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Biodiversity

06 Nov 2012: World’s Rarest Whale Species
Identified After New Zealand Beaching

Scientists have confirmed that two whales that washed onto the New Zealand coast two years ago were spade-toothed beaked whales, an enigmatic species so rare that no human is known to have ever seen one alive. Writing in the journal Current Biology, New Zealand and U.S. researchers provide the first full description of the species, which previously was known only from three skull fragments recovered over a 140-year span, the most recent of which was found 26 years ago. When conservation workers initially found the adult whale and her 11-foot male calf on a New Zealand beach in December 2010, they thought they were Gray’s beaked whales, a far more common species. But DNA tests of tissue samples collected from the animals revealed that they were actually spade-toothed beaked whales (Mesoplodon traversii), a species whose males have blade-like tusk teeth, and researchers later exhumed the whales to conduct additional tests.
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05 Nov 2012: China and Russia Block
Proposal to Protect Antarctic Waters

International talks to protect large areas of the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica collapsed last week after several nations, including China, blocked the proposal over concerns about fishing access, according to reports. Representatives from 25 member states — including China, Russia, the U.S., the European Union — gathered in Australia to negotiate plans that would have protected approximately 4 million square kilometers in the Southern Ocean, including provisions that would have banned industrial fishing operations. Some regions would have also been set aside for scientific research into the effects of climate change on polar ecosystems. According to The Australian newspaper, China and Russia were among the nations that rejected the plans. Alex Rogers, a conservation biologist at the University of Oxford, told Nature that the stalled talks reflect a wider “global dichotomy” about how to manage marine resources, with some states looking to impose greater conservation and management policies and others targeting increased exploitation. “Time really is running out on these issues,” he said. “If we don’t get protection in place now, exploitation of these systems will increase.”
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05 Nov 2012: Reduced Snowpacks Allowing
Trees to Invade U.S. Mountain Meadows

Some mountain meadows in the U.S. Northwest are steadily disappearing as the effects of climate change have allowed trees to invade the ecosystemsin recent decades, a new study says. In an analysis of Jefferson Park, a 330-acre subalpine meadow complex in the Oregon Cascades once covered with grasses, shrubs and wildflowers, researchers found that tree occupation increased from 8 percent in 1950 to 35 percent in 2007, a rapid shift they say reflects a wider trend in many areas of the U.S. West. According to scientists, rising temperatures and a reduction in snowpack duration were critical factors in the invasion of mountain hemlocks, saying the extended growing season significantly increased chances of the trees’ survival. “Once trees become fully established, they tend to persist, and seed banks of native grass species disappear fairly quickly,” said Harold Zald, of Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, the lead author of the study published in Landscape Ecology. “The meadows form an important part of forest biodiversity, and when they are gone, they may be gone forever.”
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01 Nov 2012: Family Tree for Birds Reveals
Steady Diversification of Avian Species

A team of scientists has compiled what it calls the most comprehensive “family tree” of birds ever assembled, an evolutionary history that reveals that the world’s avian species have become increasingly biologically diverse in recent geological epochs, challenging the conventional wisdom of biodiversity experts. Using fossil evidence, DNA data, and geographical information collected from across the globe, the researchers categorized each of the 9,993 known bird species into a comprehensive lineage, creating a “full global picture of diversification” in space and time. While other types of species have seen declines in biodiversity as available “niches” become filled, the researchers found that the speciation of birds has actually accelerated over the last 50 million years. “Many parts of the globe have seen a variety of species groups diversify rapidly and recently,” said Walter Jetz, a Yale University biologist and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature. The authors suggest this accelerated rate of diversification may be the result of group-specific adaptations, the opening of new habitats, and the inherent mobility of many bird species that has allowed them migrate to new regions and exploit ecological opportunities.
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31 Oct 2012: U.S. Honeybees Have Developed
Resistance to Antibiotic, Study Says

