Using Technology to Help Wild Cats and People Coexist

In Central India, F&ES doctoral student Jennie Miller is helping develop strategies to limit the increasingly frequent interactions between humans and wild cats that have triggered massive declines in populations of tigers and leopards.

Photo courtesy of Jennie Miller

For centuries, populations of tigers and leopards in central India have plummeted in the face of habitat degradation, the loss of prey, and a rise in sport hunting. Over the last few decades, however, it has been the increases in poaching and “retaliation killings” by livestock owners that have become the greatest threats facing these big cats.

 

Jennie Miller, a doctoral student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, says the best strategy to stem these losses is to limit the interactions between these rare cats and livestock animals. And she’s developing strategies that use spatial technology to achieve this goal.

 

In an interview, Miller describes the relationship between wild cats and humans in this part of the world, how simple technologies can reduce conflicts, and the risks of working so close to these predators.

 

Can you describe the research you’re doing in India? 

In a nutshell, I’m creating geospatial tools to help people and big cats sustainably coexist. In many parts of Asia, people graze their livestock in landscapes shared with tigers and leopards. Big cats regularly kill domesticated livestock since they are easy prey, causing profound livelihood loses for livestock owners. For example, in the Kanha Tiger Reserve in central India where I work, more than 400 cattle, buffalo, goats, and pigs are killed each year. Though this is less than 0.5 percent of the 85,000 livestock in the area, even a small number of attacks can create a sense of insecurity and frustration for livestock owners. To reduce attacks, owners sometimes lace livestock carcasses with pesticides to poison the cats when they return to feed. Since only about 3,500 tigers remain in the wild, every cat counts for the survival of the species.

My research aims to help reduce this human-carnivore conflict by minimizing carnivore attacks on livestock. I’m building spatial models to understand where tigers and leopards are most likely to attack livestock. These models also generate “risk maps” to predict where future attacks may occur to assist the Forest Department and villagers when managing and grazing livestock. If livestock can be grazed in habitats where carnivores are less likely to attack — for example, away from dense forests where tigers hunt — then coexistence between people and tigers and leopards may be more feasible.

 

What are the threats facing these animals? And, for that matter, the people who live in these communities?

Over the past few centuries, habitat degradation, prey loss, and uncontrolled sport hunting have caused massive declines in tiger and leopard populations. However, in the past few decades, poaching and retaliation killing have emerged as the two greatest immediate threats for these big cats. Recent surges in the value of tiger and leopard body parts in international markets in southeast and east Asia — where they are sold for traditional medicine — are motivating a spree of illegal poaching, especially within India, which supports half the world’s wild tigers.

 

Retaliation killing — when villagers poison carnivores after losing livestock — also contributes to species declines, particularly since these incidences often kill young dispersing tigers and leopards as they move through agricultural fields to colonize or join other populations in nearby protected areas. And poaching and retaliation killing can be closely linked, since poachers may capitalize on a livestock owner’s desire to remove a troublesome tiger.

Photo courtesy of Jennie Miller Jennie Miller interviews a forest guard

Attacks on humans are rare — far less frequent than deaths due to car accidents or even snake bites. Perhaps due to their rarity and primal essence, the media often sensationalizes these “man-eater” attacks, which can further instigate anger, fear, and retaliations from people. Nonetheless, attacks do occasionally happen. People who share forests with tigers and leopards are very aware of these risks and take precautions to avoid chances of attack, such as staying indoors at night, traveling in groups and regularly protecting small children. There is a great amount of respect — driven by a mixture of fear, appreciation and reverence — for large cats in India.

 

What does the mapping technology you’re using reveal? 

We’re at an exciting point in time where spatial technology like GPS units and satellite data are enabling the development of simple tools for management and conservation. One example is “spatial risk mapping,” which I use for my research. Basically, I recorded the GPS coordinates of hundreds of dead livestock in my study site as well as random sites to measure variation across the landscape. I combine these with information about the location of other environmental and human features, such as roads, villages, forests, and shrubs. I then build statistical models to predict the probability of a tiger or leopard attack on livestock across the landscape.

 

The end result is a map that can help visually identify where attacks might occur in the future. These maps can serve as powerful tools because they transcend language and education barriers by visually representing risk and so could be useful to help villagers in remote areas protect their livestock.

 

What have you learned so far?

Since tigers and leopards both use stalking hunting tactics to attack prey, I expected them to show similar hunting patterns. However, I found that tigers and leopards differ greatly in where they tend to kill livestock: Tigers attack most often in dense forests away from human infrastructure like roads and villages, whereas leopards kill in more open vegetation and aren’t as deterred by human presence. In fact, on several occasions, leopards boldly strolled into villages at night and killed livestock in bamboo enclosures adjacent to people’s mud huts while they slept inside!

“People generally know how to avoid tiger attacks but could perhaps benefit from more conservation support for actively protecting livestock from leopard attacks.”— Jennie Miller

I also expected livestock owners to have a strong sense of where both tigers and leopards kill. Yet when I interviewed owners and compared their perceptions about where these two cats tend to kill, I found that owners have a very accurate sense of where tigers attack but a poorer understanding of where leopards attack. I suspect this disparity occurs because tigers are constrained to hunting in dense forests but leopards can kill in a broader diversity of habitats, making it generally harder to predict where a leopard will attack. This means that people generally know how to avoid tiger attacks but could perhaps benefit from more conservation support for actively protecting livestock from leopard attacks, such as by strengthening night enclosures or hiring livestock herders. 

