A new study from <a href="https://www.osu.edu/">Ohio State University</a> reveals what is going on inside of your <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/gut-brain-interactions-have-an-influence-on-diseases/">brain</a> when you get lost in a fictional fantasy. The experts discovered that the more immersed we become in the lives of our favorite characters of fiction, the more our brain activity reflects how much we identify with them.
&#8220;When they think about a favorite fictional character, it appears similar in one part of the brain as when they are thinking about themselves,&#8221; said study lead author Timothy Broom.
The research was focused on self-described fans of the HBO series &#8220;Game of Thrones.&#8221; The individuals were instructed to think about themselves, nine of their friends, and nine characters from the drama series. The participants also reported on which character they felt closest to and liked the most.
According to Broom, Game of Thrones was ideal for this study because it attracted a devoted fan base and the large cast presented a variety of characters that people could become attached to.
One of the key findings involved participants who scored highest on &#8220;trait identification.&#8221; These individuals agreed most strongly with statements like &#8220;I really get involved in the feelings of the characters in a novel.&#8221;
&#8220;People who are high in trait identification not only get absorbed into a story, they also are really absorbed into a particular character,&#8221; said Broom. &#8220;They report matching the thoughts of the character, they are thinking what the character is thinking, they are feeling what the character is feeling. They are inhabiting the role of that character.&#8221;
The researchers used an fMRI machine to measure activity in various parts of the brain through small changes in blood flow. As the participants&#8217; brains were scanned, they were evaluating themselves, their friends, and Game of Thrones characters. 
A part of the brain called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) is known to show increased activity when people think about themselves and, to a lesser extent, when they think about close friends.
While in the fMRI, the individuals were shown a series of names &#8211; including themselves, friends, or characters &#8211; along with a trait, such as lonely, sad, trustworthy, or smart. The participants simply said &#8220;yes&#8221; or &#8220;no&#8221; to imply whether the trait fit the person.
As expected, the vMPFC was most active when people were evaluating themselves, less active when they evaluated friends, and least active when they evaluated characters from Game of Thrones.
However, among those who were high in trait identification, the vMPFC was more active when they thought about the fictional characters than it was for participants who identified less with the characters. This region of the brain was particularly active when the individuals evaluated the character they identified with the most.
Study co-author Dylan Wanger said the findings help explain how fiction can have such a big impact on some people.
&#8220;For some people, fiction is a chance to take on new identities, to see worlds though others&#8217; eyes and return from those experiences changed,&#8221; said Wagner.
&#8220;What previous studies have found is that when people experience stories as if they were one of the characters, a connection is made with that character, and the character becomes intwined with the self. In our study, we see evidence of that in their brains.&#8221;
The study is published in the journal <a href="https://academic.oup.com/scan">Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience</a>.
&#8211;&#8212;
By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

What happens in your brain while you're lost in fiction

The fight for the survival of baby sea turtles begins long before hatching. The conditions of the beaches where eggs are laid play a critical role in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/orangutan-mothers-are-actively-involved-in-helping-offspring-learn/">offspring</a> survival.&nbsp;



Some factors include sand moisture content, sand color, and slope angle. Human activities have been known to influence these factors and can have devastating consequences for endangered species of sea turtles.&nbsp;



Researchers with <a href="https://www.kaust.edu.sa/">King Abdullah University of Science &amp; Technology</a> (KAUST) were curious about potential sea turtle activity in a group of 1,150 islands in the Saudi Arabian Red Sea. While these islands may be potential nesting sites, very few of them have been surveyed, and those surveys were conducted decades ago. As a result, any potential damage caused by future development projects would be challenging to track.



The researchers sought to explore these islands to see if any of them provide nesting habitats for sea turtles. They visited 35 of the islands in search of tracks, nests, and eggshells, all signs of sea turtle nesting.&nbsp;



The experts found two hawksbill nests on Abu Gisha. They also found three hawksbill turtle nests and two green turtle nests on the island of Um Mesk. Rabigh, a beach on the mainland, however, contained no evidence of nests.&nbsp;



"This was expected because it is next to a foraging reef that turtles migrate away from to breed," explained Scott.



The researchers took measurements and samples from the sites to compare them to known nesting areas, including Ras Baridi, the largest nesting area in the red sea.&nbsp;



The hope is that policymakers could use this information to design management plans for future development and help us understand how climate change might affect these charismatic species.&nbsp;



"Seeing nests and tracks where they had never been recorded before confirmed our suspicion that nesting occurs along the whole Red Sea coastline," said Scott. "A wide-scale survey of all the islands off the Red Sea coast to look for nesting evidence and migration corridors will help us identify priority areas."



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://peerj.com/articles/13408/">PeerJ</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:nire518@gmail.com">Erin Moody </a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

New turtle nesting sites discovered in the Red Sea

The fight for the survival of baby sea turtles begins...

Climate change is anticipated to affect ocean <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/plant-biodiversity-hotspots-can-be-found-on-small-scales/">biodiversity</a> and play a major role in future changes in the structure of marine communities. This is because marine species are directly impacted by changes in ocean temperature and acidity, which can alter their abundance, diversity, distribution, feeding patterns, development and breeding. Measurements of biodiversity are thus commonly used in studies that monitor and assess the effects of climate change on marine communities.&nbsp;



However, it is difficult for scientists to predict exactly how changes in ocean acidification and temperature will influence marine communities in future because of the complex nature of marine ecosystems and the inadequacy of laboratory or mesocosm (outdoor laboratory) conditions in replicating this complexity. Previous experimental research has made use of various different methods to assess the potential effects and come up with contradicting results.



In order to improve understanding of climate-driven effects on marine communities, scientists from the <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/">University of Adelaide</a> have now reviewed 58 studies on community responses around volcanic CO2 vents in temperate reef, coral reef and seagrass ecosystems. The CO2 that bubbles up from below the ocean floor in these areas acidifies the seawater and this affects the surrounding biological communities. Scientists use these conditions as a proxy to provide insights into what may happen to biological communities in the face of ocean acidification.&nbsp;



The researchers also reviewed the findings of 23 studies conducted in outdoor experimental environments (mesocosms) or laboratories in order to determine whether these conditions can adequately represent the changes that occur in marine communities. Their aim was to test for the prevalence of global and generalized responses in biodiversity and community-level change to the stresses of acidification and warming in both natural and artificial locations. Their results are published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16410">Global Change Biology</a>.



Previous research studies have typically used measures of species diversity to track community changes. This means that they counted the number of different species present, and their abundances, in communities subject to changing environmental conditions. Overall, the University of Adelaide researchers found that this was a poor metric to use as both increases and decreases in species richness were recorded, cancelling out any global trend. Instead, there was a pattern of community replacement, meaning that although some species declined or disappeared from the community, others moved in and became established.



“The belief that climate change will alter global marine biodiversity is one of the most widely accepted,” said Professor Ivan Nagelkerken from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories, who was first author on the study. “Commonly used biodiversity measures don't pick up reorganization of marine communities due to ocean acidification because new species replace species that are lost. [This means that] little or no biodiversity change is detected when one community of marine species is replaced by another, even under significant habitat loss.”



Instead, the researchers detected globally repeated patterns of species replacements and community ‘reshuffling’ in the studies of CO2 vent communities. In particular, these communities showed decreases in cover by calcareous algae, crustose coralline algae, and filter feeders that have calcified shells or tubes. All these organisms contain calcium carbonate which would dissolve under acidic conditions. In contrast, there was&nbsp;increased cover by fleshy algae, turf algae and biofilm in CO2 vent communities. The authors feel that these measures of community change are more useful than simple determination of species diversity.



Furthermore, outdoor laboratory studies of marine communities were even less sensitive in detecting species replacements, community reshuffling or biodiversity change than natural systems, either to ocean acidification or warming, or to a combination of both. This lower-sensitivity is not unexpected as community structure is often influenced by ecological processes that operate over substantially larger spatial and temporal scales than those tested in outdoor laboratories.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Experiments done in the laboratory are weak in detecting biodiversity change, so natural systems experiencing advanced ocean acidification are emerging as an innovative way of studying biodiversity responses,” said Professor Sean Connell, co-author and professor in the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories. “No ecological study, whether in the laboratory or field, can fully replicate the complex ecological interactions that exist in nature across the time and spatial scales of relevance to climate change.”



The authors conclude that there are detectible, generalizable changes that take place in marine communities in response to environmental changes in acidity and temperature, but that these are not accurately tracked by considering changes in biodiversity alone. Instead, ecologists should monitor species replacements and community reorganization, particularly in terms of important functional groups, if they wish to detect the effects of climate change on marine communities.&nbsp;



“Future projections of ecosystem change and stability will be more meaningful if they focus on detections of species replacements and changes to the abundance of species rather than testing for signs of habitat loss or biodiversity loss&nbsp;per se,” said Professor Nagelkerken.



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By <a href="mailto:bosman@truewan.co.za">Alison Bosman</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Climate stress causes undetected changes in marine ecosystems

Climate change is anticipated to affect ocean biodiversity and play...

Currently, there are thousands of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/viruses-have-eyes-and-ears-on-their-hosts/">viruses</a> circulating among animals all over the world, most of them causing no symptoms. In recent decades, an increasing number of these viruses – such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003, the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome virus (MERS) in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 in 2020 - have jumped over to humans, wreaking havoc on immunologically naïve human populations.&nbsp;



Now, a research team led by the <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/">University of Colorado Boulder</a> has found that an obscure family of viruses already endemic in wild African primates and known to cause Ebola-like symptoms in some monkeys, is poised for spillover in humans too. While such arteriviruses are already considered a major threat to macaque monkeys, no human cases have been reported to date, and scientists are still uncertain what effects they would have on humans should they spill from wild animals. However, evoking parallels with HIV – a virus whose precursor also originated in African monkeys – the scientists call for vigilance from the global health community in order to avoid future pandemics.



“This animal virus has figured out how to gain access to human cells, multiply itself, and escape some of the important immune mechanisms we would expect to protect us from an animal virus. That’s pretty rare,” said study senior author Sara Sawyer, a professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at CU Boulder. “We should be paying attention to it.”



Professor Sawyer and her team examined the simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV), which causes a lethal disease similar to Ebola that led to deadly outbreaks in captive macaque colonies&nbsp;since the 1960s. Their investigation revealed that a receptor called CD163 plays a key role in the biology of simian arteriviruses, enabling them to invade and cause infection to target cells. To their surprise, a series of laboratory experiments revealed that SHVF was also remarkably adept at latching on to the human CD163 receptor, enabling it to get inside human cells and swiftly make copies of itself. Like HIV and its precursor simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), simian arteriviruses also attack immune cells, disabling fundamental defense mechanisms and taking hold in the body for extended periods of time.



“The similarities are profound between this virus and the simian viruses that gave rise to the HIV pandemic,” said study lead author Cody Warren, an assistant professor of Veterinary Medicine at the <a href="https://www.osu.edu/">Ohio State University</a>.



