Wildlife service withdraws request for approval to dump rat poison on Farallon Islands

JULY 11, 2019

by Laura Newberry, Rosanna Xia

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday withdrew its request that the California Coastal Commission sanction its controversial mouse eradication proposal on the Farallon Islands.

Following nearly two hours of testimony from the federal agency and conservationists, several commissioners seemed poised to vote against the project, which would involve scattering 1.5 tons of rat poison pellets over the islands, which lie just 27 miles from the San Francisco coast.

"We haven't been convinced this is the best and only way to go," said Commission Chair Dayna Bochco.

Fish and wildlife biologists say they must drop a powerful rodenticide on the islands in order to kill tens of thousands of invasive house mice they say are wreaking havoc on a fragile ecosystem.

The federal government does not require the express permission of the Coastal Commission in order to go ahead with its plan. However, the body's approval would help bolster public supportand potentially stave off litigation.

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To see how invading predators change an ecosystem, watch the prey, say researchers

Date:  June 5, 2019

Source:  Princeton University

Invading predators can devastate an ecosystem. In fact, a leading cause of extinction is the introduction of predators into an isolated system like an island or a lake. The destruction is usually blamed on the predator's eating choices, but sometimes the key lies in the prey animals' responses, according to an international team of researchers led by Princeton's Robert Pringle.

"You really can't understand predator-prey interactions -- or how predators will affect biodiversity and ecosystems -- without understanding the behavior of the prey," said Pringle, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "The ways in which prey change their behavior to avoid getting eaten is a hard thing to predict, but without understanding that, you can't predict anything else. Most theory in ecology simply assumes that predators eat prey, end of story. The real world is more complicated. But it's not so complicated that we can't get to the bottom of it."

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Sighting of sperm whales in Arctic a sign of changing ecosystem, say scientists

Rare sighting in the Canadian Arctic as a growing number of species expand their range into warming waters

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

Mon 5 Nov 2018 17.03 GMTLast modified on Mon 5 Nov 2018 20.40 GMT

A rare sighting of sperm whales in the Canadian Arctic is the latest sign of a quickly changing ecosystem, say scientists, as a growing number of species expand their range into warming Arctic waters.

Brandon Laforest, a marine biologist with the World Wildlife Fund, and guide Titus Allooloo were working on a project monitoring the effect of marine traffic on the region’s narwhal population when they spotted the pair of large whales just outside Pond Inlet, a community at the northern tip of Baffin Island in September.

Video of the incident, released at the end of October, captures the second known sighting of sperm whales in the region. In 2014, hunters from Pond Inlet spotted them in the area.

At first, Allooloo and Laforest thought the dark shapes in the water were killer whales – another species that has become a frequent visitor to the waters as temperatures creep up. But the distinct shape of the dorsal fin surprised Allooloo – a veteran hunter.

“They’re not known by us, we don’t know too much about them,” Allooloo told the CBC.

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Limpets under threat due to rise in antidepressant use, scientists warn

Henry Bodkin 

8 OCTOBER 2018 • 6:02PM

Limpets are being killed due to the rise in antidepressant use which means they struggle to cling onto rocks, scientists have warned.

A new study argues that aquatic creatures in and around the UK are now “bathing in a soup” of the drugs after prescription rates doubled in the last ten years.

Experts have called for doctors to consider the effect on the environment before offering medication such as Prozac, saying its presence in the ecosystem can affect everything from a creatures’ growth and shape to its movement and feeding habits.

They also point to research indicating that antidepressants in waste water have caused shrimps to swim towards light, making them more likely to be eaten by predators.

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Krill fishing poses serious threat to Antarctic ecosystem, report warns

Greenpeace finds industrial fishing taking place in the feeding grounds of whales and penguins, with vessels involved in oil spills and accidents

Matthew Taylor

Tue 13 Mar 2018 08.01 GMTLast modified on Tue 13 Mar 2018 10.13 GMT

Industrial fishing for krill in the pristine waters around Antarctica is threatening the future of one of the world’s last great wildernesses, according to a new report.

The study by Greenpeace analysed the movements of krill fishing vessels in the region and found they were increasingly operating “in the immediate vicinity of penguin colonies and whale feeding grounds”.