 

What do you hope will come out of your research?

These results provide valuable insights into how big cats, livestock, and people interact which I hope will help strengthen animal husbandry and livestock management to better protect livestock and reduce human-carnivore conflict. I’m working with the Forest Department of Kanha Tiger Reserve to integrate these spatial risk models into management to help guide their conservation efforts. For example, risk maps can be used to understand carnivore hunting behavior and patterns, especially the distinction between tigers and leopards, for developing strategies for protecting livestock. In considering the risk of an attack alongside other grazing considerations — such as browse quality and access from villages — livestock owners may also be able to make grazing decisions in a more informed way.

Photo courtesy of Jennie Miller Miller inspects the remains of a cow killed by a wild cat.

What other skills have you had to develop to conduct this research? 

Learning Hindi has enabled me to more personally relate with villagers in India to understand the ramifications of livestock losses, as well as to understand the jokes made by my field assistants. Since I surveyed dead livestock and collected tiger and leopard scat for a year, I quickly developed a tolerance for bad smells, maggots, blood, and feces. I realized this a few months into fieldwork when I found myself elbow-deep in a bucket of water and tiger feces, separating the hair from particulate matter in order to identify prey contents. And to this day, I still reach for my GPS when I smell road kill. But more seriously, I also acquired a deep respect for the villagers and forest guards who literally risk their lives daily to live alongside tigers and leopards.

 

Have you ever felt unsafe doing this work, walking in places where these animals lurk?

Definitely! Though tigers and leopards rarely attack people, one or two people — usually solitary livestock herders or forest guards — are attacked in Kanha Tiger Reserve every year. These big cats don’t usually approach groups of people, so I always took a team of three to 10 people with me when surveying livestock carcasses. We also tried to avoid visiting fresh kills to reduce the chance that the cats would still be feeding when we approached. But sometimes this couldn’t be avoided and I can recall several cases when we knew a cat was lingering nearby.

 

Once, when my team and I were walking through a dense forest towards three cow carcasses killed the night before, the villagers in front of me said they could hear the tigress walking. When we reached the carcasses a few moments later, there was fresh blood on the carcass, indicating that she had been feeding a few minutes before we arrived. That day I truly began to understand the risks that villages take in living with these cats.

 

What made you want to focus your research in India? 

In January 2005 when I was a sophomore in college, I accompanied my father, a yoga and meditation teacher, on a visit to India to meet his guru. During our trip I saw first-hand the sudden tragedy of the tsunami in coastal Chennai and also heard stories while on safari about man-eating tigers in the dense jungles of Corbett Tiger Reserve. I was mesmerized by the people’s vibrancy and resiliency despite these unpredictable hardships, and greatly impressed by the extent to which Indians are economically and spiritually connected to nature. The trip helped inspire me to major in ecology and take classes in South Asian religion, art and language, and to later return to India as a Fulbright Scholar to study bird conservation in the western Himalayas. After a year of research in India I was hooked. I hope that I can continue working in India for the rest of my life.

Source: Yale University

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Long-acting drug effectively prevents HIV-like infection in monkeys

The new drug cabotegravir (in vials above) has been shown to protect monkeys from infection by an HIV-like virus, and a clinical trial testing cabotegravir's safety and acceptability has begun. Unlike other preventive treatments, it would require only one injection every three months.
Credit: Zach Veilleux / The Rockefeller University

A regime of anti-HIV drugs -- components of regimens to treat established HIV infection -- has the potential to protect against infection in the first place. But real life can interfere; the effectiveness of this prophylactic approach declines if the medications aren't taken as prescribed.

HIV researchers hope a new compound, known as cabotegravir, could make dosing easier for some because the drug would be administered by injection once every three months. A clinical trial testing long-acting cabotegravir's safety and acceptability has already begun at multiple U.S. sites including The Rockefeller University Hospital. Meanwhile two new studies, including one conducted by researchers at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) and Rockefeller University, published today (January 15) in Science Translational Medicine, show that long-acting cabotegravir injections are highly protective in a monkey model of vaginal transmission of a virus similar to HIV.

"Clinical trial results have demonstrated that the effectiveness of preventive oral medications can range with results as high as 75 percent effective to as low as ineffective, and a lot of that variability appears to hinge on the patient's ability to take the pills as prescribed," says study researcher Martin Markowitz, a professor at Rockefeller University and ADARC. "Long acting cabotegravir has the potential to create an option that could improve adherence by making it possible to receive the drug by injection once every three months."

Developed by ViiV Healthcare and GlaxoSmithKline, and previously known as GSK744 LA, cabotegravir is an antiretroviral drug. Antiretrovirals interfere with HIV's ability to replicate itself using a host cell and they are used to treat an HIV infection or to prevent those at high risk from acquiring it in the first place.

Cabotegravir belongs to a group of antiretrovirals that target integrase, an enzyme the virus uses to integrate itself into the cell's genome. This compound is a relative of an already FDA-approved integrase inhibitor, dolutegravir, but with chemical properties that allow it to be formulated into a long-acting suspension for injection.

A previous study by the ADARC and Rockefeller team in collaboration with ViiV Healthcare and GSK found long-acting cabotegravir could protect male rhesus macaque monkeys from exposure to a virus related to HIV. Following up on these results, a phase 2 clinical trial is now underway in a group of 120 men at low risk of infection. Before cabotegravir's effectiveness in high risk individuals can be tested, trials must show that study participants tolerate the drug well and find the quarterly injections, which are a novel approach to HIV prevention, acceptable.

