Ecology and the Environment 2022

                It is a scuba diver’s dream to float beside the breathtaking wingspan of a Mobula ray as it soars through the water column like a bird in zero gravity flight. Mobula are known for flying underwater and above, making leaps up to 2 meters into the air and landing with a smack that echoes across the ocean surface. There are eleven major species of Mobulidae throughout the world. The Mobula thurstoni, also known as the bentfin devil ray, is one of the most widely distributed yet poorly documented Mobula species. Recent identification of individual bentfin devil rays in the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago in Brazil has the potential to strongly defend the importance of Marine Protected Areas worldwide. The Fernando de Noronha Archipelago (FNA) is a UNESCO heritage site. It has notably high biodiversity with a large zooplankton biomass and essential habitats for various species of fish, turtles and marine mammals.  The M...

  The extinction of species is most often brought up when discussing climate change and the state of our environment. Human activity has caused so many extinctions that we are now in the world’s sixth mass extinction. The extinction of species can be caused by a variety of factors and can occur in many different places. However, this post focuses on the extinction of chondrichthyes in the world’s oceans.  The abundance of many different chondrichthyes are not well documented, so many more chondrichthyes could be threatened without our knowledge. The class chondrichthyes includes sharks, rays, and chimeras. The knowledge on the extinction rate of many species in this class is data deficient which means that there is not enough information to determine the true status of these animals.  There are regulations on how much these animals can be fished, and protections have been put in place. Still though, these different protections are very limited and varied. This study looke...

  Lucy Troy How Scientists are Utilizing Woody Cells to Refine Climate Models        Can trees offer a glimpse into a past as important as our future? In the wake of our rapidly changing climate, scientists constantly look to climate models to predict how our climate will continue to change and what measures we must take to prevent the drastic, negative developments associated with this change. These climate models are often refined based on historic climatic patterns, by testing how accurately the models can reflect previously observed climate and weather conditions.  But observed climate conditions have not been formally recorded continuously since the beginning of time. Thus, the crucial field of dendrochronology – the scientific study of tree rings – emerged. For decades, scientists have observed how the thickness of growth rings vary from year to year. Astronomer Andrew E. Douglass was the first to link ring thickness to climatic patte...

With Halloween drawing near, it is important to understand what is in your candy. When looking at the ingredient list, palm oil should be a red flag, telling you to avoid this trick and choose a different treat.  Image: Halloween candy spill out of orange trick or treat bucket from stock.adobe.com What is the Problem with Palm Oil? Palm oil is a product that is hard to avoid in your day-to-day life. You can find it in numerous everyday products such as candy, detergent, and shampoo. Unfortunately, palm oil, made from oil palm, has a multitude of production related issues. This article will focus on the ecological impacts, but it is necessary to recognize that production also creates human rights issues such as child labor and worker exploitation. On the environmental side, palm oil production has caused numerous problems, with the two most devastating being deforestation and biodiversity loss. Deforestation  Due to high demand, oil palm, originating in Africa, is currently gro...

    Carbon is the main subject of the vast majority of discussions around climate change, as it is a large contributor to the warming of the planet. When addressing climate change, we consistently look to ways to sequester carbon, and often so in ways that rely on natural systems or species that play a significant role in ecology. Plants are an obvious choice for sequestering carbon because they take in carbon during photosynthesis and release carbon into the soil when they decay, but how often do we think about the associated species that make this possible?      Soil ecology essentially serves as the foundation of the communities that grow on the surface, and a key species in this is mycorrhizal fungi, which form symbiotic relationships with a majority of plant species.  Boreal forests are a good subject for gaining a better understanding of these interactions because they sequester large net amounts of carbon in the soil by accumulating large amounts of ...

  Analysis of Coral Bleaching Overtime Coral bleaching has become more widely known throughout the years because of its increasing effect on the health of our oceans. The article Global Analysis of Coral Bleaching Over the Past Two Decades published in the Nature Communications journal covers the history of coral bleaching and projections for the future.  Stressful temperature changes associated with climate change have been known to cause coral bleaching and death. Bleaching patterns vary spatially and temporally, so this study examined coral in 3351 sites at 81 diff countries from 1998-2017 with a variety of environmental variables, including El Nino (a weather event that causes parts of the ocean to be warmer than usual).  According to the data, bleaching was more common in areas with high intensity and frequency of temperature changes, and it was less common in areas with more sea surface temperature inconsistencies. Bleaching was also more common at tropical, mid-lat...

     Coral reefs are one of nature's most beautiful creations: they are fascinating structures with almost alien features that glow with all the colors of the rainbow. Not only are they mind-blowing, but they are home to complex ecosystems that are as diverse as tropical rainforests. Because they grow on coasts, coral reefs also protect the land from waves and erosion and help humans find food. It's safe to say that coral reefs are a vastly important part of not only marine environments, but land environments as well. An image of a thriving coral reef. Credit: Volodmymyr Goinyk from theconversation.com      Unfortunately, climate change has put these breathtaking ecosystems in danger. Over the last 30 years, about a third of the coral reefs in our oceans have been lost. This is mainly due to increases in ocean temperatures as they require very specific conditions to survive and cannot adapt fast enough as climate change causes these temperatures to ris...

     What does it mean for something to be intelligent? Does it need to be human, have a central nervous system, or exhibit the ability to learn and make cognitive decisions? Scientists have been exploring these questions and have discovered something incredible: studies show that trees should be considered intelligent, despite their current image as little more than nature's providers.       This comes from evidence that these organisms can communicate with each other through mycorrhizal fungal networks to help them adapt to their environment and combat stressors. Mycorrhizas, literally meaning "fungus roots," involve 95% of plant families in symbiotic relationships. Studies have found that plants and trees provide nutrients to the fungus as it in turn makes root growth less energetically costly and allows for communication within the highly active plant root apex, or "root-brain."   Tree and plant communication is a complicated topic, and there ...

        Associations between organisms are widely found in nature.  Symbiosis  – from Greek meaning “living together” -- is a term referring to any close relationship between two distinct organisms rather both benefit (mutualism), only one species benefits while the other has a neutral income (commensalism), or one species has advantage or harm the other through the relationship (parasitism). However, symbiotic associations are far more complex than these; they often include several other interactions with more organisms and the environment, and the way that many of them work is still unknown.      One intriguing symbiotic interaction poorly understood is the potential mutualism between cavity excavators and fungi . It is hypothesized that excavating species – such as woodpeckers – may benefit from fungi because they soften wood. Thus, woodpeckers can open holes in trees more easily. At the same time, fungi may gain advantage of facilita...

     Do you know what makes good quality chocolate? It all starts in the field where cacao plants are cultivated and harvested to be processed later into the worldwide loved sweet treat. Cacao is a tropical crop that is highly benefited by agroforestry systems that allow for greater interaction between organisms and the plantation than traditional agricultural methods. In agroforests, animals provide services such as pollination and pest control, but they can also provide disservices by harming or eating the crops. Therefore, understanding how services and disservices are balanced out is important for enhancing sustainable management practices in those biodiversity-friendly farms. Image: Cacao agroforestry. Google images. Accessed on Oct 02, 2022.      In 2019, a group of researchers conducted a one-year field experiment in 12 cacao agroforests in northwestern Peru to better understand those associations. They assessed how three main productivity indicators...