Although another pandemic caused by this virus does not appear to be imminent, there is no guarantee that this virus will not spill over into humans, since a wide range of African monkeys already carry high viral loads of diverse arteriviruses, and some species interact frequently with humans and are known to bite and scratch people.&nbsp;



“COVID is just the latest in a long string of spillover events from animals to humans, some of which have erupted into global catastrophes. Our hope is that by raising awareness of the viruses that we should be looking out for, we can get ahead of this so that if human infections begin to occur, we’re on it quickly,” Professor Sawyer concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.09.022">Cell</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Another monkey virus could spill over to humans

Currently, there are thousands of viruses circulating among animals all...

A,Male,Baltimore,Oriole,Is,Perched,On,A,Branch.,Tommy

According to the latest <a href="https://www.birdlife.org/news/2022/09/28/state-of-the-worlds-birds-2022-paints-most-concerning-picture-for-nature-yet/">State of the World’s Birds report</a> from BirdLife International, expansion of the agricultural industry, along with the chemicals and equipment used, have affected 73 percent of endangered bird species. Currently, nearly half of the world’s bird populations are in decline and just six percent of them are increasing in population – a bleak situation calling for increased <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/nature-conservation-must-become-more-dynamic/">conservation</a> efforts to help reverse this staggering declines.



The report – which is released every four years – has found that one in eight species (or 1,409 in total) face extinction. Since 1970, almost three billion birds have been lost in North America (a 29 percent decline), while in the European Union – a region five times smaller than North America – 600 million birds have died since 1980. Unfortunately, similar trends appear to be playing out all over the world.



“We have already lost over 160 bird species in the last 500 years, and the rate of extinction is accelerating,” said the report’s lead author Lucy Haskell, a science officer for BirdLife. “Historically, most extinctions were on islands, but worryingly there is a growing wave of continental extinctions, driven by landscape-scale habitat loss.”



This massive die-offs are mainly caused by agricultural expansion. For instance, in Europe, the agricultural sector contributed to a more than 55 percent decline in the continent’s farmland birds since 1980. Moreover, unsustainable rates of logging and deforestation also contributed to global declines in bird populations and have a significant impact on almost half of threatened bird species.



In addition, climate change and the proliferation of invasive species pose additional threats to bird populations, together with bycatch from fisheries, the expansion of residential and commercial development, the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires, and poorly planned energy production. According to the report authors, climate change affects over 34 percent of threatened species through extreme weather events such as droughts or storms. Since natural disasters are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, bird biodiversity will likely face even more challenges.



However, despite these grim findings, the experts argue that there are solutions to solve these problems. For instance, in December 2022, the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/">Convention of Biological Diversity</a> meeting will take place, during which scientists will finalize and start implementing a ten-year plan aiming to address our planet’s declining biodiversity. Additional measures include the preservation of remaining intact habitats, the restoration of degraded ecosystems, the prevention of overexploitation and illegal bird killings, the management of invasive species, and the minimization of the negative effects of energy infrastructure such as power lines.



“There are many examples of species being saved from extinction, populations recovering, threats being effectively managed and ecosystems being restored. However, time is running out,” the authors warned.



“The next decade is critical if we are to stop unraveling the fabric of life and destroying our global safety net. Governments must adopt a Global Biodiversity Framework with ambitious commitments to ensure transformative change and urgent implementation of action. The future of the world’s birds and ultimately our own species depends upon it.”



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Half of the world’s bird species are now in decline

According to the latest State of the World’s Birds report...

The neurohormone <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/oxytocin-promotes-cooperation-among-humans/">oxytocin</a> – often referred to as the “love hormone” – is known for promoting social bonds and giving rise to pleasurable feelings after activities including exercise, sex, or even art-viewing. However, this hormone has many other functions, such as the regulation of lactation and uterine contractions in females, as well as the regulation of testosterone production, ejaculation, and sperm transport in males.



Now, a team of scientists from <a href="https://msu.edu/">Michigan State University</a> (MSU) has found that, in both zebrafish and human cell cultures, this hormone has yet another, surprising function: it stimulates cells from the epicardium (the heart’s outer layer) to migrate into the myocardium (the inner layer), where they develop into cardiomyocytes, a type of muscle cells that generate heart contractions. In the future, these findings could be used to promote the regeneration of the human heart after heart attacks.



“Here we show that oxytocin, a neuropeptide also known as the love hormone, is capable of activating heart repair mechanisms in injured hearts in zebrafish and human cell cultures, opening the door to potential new therapies for heart regeneration in humans,”&nbsp;said study senior author Aitor Aguirre, an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at MSU.



After a heart attack, cardiomyocytes usually die off in great numbers and, since they are highly specialized cells, they cannot replenish themselves. However, a subset of cells in the epicardium can turn into stem-like cells called Epicardium-derived Progenitor Cells (EpiPCs) can help regenerate not only cardiomyocytes, but also other types of heart cells. “Think of the EpiPCs as the stonemasons that repaired cathedrals in Europe in the Middle Ages,” Professor Aguirre said.&nbsp;



While under natural conditions, the production of EpiPCs is inefficient for heart regeneration in humans, in zebrafish – a species of animal famous for its extraordinary capacity of regenerating organs – these cells can easily repair damaged hearts. According to the scientists, within three days after cryoinjury (injury due to freezing), the expression of the messenger RNA for oxytocin increases up to 20-fold in their brain. This oxytocin then travels to their epicardium and binds to the oxytocin receptor - a molecular cascade which stimulates local cells to expand and develop into EpiPCs that migrate to the myocardium to develop into cardiomyocytes, blood vessels, and other crucial heart cells.



Importantly, the scientists also showed that oxytocin has a similar effect on human tissue in vitro, by stimulating cultures of human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (hIPSCs) to become EpiPCs. “These results show that it is likely that the stimulation by oxytocin of EpiPC production is evolutionary conserved in humans to a significant extent. Oxytocin is widely used in the clinic for other reasons, so repurposing for patients after heart damage is not a long stretch of the imagination. Even if heart regeneration is only partial, the benefits for patients could be enormous,” Professor Aguirre explained.



“Next, we need to look at oxytocin in humans after cardiac injury. Oxytocin itself is short-lived in the circulation, so its effects in humans might be hindered by that. Drugs specifically designed with a longer half-life or more potency might be useful in this setting. Overall, pre-clinical trials in animals and clinical trials in humans are necessary to move forward,” he concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2022.985298">Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

“Love hormone” oxytocin has heart healing properties

The neurohormone oxytocin – often referred to as the “love...

According to a new study commissioned by the bank <a href="https://www.natwest.com/">NatWest</a> and conducted by <a href="https://onepoll.com/">OnePoll</a>, the average adult spends more than ten years of their lives on “autopilot,” following the same <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/daydreaming-brain-routine-tasks/">routines</a> every day. One fourth of the 2,000 British adults surveyed claimed that they often drift through as much as five or even more hours per day without thinking much about what they are doing, which equates to 1,396 hours each year or 27 hours a week doing the same thing.



The study revealed that, for 64 percent of adults, their daily routines - including repetitive behaviors such as getting dressed or showering at the same time of the day, or eating the same breakfast - hardly ever change. However, 79 percent of those who consider that they are “stuck in a rut” of repetitive, boring routines feel that this is holding them back from achieving their goals. The most common things the respondents said they would like to do to improve their daily lives include learning a new skill or craft, travelling the world, or starting a new career.&nbsp;



In addition, 51 percent of adults admitted that they procrastinate rather than act on tasks that need to be done, such as managing their finances, organizing meetings with friends, or shopping for food – an aspect which led six in 10 of them to buy self-help books (which half of them never finished reading though).



Following these findings, NatWest launched a series of videos with entrepreneur Stephen Bartlett to help people take action to improve their lives, with episodes focused on how to set goals, start a business, or managing personal finances.&nbsp;



“We all have goals and ambitions – whether that is buying a pair of trainers, saving for a big event, or even starting your own business. But we also know how hard it can be to take that first step to make those things happen [since] everyone experiences different challenges and obstacles in life,” said Alison Rose, the CEO of NatWest.&nbsp;



“But we hope that Stephen’s inspiring story and motivational personality can help people to set and strive for their own goals – whatever they may be.”&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Adults spend a decade of their lives on “autopilot”

According to a new study commissioned by the bank NatWest...

Young,Lady,Running,On,A,Rural,Road,During,Sunset

It has long been established that men outpace women in mid- and long-distance running. However, speed over shorter distances is determined by the magnitude of force <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/covid-19-increases-heart-inflammation-risk-in-young-athletes/">athletes</a> can apply in relation to body mass. Muscular force to body mass ratio is greater in smaller individuals, and women tend to be smaller than men.&nbsp;



The understanding of sex performance differences for short sprint events has received little attention. The understanding of comparative strength, speed and endurance capabilities of male and female athletes has been a challenging issue for modern sport.&nbsp;



In a new study, PhD candidate Emily McClelland and Peter Weyand, director of the <a href="https://www.smu.edu/">Southern Methodist University</a> Locomotor Performance Lab set out to investigate. The team used data from international competitions such as the Olympics and World Championships, between 2003 and 2018. McClelland hypothesized that sex differences in sprint running performance might be relatively small and increase with distance.



The data revealed that the difference between male and female performance time increased with event distance from 8.6 to 11 percent from shortest to longest sprint events (60 to 400<s> </s>meters). The analysis of each 10-meter segment of the 100-meter event revealed a pattern across distance - sex differences increased from a low of 5.6 percent for the first segment to a high of 14.2 percent in the last segment.



This would suggest that women are at an advantage for shorter sprint distances compared to men. In contrast to other running species like horses and dogs, there is significant variation in size between human males and females. Body size differences result in muscular force to body mass ratios that are greater in smaller individuals.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Since sprinting velocities are dependent on the mass-specific forces runners can apply, greater force/mass ratios of smaller individuals provide a theoretical advantage. During the acceleration phase of a race, the shorter legs of a female lead to more steps and pushing cycles per unit time. These factors offset the advantages of males (longer legs and greater muscularity) that become more influential over longer distances.



Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce is a Jamaican track and field star who is 5’0” tall, 115 pounds, and holds two Olympic and five World Championship gold medals in the 100-meter event. Her time at the 40-yard mark of a 100-meter race has been estimated to be as fast as 4.51 seconds. This was faster than half of all the wide receivers and running backs that tested in the National Football League’s Scouting Combine in 2022. Most of these aspiring NFL football players are over 6’ tall and 200 pounds.



The research is <a href="https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/japplphysiol.00359.2022">published</a> in the Journal of Applied Physiology.



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By <a href="mailto:katherinebucko@gmail.com">Katherine Bucko</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Women have an advantage when running short distances

It has long been established that men outpace women in...

