The Great London:
Wildlife

Gaps in our information about biodiversity means we are at risk of focussing our conservation efforts in the wrong places.

New research from Newcastle University, UK, University College London (UCL) and the University of Queensland, Australia, highlights the uncertainty around our global biodiversity data because of the way we record species sightings.

The study explains how a lack of information about a species in a particular location doesn't necessarily mean it's not there and that recording when we don't see something is as important as recording when we do.

Changing the way we record data

Publishing their findings in the journal Biology Letters, the team say we need to change the way we record sightings -- or a lack of them -- so we can better prioritise our conservation efforts in light of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Dr Phil McGowan, one of the study's authors and a Senior Lecturer in Biodiversity and Conservation at Newcastle University, said: "Where there is no recent biodiversity data from an area then we might assume a species is no longer found there, but there could be a number of other possible reasons for this lack of data. It could be that its habitat is inaccessible -- either geographically or due to human activity such as ongoing conflict -- or perhaps it's simply a case that no-one has been looking for it. Unless we know where people have looked for a particular species and not found it then we can't be confident that it's not there."

Galliformes and man

To test the research, the team used the rigorously compiled database of European and Asian Galliformes -- a group of birds which includes the pheasant, grouse and quail.

"Our long-standing love of the Galliformes goes back hundreds of years which means we have records that are likely to be much better than for other groups of animals or plants," explains Dr McGowan.

"Not only have these birds been hunted for food, but their spectacular colours made them valuable as trophies and to stock the private aviaries of the wealthy. In the late 1800s and the turn of the last century, the Galliformes were prized specimens in museum and private collections and today they are still a favourite with bird watchers."

Data absent from 40% of the study area

Analysing 153,150 records dating from 1727 to 2008 and covering an area from the UK to Siberia and down to Indonesia, the team found that after 1980, there was no available data at 40% of the locations where Galliformes had previously been present.

The study suggests two possible scenarios.

Dr Elizabeth Boakes, the study's lead author and a teaching fellow at University College London, said: "We have no evidence of populations existing past 1980 in 40% of our locations. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. One scenario is that populations have been lost from these areas, probably due to hunting or habitat loss. The other scenario is that the species are still locally present but that nobody has been to look for them. Our study shows that which scenario you choose to believe makes a huge difference to measures used in conservation priority-setting such as species richness and geographic range. It's important that we make the right call and that means a big shake up in the way we currently monitor biodiversity. We need to record what we don't see as well as what we do see and we need to be recording across much wider areas."

Meeting international targets

Involving 192 countries and the EU, the Convention on Biological Diversity is dedicated to promoting sustainable development.

The goals include the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity which says we must at least halve and, where feasible, bring close to zero the rate of loss of natural habitats, including forests, and halt extinction of those species we know to be under threat.

"In order to start meeting these goals we must first understand exactly which organisms are close to extinction and need prioritising in order to meet this target," explains Dr McGowan, who is Co-chair of IUCN Species Survival Commission's Policy Subcommittee and a member of its Strategic Conservation Planning Subcommittee.

"The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is a good starting point but as our research shows, it's only as accurate as the data that's been collected. Going forward, we need to make sure we are recording when we've not seen something just as much as when we do and that's where keen and informed members of the public -- such as bird watching groups -- could really help us."

Source: Newcastle University [March 08, 2016]

Using a technique that can tell if a species has passed by from just a sample of water, scientists are developing new ways to assess ecosystems.

All animals shed fragments of DNA as they go about their lives – in faeces, mucous, sperm and eggs, shed skin, hair and, eventually, their carcasses.

These traces of genetic material can persist in the environment for some time – a matter of weeks in water and up to a few centuries in soil. With new, more sensitive DNA amplification and sequencing techniques, scientists can collect and analyse these fragments in water and soil samples and identify individual species that have passed by.

One area where environmental DNA, or eDNA, is finding practical use is in environmental assessments, for example to check whether any protected species are present before construction works are carried out. Already, Defra in the UK have approved the use of eDNA sampling to assess the presence of protected great crested newts in ponds.

Now, in a new partnership between Imperial College London and environmental ecology consultancy Thomson Ecology, scientists are hoping to expand the use of eDNA. They want to create protocols to assess whether different areas are home to key protected species, including crayfish, water voles, otters and reptiles.

As well as looking at key protected species for conservation, the team want to use eDNA for biosecurity, by identifying invasive species. For example, as well as native crayfish, some UK waters have been occupied by invasive American Signal Crayfish, which outcompete the native species and damage the local environment. Early detection of invasive crayfish could mean they are dealt with sooner, and cause less damage.

Ultimately, the researchers hope to be able to use eDNA to profile entire ecosystems, analysing water samples to get a snapshot of all the organisms present in the local environment that have shed some DNA.

Victoria Priestley, who is taking on this task for her PhD thesis in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "I think eDNA surveys represent a sea change in how we approach survey and monitoring of species.

"There is a lot of effort going into eDNA research globally and once it becomes more established, we should be able to assess what species are present in an area much more quickly. Ultimately we should be able to use it to create a clearer and more detailed picture of global biodiversity."

Efficient Environmental Assessments

Currently, species are assessed based on intensive field surveys, requiring taxonomic expertise and often involving tagging animals and repeat visits to a site. However, Professor Vincent Savolainen, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, is developing new protocols for various species.

This is paving the way for much simpler and more cost-effective surveying for environmental assessments. Professor Savolainen said: "This research will contribute to developing new indices to meet goals of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the body that assesses the state of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services it provides to society, in response to requests from decision makers."

Although sequencing techniques have improved dramatically in the last few decades, challenges remain in analysing eDNA. The fragments degrade over time, a process enhanced by temperature, microbes, enzymes and salinity.

The rate that eDNA is 'shed' from species to species and individual to individual also requires more research, as does the role of predators in moving eDNA between sites, and especially how eDNA is distributed in aquatic environments.

However, Priestley is positive that eDNA surveys have a bright future: "There is still some way to go before whole-ecosystem eDNA monitoring is standard practice, but I believe that at least in the near future, eDNA will increasingly be one of the options in the survey toolkit, working alongside traditional methods to obtain the best ecological survey data in the most efficient way."

Positive Partnership

Professor Tom Welton, Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, said partnerships like this one help translate research into real-world applications: "This exciting collaboration demonstrates that research across the whole breadth of natural sciences at Imperial, even on newts, has practical applications to real world problems.

"Our partnership with Thomson Ecology will allow our research to have a positive impact on environmental protection and conservation."

Author: Hayley Dunning | Source: Imperial College London [November 25, 2016]

Killer whales in European waters face extinction due to outlawed but long-lived pollutants that also threaten several species of dolphins, according a study published in the journal >Scientific Reports.

Toxic chemicals known by the acronym PCBs are poisoning these marine mammals, and in some cases severely impeding their ability to reproduce, researchers reported.

Becoming more concentrated as they move up the food chain, PCBs settle into the fatty tissue of top ocean predators.

The deadly compounds—used in manufacturing and construction and banned across the European Union in 1987—can also be passed on to orca and dolphin calves suckling their mothers' milk.

"Few coastal orca populations remain in western European waters," said lead author Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London, noting that those in the Mediterranean and North Sea have already disappeared.

"The ones that do persist are very small and suffering low or zero rates of reproduction."

A community of 36 orcas, or killer whales, off the coast of Portugal—observed by scientists for decades—has not produced any offspring in more than ten years, the study reported.

An even smaller grouping near Scotland "will go extinct," Jepson told journalists by phone.

The death of a female known as Lulu, whose carcass was discovered on the Scottish island of Tiree last week, reduced this pod from nine to eight.

