It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, November 17, 2023
Cheap medicines prevented migraine as well as expensive ones
Migraine is more than just a headache. Often the pain is accompanied by nausea, vomiting, light sensitivity, and sound sensitivity. Chronic migraine can be disabling and may prevent many, especially women, from contributing to working life.
Still, it often takes a long time for migraine patients to find a treatment that works well for them. Researchers at the Norwegian Center for Headache Research (NorHead) have used data from the Norwegian Prescription Register to look at which medicines best prevent migraine in people in Norway:
“There has now been done a lot of research on this subject before. This may weaken the quality of the treatment and increase the cost of treatment for this patient group”, says the leader of the study, Professor Marte-Helen Bjørk at the Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Bergen.
Three medicines had better effect than the first choice of medicines.
The researchers used national register data from 2010 to 2020 to estimate treatment effect. They measured this by looking at the consumption of acute migraine medicines before and after starting preventive treatment, and investigated how long the people with migraine used the different preventive treatments. A total of over one hundred thousand migraine patients were in the study.
“When the withdrawal of acute migraine medicines changed little after starting preventive medicines, or people stopped quickly on the preventive medicines, the preventive medicine was interpreted as having little effect. If the preventive medicine was used on long, uninterrupted periods, and we saw a decrease in the consumption of acute medicines, we interpreted the preventive medicine as having good effect”, Bjørk explains.
As a rule, so-called beta blockers are used as the first choice to prevent migraine attacks, but the researchers found that especially three medicines had better preventive effect than these: CGRP inhibitors, amitriptyline and simvastatin.
“The latter two medicines are also established medicines used for depression, chronic pain and high cholesterol, respectively, while CGRP inhibitors are developed and used specifically for chronic migraine”, says the professor.
Can have great significance for the cost of health care.
CGRP inhibitors are more expensive than the other medicines. In 2021 their reimbursement amounted to 500 million NOK (not including discounts given by pharma companies).
“Our analysis shows that some established and cheaper medicines can have a similar treatment effect as the more expensive ones. This may be of great significance both for the patient group and Norwegian health care” says Bjørk.
The researchers at NorHead have already started work on a large clinical study to measure the effect of established cholesterol-lowering medicines as a preventive measure against chronic and episodic migraine.
Facts:
The study was done in collaboration with Aud Nome Dueland (Headache Norway, Sandvika Neurocenter), Frank Sørgaard (former medical advisor at Novartis) and Solveig Borkenhagen with several from Oslo Economics. The results are published in the prestigious journal European Journal of Neurology.
University of B.C. researchers have uncovered startling connections between micronutrient deficiencies and the composition of gut microbiomes in early life that could help explain why resistance to antibiotics has been rising across the globe.
The team investigated how deficiencies in crucial micronutrients such as vitamin A, B12, folate, iron, and zinc affected the community of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microbes that live in the digestive system.
They discovered that these deficiencies led to significant shifts in the gut microbiome of mice—most notably an alarming expansion of bacteria and fungi known to be opportunistic pathogens.
Importantly, mice with micronutrient deficiencies also exhibited a higher enrichment of genes that have been linked to antibiotic resistance.
"Micronutrient deficiency has been an overlooked factor in the conversation about global antibiotic resistance," said Dr. Paula Littlejohn, a postdoctoral research fellow with UBC's department of medical genetics and department of pediatrics, and the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. "This is a significant discovery, as it suggests that nutrient deficiencies can make the gut environment more conducive to the development of antibiotic resistance, which is a major global health concern."
Bacteria naturally possess these genes as a defence mechanism. Certain circumstances, such as antibiotic pressure or nutrient stress, cause an increase in these mechanisms. This poses a threat that could render many potent antibiotics ineffective and lead to a future where common infections could become deadly.
Antibiotic resistance is often attributed to overuse and misuse of antibiotics, but the work of Dr. Littlejohn and her UBC colleagues suggests that the 'hidden hunger' of micronutrient deficiencies is another important factor.
