces an anomalous anticyclone and cyclone in the Ross–Amundsen seas and Bellingshausen–Weddell seas. Anomalous southerly winds reduce the precipitation over the Amundsen–Bellingshausen seas, while anomalous northerly winds increase the precipitation over the Weddell Sea,” adds Xueyang Chen.

 

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JOURNAL

Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters

DOI

10.1016/j.aosl.2023.100387 

 

Syrian refugees are diagnosed with breast cancer younger and with more advanced tumors, study finds

Brigham researchers and international collaborators identified the association with younger age and advanced stage at diagnosis, coupled with the trauma associated with displacement, as likely contributors to the disparities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASS GENERAL BRIGHAM

Brigham researchers and international collaborators identified the association with younger age and advanced stage at diagnosis, coupled with the trauma associated with displacement, as likely contributors to the disparities.

War and other conflicts impact health in ways that extend far beyond an active combat zone. In a study led by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, in collaboration with international colleagues, researchers found that Syrian migrants, including refugees, with breast cancer were more likely to be younger and diagnosed with late-stage cancers when compared to Jordanian women. The paper, published today in JAMA Network Open, could help scientists and policymakers identify treatment gaps for refugees and improve their cancer outcomes.

“We know that there is stigma, a delay to accessing care, and competing interests for funding in regard to treating breast cancer in Syrian refugees,” said lead author Aditi Hazra, PhD, MPH, a genomic epidemiologist and assistant professor in the Brigham’s Division of Preventive Medicine. “What this paper adds is a quantitative description of the tumor characteristics of refugee patients.”

Prior to the start of the Syrian Civil War, the country was burdened by a severe drought that devastated local agriculture and the economy, and more recently, several large earthquakes have destroyed infrastructure. Researchers have spent over a decade documenting widespread cancer cases amongst refugees fleeing the crises, but until recently, little was known about the types of disparities displaced patients faced when searching for care.

When researchers began looking at cancer outcomes for Syrian refugees in 2014, they noted that breast cancer was the most common malignancy in women. They also discovered that in order to receive care for their cancers, patients had to apply for treatment funds from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Many patients with advanced cancers were considered to have poor odds for survival, and, therefore, denied care.

“Many of these refugees did not have access to early cancer detection. They were diagnosed late, and they were not going to receive care because of it,” Hazra said. “That seemed at odds with the idea of health as a human right.”

Early studies struggled to collect quantitative data to describe the characteristics of patients’ tumors. To address this, Hazra collaborated with officials at the Jordan Cancer Registry (JCR) to analyze data from 7891 case reports from breast cancer patients, 375 of whom were Syrian refugees.

In the new study, the investigators discovered that women with breast cancer who were refugees tended to be younger than patients who were Jordanian natives. Jordan is considered a middle-income country, and the team noted that both groups developed breast cancer at younger ages than women in high-income countries, such as the United States.

Breast cancers in Syrian refugees also appeared to be further developed than those reported in Jordanian women. Nearly a quarter of refugees with breast cancer had late-stage cancers that had metastasized to faraway locations. Less than 12 percent of Jordanian women had similarly widespread tumors.

Delays in care, coupled with the trauma associated with displacement, were hypothesized to likely be associated with the disparities. Refugees’ breast cancers had likely evaded detection that would have been routine prior to the intersecting crises in Syria, causing them to advance to late stages.

The researchers pointed out that gaps in the data limited some of their findings. For example, 23 percent of the cases they reviewed did not include data on the stage of the patient’s cancer, potentially clouding results. Data on the treatment patients received after being diagnosed with breast cancer was also incomplete. To combat this, Hazra suggested digitizing records to scale data collection and facilitate the continuity of cancer care.

The study’s authors hope that their work will draw attention to the specific healthcare gaps of Syrian refugees with breast cancer. They say multistakeholder support, drawing in refugee and local perspectives, integrating refugees in national cancer plans, and resources for scaling early cancer detection with the Jordan Breast Cancer Program for Jordanians and refugees will allow scientists to improve health systems and survival rates.

“Only one to two percent of global health funding goes to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer,” Hazra said. “Those are the major killers. We need multistakeholder support to reduce delays in care, provide trauma-informed cancer care, and improve NCD outcomes.”