Both new animal studies were conducted with women in mind; in 2013 women accounted for 47 percent of new HIV infections worldwide according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS. Working separately, two teams tested the drug's ability to block vaginal transmission in two species of monkeys with different breeding cycles and susceptibility to infection.

First author Chasity Andrews, a postdoctoral fellow at ADARC and Rockefeller, and colleagues at ADARC, the Tulane Regional Primate Center and ViiV/GSK, studied female rhesus macaques treated with progesterone to increase their susceptibility to the virus. They found injections of long acting cabotegravir were 90 percent effective at protecting the monkeys from repeated high-dose exposures to the virus.

Meanwhile, the complementary study conducted by researchers at the CDC and ViiV/GSK found female pigtail macaques injected with cabotegravir were completely protected against multiple exposures to the virus.

"While we are still a long way off from showing that this drug works for HIV prevention in humans, our hope is that it may one day offer high risk women, as well as men, an additional option for HIV prevention," Markowitz says. "One of the lessons we have learned from contraception is the more options available, the better. We are hoping for the same in HIV prevention -- more options and better results."

Source: Rockefeller University

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Targeted culling of deer controls disease with little effect on hunting

A new study found that the targeted culling of deer prevents the rampant spread of chronic wasting disease to healthy deer.

Chronic wasting disease, the deer-equivalent of mad cow disease, has crept across the U.S. landscape from west to east. It appeared first in captive mule deer in Colorado in the late 1960s. By 1981, it had escaped to the wild. It reached the Midwest by 2002. Little is known about its potential to infect humans.

The effort to keep chronic wasting disease in check in Illinois is a success, report researchers Nohra Mateus-Pinilla, left, a wildlife veterinary epidemiologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey; U. of I. animal sciences professor Jan Novakofski; and postdoctoral researcher Michelle Green.

Now researchers at the University of Illinois offer a first look at the long-term effectiveness of the practice of culling deer in areas affected by CWD to keep the disease in check. Their study appears in the journal Preventive Veterinary Medicine.

Each year, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources tests 7,000 (hunted, culled or incidentally killed) deer for CWD infection, conducts aerial surveillance to see where deer congregate and sends in sharpshooters to cull deer at the sites with disease, said Jan Novakofski, a professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois and an author of the study.

"We know a lot about how far deer typically move," he said. "If they're sick, they're going to spread the disease that far. So if you find a deer that's sick, you draw that small circle and you shoot there."

Novakofski called this approach "a textbook scientific strategy for control. You reduce contact and you reduce the spread of infection with the smallest overall impact on healthy deer."

He and his colleagues at the Illinois Natural History Survey (part of the Prairie Research Institute at the U. of I.) found that the strategy worked: The prevalence of CWD in tested Illinois deer remained at about 1 percent from 2002 to 2012.

The team also found that hunters were killing more deer each year in each region of the state (north, central and south) regardless of CWD and CWD management. Statewide, the number of deer killed by hunters went from 147,830 in 2001, before the appearance of CWD, to 181,451 in 2012. The only exception: Two counties out of 10 with cases of CWD saw a reduction in hunter harvest over the same period.

"We wanted to know whether Illinois hunters have fewer deer to hunt now than they did before CWD," said Nohra Mateus-Pinilla, a wildlife veterinary epidemiologist at the INHS who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Mary Beth Manjerovic. "We found that hunter harvest has increased, and the prevalence of CWD has been maintained at low levels for 10 years in Illinois."

This finding answers a long-time complaint by some hunters that the culling of deer makes it harder for them to find deer to shoot, Novakofski said.
"Since 2001, hunter harvest of deer has increased similarly in the northern region of Illinois, where CWD occurs, and the rest of the state, where there is no disease or sharpshooting," he said.

In the two Illinois counties with fewer deer, "the reductions were 11 to 20 percent," Manjerovic said.

The team compared the Illinois experience with that of Wisconsin, which changed its CWD-management strategy from one that relied on culling to one that consisted primarily of allowing hunters to thin deer herds, the researchers said. Wisconsin saw a striking increase of infection in CWD-tested deer after it did that, the team found.

"In the early years in Wisconsin, (CWD prevalence) was still about 1 percent, just as it was in Illinois," Manjerovic said. "Then the strategy changed. Since 2007, CWD prevalence has increased to about 5 percent."

"We can't find an environmental or other variable that explains the increase in prevalence except a change in management," Novakofski said.

The numbers may not seem alarming to some, said postdoctoral researcher and co-author Michelle Green. But the trend is of concern, she said.

"CWD is a prion disease (like mad cow disease) and it's 100 percent fatal. 
There's no current way that we can actually make the deer better, so it's important that we keep it from spreading too far throughout the population," she said. "And then there's also the connection to mad cow disease. We don't have enough information yet to really understand what the impact to human health could be."

"We all hope that there is never a case of chronic wasting disease in humans. We all hope that it never spreads to people or agricultural animals," Novakofski said. "If it ever does, the investment in maintaining prevalence at a low level in Illinois will be repaid a thousand-fold."

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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For tiger populations, a new threat

This is an Amur tiger photographed by camera trap. Credit: WCS Russia Program

Along with the pressures of habitat loss, poaching and depletion of prey species, a new threat to tiger populations in the wild has surfaced in the form of disease, specifically, canine distemper virus (CDV). According to a new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its partners, CDV has the potential to be a significant driver in pushing the animals toward extinction.