"Globally, around 340 million children under five suffer from multiple micronutrient deficiencies, which not only affect their growth but also significantly alter their gut microbiomes," said Dr. Littlejohn. "Our findings are particularly concerning as these children are often prescribed antibiotics for malnutrition-related illnesses. Ironically, their gut microbiome may be primed for antibiotic resistance due to the underlying micronutrient deficiencies."
The study, published this week in Nature Microbiology, offers critical insights into the far-reaching consequences of micronutrient deficiencies in early life. It underscores the need for comprehensive strategies to address undernutrition and its ripple effects on health. Addressing micronutrient deficiencies is about more than overcoming malnutrition, it may also be a critical step in fighting the global scourge of antibiotic resistance.
Multiple micronutrient deficiencies in early life cause multi-kingdom alterations in the gut microbiome and intrinsic antibiotic resistance genes in mice
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
16-Nov-2023
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW
NASA researcher honored by Goddard Tech Office for earth science work
Dr. Antonia Gambacorta earned the 2023 Goddard IRAD Technology Leadership award.
Earth science researcher Dr. Antonia Gambacorta earned the 2023 Goddard IRAD Technology Leadership award for pioneering new ways to measure lower layers of Earth’s atmosphere from space.
The award from the chief technologist of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recognizes Gambacorta’s work demonstrating how hyperspectral microwave sounding, the measurement of hundreds of thousands of wavelengths of microwave light, could dissect Earth’s atmospheric planetary boundary layer (PBL). She also conceptualized a microwave photonics radiometer instrument to reveal these measurements.
The part of Earth’s atmosphere people live in, and have the most experience studying, is the hardest to measure from space due to the volume and complex behavior of the air above it, Gambacorta said. Developing the ability to probe and measure the boundary layer on a global, routine basis is important to better understanding its connections to the rest of our atmosphere, the land surface, and the oceans.
“The unique challenge of the PBL requires a novel path forward that will bring together traditionally disparate observing system components in order to enable transformative scientific advances in Earth system science,” said fellow researcher Joseph Santanello. “To that end, Dr. Gambacorta’s efforts extend beyond individual technology developments, and are represented in her aspirational vision of PBL sounding as ‘the tie that binds.’ Just as notably, Dr. Gambacorta’s passion, enthusiasm, and respect for her colleagues has been evident through each of stage of the project’s development.”
In seeking solutions to measure the boundary layer, Gambacorta stepped up to lead Goddard’s hyperspectral microwave projects and became the face of the center’s Decadal Survey Incubation (DSI) efforts. Through multiple Internal Research and Development, or IRAD grants, she and her team performed fundamental research to show the effectiveness of hyperspectral microwave sounding, conceptualized a microwave photonics radiometer instrument, and more recently began developing a framework to integrate data from multiple sensors for boundary layer science observations.
“Antonia’s innovation rises above her individual successes as a capable and creative innovator,” said Goddard Chief Technologist Peter Hughes. “She capitalized on multiple programs to incubate new technology while engaging expertise from across agencies and around the world to connect to other resources.”
Her cutting-edge innovations and research earned support from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office and from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Specifically, Gambacorta built on her IRAD successes to secure an Earth Science Technology Office Instrument Incubator Program (IIP) project award to further develop her team’s microwave photonics radiometer concept and DSI funding to advance the multi-sensor fusion framework. Additionally, her momentum enabled a DSI-funded airborne instrument project attempting to transform CoSMIR, Goddard's Conical Scanning Millimeter-wave Radiometer, into a hyperspectral sensor. That project is led by up-and-coming instrument scientist Rachael Kroodsma.
This entire portfolio that Gambacorta now manages also culminated in a successful NOAA Broad Agency Announcement proposal to demonstrate hyperspectral microwave radiometry. Through her engagement with colleagues in ESTO, NOAA, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, Hughes said Goddard’s hyperspectral microwave and PBL initiatives are regarded globally as the trusted strategy for understanding the planetary boundary layer. Goddard is widely viewed as a pioneer in the use of integrated photonics for Earth remote sensing due to Gambacorta’s leadership, he added.
“Antonia serves as a true inspiration to the technologists and scientists on her teams,” her colleague Santanello added. “Her innovation and contribution to Goddard and the larger community can also be measured in each of these ways.”