As well as direct observation, biopsies of individuals in the wild have also shown that these orca populations are not reproducing.

When female killer whales give birth, they transfer about 90 percent of the PCBs accumulated in their bodies—sometimes over decades—to their calves, purging themselves but poisoning their offspring.

Recent biopsies, however, revealed that all the females have the same level of PCB toxins in their system as males, evidence that they had not produced calves in the preceding years.

The toxic effect of PCBs on marine mammals was known, but this is the first overview—based on tissue samples from more than 1,000 stranded and biopsied whales, dolphins and orcas—of the extent of the damage.

Climbing the food chain

PCBs were widely used in manufacturing electrical equipment, paints and flame retardants. Designed to withstand weathering, they were also added to sealants used in buildings.

Europe produced some 300,000 tonnes of the compound from 1954 to 1984, and 90 percent of it has yet to be destroyed or safely stored away.

PCBs—which do not dissolve in water—reach the ocean via several routes.

"It is leaching from landfills into rivers and estuaries, and eventually into the marine environment," Jepson explained.

Sediment dredging to a depth of ten metres (30 feet) along shipping lanes in industrial ports brings the deadly chemicals to the surface.

From there, they gradually climb the food chain, becoming more toxic along the way: from bottom-feeding mollusks to crabs to small fish to the bigger fish eaten by orcas, dolphins and porpoises.

Further north, a healthier population of several thousand orcas living in waters near Iceland and northern Norway provide additional evidence that PCBs are, in fact, causing the decline of their cousins to the south.

Whereas the southern killer whales eat large fish and mammals, such as seals, the Arctic orcas subsist almost exclusively on herring.

Because herring eat plankton, they are outside the food chain along which PCBs climb, explaining why the northern orcas have ten times less PCB in their fatty tissue.

Disposing of land-based PCBs—made to resist heat, chemical attack and degradation—is difficult, Jepson said.

"They were designed to last a very long time, so it is incredibly hard to destroy them."

Author: Marlowe Hood | Source: AFP [Janaury 14, 2016]

The appearance of infectious diseases in new places and new hosts, such as West Nile virus and Ebola, is a predictable result of climate change, says a noted zoologist affiliated with the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In an article published online today in conjunction with a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Daniel Brooks warns that humans can expect more such illnesses to emerge in the future, as climate change shifts habitats and brings wildlife, crops, livestock, and humans into contact with pathogens to which they are susceptible but to which they have never been exposed before.

"It's not that there's going to be one 'Andromeda Strain' that will wipe everybody out on the planet," Brooks said, referring to the 1971 science fiction film about a deadly pathogen. "There are going to be a lot of localized outbreaks putting pressure on medical and veterinary health systems. It will be the death of a thousand cuts."

Brooks and his co-author, Eric Hoberg, a zoologist with the U.S. National Parasite Collection of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, have personally observed how climate change has affected very different ecosystems. During his career, Brooks has focused primarily on parasites in the tropics, while Hoberg has worked primarily in Arctic regions.

Each has observed the arrival of species that hadn't previously lived in that area and the departure of others, Brooks said.

"Over the last 30 years, the places we've been working have been heavily impacted by climate change," Brooks said in an interview last week. "Even though I was in the tropics and he was in the Arctic, we could see something was happening." Changes in habitat mean animals are exposed to new parasites and pathogens.

For example, Brooks said, after humans hunted capuchin and spider monkeys out of existence in some regions of Costa Rica, their parasites immediately switched to howler monkeys, where they persist today. Some lungworms in recent years have moved northward and shifted hosts from caribou to muskoxen in the Canadian Arctic.

But for more than 100 years, scientists have assumed parasites don't quickly jump from one species to another because of the way parasites and hosts co-evolve.

Brooks calls it the "parasite paradox." Over time, hosts and pathogens become more tightly adapted to one another. According to previous theories, this should make emerging diseases rare, because they have to wait for the right random mutation to occur.

However, such jumps happen more quickly than anticipated. Even pathogens that are highly adapted to one host are able to shift to new ones under the right circumstances.

Brooks and Hoberg call for a "fundamental conceptual shift" recognizing that pathogens retain ancestral genetic capabilities allowing them to acquire new hosts quickly.

"Even though a parasite might have a very specialized relationship with one particular host in one particular place, there are other hosts that may be as susceptible," Brooks said.

In fact, the new hosts are more susceptible to infection and get sicker from it, Brooks said, because they haven't yet developed resistance.

Though resistance can evolve fairly rapidly, this only changes the emergent pathogen from an acute to a chronic disease problem, Brooks adds.

"West Nile Virus is a good example - no longer an acute problem for humans or wildlife in North America, it nonetheless is hhere to stay," he said.

The answer, Brooks said, is for greater collaboration between the public and veterinary health communities and the "museum" community - the biologists who study and classify life forms and how they evolve.

In addition to treating human cases of an emerging disease and developing a vaccine for it, he said, scientists need to learn which non-human species carry the pathogen.

Knowing the geographic distribution and the behavior of the non-human reservoirs of the pathogen could lead to public health strategies based on reducing risk of infection by minimizing human contact with infected animals, much likethose that reduced the incidence of malaria and yellow fever by reducing human contact with mosquitos.

Museum scientists versed in understanding the evolutionary relationships among species could use this knowledge to anticipate the risk of the pathogen becoming established outside of its native range.

Brooks, who earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was a zoology professor at the University of Toronto for 30 years until he retired early in 2011 to devote more time to his study of emerging infectious disease. In addition to being a senior research fellow with UNL's Manter Laboratory, he is a visiting senior fellow at the Universidade Federal do Parana, Brazil, funded by the Ciencias sem Fronteiras (Sciences without Borders) of the Brazilian government, and a visiting scholar with Debrecen University in Hungary.

Brooks' and Hoberg's article, "Evolution in action: climate change, biodiversity dynamics and emerging infectious disease," is part of a Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B issue on "Climate change and vector-borne diseases of humans," edited by Paul Parham, a specialist in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College in London.

"We have to admit we're not winning the war against emerging diseases," Brooks said. "We're not anticipating them. We're not paying attention to their basic biology, where they might come from and the potential for new pathogens to be introduced."

Source: University of Nebraska-Lincoln [February 16, 2015]

Researchers have observed wild-bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil deliberately break stones, unintentionally creating flakes that share many of the characteristics of those produced by early Stone Age hominins. The difference is that the capuchins' flakes are not intentional tools for cutting and scraping, but seem to be the by-product of hammering or 'percussive behaviour' that the monkeys engage in to extract minerals or lichen from the stones.

In a paper, >published in Nature, the research team says this finding is significant because archaeologists had always understood that the production of multiple stone flakes with characteristics such as conchoidal fractures and sharp cutting edges was a behaviour unique to hominins. The paper suggests that scholars may have to refine their criteria for identifying intentionally produced early stone flakes made by hominins, given capuchins have been observed unintentionally making similar tools.

The research is authored by researchers from the University of Oxford, University College London and University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. The team observed individual monkeys in Serra da Capivara National Park unintentionally creating fractured flakes and cores. While hominins made stone flake tools for cutting and butchery tasks, the researchers admit that it is unclear why monkeys perform this behaviour. They suggest that the capuchins may be trying to extract powdered silicon (known to be an essential trace nutrient) or to remove lichen for some as yet unknown medicinal purpose. At no point did the monkeys try to cut or scrape using the flakes, says the study.

Lead author Dr Tomos Proffitt, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, comments: 'Within the last decade, studies have shown that the use and intentional production of sharp-edged flakes are not necessarily linked to early humans (the genus Homo) who are our direct relatives, but instead were used and produced by a wider range of hominins. However, this study goes one step further in showing that modern primates can produce archaeologically identifiable flakes and cores with features that we thought were unique to hominins.

