Rainforest animals are using tourist walkways—offering clues for conservation design

Biology research project focuses on a manmade structure in the Peruvian Amazon

Binghamton University

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A canopy walkway at the Amazon Conservatory for Tropical Studies (ACTS) Field Station in the Napo-Sucusari Biological Reserve, located 40 miles outside of Iquitos, Peru. 

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Credit: Lindsey Swierk and Justin Santiago

Look up in the woods and you may see a familiar sight: squirrels using tree limbs like a leafy highway, crossing a patch of land without putting their paws on the ground.

That’s true in the Amazon rainforest as well. A new study published by Binghamton University biologists in the journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation offers insights for the first time into how arboreal species use human-made canopy structures.

Authored by environmental studies alumnus Justin Santiago ’21, now in a master’s program at Miami University, and Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Lindsey Swierk, “Arboreal mammal use of canopy walkway bridges on an Amazonian forest with continuous canopy cover” focuses on research conducted at the Amazon Conservatory for Tropical Studies (ACTS) Field Station in the Napo-Sucusari Biological Reserve, located 40 miles outside of Iquitos, Peru.

Either naturally occurring or artificially constructed, canopy bridges are exactly what they sound like: pathways that connect trees, offering passage to tree-dwelling animals. For example, think of a tree limb extending toward another tree in the woods, Santiago and Swierk explained. Artificial bridges may mimic these natural crossings or may take the form of an elevated walkway, such as the one used in their study. Whatever form they take, canopy bridges can be found all over the world — including in your own backyard.

The walkway at the ACTS Field Station consists of a series of platforms and bridges from 6 to 36 meters above the forest floor built primarily for use by researchers and visitors. Humans aren’t the only tree-loving mammals to use such structures. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 427 species of mammals live in the Amazon; researchers estimate that 227 of these species spend a great deal of their time in trees. The researchers set up four camera traps to record animals using the bridge over a three-week period; arboreal mammals were recorded using the bridge on 41 occasions. They included sloths, porcupines, opossums, monkeys and others.

During the survey, the animals used the bridge solely at night. While many species may have a nocturnal bent, others may be reacting to the presence of human beings using that same bridge for tourism. Outside of the survey period, a sloth and a troop of saki monkeys were seen using the walkway during the day, during a period of minimum human activity after the end of tourist season.

“Arboreal mammals are known to be shy and camouflage relatively well within their surroundings, yet at nighttime they have been shown to increase their activity and become much more mobile,” Santiago said. Future studies could address seasonal differences in canopy usage or explore potential changes in reported species.

Overall, their findings could aid in the development of future artificial canopy walkway designs. As forest habitats become fragmented, walkways provide a way for forest creatures to meet their survival needs while staying safe.

“In a broader context, as fragmentation continues to disconnect ecosystems, artificial canopy structures provide a safer route for arboreal species, keeping them away from roads where mortality events could occur,” Santiago said.

About Binghamton University

Binghamton University, State University of New York, is the #1 public university in New York and a top-100 institution nationally. Founded in 1946, Binghamton combines a liberal arts foundation with professional and graduate programs, offering more than 130 academic undergraduate majors, minors, certificates, concentrations, emphases, tracks and specializations, plus more than 90 master's, 40 doctoral and 50 graduate certificate programs. The University is home to nearly 18,000 students and more than 150,000 alumni worldwide. Binghamton's commitment to academic excellence, innovative research, and student success has earned it recognition as a Public Ivy and one of the best values in American higher education.

A canopy walkway at the Amazon Conservatory for Tropical Studies (ACTS) Field Station in the Napo-Sucusari Biological Reserve, located 40 miles outside of Iquitos, Peru. 

Credit

Lindsey Swierk and Justin Santiago

Justin Santiago ’21 installs a camera trap near a canopy walkway at the Amazon Conservatory for Tropical Studies (ACTS) Field Station in the Napo-Sucusari Biological Reserve.

Credit

Lindsey Swierk and Justin Santiago

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Journal

Neotropical Biology and Conservation

DOI

10.3897/neotropical.20.e154791 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Arboreal mammal use of canopy walkway bridges in an Amazonian forest with continuous canopy cover

 

From lab to land: How hands-on computer science is building the future

UMass Amherst physiologist leads team that is first to uncover how fish sense the change of seasons

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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When the pituitary glands of salmon are themselves exposed to daylight, they light up with TSH (red and green).