Nanoplastics promote conditions for Parkinson’s across various lab models
A novel study sounds the alarm on the need for a new area of research.
PLASTIC NANOPARTICLES (GREEN), VISIBLE UNDER A MICROSCOPE, CO-MINGLING WITH PROTEIN AGGREGATES(RED) IN NEURONAL LYSOSOMES (BLUE). TYPICALLY, CONCENTRATIONS OF THE PROTEIN AGGREGATES ARE SO SMALL, THEY WOULD NOT BE VIABLE AT THIS LEVEL.
DURHAM, N.C. – Nanoplastics interact with a particular protein that is naturally found in the brain, creating changes linked to Parkinson’s disease and some types of dementia.
In a Duke-led study appearing Nov. 17 in Science Advances, the researchers report that the findings create a foundation for a new area of investigation, fueled by the timely impact of environmental factors on human biology.
“Parkinson’s disease has been called the fastest growing neurological disorder in the world,” said principal investigator, Andrew West, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University School of Medicine. “Numerous lines of data suggest environmental factors might play a prominent role in Parkinson’s disease, but such factors have for the most part not been identified.”
Improperly disposed plastics have been shown to break into very small pieces and accumulate in water and food supplies, and were found in the blood of most adults in a recent study.
“Our study suggests that the emergence of micro and nanoplastics in the environment might represent a new toxin challenge with respect to Parkinson’s disease risk and progression,” West said. “This is especially concerning given the predicted increase in concentrations of these contaminants in our water and food supplies.”
West and colleagues in Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and the Department of Chemistry at Trinity College of Arts and Sciences found that nanoparticles of the plastic polystyrene -- typically found in single use items such as disposable drinking cups and cutlery -- attract the accumulation of the protein known as alpha-synuclein. West said the study’s most surprising findings are the tight bonds formed between the plastic and the protein within the area of the neuron where these accumulations are congregating, the lysosome.
Researchers said the plastic-protein accumulations happened across three different models performed in the study - in test tubes, cultured neurons, and mouse models of Parkinson’s disease. West said questions remain about how such interactions might be happening within humans and whether the type of plastic might play a role.
“While microplastic and nanoplastic contaminants are being closely evaluated for their potential impact in cancer and autoimmune diseases, the striking nature of the interactions we could observe in our models suggest a need for evaluating increasing nanoplastic contaminants on Parkinson’s disease and dementia risk and progression,” West said.
“The technology needed to monitor nanoplastics is still at the earliest possible stages and not ready yet to answer all the questions we have,” he said. “But hopefully efforts in this area will increase rapidly, as we see what these particles can do in our models. If we know what to look out for, we can take the necessary steps to protect ourselves, without compromising all the benefits we reap every day from plastics.”
The study was funded by in part by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s initiative (ASAP-020527).
In addition to West, study authors include Zhiyong Liu, Arpine Sokratian, Addison M. Duda, Enquan Xu, Christina Stanhope, Amber Fu, Samuel Strader, Huizhong Li, Yuan Yuan, Benjamin G. Bobay, Joana Sipe, Ketty Bai, Iben Lundgaard, Na Liu, Belinda Hernandez, Catherine Bowes Rickman, and Sara E. Miller.
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO SCIENTISTS COLINCE KAMDEM, PH.D., LEFT, AND CAROLINE FOUET, PH.D., HAVE FOUND THAT ADDING SMALL QUANTITIES OF LIQUID SOAP TO SOME CLASSES OF PESTICIDES CAN BOOST THEIR POTENCY BY MORE THAN TEN-FOLD.
EL PASO, Texas (Nov. 17, 2023) – Could the solution to the decades-long battle against malaria be as simple as soap? In a new study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, scientists at The University of Texas at El Paso have made a compelling case for it.
The team has found that adding small quantities of liquid soap to some classes of pesticides can boost their potency by more than ten-fold.
The discovery is promising news as malaria-carrying mosquitoes display an increasing resistance to current insecticides, said Colince Kamdem, Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor in UTEP’s Department of Biological Sciences.