'This does not mean that the earliest archaeological material in East Africa was not made by hominins. It does, however, raise interesting questions about the possible ways this stone tool technology developed before the earliest examples in the archaeological record appeared. It also tells us what this stone tool technology might look like. There are important questions too about the uniqueness of early hominin behaviour. These findings challenge previous ideas about the minimum level of cognitive and morphological complexity required to produce numerous conchoidal flakes.'

The monkeys were observed engaging in 'stone on stone percussion', whereby they individually selected rounded quartzite cobbles and then using one or two hands struck the 'hammer-stone' forcefully and repeatedly on quartzite cobbles embedded in a cliff face. This action crushed the surface and dislodged cobbled stones, and the hand-held 'hammer stones' became unintentionally fractured, leaving an identifiable primate archaeological record. As well as using the active hammer-stone to crush 'passive hammers' (stones embedded in the outcrop), the capuchins were also observed re-using broken hammer-stones as 'fresh' hammers.

The research team examined 111 fragmented stones collected from the ground immediately after the capuchins had dropped them, as well as from the surface and excavated areas in the site. They gathered complete and broken hammer-stones, complete and fragmented flakes and passive hammers. Around half of the fractured flakes exhibited conchoidal fracture, which is typically associated with the hominin production of flakes.

Bearded capuchins and some Japanese macaques are known to pound stones directly against each other, but the paper remarks that the capuchins in Serra da Capivara National Park are the only wild primates to be observed doing this for the purpose of damaging the stones.

Co-author and leader of the Primate Archaeology (Primarch) project Michael Haslam, from the University of Oxford, says: 'Our understanding of the new technologies adopted by our early ancestors helps shape our view of human evolution. The emergence of sharp-edged stone tools that were fashioned and hammered to create a cutting tool was a big part of that story. The fact that we have discovered monkeys can produce the same result does throw a bit of a spanner in the works in our thinking on evolutionary behaviour and how we attribute such artefacts. While humans are not unique in making this technology, the manner in which they used them is still very different to what the monkeys seem capable of.'

Source: University of Oxford [October 19, 2016]

The human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene probably began around the year 1610, with an unusual drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the irreversible exchange of species between the New and Old Worlds, according to new research published today in Nature.

Previous epochs began and ended due to factors including meteorite strikes, sustained volcanic eruptions and the shifting of the continents. Human actions are now changing the planet, but are we really a geological force of nature driving Earth into a new epoch that will last millions of years?

Scientists at UCL have concluded that humans have become a geological power and suggest that human actions have produced a new geological epoch.

Defining an epoch requires two main criteria to be met. Long-lasting changes to the Earth must be documented. Scientists must also pinpoint and date a global environmental change that has been captured in natural material, such as rocks, ancient ice or sediment from the ocean floor. Such a marker -- like the chemical signature left by the meteorite strike that wiped out the dinosaurs -- is called a golden spike.

The study authors systematically compared the major environmental impacts of human activity over the past 50,000 years against these two formal requirements. Just two dates met the criteria: 1610, when the collision of the New and Old Worlds a century earlier was first felt globally; and 1964, associated with the fallout from nuclear weapons tests. The researchers conclude that 1610 is the stronger candidate.

The scientists say the 1492 arrival of Europeans in the Americas, and subsequent global trade, moved species to new continents and oceans, resulting in a global re-ordering of life on Earth. This rapid, repeated, cross-ocean exchange of species is without precedent in Earth's history.

They argue that the joining of the two hemispheres is an unambiguous event after which the impacts of human activity became global and set Earth on a new trajectory. The first fossil pollen of maize, a Latin American species, appears in marine sediment in Europe in 1600, becoming common over subsequent centuries. This irreversible exchange of species satisfies the first criteria for dating an epoch -- long-term changes to Earth.

The Anthropocene probably began when species jumped continents, starting when the Old World met the New. We humans are now a geological power in our own right -- as Earth-changing as a meteorite strike

The researchers also found a golden spike that can be dated to the same time: a pronounced dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide centred on 1610 and captured in Antarctic ice-core records. The drop occurred as a direct result of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. Colonisation of the New World led to the deaths of about 50 million indigenous people, most within a few decades of the 16th century due to smallpox. The abrupt near-cessation of farming across the continent and the subsequent re-growth of Latin American forests and other vegetation removed enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce a drop in CO2. Thus, the second requirement of a golden spike marker is met.

The researchers have named the 1610 dip in carbon dioxide the 'Orbis Spike'. They chose the Latin word for 'world' because this golden spike was caused by once-disconnected peoples becoming globally linked.

Lead author, Dr Simon Lewis (UCL Geography and University of Leeds), said: "In a hundred thousand years scientists will look at the environmental record and know something remarkable happened in the second half of the second millennium. They will be in no doubt that these global changes to Earth were caused by their own species. Today we can say when those changes began and why. The Anthropocene probably began when species jumped continents, starting when the Old World met the New. We humans are now a geological power in our own right -- as Earth-changing as a meteorite strike."

He added: "Historically, the collision of the Old and New Worlds marks the beginning of the modern world. Many historians regard agricultural imports into Europe from the vast new lands of the Americas, alongside the availability of coal, as the two essential precursors of the Industrial Revolution, which in turn unleashed further waves of global environmental changes. Geologically, this boundary also marks Earth's last globally synchronous cool moment before the onset of the long-term global warmth of the Anthropocene."

The authors also considered the merits of dating the Anthropocene to 1964, which saw a peak in radioactive fallout following nuclear weapons testing. This marker is seen in many geological deposits, and by the 1960s human impact on the Earth was large. However, the researchers note that while nuclear war could dramatically alter Earth, so far it has not. While the fallout from nuclear bomb tests is a very good marker, the testing of nuclear weapons has not been -- in geological terms -- an Earth-changing event.

The beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in the late 18th century, has most commonly been suggested as the start of the Anthropocene. This linked a clear turning point in human history, and the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use is a long-term global environmental change of critical importance. However, the researchers did not find a golden spike at that time because most effects were local, while the global exponential rise in carbon dioxide was too smooth an increase to form a precisely dated marker.

The authors' new paper ends by highlighting some implications of formally defining the Anthropocene.

Co-author, geologist Professor Mark Maslin (UCL Geography) said: "A more wide-spread recognition that human actions are driving far-reaching changes to the life-supporting infrastructure of Earth will have implications for our philosophical, social, economic and political views of our environment. But we should not despair, because the power that humans wield is unlike any other force of nature, it is reflexive and therefore can be used, withdrawn or modified. The first stage of solving our damaging relationship with our environment is recognising it."

An official decision on whether to formally recognise the Anthropocene, including when it began, will be initiated by a recommendation of the Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission of Quaternary Stratigraphy, due in 2016.

Source: University College London [March 11, 2015]

The leopard (Panthera pardus), one of the world's most iconic big cats, has lost as much as 75 percent of its historic range, according to a paper >published in the scientific journal PeerJ. Conducted by partners including the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, international conservation charities the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Panthera and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Cat Specialist Group, this study represents the first known attempt to produce a comprehensive analysis of leopards' status across their entire range and all nine subspecies.

The research found that leopards historically occupied a vast range of approximately 35 million square kilometers (13.5 million square miles) throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Today, however, they are restricted to approximately 8.5 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles).

To obtain their findings, the scientists spent three years reviewing more than 1,300 sources on the leopard's historic and current range. The results appear to confirm conservationists' suspicions that, while the entire species is not yet as threatened as some other big cats, leopards are facing a multitude of growing threats in the wild, and three subspecies have already been almost completely eradicated.