Honeybees in the U.S. have developed widespread resistance to the antibiotic tetracycline, likely as a result of decades of exposure to preventive antibiotics in domesticated hives, a new study has found. In tests conducted on bees in several countries, scientists from Yale University say they identified eight tetracycline resistance genes in U.S. honeybees that were largely absent in bees found in places where the antibiotics are banned. In the U.S., the use of oxytetracycline — a compound similar to tetracycline — has been common since the 1950s to help prevent outbreaks of “foulbrood,” a bacterial disease that can devastate honeybee hives. “There’s a pattern here, where the U.S. has these genes and the other [countries] don’t,” said Nancy Moran, a lead author of the study published in the journal mBio. The authors warn that the treatment meant to prevent disease and strengthen honeybee hives in the U.S. may have actually weakened the bees’ ability to fight off other pathogens.
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29 Oct 2012: Photos Reveal Finch Species
Long Thought Vanished on Tibetan Plateau

Photos taken in a remote region of the Tibetan Plateau have revealed the existence of a rare species of finch long thought to have vanished. During a trip to Xinjiang, China in June, a French photographer snapped images of what ornithologists believe is a Sillem’s mountain finch (Leucosticte sillemi), a species that previously was known only by two specimens collected from the same region of China, located about 16,400 feet above sea level, in 1929. When the photographer, Yann Muzika, was unable to identify the bird, he sent the photographs to the UK-based Oriental Bird Club (OBC), where editor Krys Kazmierczak immediately thought of the mysterious finch. “The words ‘Sillem’s Mountain Finch’ simply popped into my head, and I sat there for a little while somewhat awestruck,” Kazmierczak wrote to OBC supporters. It wasn’t until 1992 that, based on the two specimens collected in 1929, a Dutch ornithologist determined that the finch represented a distinct species. Ornithologists say additional field research, perhaps including the collection of blood samples for DNA testing, will be required to confirm the bird’s identity.
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24 Oct 2012: Plastic Waste Increasing
On Remote Arctic Seabed, Cameras Reveal

Deep-sea cameras deployed to monitor biodiversity on the Arctic seabed have documented a significant rise in the amount of plastic waste and other litter on the remote sea floors of the Far North, according to a new study. While looking at many thousands of seabed photos taken in 2011 between Greenland and the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, deep-sea expert Melanie Bergmann of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research was struck by the number showing plastic waste. In a detailed analysis of the photographs — which are taken every 30 seconds by a deep-sea observatory reaching depths of 2,500 meters — Bergmann and her colleagues found that while plastic waste was seen in only one percent of photographs taken in 2002, that number had jumped to 2 percent in 2011. Two percent may not seem like a high occurrence, Bergmann said, but the quantities observed in this remote Arctic region were greater than recorded in a deep-sea canyon near Lisbon, Portugal. According to the study, published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, about 70 percent of the plastic litter had come in contact with deep-sea organisms.
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18 Oct 2012: Increased Nutrient Levels
May Drive Collapse of Salt Marsh, Study Says

Increasing levels of nutrients seeping from septic systems and lawn fertilizers may be driving the steady decline of salt marshes that has occurred along the U.S. East coast in recent decades, a new study has found. While scientists had long believed that salt marshes have an unlimited capacity for removing nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, a long-term experiment by researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Mass. found that nutrient enrichment can drive salt-marsh loss. Over nine years, the researchers added amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus to tidal waters flushing through salt marsh in an undeveloped coastal area consistent with the nutrient levels present in developed areas such as Cape Cod, Mass. and Long Island, N.Y. Within a few years, they observed wide cracks in the grassy banks of tidal creeks; eventually, the researchers say, the banks would collapse altogether into the creek. “The long-term effect is conversion of a vegetated marsh into a mudflat, which is a much less productive ecosystem,” said Linda Deegan, an MBL scientist and an author of the study published in Nature.
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16 Oct 2012: Online Atlas Illustrates
Critical Areas for World’s Seabirds