Honey,Bee,Pollinating,Sunflower,Plant

In recent decades, ozone levels in the lower troposphere have increased. Ozone (O3) is a secondary <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/plastic-pollution-is-making-the-ocean-more-acidic/">pollutant</a> formed during the reaction of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the presence of sunlight. It damages the leaves of plants and inhibits photosynthesis, accelerates and extends flowering season, and alters the number of flowers open at any one time. In addition, ozone changes the chemical structure of pollen, inhibits pollen tube growth and alters the amount of pollen and nectar formed, as well as their chemical composition. 



A new study by scientists from China and Spain has now proposed that ozone may also be affecting the health of insect pollinators in ways that impair their ability to pollinate flowers successfully. The study takes the form of a literature review that highlights the ways in which ozone impacts insect pollinators.



“There is much noise about the direct effects of agrochemicals on pollinators, a subject of profound societal attention, but it now emerges that ozone is a silent threat to pollinators and thus pollination,” said lead author Evgenios Agathokleous, an ecologist at Nanjing University of Information Science &amp; Technology. “These impacts of ozone have long been missed.”



Ozone changes the chemical composition of leaves and the amount and blend of plant-emitted VOCs. This means that leaves and flowers may develop unusual colors which can confuse pollinators searching for suitable blooms. In addition, the VOCs provide important chemical signals that attract pollinators and, if these change in composition, the plant-insect interactions may be altered as a result. Ozone also produces new volatiles that may be unfamiliar to the pollinating insects looking for cues about which flowers to visit.&nbsp;



This colorless gas is an important ally when it occurs in the stratosphere, 12 km above sea level. Here it forms naturally and helps protect the Earth from the Sun’s harmful rays. However, when it occurs in the troposphere, the region of atmosphere closer to Earth’s surface, ozone is a damaging pollutant. Tropospheric-level ozone gas is created by a photochemical reaction between VOCs – emitted by vegetation and commonly found in substances such as paint and aerosols – and oxides of nitrogen, which are released when fossil fuels burn. Tropospheric ozone levels have been rising because a warming climate is creating optimal conditions for its formation.



“Ozone pollution can affect the timing and duration of flowering in such a way that the occurrence of flowering is asynchronous to the activities of pollinators,” said Agathokleous. “It can also change the color of flowers, disrupting the visual signals to pollinators. Ozone pollution can also directly react with pollen, decreasing its quality, but also indirectly changing the amount of pollen.” &nbsp;



The research, published in the journal <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/home">Trends in Ecology &amp; Evolution</a>, also indicates that ozone affects pollinators directly by altering their olfactory learning ability, decreasing their recall of learned scents, and enhancing their response to new scents. Ozone may further decrease the proportion of active pollinators at any one time, a distress behavior that implies fewer potential foragers will be around to pollinate flowers.&nbsp;



“Changes in the composition of the volatile blends could also have severe implications to pollinators because they might not recognize host plants and their qualities in the same way they did in the past,” said Agathokleous. “Within plant tissues, ozone pollution could decrease the amount of nutrients that are essential to insects, increase the abundance of chemicals that are harmful to insects ingesting them, and degrade the overall quality of plant tissues.”



The study authors conclude that there may be some significant ecological consequences of ozone pollution for the world’s pollinating insects. Ozone concentrations are usually lower during the night but, since night-time ozone levels are increasing, ozone pollution may affect nocturnal pollinators more than previously thought. They state that a new generation of interdisciplinary research programs is needed to evaluate the resilience of plant–pollinator interactions in areas exposed to ozone pollution.&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:bosman@truewan.co.za">Alison Bosman</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Ozone pollution threatens the health of plants and pollinators

In recent decades, ozone levels in the lower troposphere have...

Contrary to what one might expect, melting polar ice that introduces fresh water into the sea will not lead to sea-level rises of equal magnitude throughout the world’s <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/even-the-most-remote-oceans-are-polluted-with-microplastics/">oceans</a>. Instead, as an ice sheet melts, it leaves a unique pattern of meltwater distribution behind, known as a sea-level fingerprint. Although the concept of sea-level fingerprints has already been factored into&nbsp;current <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/huge-arctic-report-ups-estimates-of-sea-level-rise-1.21911">models used to predict future changes in sea level, </a>actual observational measurements of the accuracy of these predictions have been difficult to make.&nbsp;



A new study, led by researchers from <a href="https://www.lanl.gov/">Los Alamos National Laboratory</a>, has now used high-resolution satellite observations of the Earth’s high latitude areas to test model predictions and assess the risks of sea-level rise to coastal communities. The research takes a major step forward in predicting probable consequences of rising ocean levels by confirming the theoretical predictions and computational models that are used to forecast sea-level changes as the climate warms.&nbsp;



“Using&nbsp;sea-surface-height observations from satellites in the way&nbsp;we have done independently verifies observations of Arctic and Greenland ice-mass loss and allows us to tease apart contributions to global&nbsp;sea-level rise from individual ice sheets and glacier systems,” said Sophie Coulson, a postdoctoral researcher in fluid dynamics and geophysics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and lead author on the paper.&nbsp;



“Accurately predicting regional patterns of sea-level change is absolutely central to understanding the impacts of future climate change and forecasting hazards,” she emphasized.&nbsp;



The theoretical models predict that sea level will actually fall in the immediate vicinity around a melting ice sheet. This is because ice sheets and glaciers have a small gravitational pull on the water that surrounds them and the strength of this force is related to the mass of the ice. As an ice sheet or glacier melts, it loses mass and therefore the gravitational pull it exerts on the nearby ocean water becomes weaker. This causes the sea level to fall.&nbsp;



In addition, as ice sheets melt, complex geological processes cause the surrounding seawater that is no longer attracted so strongly to the diminishing ice mass to move away towards oceans in the middle and low latitudes of the world. This means that sea levels are likely to rise faster in the tropical and subtropical regions, far away from the actual location of the ice sheet or glacier. For example, sea-level rise in California and Florida, generated by the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, is predicted to be as much as 52 percent greater than average sea-level rise across the rest of the world.



“As this melting continues, and the water is redistributed around the global oceans, sea level does not rise uniformly," explained Coulson. "And since every glacier and ice sheet has a unique pattern of sea-level change, these patterns have come to be known as sea-level fingerprints. But despite over half a century of research, these fingerprints have never been unambiguously detected.”



In the current study, Coulson’s search focused on satellite observations of sea-surface height in the oceans surrounding the Greenland ice sheet over the last three decades. The research team expected to see a lowering of sea level in waters around the ice sheet as it is melting and losing mass. Their models also predicted that progressively higher levels of sea rise would be recorded in oceans further away from Greenland, as the ocean water is freed from gravitational attraction to the ice sheet and heads out into the open ocean.&nbsp;



“We predicted what the pattern of sea-level change would be around Greenland using new estimates of ice melting in the area,” Coulson said. “When we then compared this pattern to satellite observations of sea-level change the fit was remarkable. It was an incredible eureka moment for us when the team saw it – ‘there it is, the sea-level fingerprint!’”



In the past it was not possible to detect sea-level fingerprints in the Arctic and Antarctic regions because the sea-surface-heights were not measured around polar ice sheets at these high latitudes. The research team on the&nbsp;Science&nbsp;paper took advantage of processed satellite observations that extend to much higher latitudes than previously possible, where the fingerprint signal is the largest. The team processed this satellite data using a powerful new technique to remove the variability due to ocean dynamics.



The new study confirms the accuracy of the geophysical predictions of sea-level change and adds confidence to projections of sea-level rise across the next decades and century. As Coulson says, “It’s a powerful and sensitive approach to monitoring ice sheets and glaciers in our warming world.”



The results of the analysis are published in the journal Science.&nbsp;



Image Credit: Courtesy of Dr. Laurence C. Smith of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.



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By <a href="mailto:bosman@truewan.co.za">Alison Bosman</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Elusive sea-level “fingerprint” detected around Greenland ice sheet

Contrary to what one might expect, melting polar ice that...

The environmental costs of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin are shockingly high and are only getting worse, according to a study from the <a href="https://www.unm.edu/">University of New Mexico</a>. The experts report that the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/generation-z-doesnt-recognize-the-climate-impact-of-meat-consumption/">climate</a> impacts from mining Bitcoin are comparable to that of natural gas or beef production.



“We find no evidence that Bitcoin mining is becoming more sustainable over time,” said Professor Benjamin A. Jones. “Rather, our results suggest the opposite: Bitcoin mining is becoming dirtier and more damaging to the climate over time. In short, Bitcoin’s environmental footprint is moving in the wrong direction.”



In collaboration with Professor Robert Berrens and Andrew Goodkind, Professor Jones estimated the climate damages associated with Bitcoin mining between January 2016 and December 2021. The experts found that in 2020 alone, Bitcoin mining used 75.4 terawatt hours of electricity (TWh). This is higher than the electricity used by Austria or Portugal during the same year.&nbsp;



“Globally, the mining, or production, of Bitcoin is using tremendous amounts of electricity, mostly from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. This is causing huge amounts of air pollution and carbon emissions, which is negatively impacting our global climate and our health,” said Professor Jones.&nbsp;



“We find several instances between 2016-2021 where Bitcoin is more damaging to the climate than a single Bitcoin is actually worth. Put differently, Bitcoin mining, in some instances, creates climate damages in excess of a coin’s value. This is extremely troubling from a sustainability perspective.”



The study also revealed that the CO2 equivalent emissions from electricity generation for Bitcoin mining increased 126-fold from 2016 to 2021. 



The estimates indicate that each Bitcoin mined in 2021 generated $11,314 in climate damages, with total global damages exceeding 12 billion dollars between 2016 and 2021. The calculations also suggest that in May 2020, each dollar of Bitcoin generated was associated with $1.56 in global climate damages.



“Across the class of digitally scarce goods, our focus is on those cryptocurrencies that rely on proof-of-work (POW) production techniques, which can be highly energy intensive,” said Professor Berrens. “Within broader efforts to mitigate climate change, the policy challenge is creating governance mechanisms for an emergent, decentralized industry, which includes energy-intensive POW cryptocurrencies. We believe that such efforts would be aided by measurable, empirical signals concerning potentially unsustainable climate damages, in monetary terms.”



The research is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/srep/">Scientific Reports</a>.



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Environmental costs of Bitcoin are getting worse over time

The environmental costs of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin are shockingly...

Around the world, more than five billion species of hoofed animals – known as “ungulates” and including species such as giraffes, horses, pigs, alpacas, or yaks – are kept as livestock or in zoos and safari parks. A new study led by <a href="https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/">Aberystwyth University</a> and the <a href="https://www.port.ac.uk/">University of Portsmouth</a> has investigated which of these species are better suited to captive environments and which display significant levels of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/stress-may-sometimes-protect-our-bodies/">stress</a> and require better husbandry if kept in captivity.&nbsp;



By examining the behavior of over 15,000 individual animals across 38 ungulate species, the experts found that the type of food species eaten and their mating strategies were associated to the risk of stress symptoms. Species most at risk of experiencing stress in captivity were those that eat high-growing woody vegetation (browsers), such as camels, okapis, and rhinoceros, or are sexually promiscuous, like buffalos, yaks, pigs, or sheep.