It also highlights incidents of fishing boats being involved in groundings, oil spills and accidents, which it said posed a serious threat to the Antarctic ecosystem.

The report, published on Tuesday, comes amid growing concern about the impact of fishing and climate change on the Antarctic. A global campaign has been launched to create a network of ocean sanctuaries to protect the seas in the region and Greenpeace is calling for an immediate halt to fishing in areas being considered for sanctuary status.

Frida Bengtsson, from Greenpeace’s Protect the Antarctic campaign, said: “If the krill industry wants to show it’s a responsible player, then it should be voluntarily getting out of any area which is being proposed as an ocean sanctuary, and should instead be backing the protection of these huge swaths of the Antarctic.”

Last month a study found a combination of climate change and industrial-scale fishing is hitting the krill population, with a potentially disastrous impact on larger predators.

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Dinosaur dung fertilizes planet, new research shows

Date: October 16, 2017

Source: Northern Arizona University

Whether it started with exhibits at the Natural History Museum or fun-terrified screams watching Jurassic Park, humans have always been awestruck by dinosaurs.

But little is known about what, if any, role dinosaurs and other large animals like mammoths or elephants play in ecosystem functioning. What would the world be like if they never existed?

Christopher Doughty, faculty member in the School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University, asks that question often. He has been studying large animals for more than 10 years, specifically how these animals have increased the planet's fertility.

Read more  

Big-game jitters: Coyotes no match for wolves' hunting prowess

Eastern coyote lacks the chops to replace wolves in the ecosystem

Date: March 23, 2017

Source: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

It may have replaced the dwindling eastern wolf atop many food chains, but the eastern coyote lacks the chops to become the big-game hunter of an ecosystem, new research led by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln ecologist shows.

Eastern wolves once roamed forests along the Atlantic coast, preying on moose, white-tailed deer and other hoofed mammals collectively known as ungulates. As the wolf population plummeted via the rifle and the trap, however, the eastern coyote inherited the status of apex predator in those habitats.

But a study from John Benson and colleagues provides evidence that the eastern coyote hunts moose and other large prey far less frequently than does the eastern wolf -- instead preferring to attack smaller game or scavenge human leftovers.

The findings help resolve long-standing questions about whether eastern coyotes have filled the ecological niche left vacant when the eastern wolf became threatened, Benson said.

"Wolves rely on large prey to survive," said Benson, assistant professor of vertebrate ecology who conducted the research as a doctoral student at Trent University. "But the smaller size of coyotes appears to give them dietary flexibility to survive on a wider variety of food and prey sizes, making them less predictable predators of large prey.

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Competitors can pose more of a threat than predators

Date: November 27, 2015

Source: EAWAG: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

When the biodiversity of an ecosystem is reduced by invasive species, competition for food plays a more important role than has previously been supposed. This was the conclusion of research conducted by Eawag and Bern University scientists on cichlid species in Lake Victoria, which suffered mass extinction following the introduction of the fish-eating Nile perch in the 1950s. The study also demonstrates the threat which rapid environmental changes pose to highly specialized species.

Although an evolutionary innovation can open up new ecological niches, traits which are essentially beneficial can put species at a disadvantage in the context of rapid environmental changes. The costs of specialization are highlighted in an article published this week in Science on fish-eating cichlids in Lake Victoria which became extinct following the proliferation of the Nile perch, introduced around 60 years ago.

In the article, the evolutionary and fish biologists Matt McGee and Ole Seehausen report that, because of a specialized jaw structure, fish-eating cichlids in Africa's largest lake take a long time to swallow their prey and are thus no match for competitors that can feed much more rapidly.

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Government takes action against the giant goldfish clogging up Canada's lakes and rivers

Goldfish released from domestic fish tanks are growing to gargantuan sizes, and causing problems for Alberta's fragile ecosystem

DOUG BOLTON

Thursday 25 June 2015

Giant goldfish released from domestic fish tanks are multiplying like rabbits in the ponds and lakes of Alberta, Canada, and the local government has been forced to take steps to prevent them spreading further.

Some of the rogue fish are growing to the size of dinner plates, and they're causing huge problems for the delicate native ecosystem.