While CDV has recently been shown to lead to the deaths of individual tigers, its long-term impacts on tiger populations had never before been studied.

The authors evaluated these impacts on the Amur tiger population in Russia's Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Zapovednik (SABZ), where tiger numbers declined from 38 individuals to 9 in the years 2007 to 2012. In 2009 and 2010, six adult tigers died or disappeared from the reserve, and CDV was confirmed in two dead tigers -- leading scientists to believe that CDV likely played a role in the overall decline of the population. Joint investigations of CDV have been an ongoing focus of WCS and Russian scientists at Sikhote-Alin Zapovednik and veterinarians at the regional Primorye Agricultural College since its first appearance in tigers in 2003.

A key finding of this study: Modeling shows that smaller populations of tigers were found to be more vulnerable to extinction by CDV. Populations consisting of 25 individuals were 1.65 times more likely to decline in the next 50 years when CDV was present. The results are profoundly disturbing for global wild tigers given that in most sites where wild tigers persist they are limited to populations of less than 25 adult breeding individuals.

The scientists used computer modeling to simulate the effects of CDV infection on isolated tiger populations of various sizes and through a series of transmission scenarios. These included tiger-to-tiger transmission and transmission through predation on CDV-infected domestic dogs and/or infected wild carnivores (such as foxes, raccoon dogs and badgers). High and low-risk scenarios for the model were created based on variation in the prevalence of CDV and the tigers' contact with sources of exposure.

Results showed that CDV infection increased the 50-year extinction probability of tigers in SABZ as much as 55.8 percent compared to CDV-free populations of equivalent size.

"Although we knew that individual tigers had died from CDV in the wild, we wanted to understand the risk the virus presents to whole populations," said WCS veterinarian Martin Gilbert. "Tigers are elusive, however, and studying the long-term impact of risk factors is very challenging. Our model, based on tiger ecology data collected over 20 years in SABZ, explored the different ways that tigers might be exposed to the virus and how these impact the extinction risk to tiger populations over the long term."

WCS Russia Program Director Dale Miquelle said, "Tigers face an array of threats throughout their range, from poaching to competition with humans for space and for food. 

Consequently, many tiger populations have become smaller and more fragmented, making them much more susceptible to diseases such as CDV. While we must continue to focus on the primary threats of poaching and habitat destruction, we now must also be prepared to deal with the appearance of such diseases in the future."

Priorities for future research, according to the authors, include identifying the domestic and wild carnivore species that contribute to the CDV reservoir, and those that are the most likely sources of infection for tigers. Tigers are too rare to sustain the virus in the long term, so CDV must rely on more abundant carnivore species to persist in the environment. 

Understanding the structure of the CDV reservoir will be a critical first step in identifying measures that might prevent or control future outbreaks. In addition, since we now know that small tiger populations are at greater risk to diseases such as CDV than larger populations, conservation strategies focusing on connectedness between populations become all the more important. "Estimating the potential impact of canine distemper virus on the Amur tiger population (Panthera tigris altaica) in Russia," appears in the current online edition of PloSONE. Authors include: Martin Gilbert of WCS and Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health at the University of Glasgow; Dale G. Miquelle of WCS; John M. Goodrich of Panthera; Richard Reeve, Sarah Cleaveland and Louise Matthews of Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health at the University of Glasgow; and Damien Joly of WCS and Metabiota.

This study was made possible through generous support from Morris Animal Foundation, Zoo Boise Conservation Fund, AZA Tiger Species Survival Plan Tiger Conservation Campaign, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

"Morris Animal Foundation is thankful to Dr. Miquelle and his team for helping protect the Amur Tigers," said Diane Brown, DVM, PhD, DACVP and Chief Scientific Officer for Morris Animal Foundation. "Our Foundation values their hard work and dedication to this study and we look forward to many more partnerships with the Wildlife Conservation Society."

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society

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Scientists produce cloned embryos of extinct frog

This is a gastric-brooding frog, Rheobatrachus silus, giving oral birth in the lab of Mike Tyler of the University of Adelaide. Credit: Mike Tyler, University of Adelaide

The genome of an extinct Australian frog has been revived and reactivated by a team of scientists using sophisticated cloning technology to implant a "dead" cell nucleus into a fresh egg from another frog species.

The bizarre gastric-brooding frog, Rheobatrachus silus -- which uniquely swallowed its eggs, brooded its young in its stomach and gave birth through its mouth -- became extinct in 1983.

But the Lazarus Project team has been able to recover cell nuclei from tissues collected in the 1970s and kept for 40 years in a conventional deep freezer. The "de-extinction" project aims to bring the frog back to life.

In repeated experiments over five years, the researchers used a laboratory technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. They took fresh donor eggs from the distantly related Great Barred Frog, Mixophyes fasciolatus, inactivated the egg nuclei and replaced them with dead nuclei from the extinct frog. Some of the eggs spontaneously began to divide and grow to early embryo stage -- a tiny ball of many living cells.

Although none of the embryos survived beyond a few days, genetic tests confirmed that the dividing cells contain the genetic material from the extinct frog.
The results are yet to be published.

"We are watching Lazarus arise from the dead, step by exciting step," says the leader of the Lazarus Project team, Professor Mike Archer, of the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. "We've reactivated dead cells into living ones and revived the extinct frog's genome in the process. Now we have fresh cryo-preserved cells of the extinct frog to use in future cloning experiments.