If a species’ behavioral needs – which they perform to survive and reproduce in the wild – are restricted by captivity, the animals often experience poor welfare and engage in repetitive, unusual behaviors – known as “stereotypical behaviors.” In this study, the scientists aimed to identify which specific behavioral needs should be prioritized to avoid stress and stereotypical behaviors and provide better welfare for the ungulates.



“Our data suggest that features of both a species’ wild behavioral biology and captive husbandry are predictive of these stereotypic behaviours in ungulates,” said study senior author Sebastian McBride, an expert in Animal Cognition at Aberystwyth.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“This research has very important implications for how these large, hoofed animals are kept in captivity – we now have a better understanding of which species are most susceptible to stress in captivity and how we can tackle this problem to improve the welfare of those animals.”



“We found that for ungulates, having the right food and social organization is crucial for their welfare. Whereas for carnivores, having enough space in captivity seems to be key. This shows the importance of understanding the specific needs of different groups of species,” added study co-author Leanne Proops, a researcher in Animal Behavior and Welfare at Portsmouth.



“As a society, we need to continue to question and examine the environmental factors that are important to animals if we are to maximize their welfare. There are lessons here for both farmers and zoos about how best to raise and treat livestock,” concluded lead author Kate Lewis, a doctoral student in Equine Behavior at Portsmouth.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1311">Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences</a>.&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Proper food and company reduce stress in captive animals

Around the world, more than five billion species of hoofed...

Since urban <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/eastern-coyotes-wolves/">coyote</a> research began in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a sustained interest in the scientific community in what type of foods coyotes living in urban areas are eating, specifically whether they are relying on human foods for sustenance. Now, by analyzing the DNA of urban coyotes living in New York, a team of experts discovered that they eat a variety of native prey species and only supplement this diet with human-sourced food items.



“Urban areas have lots of people and thus greater availability of anthropogenic foods,” said study lead author Carol Henger, a postdoctoral fellow at the <a href="https://www.wcs.org/">Wildlife Conservation Society</a>. “Knowing what the coyotes are eating can help inform management practices by city officials.”



Coyotes are opportunistic omnivores, usually taking advantage of whatever food is available. Although previous research conducted in cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago have found that coyotes eat mainly “natural” foods such as rabbits or rodents, city coyotes still tend to consume more human-sourced food items than their countryside counterparts.



To find out what New York coyotes are eating, the researchers analyzed DNA from coyote fecal samples collected in parks and other green spaces between 2010 and 2017. The analyses revealed that urban coyotes consumed a wide variety of mammalian prey, including racoons, rabbits, deer, and voles. However, they also ate birds, insects, plants, as well as human-sourced foods like beef, pork, or chicken.



“What’s unique about our study is that by sequencing the DNA of coyote scat we were able to detect diet items that might not be detected through a visual analysis of the scat samples, such as specific human food items. There are no wild cows, chickens, or banana trees in NYC parks so if we got a DNA hit on something like that, we knew that the coyote had eaten from an anthropogenic source,” Dr. Henger explained.



The scientists also compared the diet of NYC coyotes to that of coyotes living in non-urban areas from the New York state, and found that raccoons and deer made up a larger proportion of the diet of non-urban coyotes compared to that of their urban relatives. Although both groups of coyotes ate similar proportions of human food (about 60 percent of the fecal samples contained traces of at least one human food item), the urban coyotes ate a wider variety of such products, including rice, goat meat, guineafowl, or bananas.



“Raccoons were the most prevalent mammal detected in the New York City coyote diet,” Dr. Henger reported. “With no other natural predators to limit their populations, coyotes provide an important ecological service. Raccoons can carry diseases such as rabies and canine distemper that can be transmitted to humans and pets. By predating on raccoons, coyotes are helping to provide healthy ecosystems.”&nbsp;



“Our results show that coyotes are not reliant on human food to survive in New York City. Instead, coyotes are eating natural food items that are available in the city parks. This study highlights the importance of creating and maintaining green spaces where wildlife can thrive,” she concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13788">PeerJ</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Urban coyotes do not rely on human food

Since urban coyote research began in the 1980s and 1990s,...

<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/humanity-should-brace-for-catastrophic-climate-change/">Climate change</a> and related extreme weather events such as heatwaves or droughts are putting livestock at risk, causing huge economic losses for the production chain. To solve this problem, a research team led by the <a href="https://piacenza.unicatt.it/">Catholic University of the Sacred Heart</a> in Piacenza, Italy, are searching for genes to make cattle and sheep breeds more resistant to climate change.



“Production loss due to heat depends on environmental conditions, as assessed by the temperature/humidity index (THI),” explained study senior author Professor Paolo Ajmone-Marsan, a professor of Animal Breeding at the Catholic University. “Several studies revealed worrying estimates of the order of millions of euros in direct costs (loss of production) and indirect costs (cost of veterinary interventions, fodder, etc.).”



Recent research estimates that the loss of global production from heat stress could reach $40 billion a year by the end of the century, equivalent to ten percent of the 2005 value of meat and milk. “Heat stress is deleterious to all animal species, particularly for ruminants and high-producing dairy cattle, as well as our breeds,” said study co-author Riccardo Negrini, an expert in Animal Science at the same university. “Unfortunately, climate projections indicate that summer weather in our country will be increasingly dry and hot. That will increase stress in animals, despite shading, ventilation, sprinkling of water, and possible conditioning.”



However, according to Professor Ajmone-Marsan, genomics can now be efficiently employed to save livestock from the harmful effects of climate change. For instance, national breeding programs have changed the selection goals of livestock species, favoring animals which are more robust and resilient to environmental factors, and not just highly productive (as previous breeding efforts did).&nbsp;



Through genomics, several genetic variants which help animals to better adapt to hostile climates have already been identified. For example, in some local Caribbean cattle breeds, such as Senepol, Limoneiro, and Carora, a “slick” mutation that results in hair shortening and other physiological changes that make the animals highly resistant to heat stress has recently been discovered. This mutation has been introduced into the Friesian cattle breed in Florida, making them more resilient to climate change.



“Many ongoing research projects are looking for other favorable genetic variants associated with adaptation to the environment in other breeds and other species. We are actively involved in some of these projects,” said study co-author Licia Colli, a researcher in Zootechnics at the Catholic University. “Understanding the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of climate adaptation is important for planning genetic and genomic improvement programs that increase the production efficiency of local breeds without compromising their adaptive traits.”



“Genomics is a powerful tool and it will facilitate the selection of animals more resilient to climate change, but it is only one of the factors that can ensure animal welfare in extreme climates; it’s crucial also to control farm structures, breeding management, and precision feeding. The good news is that animals in production are increasingly closely monitored by cameras, sensors, and intelligent data analysis systems, that alert farmers as soon as animals show the first signs of stress, allowing immediate implementation of mitigation measures,” concluded Emilio Trevisi, a professor of Animal Sciences, Food, and Nutrition at the same university.&nbsp;



The study – which comprehensively reviews several of current genomic projects aiming to increase farm animals’ resilience to climate change – was published in the journal <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11/10/2833">MDPI Animals</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Genomics can help farm animals adapt to climate change

Climate change and related extreme weather events such as heatwaves...

The deep <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/plastic-pollution-is-making-the-ocean-more-acidic/">ocean</a> is a harsh environment. At 11 kilometers below, water at the Mariana Trench exerts eight tons of pressure per square inch. This is 1,100 times greater than the pressure at sea level on dry land.&nbsp;



Under this type of pressure, the normal tetrahedron shape of the water molecule is warped. Inside of an organism, this change in water molecule shape prevents biological processes from taking place, thus killing the organism. New research from the <a href="https://www.leeds.ac.uk/">University of Leeds</a> shows how fishes living at these depths survive otherwise crushing pressure.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Life has adapted to survive and thrive in environmental extremes. In the depths of the oceans, organisms live under extreme high pressures that would destroy human life," said Professor Lorna Dougan.



“These high pressures distort the liquid water that resides in all life, resulting in detrimental impacts to the biomolecules that underpin all biological processes."&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We need to understand what happens to water under pressure and how pressure-adapted organisms combat these effects. If we can understand how these organisms survive at extreme pressure, we can apply these findings to the wider study of biomolecular stability.”&nbsp;



The chemical that allows fish to survive these depths is TMAO - trimethylamine N-oxide. The research shows that the amount of TMAO in ocean dwelling animals increases with the depth they live at.&nbsp;



Led by Dr. Harrison Laurent, the researchers fired a beam of neutrons at water particles under low pressure (25 bar) and high pressure (4 kbar) with and without TMAO present. Without TMAO, the water bonds became distorted and compacted. With TMAO, however, the water bonds were strengthened and supported.



“The TMAO provides a structural anchor which results in the water being able to resist the extreme pressure it is under. The findings are important because they help scientists understand the processes by which organisms have adapted to survive the extreme conditions found in the oceans," said Dr. Laurent.



This research allows scientists to better understand how a plethora of newly discovered organisms can survive deep in the world’s oceans. The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42004-022-00726-z.">Communications Chemistry</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:zachfitzner@yahoo.com">Zach Fitzner</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

How do fish survive the intense pressure of deep water?

The deep ocean is a harsh environment. At 11 kilometers...

The use of service <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dogs-are-more-aware-of-actions-than-objects/">dogs</a> to support people with psychological conditions such as anxiety, panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder is growing in popularity. Such dogs are reported to improve a sufferer’s quality of life and social connections. In addition, they are able to help reduce the number of panic attacks, or the severity of PTSD symptoms, by behaving in a way that ‘calms’ the sufferer, or ‘interrupts’ his or her anxiety. Clearly, the dogs are able to perceive and respond to their owners’ psychological distress, but the mechanisms by which they do this are currently not understood.



A new study by researchers from Queens University, Belfast, and Newcastle University in the U.K. has investigated whether dogs can in fact smell when a person experiences stress. Given the excellent sense of smell that dogs have, and the fact that they have lived in association with humans for thousands of years, the researchers wondered whether dogs are able to perceive the chemical signals associated with stress in their owners.&nbsp;



The experience of stress is the main characteristic of people who suffer from anxiety, panic attacks and PTSD. Stress results in physiological changes in the body, including the release of epinephrine and cortisol hormones into the bloodstream, and increases in heart rate, blood pressure and speed of respiration. The physiological response to psychological stress is rapid, bringing about these changes within a few seconds. The researchers hypothesized that dogs, with their superior sense of smell, may be responding to olfactory cues produced by humans that are in a state of psychological stress.&nbsp;



In order to test this hypothesis, the researchers collected samples of breath and sweat from non-smoking participants who had not recently eaten or drunk anything. Baseline samples were collected first, and then the participants were given a fast-paced arithmetic task that provoked stress, after which their breath and sweat odors were again collected. In addition, participants’ heart rate and blood pressure were recorded, along with their self-reported experience of stress level.&nbsp;



Thirty-six of the participants showed increases in blood pressure and heart rate during the test, and also reported increased levels of stress.&nbsp; The samples from these participants were shown to&nbsp;trained&nbsp;dogs within three hours of being collected. Four dogs of different&nbsp;breeds and breed-mixes&nbsp;were trained, using a clicker and kibble rewards, to&nbsp;indicate the stress sample of a participant by adopting an alert posture.&nbsp;



Initially, the dogs had to identify a stress sample when it was randomly presented along with two blanks (samples without sweat or breath). They correctly&nbsp;alerted to&nbsp;the stress sample in 94 percent of the trials, with individual dogs achieving success rates of between 90 and 97 percent.&nbsp;But then the dogs were asked to identify the stress sample when it was presented along with one blank and with the baseline (relaxed) sample from the same participant. The researchers proposed that if the dogs could alert on the stress sample when the same participant’s baseline sample was present, this would imply that the chemical composition of the two human samples is different.