Disclosures: No conflicts of interest

Funding: None

Paper cited: Hazra, A et al. “Disparities in Breast Cancer Characteristics Among Syrian Migrants and Jordanian Women in the Jordan Cancer Registry from 2010 to 2016” JAMA Network Open DOI:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.25197

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.25197 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Disparities in Breast Cancer Characteristics Among Syrian Migrants and Jordanian Women in the Jordan Cancer Registry from 2010 to 2016

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jul-2023

 

Forgotten tropical plants rediscovered after 100+ years with the help of community science

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENSOFT PUBLISHERS

 

IMAGE: FLOWER OF NASA HUMBOLDTIANA SUBSPECIES HUMBOLDTIANA view more 

CREDIT: X. CORNEJO

Deep in the tropical Andes are hiding plants that were discovered and then forgotten; plants that we knew almost nothing about. Now, thanks to the combined efforts of botanists from Germany, Ecuador, Peru and Costa Rica and amateur plant enthusiasts, these plants have been rediscovered, some of them after more than 100 years. The findings were described in the open-access journal PhytoKeys.

The plants belong to Nasa, a genus from the Blazing Star family (Loasaceae) that has long caused headaches to scientists as its delicate but painfully urticant leaves make it difficult to collect. Most of them are rare, highly endemic, and only around for short periods, which makes them even more unlikely to end up in a herbarium collection.

Luckily, today’s scientists don’t have to rely on herbaria as their sole source of material and clues. Thanks to the advent of global networking and the increasing use of free data repositories, there is a lot more biodiversity data now that is available to use and easily accessible, for example as geo-referenced occurrence records and photos. Citizen science platform iNaturalist, where users can, among others, post photographic occurrence records, has turned into a valuable tool for biodiversity scientists, and plays a significant role in the rediscovery of these Andean plants.

One notable species, Nasa colanii, had only been recorded once, in 1978, until the research team came upon a photograph from 2019. This scarcity in records might have to do with the fact that the plant grows in a highly inaccessible region: in a cloud forest in the buffer zone of Peru’s Cordillera de Colán National Sanctuary, at an elevation of 2605 m.

Another species hadn’t been reported for approximately 130 years when iNaturalist users confirmed its existence in 2022 by uploading photographs. Nasa ferox had been known for centuries, but it didn’t get its scientific description until 2000. “Given the location of the park close to the [Ecuadorian] city of Cuenca, and the fact that the important road 582 goes through the park makes it particularly surprising that the species has not been reported in such a long time, even more so if we consider the numerous botanical expeditions that have been carried out in the general region,” the researchers write in their paper. In fact, only a small population of about ten fertile plants of N. ferox has been found, with the plants always growing in sheltered places such as in rock crevices or at the base of shrubs.

Remarkably, the typical form of Nasa humboldtiana called Nasa humboldtiana subspecies humboldtiana was rediscovered after 162 years, when the research team found a specimen in a conserved remnant of montane Andean forest in the province of Chimborazo, Ecuador.

But probably the most exciting discoveries happened when the team found species that have been considered extinct in the wild. Two species of Nasa, namely N. hastata and N. solaria, were believed to share this fate, both from the Peruvian Department of Lima, a comparably well sampled area, given the proximity to the national capital. Until very recently, both species “remained unknown (or almost so) in the wild.” Earlier attempts to recollect these species near their type localities where they have been found some 100 years ago failed and it needed the help of iNaturalist to reveal that they are still present in the area.  

Nasa hastata was recently rediscovered, after, for the first time, photos of living plants showed up taken by the sister of one of the authors. Only a handful of plants have since been reported from two sites, some 7 km apart. Similarly, a few dozens of plants have been found so far from N. solaria occurring in four small relict populations in remnants of forest that once covered larger areas in this region.  

Observations uploaded to iNaturalist also revealed important information on another species, Nasa ramirezii, providing the first photographs of living plants from Ecuador and the first data on its exact location.

“All these discoveries serve as a reminder that even well-studied regions harbor diversity that can so easily remain overlooked and unexplored, and point to the role of botanists in documenting biodiversity which is an essential prerequisite for any conservation effort.” leading author Tilo Henning form the Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) says.

“Hopefully, as more scientists and members of the public contribute to the database, and more professionals get involved in the curation, more undescribed or ‘long lost’ taxa will be found. Our examples of the rediscovery of Nasa ferox after 130 years and Nasa hastata after 100 years, both ‘found’ on iNaturalist underscore this point,” the researchers say in their study.

Nasa solaria

CAPTION

Nasa hastata.

CREDIT

P. Gonzále

Flower of Nasa ferox

CREDIT

E. Segovia

CAPTION

Flower of Nasa hastata.

CREDIT

P. Gonzáles

Original source:

Henning T, Acuña-Castillo R, Cornejo X, Gonzáles P, Segovia E, Wong Sato AA, Weigend M (2023) When the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence: Nasa (Loasaceae) rediscoveries from Peru and Ecuador, and the contribution of community science networks. PhytoKeys 229: 1-19. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.229.100082

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JOURNAL

PhytoKeys

DOI

10.3897/phytokeys.229.100082 

ARTICLE TITLE

When the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence: Nasa (Loasaceae) rediscoveries from Peru and Ecuador, and the contribution of community science networks