A new online atlas provides the first global inventory of ocean sites critical to the world’s seabirds, a free digital resource that its creators hope will help guide protective policies and the creation of conservation areas globally. The site (www.birdlife.org/datazone/marine), which was created by the group BirdLife International, identifies 3,000 important sites that are critical to seabirds, from penguins to sandpipers, including breeding grounds, foraging areas, and migration routes. These so-called “important bird areas” (IBAs) comprise about 6.2 percent of the world’s oceans, according to BirdLife International. While seabirds are particularly vulnerable to threats because of the great distances they travel across international waters, many conservation groups have cited a lack of data as a reason for inaction in protecting these areas, Ben Lascelles of BirdLife International told Reuters.
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10 Oct 2012: U.S. Supreme Court Refuses
Chevron Challenge of Ecuador Damages

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear Chevron Corp.’s challenge of an $18.2 billion judgment issued by an Ecuadorian court over large-scale damages caused by oil drilling in the Amazon. The Supreme Court decision is the latest development in a long legal battle that led to a ruling last year by an Ecuadorean court that Chevron had to pay the damages for massive oil dumping by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001. Chevron was challenging a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that would have effectively opened the way for worldwide enforcement of the judgment against Chevron. An Ecuadorean court found that an oil consortium run by Texaco dumped billions of gallons of oil and toxic sludge in the Amazon rainforest from 1964 through 1992, badly polluting water supplies and causing health problems among some of the 30,000 plaintiffs in the Lago Ario region. Chevron vowed to continue to fight the Ecuadorean court’s decision, which it called “fraudulent” and tainted by judicial misconduct. Chevron contends that the decision is not enforceable under New York law.
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08 Oct 2012: Indonesian Palm Oil Is
Growing Source of CO2 Emissions

The rapid expansion of palm oil plantations in the world’s tropical regions, particularly Indonesian Borneo, is becoming an increasingly significant source of global carbon emissions, a new study says. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers from Stanford and Yale universities project that the continued expansion of plantations will add more than 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2020 — an amount greater than all of Canada’s current fossil fuel emissions. Much of the expansion in recent decades has occurred in Indonesia, particularly on the island of Borneo, also known as Kalimantan. According to researchers, the loss of forest for palm oil plantations in Kalimantan led to the emission of more than 140 million metric tons of CO2 in 2010 alone, or the equivalent of the annual emissions of 28 million vehicles. About 80 percent of planting leases remained undeveloped in 2010, the study says. If all these leases are developed, more than one-third of Kalimantan’s lowlands outside of protected areas would be covered with palm oil plantations.
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05 Oct 2012: Northern Conifers Are Younger
As a Result of Extreme Climate Shifts

Extreme climate cycles in the Northern Hemisphere over millions of years altered the evolutionary history of the hemisphere’s conifer trees, encouraging the formation of new species that are millions of years younger than their counterparts in the Southern Hemisphere, according to a new study. In an analysis of the fossil remains and genetic makeup of 489 of the world’s roughly 600 living conifer species, scientists found that while the majority of conifers belong to ancient lineages, most of those found in the Northern Hemisphere emerged in just the last 5 million years. Scientists suggest that the migration of trees species and changes to range sizes in response to glacial cycles resulted in isolated populations and the introduction of new species. “Extreme climatic shifts through time may have favored the replacement of older lineages with those better adapted to cooler and drier conditions,” said Andrew Leslie, a Yale researcher and co-author of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the Southern Hemisphere, meanwhile, fragmented habitats and mild, wetter habitats likely helped the older conifers survive with greater diversity.
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02 Oct 2012: Great Barrier Reef Lost
Half of Coral Cover Since 1985, Study Says

The Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral cover in just 27 years, with most of that decline coming as a result of heavy storms, predation by crown-of-thorn starfish, and coral bleaching caused by warming ocean temperatures. In a comprehensive survey of 214 reefs, researchers at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) found that coral cover declined from 28 percent in 1985 to 13.8 percent this year. Intense tropical storms, particularly in the central and southern parts of the reef, have caused about 48 percent of the coral loss, researchers say. An explosion in populations of starfish along the reef caused about 42 percent of the decline; about 10 percent was caused by major bleaching events. Reefs are typically able to regain their coral cover after such disturbances, said Hugh Sweatman, a lead author of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But recovery takes 10-20 years, he noted. The study found efforts to reduce starfish populations could help increase coral cover at a rate of 0.89 percent per year.
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Interview: Using the Internet
To Identify Millions of New Species

Each year, about 18,000 new species of plants and animals are discovered and described by science — a number considered woefully inadequate by entomologist and taxonomist Quentin Wheeler. Along with a group of high-profile colleagues, Wheeler, the founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, is calling for an intensive international effort to discover the estimated 8 to 10 million species that remain unknown. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Wheeler says the time has never been more critical to carry out such a project, considering the rapid rate of biodiversity loss. But he notes that the tools now available to identify all the world’s species are impressive, most importantly the advent of what he calls “cybertaxonomy,” which harnesses the power of the Internet to take three-dimensional pictures of specimens and place millions of pages of taxonomic information online. “Unless we know what species exist,” says Wheeler, “we are at a huge disadvantage to monitor changes in biodiversity.”
Read the interview
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25 Sep 2012: Coral Biodiversity Hotspot
Is Found in Western Indian Ocean

The western Indian Ocean, especially the waters between Madagascar and Africa, contain one of the highest levels of coral diversity worldwide, with 369 coral species identified in a recent study and more still to be identified. Scientists say the western Indian Ocean may contain as much coral biodiversity as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, though not as much as the world’s richest region for corals, the so-called coral triangle in Southeast Asia. Reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, David Obura, a scientist with the Group Coastal Oceans Research and Development in the Indian Ocean, said that 10 percent of the species are found only in the western Indian Ocean. He said the northern end of the Mozambique Channel, between Madagascar and mainland Africa, contains roughly 250 to 300 coral species. Meanwhile, Australian scientists report that water temperatures around the Great Barrier Reef have increased steadily in the last 25 years, in some places rising as much as .5 degrees C. Such increases can contribute to coral bleaching, which can lead to mass coral die-offs.
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Interview: Shining a Light
On Africa’s Elephant Slaughter

With the mass killing of African elephants sharply escalating recently as global prices for ivory have risen, few articles have conveyed the scope and brutality of that trade as vividly as the one written earlier this month by Jeffrey Gettleman, East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Gettleman describes how weeks in the field helped him piece together a picture of an elaborate ivory trade that is fueled largely by Chinese demand and involves elements of the military from the Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda — all of which receive some funding or training from the U.S. government. As Gettleman, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, explains, the decimation of elephant herds is emblematic of a larger problem that plagues Africa’s people and its once-rich natural heritage: state failure. “That’s why so many elephants are getting killed in central Africa because it’s probably the most unstable part of Africa and has huge areas that are just completely lawless,” says Gettleman.
Read the interview
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18 Sep 2012: Explosive Urban Growth
To Put Major Strain on Biodiversity

The world’s urban areas will expand by more than 1.2 million square kilometers by 2030, nearly tripling the area of urban development that existed worldwide in 2000, according to a new study. That development surge, researchers say, will coincide with construction of new roads, buildings, and energy and water systems, causing considerable habitat loss in critical biodiversity hotspots — including many regions that were relatively undisturbed by development only a decade ago. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Yale, Texas A&M, and Boston University predicted that nearly half of that urban expansion will occur in Asia, particularly in China and India. Urban growth will occur fastest in Africa, they say, with a projected six-fold increase in land development compared with 2000. “Given the long life and near irreversibility of infrastructure investments, it will be critical for current urbanization-related policies to consider their lasting impacts,” said Karen Seto, an associate professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and lead author of the study.
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17 Sep 2012: Most Coral Reefs At Risk
Even if Warming Limited to 2 Degrees C