The findings of the study are published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274143">PLoS ONE</a>, and show that the dogs&nbsp;correctly detected and indicated (by alerting) 675 out of 720 stress samples. This equates to a success rate of 93.8 percent, which is far greater than would be expected if the alerting behavior were purely random (p&lt;0.001).&nbsp;



The experts conclude that dogs can detect&nbsp;the odor associated with&nbsp;the change in&nbsp;volatile organic compounds&nbsp;produced by humans in response to stress, a finding that&nbsp;tells us more about the human-dog relationship and&nbsp;could have applications to the training of anxiety and PTSD service dogs that are currently trained to respond predominantly to visual cues.



“This study demonstrates that dogs can discriminate between the breath and sweat taken from humans before and after a stress-inducing task," wrote the researchers.&nbsp; "This finding tells us that an acute, negative, psychological stress response alters the odor profile of our breath/sweat, and that dogs are able to detect this change in odor.”



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By <a href="mailto:bosman@truewan.co.za">Alison Bosman</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Stress has an odor, and dogs can smell it on us

The use of service dogs to support people with psychological...

Everyone knows what modern sharks look like: large fish with hydrodynamic bodies cutting through the water in search of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-can-pythons-eat-prey-as-large-as-a-deer/">prey</a>. However, sharks are an ancient lineage of fishes and in the deep past, ancestral sharks did not always appear as our modern sharks do.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Recently, the discovery of a 439 million-year-old shark was published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05233-8">Nature</a> predating the next oldest jawed fish by 15 million years. This shark is from the class Acanthodii and unlike modern sharks was armored. The shark was named Fanjingshania after the famous UNESCO world heritage site, Fanjingsha.&nbsp;



"This is the oldest jawed fish with known anatomy," said Professor ZHU Min from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the <a href="https://english.cas.cn/">Chinese Academy of Sciences</a>. "The new data allowed us to place Fanjingshania in the phylogenetic tree of early vertebrates and gain much needed information about the evolutionary steps leading to the origin of important vertebrate adaptations such as jaws, sensory systems, and paired appendages."



There were several features to distinguish Fanjingshania, including a shoulder girdle fused to fin spines. The fish also had unique armor plates, with parts of the pectoral fins fused to scales on the body. This anatomy suggests a unique role in the evolution of vertebrates for Fanjingshania. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;



"This level of hard tissue modification is unprecedented in chondrichthyans, a group that includes modern cartilaginous fish and their extinct ancestors," said study lead author Dr. Plamen Andreev, a researcher at Qujing Normal University. "It speaks about greater than currently understood developmental plasticity of the mineralized skeleton at the onset of jawed fish diversification."



"The new discovery puts into question existing models of vertebrate evolution by significantly condensing the timeframe for the emergence of jawed fish from their closest jawless ancestors. This will have a profound impact on how we assess evolutionary rates in early vertebrates and the relationship between morphological and molecular change in these groups," said Dr. Ivan J. Sansom from the University of Birmingham.



This discovery helps scientists better understand the evolution of fishes and pushes the origin of jawed fish to an earlier date than previously suspected. Since we all evolved from fishes, it’s an important piece of our own heritage.&nbsp;



Image Credit: ZHANG Heming



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By <a href="mailto:zachfitzner@yahoo.com">Zach Fitzner</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Ancient shark was one of the earliest human ancestors

Everyone knows what modern sharks look like: large fish with...

According to a new study led by the <a href="https://www.ku.dk/english/">University of Copenhagen</a>, contrary to popular belief, dairy cows and other dairy <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/cattle-are-becoming-less-adapted-to-their-environment/">cattle</a> are likely to experience worse welfare than cows raised solely for meat. By asking 70 leading bovine welfare experts from all over the world to assess the welfare risks of the most common production systems in their countries, the researchers found that dairy production involves a higher degree of human intervention, since dairy cattle are used to provide milk for human consumption, whereas beef cattle produce milk for their own calves – an aspect which has major implications for how these animals and their calves are raised and managed.



“The welfare is worse with cattle in the most common dairy production systems in opposition to cattle in the most common beef production systems. These findings contradict a very long and widely held belief in our society,” said study lead author Roi Mandel, a postdoctoral fellow in Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.



“The higher welfare risk in the dairy sector is not limited to dairy cows – defined from first calving onwards – but also to their calves. Experts rated the welfare risk of calves originating from dairy herds to be higher than that of calves originating from beef herds, regardless of the production goal, be it for red-meat, veal, or to replace the dam.”



Since the milk from dairy cows is produced in significantly higher volumes than in beef cows and is collected one to three times per day - often for 305 days or more per lactation - these cows frequently experience more stress than those grown solely for meat. Moreover, early separation of calves from their dams, together with long-term genetic selection for high milk yield in dairy cows are major factors causing poor welfare, with the latter leading to health problems such as lameness, mastitis, and reproductive and metabolic disorders.



“Refining or simply eliminating, when possible, husbandry practices that have long been recognized as compromising the welfare of both cows and their calves, such as early separation of the calves from their dams, may help to minimize the welfare gap between the beef and the dairy sector,” said Dr. Mandel.



“A complementary approach that applies to both sectors, dairy or beef, would be to elevate overall welfare, e.g. by better training of animal handlers. Unfortunately, in many regions of the world, training of animal handlers is not mandatory. In other countries periodic training updates could be required.”



“Raising awareness about the fact that dairy production also produces meat, and the toll of milk production on the welfare state of animals in the dairy industry, would hopefully encourage a more sustainable and responsible food consumption. Labeling the origin of the meat (beef/dairy herd) on food packaging, could be a first step in this process,” he concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.animal.2022.100622">animal</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Dairy cattle’s welfare is worse than that of beef cattle

According to a new study led by the University of...

Fruit,Fly

In the fight for love, the male members of a species usually take center stage. However, a group of scientists at the <a href="https://www.fchampalimaud.org/champalimaud-foundation/champalimaud-centre">Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown</a> have demonstrated that female fruit flies aren't spectators when it comes to sexual <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/sexual-competition-makes-animal-populations-more-resilient/">competition</a>.



"It is well known that female fruit flies display aggression over food and territory. So we asked, 'what about mating?" said study senior author Maria Luisa Vasconcelos.



When the team placed one male with two virgin females, everything seemed fine while the male was courting both females. But if the male began copulating with one of the flies, the spurned female began attacking the other female.



"This is curious because when the situation is reversed - when two males are in the same chamber with one female - both vigorously court the female simultaneously. But once mating is in progress, the 'losing' male doesn't attack. Instead, it courts the female even though she is otherwise engaged," explained Vasconcelos.&nbsp;



However, if a male had not previously courted a female, she would not attack. This piqued the researchers' curiosity.



"We wanted to understand what were the exact circumstances that gave rise to this behavior. For example, was it important that the females were virgins? Also, were there any external signals involved, like particular odors?" explained study first author Miguel Gaspar.



The researchers confirmed that the sexual status of the female influenced her behavior. "Mating triggers a series of physiological changes in females, which are known to have a dramatic effect on their behaviour as well," Gaspar explained. "And indeed, we found that while virgins quickly became aggressive, mated females were indifferent to the copulating pair."



The presence of food also played a role. "This was very interesting," said Vasconcelos. "We know that mated females become aggressive towards each other in the presence of food. Probably because they need nourishment to support the pregnancy. However, here the females were virgins. A possible explanation might be that mating in an environment with food is perceived as conducive to a successful pregnancy."



"We report here how female aggression towards mating pairs can be elicited. These findings add to the growing body of evidence that fruit fly females display rich, complex behaviors that are sensitive to social, environmental, and internal states. Now, we can use the extensive genetic and molecular tools available in fly research to investigate the neural underpinnings of this newly-discovered behavior."



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01453-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982222014531%3Fshowall%3Dtrue">Current Biology</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:nire518@gmail.com">Erin Moody </a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Scorned female fruit flies attack their sexual competitors

In the fight for love, the male members of a...

Honeydew is a sugary solution produced by several different types of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/insects-struggle-to-adjust-to-high-temperatures/">insects</a>, particularly those that feed by inserting their proboscis into the phloem vessels of a plant. These vessels carry dissolved sugars and other nutrients all over the plant, and the sucking insects use their spike-like mouthparts to access the flow of goodies. Strangely, when an insect taps into the liquid and begins to suck, the high pressure in the phloem vessel causes a big droplet of honeydew to emerge from the insect’s anus. It is a valued source of food for other insects, including different species of ants.&nbsp;



Although the chemical composition of honeydew has been studied from the perspective of its nutritional value to ants and other species that feed on it, the nature of the volatile (or smelly) components has not been investigated. It is possible that scents from honeydew secretions are used by insects to communicate with each other, especially around the time of reproduction. A new study, published in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/finsc.2022.982965">Frontiers in Insect Science</a>, has now shown that the honeydew produced by spotted lanternflies gives rise to many airborne organic molecules that are attractive to other members of the species, and probably play an important role in the behavior of the insects.&nbsp;



Spotted lanternflies (Lycorma delicatula) are not native to the U.S., but have been introduced inadvertently from China, where they are indigenous. The first individual was recorded in Pennsylvania in September 2014. Unfortunately, this species is invasive and feeds on a wide range of fruit, ornamental and woody trees. Individuals can spread long distances with the help of people who translocate infested material or items containing egg masses. It is critical that this pest be controlled before it spreads too widely, or it could do serious damage to the country’s grape, orchard, and logging industries.



“This research is important because the first step to managing any pest is to understand their biology and behavior,” said&nbsp;<a href="https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/1710547/overview">Dr. Miriam Cooperband</a>&nbsp;of the United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine Division (USDA APHIS PPQ) in the U.S. “As we learn more about the behavior of the spotted lanternfly, we hope to find a vulnerability that we can use to develop pest management tools to reduce its population and spread.”



It seems that spotted lanternflies do have one rather unusual behavior that may prove a vulnerability. Not only do they leave their honeydew secretions dotted onto the understory of trees in their habitat, but they also form mass aggregations on the trunks of select trees. There, they secrete so much honeydew that the surface of the tree trunk becomes white and frothy, and begins to smell like fermenting fruit. Multitudes of lanternflies gather at these sites and add to the secretions, while neighboring tree trunks are left untouched.