Lead author Andrew Jacobson, of ZSL's Institute of Zoology, University College London and the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, stated: "The leopard is a famously elusive animal, which is likely why it has taken so long to recognize its global decline. This study represents the first of its kind to assess the status of the leopard across the globe and all nine subspecies. Our results challenge the conventional assumption in many areas that leopards remain relatively abundant and not seriously threatened."

In addition, the research found that while African leopards face considerable threats, particularly in North and West Africa, leopards have also almost completely disappeared from several regions across Asia, including much of the Arabian Peninsula and vast areas of former range in China and Southeast Asia. The amount of habitat in each of these regions is plummeting, having declined by nearly 98 percent.

"Leopards' secretive nature, coupled with the occasional, brazen appearance of individual animals within megacities like Mumbai and Johannesburg, perpetuates the misconception that these big cats continue to thrive in the wild—when actually our study underlies the fact that they are increasingly threatened," said Luke Dollar, co-author and program director of the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative.

Philipp Henschel, co-author and Lion Program survey coordinator for Panthera, stated: "A severe blind spot has existed in the conservation of the leopard. In just the last 12 months, Panthera has discovered the status of the leopard in Southeast Asia is as perilous as the highly endangered tiger." Henschel continued: "The international conservation community must double down in support of initiatives — protecting the species. Our next steps in this very moment will determine the leopard's fate."

Co-author Peter Gerngross, with the Vienna, Austria-based mapping firm BIOGEOMAPS, added: "We began by creating the most detailed reconstruction of the leopard's historic range to date. This allowed us to compare detailed knowledge on its current distribution with where the leopard used to be and thereby calculate the most accurate estimates of range loss. This research represents a major advancement for leopard science and conservation."

Leopards are capable of surviving in human-dominated landscapes provided they have sufficient cover, access to wild prey and tolerance from local people. In many areas, however, habitat is converted to farmland and native herbivores are replaced with livestock for growing human populations. This habitat loss, prey decline, conflict with livestock owners, illegal trade in leopard skins and parts and legal trophy hunting are all factors contributing to leopard decline.

Complicating conservation efforts for the leopard, Jacobson noted: "Our work underscores the pressing need to focus more research on the less studied subspecies, three of which have been the subject of fewer than five published papers during the last 15 years. Of these subspecies, one—the Javan leopard (P. p. melas)—is currently classified as critically endangered by the IUCN, while another—the Sri Lankan leopard (P. p. kotiya)—is classified as endangered, highlighting the urgent need to understand what can be done to arrest these worrying declines."

Despite this troubling picture, some areas of the world inspire hope. Even with historic declines in the Caucasus Mountains and the Russian Far East/Northeast China, leopard populations in these areas appear to have stabilized and may even be rebounding with significant conservation investment through the establishment of protected areas and increased anti-poaching measures.

"Leopards have a broad diet and are remarkably adaptable," said Joseph Lemeris Jr., a National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative researcher and paper co-author. "Sometimes the elimination of active persecution by government or local communities is enough to jumpstart leopard recovery. However, with many populations ranging across international boundaries, political cooperation is critical."

Source: PeerJ [May 03, 2016]

To fence or not to fence? That is the question facing conservationists concerned with barriers that keep wildlife in and people out.

According to a new study by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups, appearing in April 20 edition of the Journal of Applied Ecology, new policies must be developed before fences are erected -- particularly in dryland ecosystems where mobility is essential for both humans and wildlife.

Some nations are considering fences as a means to protect remnant wildlife populations. For example, Uganda intends to fence all of its national parks to stem human-wildlife conflicts, while Rwanda recently erected a 120 km fence around Akagera National Park.

But the study's authors caution that evidence is limited showing that fences are effective management tools, particularly in drylands.

"Large-scale fencing can disrupt migration pathways and reduce access to key areas within drylands, such as seasonal foraging areas," said lead author Sarah Durant of ZSL. "This can lead to severe reductions in migratory wildlife populations and may prompt wider impacts on non-migratory species."

The study says that policies are needed to evaluate whether fences should be erected and should be evaluated based on wildlife movement and distribution, climate change predictions, costs and benefits to local people, and other factors.

Said co-author James Deutsch of WCS: "Fencing can initially appear to be an easy conservation solution. Yet, unless fencing strategies have local community support and financing for maintenance, there is a danger that they may generate more problems than they solve."

The authors suggest that The United Nations Conventions on Migratory Species (CMS) and to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) are appropriate international agreements for leading to the development of policies and guidelines on fencing drylands.

In response, the Scientific Council of CMS has proposed to form a Working Group on fencing problems and policies in dryland ecosystems.

Said co-author Roseline Beudels-Jamar from the CMS Scientific Council: "CMS is concerned about the impact of human-wildlife conflict on both wildlife and on vulnerable livelihoods of marginalised people, and would like to better understand the impacts of fencing, or alternative methods, if used to mitigate such conflicts."

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society [May 06, 2015]

Global populations of vertebrates -- mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish -- have declined by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012, states a new report from World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Animals living in the world's lakes, rivers, and freshwater systems have experienced the most dramatic population declines, at 81 percent. Because of human activity, the report states that without immediate intervention global wildlife populations could drop two-thirds by 2020.

"This research delivers a wake-up call that for decades we've treated our planet as if it's disposable," said Carter Roberts, WWF president and CEO. "We created this problem. The good news is that we can fix it. It requires updating our approach to food, energy, transportation, and how we live our lives. We share the same planet. We rely on it for our survival. So we are all responsible for its protection."

The top threat to wildlife is habitat loss and degradation, driven primarily by increasing demand for food and energy. According to the report, global food production is the leading cause for destruction of habitats and overexploitation of wildlife. Agriculture currently occupies approximately one-third of Earth's total land area and accounts for 70 percent of all freshwater use.

Wild animals are not the only ones at risk; the report states that increased pressure threatens the natural resources that all life -- including humanity -- depend on.

The report demonstrates the need to rethink how we produce, consume, measure success and value the natural environment, and calls for an urgent system change by individuals, businesses and governments. The report also illustrates the positive momentum that is building by highlighting recent global agreements on climate change and sustainable development. In particular, the report recognizes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as an essential guide to decision-making that can ensure that the environment is valued alongside economic and social interests.

"A strong natural environment is the key to defeating poverty, improving health and developing a just and prosperous future," said Marco Lambertini, WWF director general. "We have proven that we know what it takes to build a resilient planet for future generations, we just need to act on that knowledge."

>Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience in a new era is the eleventh edition of WWF's biennial flagship publication. The report tracks over 14,000 vertebrate populations of over 3,700 species from 1970 to 2012 and includes research from the Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London.

Source: World Wildlife Fund [October 27, 2016]

The world's fastest land animal, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), is sprinting towards the edge of extinction and could soon be lost forever unless urgent, landscape-wide conservation action is taken, according to a study published today in the journal >Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Panthera and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the study reveals that just 7,100 cheetahs remain globally, representing the best available estimate for the species to date. Furthermore, the cheetah has been driven out of 91% of its historic range. Asiatic cheetah populations have been hit hardest, with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in one isolated pocket of Iran.

Due to the species' dramatic decline, the study's authors are calling for the cheetah to be up-listed from 'Vulnerable' to 'Endangered' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Typically, greater international conservation support, prioritization and attention are granted to wildlife classified as 'Endangered', in efforts to stave off impending extinction.

Dr. Sarah Durant, ZSL/WCS lead author and Project Leader for the Rangewide Conservation Program for Cheetah and African Wild Dog, said: "This study represents the most comprehensive analysis of cheetah status to date. Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked. Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought."