Most of the world’s coral reefs will likely be subject to long-term degradation even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, and as much as one-third of coral reef systems will likely be vulnerable to threats even under the most optimistic climate projections, a new study says. In an analysis of the potential effects of heat stress on coral reef systems under different climate change scenarios, a team of researchers found that most potential outcomes will likely trigger more frequent and intense mass-bleaching events. If global mean temperature increases exceed 2 degrees C, coral reefs “might no longer be prominent coastal ecosystems,” said Katja Frieler, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and lead author of the study, published in Nature Climate Change. Under the most optimistic scenarios — including aggressive climate mitigation and assumptions that coral systems can adapt to warming conditions — one third of the world’s coral systems would still be subject to severe degradation, the study said.
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17 Sep 2012: Forest Mortality in U.S. Declines
As Beetles Run Out of Food, Report Says

Tree deaths caused by insect infestation and disease in the western U.S. declined significantly last year, largely because mountain pine beetles have devoured so many forests that they are running out of food, according to a report by the U.S. Forest Service. Researchers reported that about 6.4 million acres of forest died nationally in 2011, compared with 9.2 million acres in 2010 and a peak mortality of 11.8 million acres in 2009. Scientists say about 60 percent of the mortality was caused by one pest, the mountain pine beetle, a native insect that has decimated lodgepole and ponderosa pine forests across western North America because warmer winters are not killing off beetle larvae. While the researchers say a critical factor in the decline has been a reduced number of available lodgepoles, they say ponderosa pine and high-elevation white bark pine remain at risk. The greatest forest mortality was reported in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. “Native insects and diseases run in cycles, and right now we are grateful the trend is downward,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. He added, however, that forests still face significant threats, including from climate change and new invasive species.
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14 Sep 2012: New Monkey Species
Identified in Remote Region of Congo

A team of scientists has identified a new species of monkey in a remote area in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a discovery that researchers say confirms the remote African region as a biodiversity hotbed. After encountering one of the monkeys in captivity in a village, the researchers observed the animal, known locally as the “lesula,” in the wild and, after conducting DNA tests, confirmed that it is a unique species. Scientists say the new species has a naked face and muzzle, a blond chin, a reddish lower back and tail, and a “brilliant blue” patch of skin in the buttocks and scrotum area. The monkey, which researchers named Cercopithecus lomamiensis, is just the second new species of African monkey identified in the past 28 years. Researchers believe it was likely not identified by scientists earlier because of the remoteness of its 6,500-square-mile range. “If we’re finding new species of primates, then who knows how many new species of small mammals or lizards or insects, just to name a few, might be out there,” said Eric Sargis, a professor at Yale University and one of the co-authors of the study. The findings are published in the journal PLoS ONE.
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Interview: On the Trail of
South Florida’s Python Invaders

Just three decades after the invasive Burmese python became established in southern Florida, scientists believe there may now be tens of thousands of these giant snakes living across an 8,000-square-kilometer area. And python expert Michael Dorcas says they have decimated once-common native species across the region, including deer, bobcats, and raccoons. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Dorcas explains how these pythons became such a problem in South Florida, why their range could expand significantly, and why it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of them. “You can go out and you can find pythons, but you can’t go out and find all the pythons — in any area,” says Dorcas. “They’re very secretive animals. And when you have a landscape that is very vast and inaccessible, it makes it very difficult to find these snakes.”
Read the interview
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11 Sep 2012: Small Forage Fish Species
Worth 20 Percent of Global Fisheries