Cooperband and her collaborators wondered whether the honeydew that is excreted in these copious quantities perhaps contains semiochemicals, pheromones that convey signals to other lanternflies and modify their behavior. In previous studies the researchers had fixed small samples of either male or female spotted lanternflies to the trunk of a tree, enclosed in a fine mesh sleeve. These groups soon generated large aggregations of free lanternflies on the tree trunks, suggesting to the researchers that pheromones were indeed involved in attracting the lanternflies to each other.



To find out whether the honeydew contains any behaviorally active components that could influence lanternfly behavior, the researchers collected honeydew samples separately from male and female lanternflies in the field, to test in the lab. They found numerous semiochemicals present, including four ketones, six esters, and three alcohols, all of which existed in both sexes but at different ratios. Two compounds occurred at ratios over 1.5 times higher in male than in female honeydew, whereas five other compounds were found at higher concentrations in female than in male secretions.&nbsp;



The researchers then investigated how the honeydew influenced lanternfly behavior by giving captive lanternflies a choice to move to areas with or without the different types of honeydew. Their results showed that male flies were strongly attracted to male honeydew, while both males and females were only slightly attracted to female honeydew. Although it is not clear what would cause this behavior, this is consistent with observations of how these insects behave in the field.



The team went on identify which components of the honeydew produced the strongest signals. Five molecules were tested for attraction and found to have specific sex-attractant profiles. Two molecules called benzyl acetate and 2-octanone attracted both sexes, one molecule called 2-heptanone attracted only males, one molecule, 2-nonanone, attracted only females, and one molecule, 1-nonanol, repelled females but not males. All five of these compounds also serve as pheromone components for species across multiple insect orders, including bees and bed bugs.



These findings are just the initial steps to obtaining a better understanding of how, potentially, to control this invasive pest. The authors suggest that their findings can help develop non-insecticide control measures, such as the development of semiochemical lures for detecting lanternfly presence, or to use as mass trapping tools. There are many more questions to answer, such as whether there are seasonal variations in this behavior, and whether there are interactions with microbes in the honeydew that produce the necessary chemicals.&nbsp;



“Spotted lanternfly behavior and communication is quite complex, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to our work studying chemical signals, such as those in honeydew, we are also interested in the role of substrate vibrations in their communication system,” said Cooperband. “Future research might focus on understanding how they locate each other when they gather and find mates using multiple types of signals.”



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By <a href="mailto:bosman@truewan.co.za">Alison Bosman</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Honeydew secretions could be used to manage crop pests

Honeydew is a sugary solution produced by several different types...

Macro,The,Stinkbug,On,Green,Leaf

A new modeling study led by <a href="https://wsu.edu/">Washington State University</a> (WSU) has found that, in the United States, climate change could increase the suitable habitat for the brown marmorated stink bug by 70 percent. The foul-smelling, voracious pest migrated from Asia to the United States two decades ago.&nbsp;



By drawing on data from a three-year stink bug monitoring effort in 17 states, as well as several potential climate change scenarios, the experts estimated a possible northward shift in stink bug-hospitable areas, including the Mid-Atlantic, the Great Lakes, and West Coast valleys such as the Sacramento Valley in California or the Treasure Valley in Idaho. However, whether the insects will manage to thrive in these places will depend on the conditions of each area and potential mitigation measures.



“Every system will change with climate change, so the fact that you can grow garbanzo beans, lentils or wheat without these pests now, doesn’t mean that you will not have them in a few years,” said study lead author Javier Gutierrez Illan, an entomologist at WSU. “There are mitigating things that we can do, but it is wise to prepare for change.”



The brown marmorated stink bug is a generalist herbivore, known to feast on almost 170 different plants, including crops and even ornamental plants. Since its arrival in the U.S. two decades ago, it has been detected in 46 states and is considered a pest in 15 of them. Because these bugs like to winter indoors, proximity to populated areas appeared to help them get established in new places.&nbsp;



However, once there, they do not need people to proliferate, and other factors – such as water availability – have a greater impact on their abundance. Thus, although the bugs dislike cold winters, rising temperatures caused by climate change are not necessarily beneficial for them if the land becomes too dry. As a consequence, changing patterns of precipitation will likely play a leading role in influencing where the bugs will thrive.&nbsp;



Currently, some states (including Washington) are employing a parasitoid insect called the samurai wasp to control stink bugs. These wasps lay their eggs inside stink bug eggs, which not only destroys the affected eggs, but also gives the opportunity to wasp larvae to further consume other developing stink bugs.&nbsp;



According to the scientists, such measures may help prevent or minimize stink bug spread into new areas. They also advise Washington growers to use WSU’s&nbsp;<a href="https://decisionaid.systems/">DAS, or Decision Aid System</a>,&nbsp;a online tool that provides information to help them prepare for future changes to their agricultural systems, including the possible invasion of such pests. Finally, growers would also benefit from familiarizing themselves with the stink bugs through websites such as <a href="https://www.stopbmsb.org/">stopbsmb.org</a>.



“Most growers learn from their parents or from the previous generation, but the information that they had is probably no longer as useful because the climate is changing, so they need these types of tools,” Gutierrez Illan concluded.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Stink bug habitat could increase by 70 percent in the U.S.

A new modeling study led by Washington State University (WSU)...

The larger African carnivores, such as lions, leopards and cheetahs, have populations that are predictably constrained within the borders of nature reserves and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/wildlife-crossings-save-lives-and-money-in-washington-state/">wildlife</a> areas. They have suffered range contractions in the past because they were in conflict with humans and their livestock. But a new study, led by scientists from the <a href="https://environment.yale.edu/">Yale School of the Environment</a>, has found that all 91 different species of African carnivores investigated are facing range loss, and the smaller, less conspicuous carnivores are no exception.



The study, published in&nbsp;the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2201942119">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> and led by YSE Knobloch Family Associate Professor of Wildlife and Land Conservation Nyeema C. Harris, found that many carnivore species that are currently classified as being of “least concern” in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species had ranges that are at risk of significant contraction.&nbsp;



For example, the common slender mongoose (Herpestes sanguineus) and serval (Leptailurus serval) both face the risk that 16 percent of their current range area will be lost, while it was as much as 70 percent for the Egyptian weasel (Mustela subpalmata).&nbsp; Harris says the most important finding of the study, which analyzed additional data not previously assessed, is that all the species studied have some portion of their range at risk of contraction due to burgeoning threats. The average range contraction risk for the species studied was 15 percent.&nbsp;



“There’s a growing interest in relying on geospatial data to make conservation decisions but the range maps are flawed,” said Harris. “Traditional gap analyses do not consider both threats and assets, across the range, that influence population persistence. We are introducing a novel approach by assessing these different variables.”



Most surprising, she said, is that the team’s model was able to determine the potential range contraction risk for so many of the different species. Filling in these gaps in the current understanding will help forecast range contractions in African carnivores in future. The study reported that the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) and the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), large carnivores that are classified as endangered in the IUCN Red List, were facing range losses of 33 percent and 3 percent, respectively.&nbsp;



“We were able to get new insights about species that are largely unknown or understudied, and we identified that there are some conservation concerns because they have very small ranges containing more threats than assets,” said Harris. “The model is giving us a broader understanding and a different approach to anticipating biodiversity losses, especially for species with limited information, classified as ‘data deficient’ in the IUCN Red List, such as the Ethiopian Genet (Genetta abyssinica, a catlike mammal) and Pousargues’s mongoose (Dologale dybowskii), also known as African tropical savannah mongoose.”&nbsp;



Approximately one third of the world’s carnivore species are to be found in Africa, but these animals are under pressure from many different anthropogenic factors. Conflict with humans is a persistent problem, especially in parts where farmers depend on livestock that can fall prey to predators. Africa also has a rich biocultural diversity, with many groups of that value carnivores as part of their heritage.&nbsp;



The study examines possible assets to conservation, such as distribution of Indigenous lands and cultural diversity, and threats to carnivores, such as drought risks and exposure to urbanization or&nbsp;agriculture. It highlights some anthropic factors that are helping conservation efforts. For example, customary laws and traditional ceremonies of the Nharira community in central Zimbabwe include biodiversity protection.



“The blanket inclusion of human density as inherently and exclusively an environmental stressor is not accurate,” the authors noted. “By seeking, incorporating, and respecting traditional ecological knowledge of people in places, conservation can progress to a more inclusive practice and promote species ranges under varying global change scenarios.”



According to Harris, more work needs to be done to fill out the full extent of variables distributed across species ranges – an idea she calls textured range maps. She noted that such efforts can complement existing frameworks such as the IUCN Red List. She said their model will be used for a global carnivore assessment, and she hopes other researchers will apply similar approaches to study different groups of conservation interest, such as primates and amphibians around the world. “It will allow us to set a very explicit agenda around conservation strategy."



The study was co-authored by YSE doctoral student Siria Gámez; Asia Murphy, postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz; Aalayna R. Green, doctoral student in natural resources at Cornell University; Daniel M. Mwamidi, doctoral student at the Institution of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona; and Gabriela C. Nunez-Mir, assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago.



“I’m very proud of the collaborators and the partners involved in this work who bring different expertise and experiences,” said Harris, noting the team of all Black and Latina scientists. “We are helping to change the narrative of who gets to ask the questions&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:bosman@truewan.co.za">Alison Bosman</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

African carnivores face range losses in the future

The larger African carnivores, such as lions, leopards and cheetahs,...

According to a new study led by the <a href="https://www.exeter.ac.uk/">University of Exeter</a>, the structure of family groups – defined in terms of “relatedness,” or the strength of genetic links to members of a social group - gives <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivalry-has-helped-drive-intelligence-among-animals/">animals</a> incentives to help or harm their social group as they age. The experts found that, when living in a group of close genetic relatives, it is in an animal’s best interest to behave in ways helping the whole group. By contrast, when living among less related, or unrelated individuals, the best strategy for individual animals often appears to be selfish or even harmful behavior.



“We wanted to know how an individual’s relatedness to their group changes as they age, and what consequences this might have for behavior,” said study lead author Sam Ellis, a research fellow in Animal Behavior at Exeter.



“We made a model to predict these changes and then tested it using data on banded mongooses, chimpanzees, badgers, killer whales, spotted hyenas, rhesus macaques, and yellow baboons. Our model fitted the real data. This is exciting is because it allows us to make predictions about how and why social behaviors can change with age.”



For instance, while male and female killer whales both remain in the same group as their mothers, with females thus having a growing number of close relatives around them as they age, female spotted hyenas usually live among fewer close relatives as time passes – features which structure these animals’ behavior towards their group members.



“Across a wide range of species, we see age-related changes in helping and harming behavior which can also differ between males and females,” explained study co-author Darren Croft, an expert in Social Evolution at the <a href="https://www.leeds.ac.uk/">University of Leeds</a>.