Durant continued, "We have worked with range state governments and the cheetah conservation community to put in place comprehensive frameworks for action to save the species, but funds and resources are needed to implement them. The recent decisions made at the CITES CoP17 meeting in Johannesburg represent a significant breakthrough particularly in terms of stemming the illegal flow of live cats trafficked out of the Horn of Africa region. However, concerted action is needed to reverse ongoing declines in the face of accelerating land use changes across the continent."

While renowned for its speed and spots, the degree of persecution cheetahs face both inside and outside of protected areas is largely unrecognized. Even within guarded parks and reserves, cheetahs rarely escape the pervasive threats of human-wildlife conflict, prey loss due to overhunting by people, habitat loss and the illegal trafficking of cheetah parts and trade as exotic pets.

To make matters worse, as one of the world's most wide-ranging carnivores, 77% of the cheetah's habitat falls outside of protected areas. Unrestricted by boundaries, the species' wide-ranging movements weaken law enforcement protection and greatly amplify its vulnerability to human pressures. Indeed, largely due to pressures on wildlife and their habitat outside of protected areas, Zimbabwe's cheetah population has plummeted from 1,200 to a maximum of 170 animals in just 16 years -- representing an astonishing loss of 85% of the country's cheetahs.

Scientists are now calling for an urgent paradigm shift in cheetah conservation, towards landscape-level efforts that transcend national borders and are coordinated by existing regional conservation strategies for the species. A holistic conservation approach, which incentivises protection of cheetahs by local communities and trans-national governments, alongside sustainable human-wildlife coexistence is paramount to the survival of the species.

Panthera's Cheetah Program Director, Dr. Kim Young-Overton, shared, "We've just hit the reset button in our understanding of how close cheetahs are to extinction. The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-ranging cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever."

The methodology used for this study will also be relevant to other species, such as African wild dogs, which also require large areas of land to prosper and are therefore similarly vulnerable to increasing threats outside designated protected areas.

Source: Panthera [December 26, 2016]

Scientists have discovered that stunted growth can be a genetic response to ocean acidification, enabling some sea creatures to survive high carbon dioxide levels, both in the future and during past mass extinctions.

Using natural CO2 seeps as test sites, the international team of marine scientists and palaeontologists have studied the way in which sea snails cope in more acidic conditions ‒ simulating the change in seawater chemistry that will occur in future as more atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by the ocean.

The researchers say their findings, published in Nature Climate Change, provide an explanation as to why marine species that survived previous mass extinction events were much smaller – a phenomenon known as the ‘Lilliput effect’.

The research was funded by the EU MedSeA project and the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme, and involved researchers from 10 institutions including Plymouth University, the University of Southampton, the Natural History Museum, London, and colleagues in Italy, Monaco, Norway and New Caledonia.

Its results provide a stark warning about the impact that continuing ocean acidification could have on marine ecosystems unless we drastically slow the rate of carbon dioxide emissions.

Dr Vittorio Garilli, at Paleosofia-APEMA, Palermo, said: “Two species of snails growing at shallow water CO2 seeps were smaller than those found in normal pH conditions, and adapted their metabolic rates to cope with the acidified seawater. These physiological changes allowed the animals to maintain calcification and to partially repair shell dissolution.”

Professor Jason Hall-Spencer, of the School of Marine Science and Engineering at Plymouth University, said: “Organisms that have been exposed to elevated CO2 levels over multiple generations provide valuable insights both into changes we can expect in marine ecosystems as CO2 emissions continue to rise unchecked, and into past mass extinctions."

“Not only do they demonstrate a similar magnitude and direction of body size change as fossil organisms, but they also reveal the physiological advantages of dwarfing,” added Professor Marco Milazzo at Palermo University.

Measurements showed that the shells from high CO2 seawater were about a third smaller than those in “normal” environments. Some of the snails were taken to the Marine Environmental Studies Laboratory at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Monaco, where their calcification rates were measured in aquaria.

Study co-leader Dr Riccardo Rodolfo-Metalpa, from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, said: “They developed a surprising ability to calcify and cope with shell dissolution at pH values which were thought too low for calcification to occur.”

The results – published in the paper Physiological advantages of dwarfing in surviving extinctions in high CO2 oceans – confirmed the theory that the snails had adapted to the conditions over many generations.

Professor Richard Twitchett, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, said: “The fossil record shows us that mass extinctions and dwarfing of marine shelled species are repeatedly associated with episodes of past global warming. It is likely that similar changes will increasingly affect modern marine ecosystems, especially as the current rate of ocean acidification and warming is so rapid."

Professor Hall-Spencer added: “It is critical that we understand the mechanisms by which certain species survive chronic exposure to elevated CO2 since emissions of this gas are already having adverse effects on marine foodwebs and putting food security at risk.”

Author: Andrew Merrington | Source: University of Plymouth [April 21, 2015]

A relationship that has lasted for 100 million years is at serious risk of ending, due to the effects of environmental and climate change. A species of spiny crayfish native to Australia and the tiny flatworms that depend on them are both at risk of extinction, according to researchers from the UK and Australia.

Look closely into one of the cool, freshwater streams of eastern Australia and you might find a colourful mountain spiny crayfish, from the genus Euastacus. Look even closer and you could see small tentacled flatworms, called temnocephalans, each only a few millimetres long. Temnocephalans live as specialised symbionts on the surface of the crayfish, where they catch tiny food items, or inside the crayfish's gill chamber where they can remove parasites. This is an ancient partnership, but the temnocephalans are now at risk of coextinction with their endangered hosts. Coextinction is the loss of one species, when another that it depends upon goes extinct.

In a new study, researchers from the UK and Australia reconstructed the evolutionary and ecological history of the mountain spiny crayfish and their temnocephalan symbionts to assess their coextinction risk. This study was based on DNA sequences from crayfish and temnocephalans across eastern Australia, sampled by researchers at James Cook University, sequenced at the Natural History Museum, London and Queensland Museum, and analysed at the University of Sydney and the University of Cambridge. The results are published in the >Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"We've now got a picture of how these two species have evolved together through time," said Dr Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences, the paper's lead author. "The extinction risk to the crayfish has been measured, but this is the first time we've quantified the risk to the temnocephalans as well -- and it looks like this ancient partnership could end with the extinction of both species."

Mountain spiny crayfish species diversified across eastern Australia over at least 80 million years, with 37 living species included in this study. Reconstructing the ages of the temnocephalans using a 'molecular clock' analysis showed that the tiny worms are as ancient as their crayfish hosts and have evolved alongside them since the Cretaceous Period.

>A symbiotic relationship that has existed since the time of the dinosaurs is at risk of ending,> as habitat loss and environmental change mean that a species of Australian crayfish >and the tiny worms that depend on them are both at serious risk of extinction >[Credit: David Blair/James Cook University]
Today, many species of mountain spiny crayfish have small geographic ranges. This is especially true in Queensland, where mountain spiny crayfish are restricted to cool, high-altitude streams in small pockets of rainforest. This habitat was reduced and fragmented by long-term climate warming and drying, as the continent of Australia drifted northwards over the last 165 million years. As a consequence, mountain spiny crayfish are severely threatened by ongoing climate change and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed 75% of these species as endangered or critically endangered.

"In Australia, freshwater crayfish are large, diverse and active 'managers', recycling all sorts of organic material and working the sediments," said Professor David Blair of James Cook University in Australia, the paper's senior author. "The temnocephalan worms associated only with these crayfish are also diverse, reflecting a long, shared history and offering a unique window on ancient symbioses. We now risk extinction of many of these partnerships, which will lead to degradation of their previous habitats and leave science the poorer."