"We're increasingly confident that the hurdles ahead are technological and not biological and that we will succeed. Importantly, we've demonstrated already the great promise this technology has as a conservation tool when hundreds of the world's amphibian species are in catastrophic decline."

The technical work was led by Dr Andrew French and Dr Jitong Guo, formerly of Monash University, in a University of Newcastle laboratory led by frog expert, Professor Michael Mahony, along with Mr Simon Clulow and Dr John Clulow. The frozen specimens were preserved and provided by Professor Mike Tyler, of the University of Adelaide, who extensively studied both species of gastric-brooding frog -- R. silus and R. vitellinus -- before they vanished in the wild in 1979 and 1985 respectively.

UNSW's Professor Archer spoke publicly for the first time today about the Lazarus Project and also about his ongoing interest in cloning the extinct Australian thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, at the TEDx DeExtinction event in Washington DC, hosted by Revive and Restore and the National Geographic Society.

Researchers from around the world are gathered there to discuss progress and plans to 'de-extinct' other extinct animals and plants. Possible candidate species include the woolly mammoth, dodo, Cuban red macaw and New Zealand's giant moa.

Source: University of New South Wales

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Wild weather in the Arctic causes problems for people and wildlife

Svalbard's reindeer population can be severely affected by winter icing.
Credit: Brage Bremset Hansen

The residents of Longyearbyen, the largest town on the Norwegian Arctic island archipelago of Svalbard, remember it as the week that the weather gods caused trouble. Temperatures were ridiculously warm -- and reached a maximum of nearly +8 degrees C in one location at a time when mean temperatures are normally -15 degrees C. It rained in record amounts.

Snow packs became so saturated that slushy snow avalanches from the mountains surrounding Longyearbyen covered roads and took out a major pedestrian bridge. Snowy streets and the tundra were transformed into icy, rain-covered skating rinks that were difficult to navigate with snowmobiles. Flights were cancelled, the airport closed, and travel around town was tricky.

The situation was particularly problematic out on the Arctic tundra. Rain falling on snow can percolate to the base of a snowpack where it can pool at the soil surface and subsequently freeze. That makes it impossible for grazing reindeer to get at their food, for example, and extreme warm spells can even affect temperatures in the permanently frozen ground found throughout the archipelago.

But the extreme event also offered an interdisciplinary group of scientists, from climatologists to biologists to snow geophysicists and structural engineers, a chance to document the event and learn from it. Their cross-disciplinary report, "Warmer and wetter winters: characteristics and implications of an extreme weather event in the High Arctic," was published on 20 November in Environmental Research Letters.

"We had a unique opportunity to document what happened, and we did," said Brage Bremset Hansen, the first author on the paper, and co-author Øystein Varpe. "This was a case study from one event…but since it was an extreme event, and with all of our contacts in the different disciplines, we were able to compile this information into one story, which is quite rare."

Hansen is a biologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics, and Varpe is an associate professor at the University Centre in Svalbard.

Just a 0.2 percent chance of happening

Co-author Ketil Isaksen, a climatologist from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, said that such an extreme event has a 500-year return period, which means that the probability of it happening in any one year is just 0.2 percent.

At the same time, climatologists say that Svalbard has seen the greatest increase in temperatures of any place in Europe over the last three decades.

And while no one can attribute the event directly to global warming, virtually all climate studies show that the High Arctic, including Svalbard, will become increasingly warmer and wetter over time.

"We expect this to be more likely to happen," Isaksen said.

Reindeer mortality up

As a biologist, Hansen was very interested in how the extreme weather would affect the archipelago's natural communities. Only four vertebrate species overwinter on Svalbard -- the wild Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus), the Svalbard rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta hyperborea), and the sibling vole (Microtus levis), and one animal that eats them all, the Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus).

When Hansen and his colleagues compared summer population counts of reindeer after the January 2012 event to counts conducted for the previous summer, they found that the number of reindeer carcasses in many populations was among the highest ever recorded.
But it could have been worse, he said, in part because recent increases in summer temperatures have made for better foraging conditions for Svalbard reindeer overall.

"It wasn't like there were dead reindeer all over the tundra," he said. "If this had happened in the colder 1980s, it could have been much worse. …They had a nice winter up to this event, which occurred rather late."

Rain and permafrost

Hansen and colleagues have previously published research on the overwintering animal community on Svalbard, suggesting that such extreme events can affect all species. But what makes the new findings unique is the collaboration between different disciplines that enabled researchers to assemble a picture of what happened to Svalbard's physical environment, and to people living in the outposts of Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund, a tiny community with a winter population of about 30 people.

In Ny-Ålesund, for example, it rained nearly 100 mm in one day -- which would be more typical of the Norwegian coastal town of Bergen, renowned for its heavy rains. That one-day amount represented a quarter of the precipitation that Ny-Ålesund typically gets in a year.

Isaksen documented a significant increase in ground temperatures in permafrost as deep as 5 metres below the surface as a result of the extreme warming. This temperature increase came on top of a decades-long larger trend of warming of the permafrost on Svalbard, the researchers said. Permafrost is permanently frozen ground that is found throughout the archipelago and the High Arctic. In regions in the Northern Hemisphere where permafrost is found, it occupies approximately 25% (23 million km²) of the land area.