“Our new work shows that understanding how relatedness to the family group changes with age is key in understanding how the incentives to help or harm the group changes across the lifespan, which can potentially explain these differences across species and between the sexes.”



“This research opens the door for future studies by providing testable predictions for how patterns of helping and harming will change across the lifespan and we eagerly anticipate new work testing these predictions,” he concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01872-2">Nature Ecology and Evolution</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Genetic ties influence the social behavior of aging animals

Since <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-change-fungal-diseases/">fungal diseases</a> in human populations are on the rise, it is important for health authorities to know where these pathogens come from. A new study led by the <a href="https://www.unm.edu/">University of New Mexico</a> (UNM) has revealed that small mammals like rodents could act as reservoirs, agents of dispersal, and incubators of fungal pathogens.



“We wanted to understand if the fungal spores of respiratory pathogens reside in soils because they feed on dead and decaying plant matter, or if they are instead living within small animals and their spores are released into the soil after the rodents die,” said study lead author Paris Salazar-Hamm, a postdoctoral fellow in Microbiology at UNM.



“Our analysis, which specifically focused on lung pathogens that cause disease in humans, detected a wide range of fungi in the lung tissues of small mammals. We found that many of the rodents we sampled from areas in the Southwestern US were harboring the type of fungi that can cause lung infections in humans, such as the fungus that leads to Valley Fever, a disease that typically causes flu-like symptoms and can be life threatening.”



The scientists used next-generation sequencing – a method that allows for a quick detection and assessment of a wide number of fungal species – to analyze fungal DNA in rodent lung tissues from museum specimens. The investigation detected the fungus&nbsp;Coccidioides (the cause of Valley Fever) in the lung tissues of small rodents from Kern County, California, and Cochise and Maricopa Counties, Arizona - areas which have high rates of this disease – as well as from Catron, Sierra, and Socorro Counties in New Mexico, where this fungus has not been detected before.



“Current forecasts of the distribution of&nbsp;Coccidioides, based on climate and soil conditions, predict that Valley Fever will expand substantially northward and eastward over the next century as a result of climate change impacting environmental conditions. Our results will inform these modeling efforts by adding valuable information about animals as reservoirs for pathogens,” Dr. Salazar-Hamm said.



Future research is needed to assess the health of the host animals and clarify how this might impact the spread and virulence of the diseases.&nbsp;



“We were not able to assess the health of the mammalian hosts from which the lung tissues were acquired. Despite the presence of pathogens, it was impossible to say conclusively that there was disease. It would be interesting to further explore the impact of the fungi on the mammals. That effort would require more detailed information about the general health of the animal in question,” she concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ffunb.2022.996574">Frontiers in Fungal Biology</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Rodents are reservoirs for dangerous fungal diseases

Since fungal diseases in human populations are on the rise,...

In 2012, after two years of increased rainfall, California’s most prized ornamental trees – the coral beans – began wilting and falling away, revealing stems which had been hollowed out from the inside by the caterpillars of Erythrina stem borer <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/moths-may-struggle-to-move-in-response-to-climate-change/">moths</a>. Another massive outbreak followed in 2015 after a significant bout of rainfall caused by the Hurricane Dolores and, although the moths have declined afterwards, they have nevertheless continued to be spotted in Southern California each year, indicating that they may be there to stay. Now, a research team led by the <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/">Florida Museum of Natural History</a> has performed a comprehensive DNA analysis of this invasive insect, in order to clarify its origins and find ways of controlling it.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Initially, the scientists believed that the moths invading Southern California’s coral beans may have originated from the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts in Mexico. However, the analyses revealed that Erythrina stem borers have a very wide distribution, from Florida down through the Caribbean and some parts of South America, as well as many regions from Africa and Asia. Thus, since these insects can easily hitch a ride from one place to another while hidden in their host plants, it is possible they could have come from anywhere in the world through the horticultural trade.



By sequencing the DNA of the moths involved in the Southern Californian outbreaks and comparing it to that of moths from different U.S. states and other countries, the researchers found that these moths were most closely related to those living in the Baja Peninsula and Arizona. However, although the moths from North and South America seem almost identical, DNA analysis revealed that the western moths were in fact on a highly different evolutionary trajectory than their eastern relatives.



“The specimens turned out to be western, but to our surprise, all western moths also turned out to be isolated genetically from the rest of the New World,” said study lead author Andrei Sourakov, an entomologist at the Florida Museum. “So we had two entities here: one ranging from Florida to Argentina, and the other one with a distribution in western North America, which we named as a new subspecies.”



According to Sourakov and his colleagues, although it is possible that the insects were unintentionally brought to California by humans, they presence could also result from a natural expansion mediated by regional changes in climate.&nbsp;



Further research is needed to clarify these pests’ origin and patterns of spreading, and to devise ways of controlling them in order to mitigate their impact on crops.



The study is published in the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jen.13082">Journal of Applied Entomology</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

What is the origin of California’s latest invasive insect?

In 2012, after two years of increased rainfall, California’s most...

In intensive agriculture landscapes, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/wild-bees-struggle-to-recover-after-extreme-weather-events/">wild bees</a> are rare due to the low availability of flowers as nectar and pollen sources, leading to significant problems for crop systems such as apple orchards, which are dependent on pollination. However, a new study led by the <a href="https://uni-freiburg.de/en/">University of Freiburg</a> in Germany has found that using a combination of hedges and perennial flower strips could support wild bee diversity and abundance in orchards by providing continuous resources during the entire growing season.&nbsp;



Between 2018 and 2020, the researchers compared flower resources and wild bee populations across 18 apple orchards in the Lake Constance area of Germany, one of the country’s leading apple growing regions. The analysis revealed that orchards housing a combination of hedgerows and perennial flower strips had a larger and more diverse population of bee pollinators. Wild bee species were found to visit flowering hedges from March to June, and perennial flower strips from June to August in the first year of planting, and from April onwards in subsequent years.



“For enhancing wild bees in intensive agricultural landscapes one should provide a network of perennial flower strips and some well-maintained hedges to create a continuous flower offer over the entire growing season,” said study lead author Vivien von Königslöw, an expert in Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology at Freiburg.



“Our results suggest preferential establishment of perennial flower strips rather than annual flower strips because perennial flower strips flower much earlier in the second year of establishment than in the year of sowing and attract different bee communities over the years. Thus, they are more suitable to enhance bee diversity,” she added.&nbsp;



Although hedges and perennial flower strips were found to complement each other, the scientists nevertheless argued that the latter are benefitting wild bees the most, since they are in bloom during periods when other flowers are scarce, while hedges predominantly overlap with apple trees and orchard ground vegetation flowering in spring.



The study is published in the <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.14277">Journal of Applied Ecology</a>.&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Flower strips can boost wild bee populations

In intensive agriculture landscapes, wild bees are rare due to...

Since they produce fruit all year round, fig trees are essential components of tropical forests, ensuring that there is sufficient food for forest birds and mammals, even during periods when other plants do not bear fruit. However, in order to be able to provide this crucial ecological role, fig trees need to be pollinated by fig <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/wasps-are-undervalued-as-predators-and-pollinators/">wasps</a> – a type of insect measuring two to three millimeters in length, living an average of two to three days, and often flying ten or more kilometers to get from a ripe tree to a flowering one.



Unfortunately, a team of researchers led by <a href="https://www.uu.se/">Uppsala University</a> in Sweden has now found that rising temperatures caused by global warming have a negative impact on these important pollinators, significantly reducing their lifespans. The experts collected ripe figs from five different species of fig trees - Ficus obtusifolia, Ficus citrifolia, Ficus popenoei, Ficus insipida, and Ficus maxima – and opened them in the lab. The wasps which had developed inside the figs were kept in climate chambers at different temperatures, and counted every few hours. The analysis revealed that all five pollinator fig wasp species lived shorter lives at higher temperatures.



“We found that all tested pollinator wasp species had a significantly shorter lifespan in 30, 32, 34, and 36°C compared to the current diurnal mean temperature of 26°C. At 36°C pollinator median lifespan decreased to merely 2–10&nbsp;h (6%–19% of their median lifespan at 26°C),” the study authors reported.



Besides rising temperatures shortening the lifespan of the wasps, the massive deforestation across the tropics is increasing the distance between fig trees, which also makes pollination more difficult. Hopefully, fig wasps will be able to avoid higher temperatures by adapting their behavior, such as flying at night when it is cooler.



“Unless wasps can adapt, such a dramatic reduction in lifespan is expected to reduce the number of pollinators that successfully disperse to flowering fig trees, and may therefore jeopardize both fruit set and eventually survival of the mutualism,” the authors concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9311">Ecology and Evolution</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Rising temperatures shorten the lifespan of fig tree pollinators

Since they produce fruit all year round, fig trees are...

<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/sauropod-dinosaurs-lived-only-in-earths-warmer-regions/">Dinosaurs</a> originated in the late Triassic Period (approximately 225 million years ago) and dominated the Earth until their mass extinction 66 million years ago. Towards the end of the 19th century, enough dinosaur fossils have been found for scientists to develop a binary classification system based primarily upon the shape of dinosaurs’ hip bones: saurischians (lizard-hipped) versus ornithischians (bird-hipped).&nbsp;



Although this classification proved reliable enough for all dinosaur remains to slot neatly into one of the two groupings, more recent studies argued that bird-hipped and lizard-hipped dinosaurs most likely evolved from a common ancestor, thus questioning the utility and reliability of the previous classification. Now, a research team led by the <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/">University of Cambridge</a> and the <a href="https://www.ufsm.br/">Federal University of Santa Maria</a> in Brazil has conducted a new analysis of the origins of bird-hipped dinosaurs and discovered that they probably evolved from a group of animals known as silesaurians, which were first identified two decades ago, and had some of the features of saurischians.&nbsp;



Currently, there is a gap of over 25 million years in the fossil record, making it difficult to identify the origins of the ornithischians. “It seemed to be that they originated with all other dinosaurs in the Late Triassic but exhibited a unique set of features that could not be fitted into an evolutionary succession from their dinosaur cousins,” said study lead author David Norman, a Cambridge paleontologist. “It was as if they just suddenly appeared out of nowhere.”



However, according to Professor Norman and his colleagues, the discovery of the remains of several rather unusual Late Triassic dinosaur-like animals called silesaurians could potentially help fill this gap. While these creatures had long slender legs and hip bones similar to those of saurischians, they had a&nbsp;toothless, beak-like region at the front of their lower jaws not unlike the predentary structure found in ornithischians.&nbsp;



“Silesaurians progressively modified their anatomy during the Late Triassic, so that they come to resemble ornithischians,” said Professor Norman. “We have been able to trace this transition through the development of the toothless beak, the development of leaf-shaped coarse-edged teeth typical of those seen in the herbivorous ornithischians, modifications to the shoulder bones, changes in the proportions of the pelvic bones, and finally a restructuring of the muscle attachment areas on the hind legs.”