The world’s forage fish species — small, schooling fish such as herring and sardines that play a key role in the food web in marine ecosystems — represent about 20 percent of the global values of all marine fisheries, according to a new study. In a comprehensive analysis of dozens of food web models from around the planet, scientists from the State University of New York at Stony Brook calculated that these small fish contribute $16.9 billion to global fisheries each year, either as direct catch or as food for larger fish. According to their findings, the direct catch value for forage fish worldwide is $5.6 billion — with the largest market being the Peruvian anchoveta fishery — while the value of fisheries depending on these small fish is about $11.3 billion. “In addition to their value to commercial fishing and other industries that depend on them for their products, forage fish play valuable roles in global ecosystems while they are still in the water,” said Ellen K. Pikitch, co-lead author of the study, published in the journal Fish and Fisheries.
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07 Sep 2012: Key Asian Species Need
Urgent Recovery Plans, Group Says

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has called on Asian nations to work together to save a handful of critically endangered species, including tigers, Asian rhinos, orangutans, Asian vultures, Batagur turtles, and the Mekong giant catfish. Speaking at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress in South Korea, WCS President Christian Samper called on delegates to intensify recovery plans or face the possible extinction of some of these iconic species. The WCS painted a stark portrait of the situation: Only 3,200 Asian tigers remain in the wild, Sumatran and Bornean orangutans are experiencing steep declines, only about 40 Javan rhinos survive, Asian vultures have declined by more than 90 percent across the Indian subcontinent, populations of Mekong giant catfish have declined by more than 80 percent since 1990, and numerous species of Bagatur turtles across Asia are on the brink of extinction because of hunting and harvesting of eggs.
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31 Aug 2012: Method Uses DNA Technology
To Track Marine Life From Water Samples

Danish scientists say they have developed a process to detect the presence of fish and whales in local waters through the DNA analysis of water samples, an innovation that will help researchers more safely monitor biodiversity in the world’s oceans. Using sophisticated DNA sequencing technology, researchers from the University of Copenhagen say they were able to detect DNA from 15 different fish species from a half-liter sample of seawater. According to Philip Francis Thomsen, one of the authors of the study published in the journal PLoS ONE, tests of the water revealed the presence of small and large fish — including common species and species rarely or never recorded by conventional monitoring — in the waters off Denmark. “Cod, herring, eel, plaice, pilchard and many more have all left a DNA trace in the seawater,” he said. The researchers say the use of DNA technology may offer a less invasive way of monitoring marine populations than traditional methods, such as the use of trawls and pots. In addition, such DNA tests could be conducted almost anywhere and on any species, unlike typical monitoring methods that focus mostly on commercial fish species.
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30 Aug 2012: Brazilian Deforestation
Falls Sharply in Past Eight Years

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 77 percent from 2004 to 2011, but carbon emissions did not drop as steeply because of complex processes revealed during on-the-ground studies, scientists say. While analysis of satellite images showed the three-quarters drop in deforestation, researchers said that several factors — including the slow decay of roots and the later burning of wood biomass — meant that carbon emissions from deforestation fell by 57 percent during the same period, according to a study published in the journal Global Change Biology. Another reason for the 20-percent lag in carbon emissions reductions is that logging in recent years has been moving into denser Amazon forests, so even the reduced amount of deforestation is leading to higher carbon emissions, researchers said. U.S. scientists praised their Brazilian colleagues for the sophisticated new techniques used to tease out the differences between reduced deforestation and lagging emissions reductions. “That’s where you’d like the rest of the world to be, where Brazil is,” said Richard Houghton of the Woods Hole Research Center.
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17 Aug 2012: Triage System for Plant Species
Devised Based on Geographic Range

With an increasing number of plant species worldwide facing growing threats, from climate change to invasive species, a team of U.S. scientists has developed a process to more rapidly evaluate those plants facing the greatest risks of extinction. Writing in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, the scientists from the New York Botanical Garden describe a triage method to identify at-risk species based on data from plant research collections and geographic information systems (GIS) technology. According to the scientists, the standard conservation assessment process, developed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — which uses a rigorous process to classify species as “extinct,” “least concern,” “endangered,” and “critically endangered” — is limited because it requires large amounts of data that simply do not exist for most species. While there are 300,000 known plant species, they say, only 15,000 species have been evaluated under the IUCN process. As an alternative, they propose a simpler process that classifies species as either “at risk” or “not at risk” based on the key criterion of the size of its geographical range.
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16 Aug 2012: Ocean Health Index Evaluates
State of Waters Around the Globe