Tourism and infrastructure

And for Svalbard residents, who are some of the most northerly inhabitants on the globe, there were significant socioeconomic effects. During and after the event, it was difficult for snowmobiles to travel out on the tundra on the thick layer of ice, Varpe said.

This thick layer, averaging 15.3 cm, persisted out on the tundra well after the event was over, said Jack Kohler, senior research scientist, glaciology, at the Norwegian Polar Institute.
"The winter rain event leads to the ground-ice formation, and the ice lasts the remainder of the melt season, until it melts, and that is what I would call the significant happening," Kohler said. "The rain is an event, for sure, but the ice is actually the (big) event."

The result was a strong decrease in tourism for the rest of the winter, specifically for activities such as guided snowmobile and dogsled tours. Tour numbers dropped by 28 percent compared to the previous winter, and were the lowest ever since 2001, which is when statistics were first continuously kept. The researchers also believe that had a ripple effect on hotel stays and other tourist activities.

Another potential problem exposed by the extreme event was the vulnerability of the town's infrastructure to avalanches. A major avalanche in June 1953 destroyed the town's hospital and other buildings, killing three people, but since then, many buildings have been constructed without regard to potential avalanche risks. If Svalbard's climate continues to warm as our downscaled climate scenarios predict, the likelihood of damaging avalanches will only increase, Hansen and colleagues say.

Hansen is continuing to investigate the consequences of a warmer Arctic on Svalbard's natural communities and human population with a research project called VINTERREGN (Winter rain). Of particular interest is whether or not plants, which usually do not grow taller than a couple of inches at this latitude, can withstand being completely covered in ice for several months.

Source:  The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

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Arctic conditions may become critical for polar bears by end of 21st century

This is a photo of an Arctic polar bear. Shifts in the timing and duration of ice cover, especially the possible lengthening of ice-free periods, may impact polar bears under projected warming before the end of the 21st century, according to a study published Nov. 26, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Stephen Hamilton from University of Alberta and colleagues. Credit: Andrew Derocher; CC-BY

Shifts in the timing and duration of ice cover, especially the possible lengthening of ice-free periods, may impact polar bears under projected warming before the end of the 21st century, according to a study published November 26, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Stephen Hamilton from University of Alberta and colleagues.

Sea ice across the Arctic is declining and altering physical characteristics of marine ecosystems, and polar bears are vulnerable to these changes in sea ice conditions. The authors of this study used sea ice projections for the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from 2006-2100 and metrics developed from polar bear energetics modeling to gain insight into the conservation challenges for polar bears facing habitat loss.

Shifts away from multiyear ice to annual ice cover throughout the region, as well as lengthening ice-free periods, may become critical for polar bears before the end of the 21st century with projected warming. Each polar bear population in the Archipelago may undergo 2-5 months of ice-free conditions, where no such conditions exist presently. Under business-as-usual climate projections, polar bears may face starvation and reproductive failure across the entire Archipelago by the year 2100. "We predict that nearly one-tenth of the world's polar bear habitat, as much as one-quarter of their global population, may undergo significant habitat loss under business-as-usual climate projections," said Stephen Hamilton.

Source: PLOS

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Tinkering with the Tao of pandas

This image shows a panda eating in China's Wolong Nature Reserve. Pandas habitat choices center around the ready availability of bamboo -- lots of bamboo.
 Credit: Sue Nichols, Michigan State University

Good news on the panda front: Turns out they're not quite as delicate -- and picky -- as thought.

Up until now, information gleaned from 30 years worth of scientific literature suggested that pandas were inflexible about habitat. Those conclusions morphed into conventional wisdom and thus have guided policy in China. But a Michigan State University (MSU) research associate has led a deep dive into aggregate data and emerged with evidence that the endangered animal is more resilient and flexible than previously believed.

Vanessa Hull is a postdoctoral research associate at MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). She has spent three years stalking giant pandas in China's Wolong Nature Reserve. Given the pandas' elusive nature, Hull had a lot of down time.

So she bided her time plowing through literature on panda habitat selection, discovering inconsistencies and lack of consensus on matters crucial as scientists and policymakers struggle to protect the estimated 1,600 remaining wild giant pandas in the 21,300 square kilometers to which the animals have been relegated.

"Panda habitat selection is a complex process that we are still trying to unravel," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and CSIS director. "Pandas are a part of coupled human and natural systems where humans have changed so much in their habitat."

It has been thought pandas demanded a forest with fairly gentle slope (easier to mosey around in while seeking bamboo) at a certain elevation in original, old forest, an abundance of bamboo, and plenty of distance from people. These recommendations, Hull said, come from often-scant research because pandas are difficult animals to study.

"Pandas are difficult to observe and follow in the wild, we're always 10 steps behind them," Hulls said. "We don't know why they're there -- or where they were before and after. There's a lot of guesswork."

Vanessa and her colleagues drew up analysis of all the research projects and sought to separate studies that focus on where pandas live from studies that examine what kind of choices pandas make when multiple types of habitat are available. They discovered that pandas may not be as picky as thought.

The research shows, for instance, that pandas are willing to live in secondary forests -- forests that have been logged and have regrown. They also don't seem as selective about slope, and are willing to climb depending on which of the many varieties of bamboo is growing, or what type of forest it was in. Same for elevation, and the amount of sunshine that hits a piece of panda home.

That's good news. Indications that forests once cut clean by timber harvesting can return to acceptable panda habitat validate current bans on forest harvesting.