The crayfish tend to have the smallest ranges in the north of Australia, where the climate is the hottest and all of the northern species are endangered or critically endangered. By studying the phylogenies (evolutionary trees) of the species, the researchers found that northern crayfish also tended to be the most evolutionarily distinctive. This also applies to the temnocephalans of genus Temnosewellia, which are symbionts of spiny mountain crayfish across their geographic range. "This means that the most evolutionarily distinctive lineages are also those most at risk of extinction," said Hoyal Cuthill.

The researchers then used computer simulations to predict the extent of coextinction. This showed that if all the mountain spiny crayfish that are currently endangered were to go extinct, 60% of their temnocephalan symbionts would also be lost to coextinction. The temnocephalan lineages that were predicted to be at the greatest risk of coextinction also tended to be the most evolutionarily distinctive. These lineages represent a long history of symbiosis and coevolution of up to 100 million years. However they are the most likely to suffer coextinction if these species and their habitats are not protected from ongoing environmental and climate change.

"The intimate relationship between hosts and their symbionts and parasites is often unique and long lived, not just during the lifespan of the individual organisms themselves but during the evolutionary history of the species involved in the association," said study co-author Dr Tim Littlewood of the Natural History Museum. "This study exemplifies how understanding and untangling such an intimate relationship across space and time can yield deep insights into past climates and environments, as well as highlighting current threats to biodiversity."

Source: University of Cambridge [May 24, 2016]

Researchers surveying for endangered primates in national parks and forest reserves of Ivory Coast found, to their surprise, that most of these protected areas had been turned into illegal cocoa farms, a new study reports.

The researchers surveyed 23 protected areas in the West African nation between 2010 and 2013 and found that about three-quarters of the land in them had been transformed into cocoa production.

The Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa beans, providing more than one-third of the world's supply. Cocoa is the main ingredient in chocolate.

"The world's demand for chocolate has been very hard on the endangered primates of Ivory Coast," said W. Scott McGraw, co-author of the study and professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University.

McGraw said the original goal of this research was "just to do a census of the monkeys in these protected areas."

"But when we started walking through these areas we were just stunned by the scale of illegal cocoa production. It is now the major cause of deforestation in these parks," he said.

"There are parks in Ivory Coast with no forests and no primates, but a sea of cocoa plants."

For the study, McGraw and his co-authors, all of whom work for Ivory Coast research institutions, spent a total of 208 days walking transects through nationally protected areas, most in the central and southern regions of the country. In each area, they noted the amount of forest that had been cut down or degraded and how much of this was replaced by cocoa or other types of farms. They also recorded the presence of 16 primate species, including monkeys and chimpanzees.

The results, McGraw said, were "depressing."

Of the 23 protected areas, 16 of them had more than 65 percent of their forests degraded by farms, logging or other human disturbance. While a variety of agricultural products were grown illegally in the parks, cocoa constituted 93 percent of the total crops grown.

Overall, 20 of the areas had illegal cocoa plantations and approximately 74 percent of the total land in these areas was transformed into cocoa production.

Unauthorized villages have sprung up within these parks, with one housing nearly 30,000 people.

"I've been doing survey work in these parks for 20 years, and it wasn't nearly this bad when I started. This is a relatively recent development," McGraw said.

The impact on primates has been dramatic.

• Overall, 13 of the protected areas (57 percent) had lost their entire primate populations, while another five had lost half of their species.

• One species of monkey -- Miss Waldron's red colobus -- was not seen during this survey and has not officially been sighted since 1978. It is probably extinct.

• Two other monkeys -- the Roloway monkey and the White-naped mangabey -- were seen in only two reserves and are critically endangered, at least partially due to the habitat destruction caused by illegal cocoa farms.

"The Roloway monkey may be the next to go extinct," McGraw said. "It is not able to live in the degraded habitats that are left in many of these protected areas."

A variety of factors have led to these forest reserves being destroyed, he said. One has been the growing worldwide demand for chocolate. Ivory Coast produced a record 1.7 million metric tons of cocoa in the year that ended in September, according to the International Cocoa Organization in London.

Many of the older, legal cocoa plantations in the country have been blighted by disease or otherwise haven't produced at the same levels as previously, which has led some growers to establish new farms in the reserves. Moreover, migrants from outside the country have moved into Ivory Coast and turned to farming to survive.

At the same time, Ivory Coast has been in political turmoil in recent years and the government hasn't been focused on monitoring these forest reserves.

"There is little, if any, real active protection given to these parks and reserves," McGraw said. "People have moved in and settled with essentially no resistance, cut down the forest, and planted cocoa. It is incredibly blatant."

McGraw said that while the results are disappointing, there is still time to halt the disappearance of more primates and other wildlife. First, the land within protected areas needs to be actually protected.

Outside these lands, growers should move toward shade-cocoa farming, which keeps some of the large existing trees, with cocoa plants interspersed among them. This would at least preserve some suitable habitat for monkeys that live in the country, he said.

In addition, there should be efforts to connect the many fragmented forest reserves in the country. "We need to view the protected areas not as individual islands, but as a matrix," he said.

One promising development is the establishment of community-based bio-monitoring programs that involve foot patrols conducted by local villagers. McGraw said his co-authors on this paper established a patrol in the Dassioko Forest Reserve and it has succeeded in reducing illegal activity in the area. Encounter rates with primates has risen in the area as a result.

The study appears in the March 2015 issue of the journal Tropical Conservation Science.

Author: Jeff Grabmeier | Source: Ohio State University [March 30, 2015]

A new study says that more than 17,000 marine species worldwide remain largely unprotected, with the U.S. among the bottom in supporting formal marine protected areas (MPAs) that could safeguard marine biodiversity.

The study, which is the first comprehensive assessment of protected areas coverage on marine life, appears in the international journal Scientific Reports. Authors include scientists from University of Queensland, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED), UC Santa Barbara, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Imperial College London and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The authors looked at the ranges of some 17,348 species of marine life, including whales, sharks rays and fish, and found that 97.4 percent have less than 10 percent of their range represented in marine protected areas. Nations with the largest number of "gap species" or species whose range lie entirely outside of protected areas include the U.S., Canada, and Brazil.

Despite these dismal results, the authors say the study underscores opportunities to achieve goals set by the Convention on Biological Diversity to protect 10 percent of marine biodiversity by 2020. For example, the majority of species that were considered very poorly represented (less than two percent of their range found in marine protected areas) are found in exclusive economic zones. This suggests an important role for particular nations to better protect biodiversity.

"The process of establishing MPAs is not trivial as they impact livelihoods. It is essential that new MPAs protect biodiversity whilst minimizing negative social and economic impacts. The results of this study offer strategic guidance on where MPAs could be placed to better protect marine biodiversity." said the study's lead author Dr Carissa Klein of the University of Queensland and CEED.

The authors say that it is imperative that new MPAs are systematically identified and take into account what has already been protected in other places, in addition to socioeconomic costs of implementation, feasibility of success, other aspects driving biodiversity.

"The increase in the number MPAs in recent years is encouraging, but most of this increase has come from a few very large MPAs," said Dr. Ben Halpern of UC Santa Barbara and NCEAS. "Those very large MPAs provide important value, but they can be misleading in thinking that biodiversity is being well protected because of them. Species all around the planet need protection, not just those in some locations. Our results point out where the protection gaps exist."

Said co-author Dr. James Watson of WCS and the University of Queensland: "As most marine biodiversity remains extremely poorly represented, the task of implementing an effective network of MPAs is urgent. Achieving this goal is imperative for not just for nature but for humanity, as millions of people depend on marine biodiversity for important and valuable services."

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society [December 03, 2015]

Scientists working in the mid-Atlantic and south-west Indian Ocean have found evidence of microfibers ingested by deep sea animals including hermit crabs, squat lobsters and sea cucumbers, revealing for the first time the environmental fallout of microplastic pollution.