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Credit: Stephen McCormick

AMHERST, Mass. – One of the enduring ichthyological mysteries is how migratory fish know when it is time to move from their winter to summer habitats. The ability to tell when the seasons are changing is crucial for a wide range of major life events, including feeding and spawning, as well as migration. Many animals are sensitive to photoperiods, or the changing length of the days across seasons, but while scientists have a good understanding of how photoperiodism works in birds and mammals, how exactly fish recognize changes in day length has remained a mystery—until now.

A team of researchers led by Stephen McCormick, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has just uncovered how fish know when to migrate—with the surprising discovery that their pituitary gland, located at the base of their brains, is studded with photoreceptors that can “see” the changing daylight. The research, published recently in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, not only sheds light on the enduring migration mystery, but also will help in planning for the increasingly disruptive role climate change is already having on migrating fish populations.

“Many animals, especially in the temperate zones, need to be able the sense the changing of the seasons,” says McCormick. “They need to prepare for winter or know when the spring is arriving, and this is crucial for everything from mating to finding food. One reliable way to do this is to be able to judge the season by the amount of daylight.”

Researchers have known for years that, in birds and mammals, increased daylight triggers a whole chain of hormone activity. First, the pituitary gland produces a hormone, called thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), that flows to the brain, which in turn alters the production of a deiodinase enzyme that converts the thyroid hormone thyroxine (T4) to its more active form, known as T3. It’s this increasing level of brain T3 that seems to stimulate all sorts of seasonal responses, from migration to growth and reproduction.

Not only are McCormick and his colleagues, who hail from the University of Tokyo, Toho University, and the University of Gothenburg, the first to confirm that this basic pathway is the same in fish, but they also discovered that the way fish sense changes in daylength is very different from how birds and mammals do it.

For their research, the team focused on Atlantic salmon. “I have a lifelong interest in the species,” says McCormick, who notes that they’re endangered and that what holds true for them should also hold true for many other anadromous, migratory fish.

Salmon normally live in freshwater streams and lakes for one to three years and, upon reaching a critical size, will migrate in the spring to the ocean. As part of this transformation, they change from being dark sided to a bright silver color, acquire a high tolerance for saltwater and begin to change their behavior by schooling and swimming downstream.

“All of this is stimulated by changes in the daylight,” says McCormick, “and now we know how and why.”

It turns out that salmon can perceive daylight with more than just their eyes—between 7-9% of the sunlight penetrates the fish’s head and reaches the pituitary gland itself, which is studded with photoreceptors. McCormick and his team discovered this by removing the pituitary glands, exposing them to various lengths of daylight, and observing as the glands’ TSH levels changed in response to long days.

This capacity of the pituitary to directly perceive changes in daylength has not been previously seen in any vertebrate.

All of this has implications for the survival of migratory fish. Over eons, migratory animals have evolved to begin their migrations so that they arrive at their destinations in time to feast on their favorite food source, or when conditions are right for mating or raising their young. Climate change has uncoupled seasonal changes from the length of the day, however, and it is now not uncommon for migratory species to arrive in their summer feeding grounds after their food sources has itself migrated somewhere else.

“Now that we know how photoperiodism works in fish,” McCormick says, “we can get a much better sense of the pace of their evolution, and this can help us determine the best methods for helping fish to survive a warming world.”

 

Contacts: Steve McCormick, mccormick@umext.umass.edu

                 Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu

 

About the University of Massachusetts Amherst 

The flagship of the commonwealth, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public land-grant research university that seeks to expand educational access, fuel innovation and creativity and share and use its knowledge for the common good. Founded in 1863, UMass Amherst sits on nearly 1,450-acres in scenic Western Massachusetts and boasts state-of-the-art facilities for teaching, research, scholarship and creative activity. The institution advances a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where everyone feels connected and valued—and thrives, and offers a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees across 10 schools and colleges and 100 undergraduate majors.  

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Journal

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2025.1611 

Article Title

The fish pituitary directly responds to daylength and drives seasonality

 

When a derecho strikes: Engineers build emergency management training game

Iowa State University

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An image from an early version of an emergency training video -- still just an AI experiment -- shows a derecho hitting a Midwest farmer's market.

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Credit: Image courtesy of Abram Anders/Iowa State University.

AMES, Iowa – It’s a crowded Saturday morning at the downtown farmers’ market in a major Midwestern city.