They also found that there is a complex relationship between trees and bamboo. Pandas choose different forest types as places to spend their time, as long as bamboo is available.

Hull said consensus would be helpful for future panda habitat research, since the future guarantees change.

"It's exciting to see the flexibility pandas have, or at least see that pandas are choosing areas I didn't think could support them," Hull said. "It gives you hope. They've survived throughout many challenges over so many millions of years, it would be sad to think humans came along and threw it all away. This also suggests we should stay on board and try to make things better for them."

Source: Michigan State University

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Sampling rivers for genes rather than organisms

Conventional methods used to inventory macroinvertebrates are extremely time-consuming. Credit: Image courtesy of EAWAG: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

Effective environmental management depends on a detailed knowledge of the distribution of species. But taxonomists are in short supply, and some species can be difficult to identify, even for experts. Eawag, in collaboration with Canton Zurich, is now pursuing a new approach for species identification, requiring no more than samples of DNA shed into the environment.

If amphipods are detected in a river, are they a threatened species, or organisms indicating good water quality? Or perhaps the first arrivals of an invasive species? Conservation and environmental management call for a detailed knowledge of species. But experts capable of identifying species under the microscope on the basis of morphological characteristics are increasingly rare. Alternative methods for water monitoring would therefore be welcome. Biologists at Eawag are now pursuing a new approach for the detection of species, involving the use of environmental DNA (eDNA). Because organisms continuously release genetic material into the environment in the form of faeces, hair or skin cells, water samples collected from a river or lake contain innumerable fragments of DNA. As long as the relevant genetic code is known, these DNA segments can be assigned to particular species, using the latest molecular biological techniques and global databases.

Cantonal authorities interested
In cooperation with the Canton Zurich Office of Waste, Water, Energy and Air (AWEL), the researchers investigated whether this method is suitable for the detection of macroinvertebrates: organisms such as mayflies, amphipods, mussels or snails are important bioindicators, used in the assessment of water quality and ecotoxicity. Water samples were collected from 14 lake and river habitats in Canton Zurich for eDNA analysis, and macroinvertebrate species collected by kicknet sampling were also determined in the conventional manner.

While the two methods did not always deliver the same results, five of the six target species were reliably detected by both methods. Especially for organisms occurring in small populations, the eDNA method appears to be more sensitive. With this approach, the rare mayfly Baetis buceratus was additionally detected at two sites where no Baetis specimens where found by kicknet sampling. According to project leader Florian Altermatt, the new method may also be suitable for the detection of invasive species at an early stage of colonization. In the US and France, it is already being tested for invasive carp species.

Long-term goal: routine monitoring of biodiversity
The eDNA method offers additional advantages. As eDNA is ubiquitous in freshwater throughout the year, the findings reflect the situation of an entire catchment, and surveillance is less time-critical. By contrast, kicknet sampling merely provides a snapshot, and for many species it can only be carried out at certain stages of the life cycle and certain times of the year. For eDNA analysis, organisms do not have to be removed from a river or lake and -- in principle -- hundreds of species can be detected at the same time. This means that continuous monitoring of freshwater biodiversity could one day become possible, just as chemical parameters are routinely monitored today.

This, however, is still a long way off: apart from the need for further refinements, the method is still costly and time-consuming. The cantons currently lack the necessary infrastructure and expertise. But Altermatt believes it will not take too long for technical standards to be established, permitting efficient operation: "eDNA analysis will then cost a few hundred Swiss francs and will be cheaper than conventional surveys." However, the new method will not wholly replace the conventional approach. Altermatt argues that the benefits of both approaches should be exploited. In addition, taxonomists will remain indispensable for validation and calibration of the new procedures.

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

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Brazilian zoologists discovered the first obligate cave-dwelling flatworm in South America

The type locality of the new cave-dwelling species in northeastern Brazil is shown.
 Credit: Rodrigo Ferreira; CC-BY 4.0

Typical cave-dwelling organisms, unpigmented and eyeless, were discovered in a karst area located in northeastern Brazil. The organisms were assigned to a new genus and species of freshwater flatworm and may constitute an oceanic relict. They represent the first obligate cave-dwelling flatworm in South America. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Freshwater flatworms occur on a wide range of habitats, namely streams, lagoons, ponds, among others. Some species also occur in subterranean freshwater environments.

Brazil has more than 11,000 caves, but their species diversity is largely unknown. Field work by Rodrigo Ferreira, from University of Lavras, Brazil, in a karst area located in northeastern Brazil, has found the first obligate cave-dwelling flatworm in South America. Flatworm researchers from University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), Brazil, Ana Leal-Zanchet and Stella Souza, described it as a new genus and species.

The new species, which was named Hausera hauseri, is a typical cave-dwelling organism, unpigmented and eyeless. The genus and species names were proposed in honour to a Hungarian biologist, the late Prof. Dr. Josef Hauser, who immigrated to Brazil and studied freshwater flatworms over many years.

The sampling area of the new species is unique in comparison with other karst areas in Brazil. Most Brazilian limestone formations are located in inner portions of the country, which must have prevented marine groups from colonizing these caves in the past. In contrast, this karst area is located near the sea, and its limestone outcrops are at low altitude, which has allowed different invertebrates to colonize the caves during sea level rises in the past. Thus, the new species may constitute an oceanic relict as is the case of other cave-dwelling invertebrates found in this karst area in northeastern Brazil.