The UK government recently announced that it is to ban plastic microbeads, commonly found in cosmetics and cleaning materials, by the end of 2017. This followed reports by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee about the environmental damage caused microbeads. The Committee found that a single shower can result in 100,000 plastic particles entering the ocean.

Researchers from the universities of Bristol and Oxford, working on the Royal Research Ship (RRS) James Cook at two sites, have now found evidence of microbeads inside creatures at depths of between 300m and 1800m. This is the first time microplastics -- which can enter the sea via the washing of clothes made from synthetic fabrics or from fishing line nets -- have been shown to have been ingested by animals at such depth.

Laura Robinson, Professor of Geochemistry in Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "This result astonished me and is a real reminder that plastic pollution has truly reached the furthest ends of the Earth."

Microplastics are generally defined as particles under 5mm in length and include the microfibres analysed in this study and the microbeads used in cosmetics that will be the subject of the forthcoming Government ban.

Among the plastics found inside deep-sea animals in this research were polyester, nylon and acrylic. Microplastics are roughly the same size as 'marine snow' -- the shower of organic material that falls from upper waters to the deep ocean and which many deep-sea creatures feed on.

Dr Michelle Taylor of Oxford University's Department of Zoology, and lead author of the study, said: "The main purpose of this research expedition was to collect microplastics from sediments in the deep ocean -- and we found lots of them. Given that animals interact with this sediment, such as living on it or eating it, we decided to look inside them to see if there was any evidence of ingestion. What's particularly alarming is that these microplastics weren't found in coastal areas but in the deep ocean, thousands of miles away from land-based sources of pollution."

The animals were collected using a remotely operated underwater vehicle. The study, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), was a collaboration between The University of Oxford, the University of Bristol, the Natural History Museum in London, and Staffordshire University's Department of Forensic and Crime Science, which made sure the results were robust and the study was free from potential contamination.

Dr Claire Gwinnett, Associate Professor in Forensic and Crime Science at Staffordshire University, said: "Existing forensic approaches for the examination of fibres are tried and tested for their robustness and must stand up to the scrutiny of the courts of law. These techniques were employed in this research in order to effectively reduce and monitor contamination and therefore provide confidence in the fact that the microplastics found were ingested, and not from the laboratory or other external contaminant.

"Using forensic laboratory techniques, we have identified that microplastics are present in ingested material from deep sea creatures. Forensic science is still a fairly new science, but we are delighted that our work and techniques are starting to inform other sciences and important environmental research such as this."

The results are published in the journal >Scientific Reports.

Source: University of Bristol [September 30, 2016]

Some of the UK's leading nature experts have delivered a clarion call for action to help save many of the nation's native wildlife species from extinction.

A critical new report, called >State of Nature 2016 and published, delivered the clearest picture to date of the status of our native species across land and sea. Crucially, the report attributes much of the imposing threat to changing agricultural land management, climate change and sustained urban development. These threaten many of Britain's best loved species including water voles -- the fastest declining mammal.

The startling report reveals that more than half (56%) of UK species studied have declined since 1970, while more than one in ten (1,199 species) of the nearly 8000 species assessed in the UK are under threat of disappearing altogether.

The report, produced by a coalition of more than 50 leading wildlife and research organisations and specialists including Dr Fiona Mathews from the University of Exeter, demands immediate action to stave off the growing threat to Britain's unique wildlife.

Dr Mathews, an Associate Professor in Mammalian Biology at the University of Exeter and Chair of the Mammal Society, who helped write the report, said many British mammals are under pressure from house building and intensification of agriculture.

She said: "The reality is that our human population is expanding and we need urgently to work out how we can live alongside our wildlife. For example, water voles are one of our fastest declining species, and many thousands of kilometres of their habitat are affected by development every year.

"We are therefore researching ways to ensure their survival, supported by our water vole appeal fund. In the summer, we launched best-practice guidance on looking after water voles during development, and these are now being followed by industry, helping to ensure that "Ratty" survives on ponds, rivers and canals throughout the UK."

As the UK Government and devolved administrations move forward in the light of the EU Referendum result, there is an opportunity to secure world leading protection for our species and restoration of our nature. Now is the time to make ambitious decisions and significant investment in nature to ensure year-on-year improvement to the health and protection of the UK's nature and environment for future generations. The Mammal Society is currently drawing up a 'Red List' of the most threated species, to help ensure that scarce funds are directed to the animals most in need.

Dr Mathews added: "The findings emphasise that whole ecosystems, not just one or two species, are under threat.

"We are a nation of nature-lovers -- just look at the success of "Countryfile" and "Springwatch." Every week thousands of volunteers are out recording wildlife and helping with practical habitat management. We also depend on the natural environment for a huge number of goods and services, not to mention our own health and wellbeing.

"Yet successive governments have cut funding for the environment, and conservation concerns are all too often vilified as a barrier to urban development, infrastructure projects or efficient food production. This is a moment to reflect on what sort of country we want for our children -- a sustainable future for them depends on our decisions now."

The State of Nature 2016 UK report will be launched by Sir David Attenborough and UK conservation and research organisations at the Royal Society in London on Wednesday, September 14, while separate events will be held in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast over the next week.

Sir David Attenborough said: "The natural world is in serious trouble and it needs our help as never before. The rallying call issued after the State of Nature report in 2013 has promoted exciting and innovative conservation projects. Landscapes are being restored, special places defended, struggling species being saved and brought back. But we need to build significantly on this progress if we are to provide a bright future for nature and for people.

"The future of nature is under threat and we must work together -- -Governments, conservationists, businesses and individuals -- -to help it. Millions of people in the UK care very passionately about nature and the environment and I believe that we can work together to turn around the fortunes of wildlife."

In order to reduce the impact we are having on our wildlife, and to help struggling species, we needed to understand what's causing these declines. Using evidence from the last 50 years, experts have identified that significant and ongoing changes in agricultural practices are having the single biggest impact on nature.

The widespread decline of nature in the UK remains a serious problem to this day. For the first time scientists have uncovered how wildlife has fared in recent years. The report reveals that since 2002 more than half (53%) of UK species studied have declined and there is little evidence to suggest that the rate of loss is slowing down.

Mark Eaton, lead author on the report, said:"Never before have we known this much about the state of UK nature and the threats it is facing. Since the 2013, the partnership and many landowners have used this knowledge to underpin some amazing scientific and conservation work. But more is needed to put nature back where it belongs -- we must continue to work to help restore our land and sea for wildlife.

"There is a real opportunity for the UK Government and devolved administrations to build on these efforts and deliver the significant investment and ambitious action needed to bring nature back from the brink.

"Of course, this report wouldn't have been possible without the army of dedicated volunteers who brave all conditions to survey the UK's wildlife. Knowledge is the most essential tool that a conservationist can have, and without their efforts, our knowledge would be significantly poorer."

Derek Crawley, Atlas Office for the Mammal Society, said "New technology now enables volunteers to share information more easily than ever before. Our MammalTracker app is freely available from the App Store, or sightings of mammals can be recorded via our website. We will also be sharing information on how to make the most of volunteer programmes at a special meeting in the autumn.

Source: University of Exeter [September 23, 2016]

Habitat degradation poses a greater risk to the survival of turtles and tortoises than rising global temperatures, according to new research.

More than 60 per cent of the group are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered, because they are being traded, collected for food and medicine and their habitats are being degraded. Understanding the additional impact of global warming and changes in rainfall patterns on their diversity and distributions is therefore paramount to their conservation.

The team of researchers set out to test if long-term climate change poses a threat or opportunity to turtles and tortoises and how they might respond to increased global temperatures.