 

It’s tomato time. Peppers are ripe and red. There are food trucks. Musicians. And, despite clouds to the west, lines of people.

 

Then, with little warning, a storm blows in. And keeps blowing: Damaging wind gusts of 58 mph and a damage trail that eventually extends to 240 miles. A derecho has hit downtown.

 

How will emergency management officials respond? What should police do? Firefighters? Medical responders? Public works employees? The mayor’s office?

 

A “novel, online serious game on emergency response” designed, built and evaluated by Iowa State University engineers in partnership with Polk County Emergency Management in Des Moines will help emergency forces practice their responses. The game will force “players to grapple with the uncertainty and trade-offs in their actions,” according to a project summary.

 

The U.S. National Science Foundation is supporting development of the multiplayer, online game with a one-year grant of $700,000 from the agency’s Civic Innovation Challenge program. Cameron MacKenzie, an associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, is leading the project. (See sidebar for other collaborators.)

 

MacKenzie said the project was sparked by a comment made by A.J. Mumm, the director of Polk County Emergency Management, during discussions about a previous grant proposal: “Wouldn’t it be great to have computer games to train emergency management officials?”

 

MacKenzie kept that idea in mind for a potential research project. That led to a planning grant last fall and a full grant this year.

 

Adding intensity, engagement

Brett McIntyre, a program assistant for Polk County Emergency Management, said there are a variety of traditional resources for emergency management training.

 

They can include peer-led training groups, mentor relationships, workshops from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and classes at the National Disaster and Emergency Management University based in Maryland. Class offerings include EO102, “Fundamentals of Threats and Hazards.”

 

And then there are locally organized tabletop planning exercises. Emergency managers, responders and partners gather around a conference table and work their way through a disaster response.

 

“People evaluate what they would do,” McIntyre said. “How does that fit or interfere with existing plans and practices? What gaps exist?”

 

An online, multiplayer game – complete with video, audio, graphics and a scoring system – could “add a level of intensity that isn’t there when we’re just discussing scenarios,” he said. “That extra bit of intensity should get people engaged.”

 

As the person responsible for the training program at Polk County Emergency Management, McIntyre said, “It’s natural for us to be involved in this project to develop another training tool we can have in the toolbox. Something like this could be used and reused.”

 

Storyboards and curveballs

“Run everyone,” shouts a farmer’s market vendor, raincoat hood up, lightning cracking behind her, wind pushing at the trees. “Get to shelter!”

 

Then a huge tree topples behind her, nearly crushing her vegetable stand and barely, just barely, missing a fellow vendor.

 

You don’t see and hear that on a tabletop.

 

It’s a very early project video – still just an experiment – generated by artificial intelligence tools.

 

“We’re currently testing various techniques and workflows to understand what works best for creating realistic emergency management training content,” said Abram Anders, Iowa State’s Jonathan Wickert Professor of Innovation and associate director of the Student Innovation Center. “We’re exploring approaches like detailed storyboarding, using reference images, and comparing capabilities across different AI platforms.”

 

The goal is to establish “reproducible methods” that emergency management officials can use to make their own custom training tools, all without special expertise or big budgets.

 

That way, when emergency responders log in for disaster training, they’re in the middle of a timely, relevant and engaging training session.

 

Decisions will be tracked and scored. As resources are deployed, outcomes will shift. It could allow for players to switch roles – the mayor’s office playing as firefighters, for example – to learn what other responders must consider and decide.

 

And, at any time during the game, MacKenzie said the facilitator could say, “Oh, I want to throw this curveball in.”

 

It’s all about creating “a high-pressure, high-stakes situation” for emergency responders, the researchers wrote, “thereby enhancing their communities’ disaster preparedness.”

 

– 30 –

 

The ISU research team

• Cameron MacKenzie, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, project leader, decision and risk analysis
• Abram Anders, the Jonathan Wickert Professor of Innovation and associate director of the Student Innovation Center, AI-generated media
• Michael Dorneich, the Joseph Walkup Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, human computer interaction
• Sri Sritharan, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, Wilkinson Chair in the College of Engineering and assistant dean for research, emergency preparations

• Eliot Winer, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the VRAC Research Center (for studies of virtual reality), game coding

• Stephen Gilbert, a co-leader of the planning grant, professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering and faculty director of the Honors Program and Undergraduate Research, human computer interaction