Source: Pensoft Publishers

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How pace of climate change will challenge ectotherms

Turtles sunning themselves (stock image). Turtles are ectotherms, one of many that will be threatened by climate change, researchers say.
Credit: © xoanon / Fotolia

Animals that regulate their body temperature through the external environment may be resilient to some climate change but not keep pace with rapid change, leading to potentially disastrous outcomes for biodiversity.

A study by the University of Sydney and University of Queensland showed many animals can modify the function of their cells and organs to compensate for changes in the climate and have done so in the past, but the researchers warn that the current rate of climate change will outpace animals' capacity for compensation (or acclimation).

The research has just been published in Nature Climate Change (Letters), written by Professor Frank Seebacher School of Biological Sciences and Professor Craig Franklin and Associate Professor Craig White from the University of Queensland.

Adapting to climate change will not just require animals to cope with higher temperatures. The predicted increase to fluctuations in temperature as well as to overall temperature would require animals to function across a broader range of conditions. This is particularly important for ectotherms, animals that rely on external sources of heat to control body temperature, and are therefore more influenced by environmental temperatures.

The research showed that many groups of ectotherms, which make up more than 90 percent of all animals, are able to change their physiological function to cope with an altered environment, but the rapid pace and fluctuations of human-induced climate change present serious challenges.

The researchers studied 40 years of published data to assess how biological functions change in response to a sudden fluctuations in environmental temperatures. They found that the physiological rates of ectothermic animals, such as heart rate, metabolism and locomotion, had already increased over the past 20 years with increasing average temperatures.

"It is important that animals maintain the right balance between the large number of physiological functions despite environmental fluctuations. An increase in temperature that leads to changed reaction rates can upset that balance and cause the decline of individuals and species," said Professor Seebacher. "For example, movement requires energy and oxygen to be delivered to muscles. However, if metabolism or the cardiovascular system can't cope with increased temperatures, animals can no longer move to forage, migrate or interact with each other.

"The overall trend in the last 20 years has been to increased physiological rates, and we predict that this would continue to increase with increasing temperature. "Even if animals are able to maintain the balance of their physiological functions in a warmer climate, increased metabolism leads to increases in the food resources needed and could upset the balance in ecosystems, particularly if predator and prey populations respond very differently to the environmental temperature change."

Source: University of Sydney

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New fossil find: Precursor of European rhinos found in Vietnam

Epiceratherium naduongense sp. nov. vom Krokodil zerbissen. Credit: Senckenberg

A team of scientists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment Tübingen was able to recover fossils of two previously unknown mammal species that lived about 37 million years ago. The newly described mammals show a surprisingly close relationship to prehistoric species known from fossil sites in Europe. The location: The open lignite-mining Na Duong in Vietnam. Here, the team of scientists was also able to make a series of further discoveries, including three species of fossilized crocodiles and several new turtles.

Southeast Asia is considered a particularly species-rich region, even in prehistoric times -- a so-called hotspot of biodiversity. For several decades now, scientists have postulated close relationships that existed in the late Eocene (ca. 38-34 million years ago) between the faunas of that region and Europe. The recent findings by the research team under leadership of Prof. Dr. Madelaine Böhme serve as proof that some European species originated in Southeast Asia.

Rhinoceros and Coal beast

One of the newly described mammals is a rhinoceros, Epiaceratherium naduongense. The anatomy of the fossil teeth allows identifying this rhinoceros as a potential forest dweller. The other species is the so-called "Coal Beast," Bakalovia orientalis. This pig-like ungulate, closely related to hippos, led a semi-aquatic lifestyle, i.e., it preferred the water close to bank areas. At that time, Na Duong was a forested swampland surrounding Lake Rhin Chua. The mammals' remains bear signs of crocodile attacks. Indeed, the excavation site at Na Duong contains the fossilized remains of crocodiles up to 6 meters in length.

From island to island toward Europe

In the Late Eocene, the European mainland presented a very different aspect than it does today. Italy and Bulgaria were part of an island chain in the Tethys Sea. These islands spanned several thousand kilometers between what later became Europe and India. European fossils from that epoch are very rare, since little material has been preserved due to the folding of mountains and erosion. Yet, the two new species had relatives in this area: A rhinoceros Epiaceratherium bolcense closely resembling the one from Na Duong was found in Italy (Monteviale). Fossil finds of Epiaceratherium magnum from Bavaria indicate that rhinoceroses reached continental Europe no later than 33 million years ago and colonized the landmass. The coal beast did not quite make it to the European mainland -- but it certainly reached the so-called Balkano-Rhodopen Island: a fossilized coal beast very similar to Bakalovia orientalis was unearthed in present-day Bulgaria.

Research among coal dust and excavators

The open mining pit Na Duong is still active. While the scientists conduct their excavations, lignite is being extracted nearby. Since 2008, the international research team around Prof. Dr. Madelaine Böhme from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP) at the University of Tübingen has studied the prehistoric ecosystem and the fossils of Na Duong in Vietnam. This research revealed that the lignite seams contained a globally important fossil deposit from the Paleogene interval. Originally, scientists had expected to find fossils from the younger Cenozoic (up to 23 million years ago) at the site. This ecosystem, which the scientists from Vietnam, France and Germany explore and reconstruct in ever more detail from one excavation season to the next, is a 37 million year-old swamp forest in a tropical to subtropical climate. Up to 600 trees grew there per hectare, and their crowns reached heights of up to 35 meters.

Source:  Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum

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