“Over the past two decades, mosquitoes have become strongly resistant to most insecticides,” Kamdem said. “It’s a race now to develop alternative compounds with new modes of action.”
Both laboratory tests and field trials have shown that neonicotinoids, a special class of insecticide, are a promising alternative to target populations showing resistance to existing insecticides, said UTEP Research Assistant Professor Caroline Fouet, Ph.D., second author of the study. Neonicotinoids, however, do not kill some mosquito species unless their potency is boosted. In this case, Fouet said, soap is the boosting substance.
Malaria is a devastating mosquito-borne disease that is prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, causing fever, fatigue, headaches and chills; the disease can be fatal. In 2020, there were an estimated 241 million cases of malaria worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control, resulting in 627,000 deaths.
Prior to joining UTEP, Kamdem worked at Cameroon’s Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases (CRID); it was there that he first caught on to soap’s potency while conducting routine insecticide testing.
Current protocols from the World Health Organization (WHO) for testing mosquitoes’ susceptibility to some insecticides recommend adding a seed oil-based product to insecticide concoctions. Kamdem noticed when the compound was added, mosquito mortality increased from when the insecticide was used on its own.
“That compound belongs to the same class of substances as kitchen soap,” Kamdem said. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we test products that have same properties?’
He and his team selected three low-cost, linseed-oil based soaps that are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa — Maître Savon de Marseille, Carolin Savon Noir and La Perdrix Savon — and added them to four different neonicotinoids, acetamiprid, clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.
The hunch paid off. In all cases, the insecticides drastically enhanced potency, the team wrote in the study. “All three brands of soap increase mortality from 30 percent to 100 percent compared to when the insecticides were used on their own,” said Ashu Fred, first author of the study and Ph.D. student at Cameroon’s University of Yaoundé 1.
The team also tested the addition of soap to a class of insecticides known as pyrethroids. In those cases, however, they saw no benefits.
The team hopes to conduct additional testing to establish exactly how much soap is needed to enhance insecticides.
“We would love to make a soap-insecticide formulation that can be used indoors in Africa and be healthy for users,” Kamdem said. “There are unknowns as to whether such a formulation will stick to materials like mosquito nets, but the challenge is both promising and very exciting.”
Additional authors on the study are doctoral student Marilene M. Ambadiang of CRID and the University of Yaoundé 1; and Professor Veronique Penlap-Beng, Ph.D., of the University of Yaoundé 1.
The project was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
About The University of Texas at El Paso
The University of Texas at El Paso is America’s leading Hispanic-serving university. Located at the westernmost tip of Texas, where three states and two countries converge along the Rio Grande, 84% of our 24,000 students are Hispanic, and more than half are the first in their families to go to college. UTEP offers 171 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs at the only open-access, top-tier research university in America.
JOURNAL
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
ARTICLE TITLE
Vegetable oil-based surfactants are adjuvants that enhance the efficacy of neonicotinoid insecticides and can bias susceptibility testing in adult mosquitoes
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Nov-2023
New research suggests plants might be able to absorb more CO2 from human activities than previously expected
New research published today in leading international journal Science Advances paints an uncharacteristically upbeat picture for the planet. This is because more realistic ecological modelling suggests the world’s plants may be able to take up more atmospheric CO2 from human activities than previously predicted.
Despite this headline finding, the environmental scientists behind the research are quick to underline that this should in no way be taken to mean the world’s governments can take their foot off the brake in their obligations to reduce carbon emissions as fast as possible. Simply planting more trees and protecting existing vegetation is not a golden-bullet solution but the research does underline the multiple benefits to conserving such vegetation.
“Plants take up a substantial amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year, thereby slowing down the detrimental effects of climate change, but the extent to which they will continue this CO2 uptake into the future has been uncertain,” explains Dr Jürgen Knauer, who headed the research team led by the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University.
“What we found is that a well-established climate model that is used to feed into global climate predictions made by the likes of the IPCC predicts stronger and sustained carbon uptake until the end of the 21st century when it accounts for the impact of some critical physiological processes that govern how plants conduct photosynthesis.