The problem stems from people releasing their pet goldfish into Alberta's streams and lakes once they get sick of taking care of them.

Once in the wild, the fish can survive Alberta's harsh winters and grow to huge sizes. Since they have no natural predators in the province, they can out-compete native fish species for food and other resources and reduce biodiversity in the area.

Kate Wilson, aquatic invasive species coordinator at Alberta Environment and Parks, told CBC Calgary she was surprised at how large some of the fish are, and at the sheer numbers they are finding.

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Specialized species critical for reefs

Date:

September 15, 2014

Source:

ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies

Summary:

Coral reef ecologists fear that reef biodiversity may not provide the level of insurance for ecosystem survival that we once thought. This study found that even in high-diversity systems, such as tropical reefs, functional biodiversity remains highly vulnerable to species loss.

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Salamanders Help Predict Health Of Ecosystems On US Golf Courses - via Herp Digest

April 11, 2014

Study finds that improved turf management techniques help golf course ecosystems succeed.

Currently, there are more than 18,300 golf courses in the US covering over 2.7 million acres. The ecological impacts of golf courses are not always straightforward with popular opinion suggesting that environmentally, golf courses have a negative impact on ecosystems. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have determined that golf courses can offer a viable habitat for stream salamanders, and enhanced management practices may be beneficial to ecosystems within golf courses.

“If you look at the literature on golf courses, historically they get a lot of bad publicity,” said Ray Semlitsch, Curators Professor of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU. “It’s always been thought that course managers not only clear the land, but they add a lot of chemicals to the environment. In terms of maintaining the turf of the golf course, managers use herbicides, insecticides, pesticides and fertilizers. We went into the research study thinking these things were going to be really toxic and really bad to the salamanders. What we found was quite the opposite—golf courses can actually provide a wonderful habitat for salamanders and other organisms where they can survive and thrive.”

The study was conducted on 10 golf courses in the southern Appalachian region of western North Carolina. All courses were within a 30-mile radius of the Highlands Biological Station. Sampling focused on both larvae and adult salamanders in streams that crossed fairways within the golf courses. Water samples were also analyzed for chemicals and adverse substances that might be detrimental to the salamanders located on the courses.

“Surprisingly, we found no change or reduction in the abundance or diversity of salamanders downstream, which is where we expected to find chemical runoff from the upkeep and maintenance of the courses,” Semlitsch said. “Golf courses have an environmental impact when they go in and clear an area; however, because of improved management techniques, we’re seeing no signs of chemical effects around these courses. It implies that the turf science industry is doing a great job at utilizing fairway design techniques, plants that reduce chemicals found in the soil, and other methods to ensure that biodiversity succeeds on the course.”

Semlitsch and his research team, including graduate students, Mark Mackey, Grant Connette and Bill Peterman, suggest that salamander abundance on golf courses and related ecosystems may be enhanced through simple management practices such as retaining woody debris, leaf litter, and restoring the natural buffers between fairways and streams.

“We have this image of pristine and highly manicured fairways such as the ones we see in Augusta, or at Pebble Beach,” Semlitsch said. “However, our research suggests a more natural course that includes streams with leaf litter, sticks and twigs that offer a natural habitat for different species is preferred. Turf and golf course managers are taking note of these practices, and it is making a real ecological difference.”

The study, “Do golf courses reduce the ecological value of headwater streams for salamanders in the southern Appalachian Mountains?” was published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, and was funded by a Highlands Biological Station Fellowship and a United States Golf Association and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Wildlife Links granting program.

European water flea infestation threatens US ecosystem

A clump of spiny water fleas collected from the Lake Superior shoreline. These small predators are eating the bottom out of aquatic food chains in the Upper Midwest. Copyright: Jaime LeDuc

March 2014: A tiny, spikey, water-borne flea that came from Scandanavia and Northern Europe is threatening the ecosystem of a band of inland lakes stretching from eastern Ontario to northern Minnesota and in the cooler Great Lakes in the USA say scientists.

The fleas came over to the States in the 1980s by ships loading ballast in one part of the world and dumping it in another.

The results of this invasion has been catastrophic on planktonic organisms as they can consume between 10 and 20 a day and reports show numbers have dropped by up to 80 per cent, which in turn could have a negative affect on fish. 