An international team of researchers has released a new tool that evaluates the state of the world’s oceans, a so-called Ocean Health Index that its creators say provides the first comprehensive assessment of the relationship between the planet’s marine regions and human communities. While previous assessments of ocean health were based on the level of “pristineness,” this index is framed in terms of the benefits humans derive from the oceans and the extent to which communities maintain a sustainable marine environment. Using a wide range of criteria — including water quality, marine biodiversity, and the condition of coastal areas — the researchers ranked ocean areas worldwide on a scale from 0 to 100. According to their analysis, published in the journal Nature, the global ocean received an overall score of 60, while scores for individual areas ranged from 36 to 86. The waters around Jarvis Island, near Hawaii, ranked highest; the waters off the West African nation of Sierra Leone ranked lowest.
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15 Aug 2012: Wildlife Vanishing in Brazil’s
Fragmented Atlantic Forest, Study Says

The fragmentation of tropical forests in eastern Brazil as a result of agricultural expansion and other human activities has decimated biodiversity even within the pockets of forest that still remain, a new study has found. Using wildlife surveys and interviews conducted at 196 forest fragments across a 253,000-square-kilometer region inside Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a team of researchers estimated that only about 22 percent of the animals that once inhabited the region are still there — far lower than earlier estimates. According to their findings, published in the journal PLoS ONE, white-lipped peccaries have been “completely wiped out,” while jaguars, lowland tapirs, woolly spider-monkeys and giant anteaters are essentially extinct. The loss of wildlife has even extended to areas where forest canopies are still relatively intact, said Carlos Peres, an ecologist at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study. While the Atlantic Forest once covered more than 1.5 million square kilometers, about 90 percent has been cleared for agriculture, pasture, or urban expansion. Most remaining patches of forest, researchers say, are about the size of a football field.
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14 Aug 2012: Radiation from Fukushima
Caused Butterfly Mutations, Study Says

Radioactive materials emitted during the Fukushima disaster caused physical mutations and genetic damage to butterfly populations living near the nuclear plant, a new study says. In a series of tests, Japanese scientists found that butterflies collected from the Fukushima area about two months after the 2011 accident were more likely to have leg, antennae, and wing shape mutations than those found elsewhere. According to their findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, butterflies found in areas with higher levels of radiation developed much smaller wings and eye irregularities. After breeding these butterflies in a laboratory, researchers found the next generation had numerous abnormalities not seen in the previous generation, including malformed antennae. And adult butterflies collected near Fukushima six months after the initial tests were more than twice as likely to have mutations than those found soon after the accident.
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13 Aug 2012: Shifting Climate Makes Frogs
More Vulnerable to Disease, Study Says

Increasingly unpredictable swings in the weather are making frogs more vulnerable to the deadly chytrid fungus, according to a new study. In a series of tests, scientists at Oakland University in Michigan exposed Cuban treefrogs living under a variety of conditions in laboratory incubators to chytridiomycosis, a highly infectious fungal disease that has decimated amphibian species globally. The scientists found that frogs that were exposed to unpredictable temperature changes were more susceptible to the disease. For example, frogs that were shifted to incubators at a temperature of 15 degrees C (59 degrees F) after spending four weeks at a temperature of 25 C (77 F) were far more likely to suffer infections than those frogs already accustomed to living at 15 C. According to Thomas Rafell, an Oakland University researcher and lead author of the study, the fungus was likely able to adapt faster to the temperature shift because it is smaller and has a shorter generation time than its host. The study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
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