“We accounted for aspects like how efficiently carbon dioxide can move through the interior of the leaf, how plants adjust to changes in temperatures, and how plants most economically distribute nutrients in their canopy. These are three really important mechanisms that affect a plant’s ability to ‘fix’ carbon, yet they are commonly ignored in most global models” said Dr Knauer.
Photosynthesis is the scientific term for the process in which plants convert – or “fix” – CO2 into the sugars they use for growth and metabolism. This carbon fixing serves as a natural climate change mitigator by reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere; it is this increased uptake of CO2 by vegetation that is the primary driver of an increasing land carbon sink reported over the last few decades.
However, the beneficial effect of climate change on vegetation carbon uptake might not last forever and it has long been unclear how vegetation will respond to CO2, temperature and changes in rainfall that are significantly different from what is observed today. Scientists have thought that intense climate change such as more intense droughts and severe heat could significantly weaken the sink capacity of terrestrial ecosystems, for example.
In the study published this week, however, Knauer and colleagues present results from their modelling study set to assess a high-emission climate scenario, to test how vegetation carbon uptake would respond to global climate change until the end of the 21st century.
The authors tested different versions of the model that varied in their complexity and realism of how plant physiological processes are accounted for. The simplest version ignored the three critical physiological mechanisms associated with photosynthesis while the most complex version accounted for all three mechanisms.
The results were clear: the more complex models that incorporated more of our current plant physiological understanding consistently projected stronger increases of vegetation carbon uptake globally. The processes accounted for re-enforced each other, so that effects were even stronger when accounted for in combination, which is what would happen in a real-world scenario.
Silvia Caldararu, Assistant Professor in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, was involved in the study. Contextualising the findings and their relevance, she said:
“Because the majority of terrestrial biosphere models used to assess the global carbon sink are located at the lower end of this complexity range, accounting only partially for these mechanisms or ignoring them altogether, it is likely that we are currently underestimating climate change effects on vegetation as well as its resilience to changes in climate. We often think about climate models as being all about physics, but biology plays a huge role and it is something that we really need to account for.
“These kinds of predictions have implications for nature-based solutions to climate change such as reforestation and afforestation and how much carbon such initiatives can take up. Our findings suggest these approaches could have a larger impact in mitigating climate change and over a longer time period than we thought.
“However, simply planting trees will not solve all our problems.We absolutely need to cut down emissions from all sectors. Trees alone cannot offer humanity a get out of jail free card.”
Using historical records from around Australia, an international team of researchers have put forward the most accurate prediction to date of past Antarctic ice sheet melt, providing a more realistic forecast of future sea level rise.
The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest block of ice on earth, containing over 30 million cubic kilometers of water.
Hence, its melting could have a devasting impact on future sea levels. To find out just how big that impact might be, the research team, including Dr Mark Hoggard from The Australian National University, turned to the past.
“If we want to know what is going to happen in the next 100 years, we need to have an accurate model for how ice sheets respond to climate change,” Dr Hoggard said.
“Previous forecasts of the Antarctic contribution to global mean sea level rise were anywhere between 20 and 52cm by 2100. But by getting a better idea of sea levels during the Mid-Pliocene era, our study reduces this estimate to between 5 and 9cm.
“The Mid-Pliocene period 3 million years ago is considered the best equivalent to conditions expected this coming century in terms of CO2 levels and temperature.”
Dr Hoggard said accurately determining sea level during this period can help reveal how the Antarctic ice sheet behaved in the past and therefore how it might behave in the future.
To determine the historic sea level, researchers first looked at the geological record of Australia to find fossilised corals and other sea-level markers that indicate how high the shoreline used to be.
“This is not a perfect method as fossil markers are not only affected by the movement of the sea, but also the movement of the land,” Dr Hoggard said.
Over millions of years, Earth’s tectonic plates move up and down in a process called dynamic topography.
“If you stand on the shoreline of Australia today and see that our sea level is rising, it could be one of two things. It could be sea level genuinely rising, or it could be the land you’re standing on subsiding,” Dr Hoggard said.
“For the first time, we have corrected for these up and down movements across a whole continent, so we can see where the sea level markers really sit.”