Read on

Mass sea star deaths off US west coast puzzle scientists

Starfish have been mysteriously dying by the millions in recent months along the US west coast, worrying biologists who say the sea creatures are key to the marine ecosystem.

Scientists first started noticing the mass deaths in June 2013. Different types of starfish, also known as sea stars, were affected, from wild ones along the coast to those in captivity, according to Jonathan Sleeman, director of the US Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center.

"The two species affected most are Pisaster ochraceus (purple sea star or ochre starfish) and Pycnopodia helianthoides (sunflower sea star)," he wrote in a statement in December.

The sunflower sea star is considered among the largest starfish and can span more than a meter in diameter.

The most commonly observed symptoms are white lesions on the arms of the sea star. The lesions spread rapidly, resulting in the loss of the arm. Within days, the infection consumes the creature's entire body, and it dies.

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More than three quarters of large carnivores now in decline

By Matt McGrath

Environment correspondent, BBC News

The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone national park has been a success for the ecosystem.

Three quarters of the world's big carnivores - including lions, wolves and bears - are in decline, says a new study.

A majority now occupy less than half their former ranges according to data published in the journal, Science.

The loss of this habitat and prey and persecution by humans has created global hotspots of decline.

The researchers say the loss of these species could be extremely damaging for ecosystems the world over.

The authors say that in the developed world, most carnivorous animals have already succumbed to extinction.

When they looked at 31 big meat eaters, they found that they were under increasing pressure in the Amazon, South East Asia, southern and East Africa.

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Snowball Effect of Overfishing Highlighted

Jan. 7, 2014 — Florida State University researchers have spearheaded a major review of fisheries research that examines the domino effect that occurs when too many fish are harvested from one habitat.

The loss of a major species from an ecosystem can have unintended consequences because of the connections between that species and others in the system. Moreover, these changes often occur rapidly and unexpectedly, and are difficult to reverse.

"You don't realize how interdependent species are until it all unravels," said Felicia Coleman, director of the Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory and a co-author on the study.

Read on

New Actors in the Arctic Ecosystem

Dec. 18, 2013 — Biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have for the first time shown that amphipods from the warmer Atlantic are now reproducing in Arctic waters to the west of Spitsbergen. This surprising discovery indicates a possible shift of the Arctic zooplankton community, scientists report in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. The primary victims of this "Atlantification" are likely to be marine birds, fish and whales. The reason is that the migrating amphipods measure around one centimetre, and so are smaller than the respective Arctic species; this makes them less nutritious prey.

Amphipods have a preference which made it easy for AWI biologists to recognise these changes. This is because the sea dwellers, which are classed as zooplankton, would appear to like hiding.

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Problem elephants moved from Laikipia to Meru National Park

9 elephant bulls moved

July 2013. The Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem has the second largest population of elephants in Kenya making it a hotspot for human-elephant conflict. In order to mitigate this conflict, Ol Pejeta initiated an elephant monitoring programme in 2005 to identify habitual fence breakers so that appropriate management interventions could be undertaken. The monitoring is carried out by a skilled elephant tracker armed with GPS, binoculars and camera to check on every fence breakage or crop raid and store data in a specially designed database. Thanks to this system, the habitual fence breakers are well known.

Over the years, different intervention strategies such as collaring, de-tusking and even upgrading the electric boundary fence have been used to control fence breaking and crop raiding elephants within the conservancy. However, these interventions were not always effective as a few individuals continued to break fences and studies were carried out to find out why.

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Climate zones will shift faster as world warms-Accelerating ecosystem change may raise extinction risk. – via Herp Digest

April 22, 2013, Nature Magazine by Amanda Leigh Mascarelli 

Earth's regional climate zones will shift more quickly in response to warming as the globe grows hotter in coming decades, according to a study published online in Nature Climate Change on Sunday1. This is likely to make it harder for species to cope, raising the risk of extinction. 

“If these changes are happening faster and faster, it means that the ecosystems have less and less time to adapt,” says Irina Mahlstein, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, who led the study. 