As turtles live such long lives, it is impossible to conduct experiments to test for the impact of warming over several generations. The group used a novel combination of state of the art climate models and the deep time fossil record of turtles during warmer times.

The Late Cretaceous fossil record (66-72 million years ago), dating from the time just before the demise of the dinosaurs, was investigated as a natural experiment to quantify differences between the ecology of living turtles and tortoises and those living in an earlier, warmer greenhouse world.

The results of this study, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with support from The Royal Society, show that during periods with much warmer climates, turtles and tortoises were able to stand the heat in the warmer tropics -- as long as there was enough water to support those species living in rivers and lakes.

Amy Waterson, PhD student and lead author from the University of Bristol, said: "Some groups of turtles have maintained similar niches over millions of years. They have withstood warmer climates in the past and their ability to adapt to the rate of environmental change happening today will be an important factor in their resilience to future climate change."

Turtles and tortoises are highly sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall, hence concerns about the impact of climate change on their distribution. Alongside overexploitation and habitat loss, climate change is a significant threat to their conservation status with growth, abundance and geographical ranges all predicted to decline under future climate change projections.

In many species, temperature determines if the egg will develop into a male or female showing a direct impact of warming. As the group lives in ponds, rivers, on land and in the sea climate change can impact them via changes in temperature, rainfall, and major ocean currents.

However, Professor Daniela Schmidt, an expert in palaeobiology from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, explained that the bigger question for the conservation of the group is not how warm it will be in the near future but how fast that warming will be: "The largest difference between the warm Cretaceous and today is that this earlier warming happened over tens of thousands of years, giving these animals a chance to adapt to these conditions, not in a century."

Professor Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum, London added: "Other conservation threats, such as humanmade habitat degradation and barriers to movement, might be as important in determining the fates of turtles in a warming world as the warming itself."

The study is published in the >Royal Society of Proceedings B.

Source: University of Bristol [September 22, 2016]

Research reveals that large areas of 'degraded' forest in Southeast Asia can play an important role in conserving mammal diversity.

Mammals can be one of the hardest-hit groups by habitat loss, and a lot of research has been carried out to find the best ways to conserve mammal diversity.

Much of this research has focused on very large-scale changes in land use and the impacts this will have on overall mammal diversity. However, many important decisions about land use are made at much more local scales, for example at the level of individual landowners.

Now, in a detailed study led by Imperial College London that looked at mammal diversity across different small-scale landscapes in Borneo, researchers have identified previously logged forests as an overlooked source of refuge for mammals.

These 'selectively logged' forests, where only certain tree species are removed, are often considered to be degraded and are frequently cleared to make way for plantations. The new results, published in the >journal Ecological Applications, suggest they should be better protected.

The team recorded mammals using trap-and-release techniques and motion-sensing cameras over three years, creating an unprecedented 20,000 records of species in three land-use types: old-growth forest, logged forest and oil palm plantation. This is one of the most intensive studies of rainforest mammal diversity ever undertaken.

To their surprise, they found that mammal diversity for large mammals, like the clouded leopard and civets, was similar for both old-growth forests and logged forests. For small mammals, such as squirrels and rodents, the diversity was actually higher in logged forests.

Both sizes of mammals however suffered heavy losses of diversity in oil palm plantations. Most species discovered on the plantations likely spilled over from adjoining forests or riparian zones -- strips of forests surrounding rivers to reduce the chance of flooding.

Lead researcher Dr Oliver Wearn, who completed the research for his PhD in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said that the surprise result that mammal diversity remains high in logged forests may be because of the way habitats are distributed.

"The logging process creates a greater variation in habitat types in a smaller area, from untouched areas on steep slopes to completely denuded areas of open grassland. Old-growth forests would likely have the same diversity if we looked at them on a much larger scale."

Dr Wearn also stresses that while a greater diversity is recorded now in these logged forests, it cannot yet be certain that this diversity will remain in the future as the knock-on effects of habitat loss take effect on mammals and other rainforest species.

He added: "What we can say from this study is that protecting those large areas of forest that have already been logged could help conserve mammal species better than preserving fragmented pockets of forests inside oil palm landscapes."

This study complements another recent study from Imperial, where researchers recommended rehabilitating logged forests as a way to prevent highly threatened species from becoming extinct.

"Where old growth forests remain, however, these are still the best habitats for mammals and other native species, and should be the absolute top priority for conservation," said Dr Wearn.

Author: Hayley Dunning | Source: Imperial College London [August 22, 2016]

The world's rarest ape has an increased chance of survival after a team led by international conservation charity the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) found a new family group of Hainan gibbons (Nomascus hainanus).

Until last month, it was thought that there were just 25 Hainan gibbons living in three social groups on an island off the Chinese mainland.

The discovery of a new fourth group, a mating pair with a young baby, sighted within Bawangling National Nature Reserve, Hainan Province, increases the known population by almost 12%.

The discovery of this fourth breeding group increases reproductive potential of the population, which could be vital for the long term survival of the Critically Endangered gibbons.

ZSL researcher Dr Jessica Bryant, who led the expedition that made the discovery, said: "Finding a new Hainan gibbon group is a fantastic boost for the population. We had hoped to locate at least one or two solitary gibbons, but discovering a whole new family group complete with a baby is beyond our wildest dreams."

The new social group brings the estimate of the total population of Hainan gibbons to around 28 individuals.

The ZSL-led project team, including international gibbon experts along with staff from Bawangling National Nature Reserve Management Office, set out to try and find any surviving lone gibbons in the reserve to gain a greater understanding of the total number of Hainan gibbons that remain.

Gibbons are typically located by the sound of their daily song. Due to the low population density of the Hainan gibbon, they are less likely to sing as there are few other gibbons to advertise their territory to, making detection of solitary individuals or groups extremely challenging. By utilising new acoustic techniques that prompt gibbons to investigate and call, the team were able to locate this new group.

Dr Bryant added: "The success of our discovery is really encouraging. We now want to learn more about this new group, and also hope to extend the investigation to perhaps even find additional solitary gibbons or other groups. Today is a great day for Hainan gibbon conservation."

Source: Zoological Society of London [July 13, 2015]

Scientists at the international conservation charity Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have used historical records from China stretching back over 400 years to track changes in the distribution of gibbons, which today are some of China's most threatened species. This is one of the first instances of using ancient historical records to reconstruct the course of extinctions across several centuries.

Using local government records dating from as early as 1600 AD, across the Ming and Qing Dynasties and through China's Republican and Communist periods, researchers were able to infer the former presence of gibbons in different Chinese prefectures, and track their gradual disappearance through time.

Researchers found that only a few hundred years ago, gibbons were distributed across almost half of China. However, gibbon populations collapsed during the twentieth century, and today they survive in only a few remote forest patches in the far southwest of the country. One of China's gibbon species, the Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus), is now probably the rarest mammal species in the world, with a total population of only 26-28 individuals.

Dr Samuel Turvey, lead author and Senior Research Fellow at ZSL, said: "Gibbons were of great cultural importance in pre-modern China, because they were thought to be able to channel mystical "qi energy" and live for several hundred years, and their haunting dawn calls came to symbolise the melancholy of travellers in classical poetry. Their former presence over large regions of China was widely recorded in local documents, and reconstructing when -- and why -- different gibbon populations disappeared across much of China can teach us important lessons that can help save the country's last few gibbons.

"China has a fantastically rich historical record, which includes a wealth of environmental data that has rarely been used for conservation management. Because of the current environmental crisis facing eastern and southeast Asia, we have to explore new ways to better understand the kinds of factors that can make species more or less vulnerable to extinction."

The study appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Source: Zoological Society of London [August 05, 2015]