Previous estimates had sea level during the Mid-Pliocene somewhere between six and 60 meters above current sea level in Australia. Now, it can be more accurately pinned at 16 meters, with the Antarctic ice sheet likely contributing 9.8 meters in height.
Dr Hoggard credited the accuracy of these predictions to significant advances in science over the past 10 years.
“Thanks to better models, improvements in computational power and a greater understanding of the geological processes, our ability to map the movement of tectonic plates over the mantle has been revolutionised,” he said.
“Right now, this is probably the best reconstruction we’ve got.”
Reducing this uncertainty will allow for more accurate modelling of future sea level rise.
While a lower estimated contribution by the Antarctic ice sheet is good news, the researchers point out there is still plenty of work to be done.
“If you live in a Pacific Island nation like Tuvalu where the highest point of elevation is only 4.6 meters, small changes in the baseline sea level can have devastating impacts when disaster events like cyclones or storm surges hit,” Dr Hoggard said.
“Ensuring we have more accurate models can help improve policy, especially when looking at coastal and low-lying communities which can be impacted by just centimeters of sea level change.”
Geodynamically corrected Pliocene shoreline elevations in Australia consistent with mid-range projections of Antarctic ice loss
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Nov-2023
MOZAMBIQUE
Idai vs. Impalas: New study shows in real-time what helps mammals survive a natural disaster
With a network of cameras and GPS collars, Gorongosa National Park researchers watched in real time as animals reacted to Cyclone Idai, the deadliest cyclone in the southern hemisphere in recorded history.
HEAVY RAINS FALL ON THREE IMPALA IN GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK IN CENTRAL MOZAMBIQUE. WHEN CYCLONE IDAI SLAMMED GORONGOSA WITH 105 MPH WINDS AND POUNDING RAINS ON MARCH 15, 2019, THE RESULTING FLOODWATERS TRANSFORMED THE ECOSYSTEM OF THE PARK, KILLING HALF OF THE ORIBI AND REEDBUCK (TWO SMALL ANTELOPE SPECIES) AND DAMAGING MANY OTHER HERBIVORE POPULATIONS. SOME DIED DURING THE STORM, UNABLE TO OUTRUN THE RISING WATERS, AND OTHERS DIED OF STARVATION OR MALNUTRITION IN THE AFTERMATH, AS NUTRIENT-DENSE GRASSES DROWNED, LEAVING ANIMALS TO FORAGE ON NUTRIENT-POOR SUBSTITUTES.
When Cyclone Idai swept through Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park in May 2019, one of nature‘s deadliest forces encountered one of the most technologically sophisticated wildlife parks on the planet. Princeton researchers and colleagues from around the world documented the effects using trail cameras and animal-tracking devices that had been in use before the storm.
Thanks to the extensive network of cameras, GPS collars and other instruments, park staff and wildlife ecologists had an “unprecedented opportunity” to assemble a minute-by-minute view of how the storm affected the park and how the animals responded, said Hallie Brown, a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton’s Department of Ecology and Environmental Biology and the first author of a new paper in Nature about the hurricane’s impact.
“This is the first study that has ever been able to track the real-time responses of a large-mammal community to a natural disaster,” said Robert Pringle, an EEB professor who has worked with Gorongosa National Park since its inception.
Brown, now a postdoctoral research associate in Pringle’s lab, was a graduate student at the time with Ryan Long, an associate professor of wildlife sciences at the University of Idaho and a former Princeton postdoc. Long and Pringle shared senior author credits on the new Nature paper.
“We watched the waters rise,” Brown recalled. “We watched the animals’ reactions in the hours, days, weeks after the cyclone: how some of them escaped the floodwaters, and some of them didn’t. We used the data we had from before, during and after the storm to create, not just a description of this one event, but a broader set of expectations, so managers can better anticipate the effects of increasingly severe weather events.”
The research team found that the best predictor of survival was size. The tiny oribi, about the size of a greyhound, saw its population plummet by 50%. About half of the slightly larger reedbucks died as well. The bushbucks, which are the smallest species that can wear a GPS collar, saw three of its eight collared animals die — the smallest male and the two smallest females — but only lost 4% of their population overall.