She and her team sought to determine whether ecosystems might undergo “runaway climate-zone shifts” above a certain temperature threshold, says John Daniel, an atmospheric scientist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder and a co-author of the study. Because many governments have sought to limit warming to less than 2 °C — a goal that seems increasingly out of reach — the study’s authors decided to examine how warming beyond that target might affect the world’s climate zones. But they did not find evidence for a critical threshold; instead, global temperature and the pace of climate shift appeared to increase in lock-step. 

The team combined data from 13 model simulations using global mean temperature and precipitation to estimate past and future regional climate shifts between 1900 and 2098. Under one modelling scenario, the pace of climate-zone change nearly doubles by the end of this century and about one-fifth of Earth’s land area undergoes a climate shift. The study predicts that polar climates will shrink whereas arid regions will expand. Large swathes of Earth will switch from cool summers to hotter summers. And at low latitudes, mountainous regions will shift climate zones earlier than nearby low-altitude areas. 

Moving on 

Previous studies have also examined how ecosystems will shift in a warming world. Research published in Nature in 20092 projected how quickly various types of habitat, such as deserts or tropical regions, might be affected by climate change, and thus how quickly species will have to migrate to keep pace with their preferred habitat. But the new study is the first use climate zones, defined by temperature and precipitation, to analyse the pace of change. 

Alan Townsend, an ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was not involved with the research, says that it does not specifically address how the surrounding geography will affect species’ responses to local climate change, an important limitation. “As climate changes, you’ve got to figure out somewhere else to go, but the problem involves both how fast you have to do that and how far you have to go,” he says. 

But Townsend agrees that faster shifts in regional climate will present big challenges for conservation. “By definition, that’s going to put greater stress on the species that live there, because they’re going to have less time to figure out a new way to make a living.”

Ants Rise With Temperature

Mar. 21, 2013 — Warm nights might be more important than hot days in determining how species respond to climate change. "Rising minimum temperatures may be the best way to predict how climate change will affect an ecosystem," said Robert Warren, assistant professor of biology at SUNY Buffalo State. "Cold extremes that once limited warm-adapted species will disappear in a warming global climate."

Global Change Biology published a study conducted by Warren with Ph.D. candidate Lacy Chick of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. The study shows that the lowest- -- not the highest--temperatures are critical in determining the migration of warmth-loving ants, Aphaenogaster rudis, to higher elevations.

As they migrate, A. rudis--a reddish ant with light-colored legs -- displace Aphaenogaster picea, a dark ant with dark legs. A. picea thrive at temperatures about 2ºC colder than A. rudis can tolerate. Aphaenogaster ants are the dominant woodland seed dispersers in eastern forests. "So it's possible that the displacement of A. picea may affect the spread of seeds produced by early spring ephemerals," said Warren.

By comparing data collected in 1974 to current data, Warren and his team were able to compare the percentage of A. rudis and A. picea at different elevations in the Southern Appalachian Mountains in Georgia. In 1974, A. rudis accounted for less than 60 percent of the two species at 500 meters and less than 20 percent at 700 meters. At 900 meters (nearly 3,000 feet), A. rudis were almost nonexistent.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130321081505.htm

Monster Goldfish Found in Lake Tahoe

Tanya Lewis, LiveScience Staff Writer

Date: 21 February 2013 Time: 02:27 PM ET

A new kind of lake monster has been found, in the depths of Lake Tahoe: gigantic goldfish. Researchers trawling the lake for invasive fish species scooped up a goldfish that was nearly 1.5 feet long and 4.2 pounds.

Gigantic goldfish, like this one held by University of Nevada, Reno, 

researcher Christine Ngai, have been found in the waters of Lake Tahoe.

CREDIT: Heather Segale 

"During these surveys, we've found a nice corner where there's about 15 other goldfish," environmental scientist Sudeep Chandra of the University of Nevada, Reno, told LiveScience. "It's an indication that they were schooling and spawning." The arrival of the fish, which were probably dumped there by aquarium owners, has Chandra worried — goldfish are an invasive species that could interfere with Lake Tahoe's ecosystem.

It's unclear whether the giant fish were introduced as fully grown adults, or while they were still small, Chandra said. But even a small creature can have a big impact, if there are enough of them.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/27309-monster-goldfish-lake-tahoe.html