These findings suggest that ornithischians emerged in the Late Triassic in the guise of silesaurs which gradually re-arranged their anatomy until recognizable&nbsp;ornithischians had evolved by the beginning of the Jurassic Period. Interestingly though, these earliest ornithischians from the Late Triassic retained the saurischian hip construction.



“So, the very earliest ornithischians were, technically, saurischian,” Professor Norman concluded. “From a taxonomic perspective, classifying silesaurs as early ornithischians seems counterintuitive. But, taking a Darwinian perspective, the unique anatomical characteristics of ornithischians&nbsp;had&nbsp;to evolve from somewhere, and where better than from their nearest relatives: their saurischian cousins!”



The study is published in the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac062">Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society</a>.&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer&nbsp;&nbsp;

How did bird-hipped dinosaurs evolve?

Dinosaurs originated in the late Triassic Period (approximately 225 million...

Narwhals (Monodon monoceros) are a type of small whale that inhabit the Arctic Ocean. Also known as the unicorns of the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/extreme-marine-heatwave-persists-in-the-mediterranean-sea/">sea</a>, narwhals are mysterious creatures. However, researchers with <a href="https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/">Hokkaido University</a> and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources have begun to uncover some of their secrets.



The experts analyzed 83 days' worth of data from a satellite-tagged animal to study the whale's daily diving behaviors. Prior to this study, scientists believed that narwhal diving and surface resting behavior was irregular.



"While animal-borne ocean sensors continue to advance and collect more data, there is a lack of adequate methods to analyze records of irregular behavior," said study first author Evgeny A. Podolskiy.



However, this idea was abandoned when a new method of analysis was used. The researchers applied mathematical equations of the chaos theory to the movements and patterns that were previously difficult to detect.



"Our approach is relatively simple to implement and can map and label long term data, identifying differences between the behavior of individual animals and different species, and also detecting perturbations in behavior caused by changing influences," explained the study authors.



The researchers found that the tagged whale would rest close to the ocean surface mid-day, but when they did dive during that period, the dives were very deep. At dusk, the narwhal would take shallower dives, but these dives were more intense, perhaps due to hunting squid. The experts also noticed that more sea ice restrictions seemed to compel more extreme diving.&nbsp;



The narwhal is a charismatic species but also one of the most vulnerable to our changing climate since it depends on sea ice. As the ice melts, they become more exposed to the open ocean. Consequently, there is increased conflict with humans via hunting and oil extraction. Also, the opening of sea ice allows the natural migration of predators such as orcas deeper into the arctic.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The authors hope this study will encourage other scientists to use the methods developed in this research to assist in narwhal preservation. The chaos theory could also be applied to other endangered animals in the Arctic.



The study appears in the journal <a href="https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/blog/clarifying-the-chaos-of-narwhal-behavior/">PLOS Computational Biology</a>.



Image Credit: Carsten Egevang



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By <a href="mailto:nire518@gmail.com">Erin Moody </a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Chaos theory may help protect narwhals

Narwhals (Monodon monoceros) are a type of small whale that...

There are ideas about what makes an ideal candidate for urban wildlife. According to Lauren Stanton from UC Berkeley, several cognitive abilities have been proposed as particularly important for urban <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/predicting-disease-transmission-between-wildlife-and-humans/">wildlife</a>, including adaptability.&nbsp;



Few studies have looked directly at the abilities of one consummate urban animal - the raccoon. Staton teamed up with Sarah Benson-Amram at the University of Wyoming and other researchers across the US to determine what personality traits best served urban raccoons.&nbsp;



"We used live traps baited with cat food to humanely capture raccoons living in the city of Laramie, Wyoming," said Stanton.



The animals were then moved to a lab where they were tagged with microchips and tested to see if they were more docile or impulsive. The team counted the number of times a raccoon was caught as a further sign of compulsiveness. After 204 raccoons were tagged in four years, the research progressed.&nbsp;



Small raccoon-sized boxes were placed in the neighborhoods. The boxes were fitted with two buttons: one that dispensed dog treats and one that did not. The raccoons soon learned the trick to get themselves some treats. When most of the animals learned, the buttons were switched to see how quickly the raccoons would relearn. Overall, 19 raccoons learned to push the button the first time and 17 relearned to switch buttons.



Initially, the more impulsive and young animals were the first to explore the boxes - but older, less impulsive adults learned the buttons quicker and were especially good at relearning when the buttons were switched. This suggests a potential relationship between emotional reactivity and cognitive ability in raccoons, explained Stanton.



In the laboratory, animals seemed to learn faster. This was likely because there were more distractions and interruptions during testing in the natural conditions, noted Stanton.&nbsp;



The researchers hope that their study helps wildlife managers understand that it’s not the compulsive raccoons that can be the most nuisance but instead the docile animals.&nbsp;



The research is published in the <a href="https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.243726">Journal of Experimental Biology</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:zachfitzner@yahoo.com">Zach Fitzner</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Docile raccoons are the most clever criminals

There are ideas about what makes an ideal candidate for...

Scientists have long known that land mammals, such as horses, experience “pulses” in their blood while galloping, as blood pressure inside the body fluctuates on every stride. Now, a team of researchers from the <a href="https://www.ubc.ca/">University of British Columbia</a> (UBC) has found that the same phenomenon occurs also in marine mammals that swim with dorso-ventral movements, such as <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/great-whales-will-drift-southward-due-to-climate-change/">whales</a>, but that the mechanism that protects them from brain damage during these pulses is different from that employed by terrestrial animals.



In all mammals, blood pressure is higher in the arteries exiting the heart than in veins. This difference in pressure drives the blood flow through the body and the brain. However, locomotion often causes spikes in pressure, or “pulses” to the brain, which can cause significant damage. In order to avoid such problems, animals evolved different ways of compensating for such differences in pressure between the blood entering and exiting the brain. Horses, for instance, deal with these pulses by breathing in and out. But how do whales manage to avoid brain damage?



“If cetaceans can’t use their respiratory system to moderate pressure pulses, they must have found another way to deal with the problem,” said study lead author Margo Lillie, a research associate emerita in Zoology at UBC.



By collecting biochemical parameters from 11 whale species, and using a computer model to analyze the data, the scientists found that special blood vessels in whale brains and spines - known as “retia mirabilia,” or “wonderful net”- may protect them from the damage caused by pulses occurring while they swim.



According to the researchers, the retia uses a “pulse-transfer” mechanism to ensure there is no difference in blood pressure in the whales’ brain during movement. Thus, rather than dampening the pulses occurring in the blood, the retia transfers them from the arterial blood entering the brain to the venous blood exiting it, while keeping the same amplitude or strength of the pulse in order to avoid differences in pressure in the brain itself.



“Our hypothesis that swimming generates internal pressure pulses is new, and our model supports our prediction that locomotion-generated pressure pulses can be synchronized by a pulse transfer mechanism that reduces the pulsatility of resulting flow by up to 97 percent,”&nbsp;explained study senior author Robert Shadwick, a professor emeritus of Zoology at UBC.



“Understanding how the thorax responds to water pressures at depth and how lungs influence vascular pressures would be an important next step,” added study co-author Dr. Wayne Vogl, a professor of Cellular and Physiological Sciences at UBC. “Of course, direct measurements of blood pressure and flow in the brain would be invaluable, but not technically possible at this time.”



The study is published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abn3315">Science</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer&nbsp;&nbsp;

How do whales avoid brain damage while swimming?

Scientists have long known that land mammals, such as horses,...

Shallow reefs and the diverse creatures that inhabit them are changing due to rising <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-change-may-be-the-oceans-biggest-enemy/">ocean</a> temperatures. Researchers in Australia have been tracking these changes for over a decade. Their findings illustrate how warming waters impact tropical and temperate reef fish communities differently.



“Reefs provide a ton of benefits to people, from food, livelihoods, recreation, physical protection from storms, and I dare say even happiness and inspiration,” said study lead author Rick Stuart-Smith, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania.&nbsp;



“We specifically considered the fishes that live on reefs, as these are important for many of those aspects, and also help maintain the natural ecological function of the reefs.”



The Reef Life Survey was created by the authors to collect data to better understand how Australia’s reefs are changing. For this study, the survey data was combined with two reef monitoring programs amongst the longest running in the world.&nbsp;



“The combination of these datasets provided a more comprehensive picture of what is happening on reefs than would be imaginable for any other continent.” said Stuart-Smith.



The research teams looked at impacts such as habitat change, coral bleaching and temperature change and found that impacts varied depending on location. Fish on temperate and subtropical reefs showed signs of temperature change, while tropical reef fish were more affected by habitat change.&nbsp;



The experts also examined how a loss of coral and kelp resulted in less unique fish populations. Northeastern Australia showed evidence of habitat degradation leading to fish populations of generalist species, rather than niche species adapted to specific habitats.



The research team is hopeful for more coordinated local research to evaluate global trends.&nbsp;



“Climate change clearly has a huge impact on marine biodiversity, with changes we observed around the Australian continent over short time scales indicating that much larger changes are likely over the next half century as ocean warming progresses,” wrote the researchers.



The study is published by Cell Press in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.067">Current Biology</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:katherinebucko@gmail.com">Katherine Bucko</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Reef fish populations are altered by rising temperatures

Shallow reefs and the diverse creatures that inhabit them are...

<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/stress-has-an-odor-and-dogs-can-smell-it-on-us/">Dogs</a> and humans have a unique bond that goes back thousands of years, and humans have spent hundreds of years trying to figure out how this bond developed and why it's so strong. A study published in <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274353#sec021">PLOS ONE</a> delved into another element of this special bond. The researchers wanted to know the specific behavioral traits dog owners found important in building a bond with their pets.&nbsp;



The experts wish to use this information in the future to program autonomous dog-like robots to mimic these desired behaviors to help cure loneliness. The researchers surveyed 153 dog owners, asking them open-ended questions about what dog behaviors they thought supported their bond with their pets.



Overall, the owners felt that attunement, communication, consistency, predictability, physical affection, positivity, enthusiasm, proximity, and shared activities were important in building and maintaining social bonds. Some dog behaviors the participants deemed meaningful were nudging and checking in on the owner during walks.&nbsp;



By including these behaviors in autonomous robot programming, the researchers believe that robots could, one day, provide the same mental health benefits that we currently get from dogs. They hope future studies will explore how people interact with dog-like robots and what kind of effect they have on human mental health.



&nbsp;Also, since our relationships with dogs are varied, they want to look at how people with different backgrounds and demographics respond to other dog-like behavior in robots.&nbsp;



"Using a qualitative approach enabled us to gain a deep and nuanced understanding of the things people find so endearing about our canine companions," wrote the study authors. "While it won't be easy to model most of these behaviors on robots, this work offers new and exciting insights for those working to develop pet-like technologies."



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.



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By <a href="mailto:nire518@gmail.com">Erin Moody </a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Dog-human bond helps guide social robot programming

Dogs and humans have a unique bond that goes back...

species in Bulinidae