GPS data revealed that the bushbucks looked for hills to climb, including termite mound hillocks that reach up to 16 feet tall (5 meters) and 65 feet long (20 meters), which became islands in the flood. The researchers saw that one survivor hopscotched from mound to mound, passing quickly through the floodwaters in between, before finding safety in the woods at higher elevations. The four largest herbivores wearing GPS collars — nyala, kudu, sable and elephant — had no fatalities.
Body size also offered a secondary protection, the researchers found.
“Not only could the smaller-sized animals not outpace the waters, they were also not able to buffer the nutritional limitation afterwards,” said Brown. “Because the flood was so high for so long, it killed a lot of the grasses and low-lying vegetation. Smaller animals can’t withstand those nutritionally limited periods like larger animals, who have more fat to rely on.”
The only previous study of hurricane effects on island populations looked at lizards and spiders in the Bahamas and found very similar patterns. “It’s incredible how the patterns we found cross taxonomic and geographic lines,” said Brown. “They seem to play out the same ways in our terrestrial ecosystem, with the largest mammals on earth, and with these tiny little invertebrates and reptiles in the Bahamas.”
The researchers have two primary recommendations for other wildlife managers: evacuate the smallest and most ecologically vulnerable creatures to safer areas before storms come, and provide supplementary feed after the storm. Once all of the grasses have drowned, animals will turn to foraging on less-nutritious shrubs and bark, and many small creatures can’t survive that dietary shift.
The few carnivores in the park weathered the storm just fine, Brown said. The wild dogs and leopards benefited from having their prey animals concentrated in the upland areas, and the lions’ primary food source — warthogs — stayed in the uplands for several months but were otherwise largely unaffected by the cyclone.
The research team included institutions from five countries: Princeton University; the University of Idaho-Moscow; the University of California-Merced; Montana State University-Bozeman;Yale University; Archbold Biological Station in Venus, Florida; the University of British Columbia-Vancouver; Gorongosa National Park; the University of Kent; the University of the Witwatersrand-Johannesburg; Associação Azul Moçambique in Maputo, Mozambique.
Other Princeton authors on the paper are then-graduate students Matt Hutchinson, Ph.D. 2021; Justine Atkins Becker, Ph.D. 2020; Arjun Potter, Ph.D. 2022; and then-NSF postdoctoral fellow Meredith Palmer.
“For me, the most exciting thing about this paper is the incredible collaboration between so many groups of researchers, from hydrology to large animal ecology, to create this really integrated piece of science,” Brown said. “The best work happens in collaborative projects.”
“Trait-based sensitivity of large mammals to a catastrophic tropical cyclone,” by Reena H. Walker, Matthew C. Hutchinson, Justine A. Becker, Joshua H. Daskin, Kaitlyn M. Gaynor, Meredith S. Palmer, Dominique D. Gonçalves, Marc E. Stalmans, Jason Denlinger, Paola Bouley, Mercia Angela, Antonio Paulo, Arjun B. Potter, Nikhail Arumoogum, Francesca Parrini, Jason P. Marshal, Robert M. Pringle and Ryan A. Long, was published in Nature on Nov. 15 (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06722-0). The research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (IOS-1656527, DEB-2225088, IOS-1656642 and PRFB-1810586); the National Research Foundation of South Africa (116304); the Greg Carr and Cameron Schrier Foundations;; the Howard Hughes Medical Initiative BioInteractive; the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies; the Grand Challenges Program of the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University; and the National Geographic Society (000039685).
Mammals in Gorongosa National Park range in size from the tiny oribi, which lost half of its population to Cyclone Idai, to the massive elephants that saw no fatalities from the storm or its aftermath. When Cyclone Idai slammed Gorongosa with 105 mph winds and pounding rains on March 15, 2019, the resulting floodwaters transformed the ecosystem of the park, the smallest animals were hardest hit. Half of the oribi and reedbuck (two small antelope species) died, but the largest mammals saw few if any fatalities. Some of the small herbivores died during the storm, unable to outrun the rising waters, while others died of starvation or malnutrition in the aftermath, as nutrient-dense grasses drowned, leaving animals to forage on nutrient-poor substitutes.
