Month: July 2015

City birds are more aggressive than country birds

Post author By jcoker
Post date July 29, 2015

A new study published in Behavioral Ecology suggests that increased aggression in urban song sparrows is related to resource availability. The study, by Virginia Tech researchers Sarah Foltz and Ignacio Moore, was featured this week in Science.

“City folk have a reputation for being less friendly than their rural counterparts, and the same appears to be true for garden birds. Urban song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) are more aggressive toward their neighbors than are sparrows out in the country. But whereras the temperament of human city-dwellers is often attributed to the sheer density of people, this isn’t the case for sparrows. The team measured birds’ responses to recordings of another male’s song, noting how often males approached or attacked the speakers, and found that aggression depended not on the density of sparrows, but on the availability of food in the environment. Counterintuitively, male sparrows responded more aggressively in the city, where there tends to be more food, and rural birds became more aggressive when provided with food supplements. The authors explain that the sparrows defend food-rich, high-quality territories more aggressively, but it isn’t clear whether this is an offensive or a defensive strategy; city birds may be more aggressive because a territory with more food is more valuable to them, or because their abundant resources attract more thieves.”

Original Article:

Foltz, Sarah L.,Ross, Allen E., Laing, Brenton T.,Rock, Ryan P., Battle, Kathryn E., Moore, Ignacio T. Get off my lawn: increased aggression in urban song sparrows is related to resource availability. Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arv111

Photo by: By Linda Tanner from Los Osos, California, via Wikimedia Commons

Climate Change

Science communication through music

Post author By jcoker
Post date July 23, 2015

Originally published at Ensia

When faced with the challenge of sharing the latest climate change discoveries, scientists often rely on data graphics and technical illustrations. University of Minnesota undergrad Daniel Crawford came up with a completely different approach. He’s using his cello to communicate the latest climate science through music.

Thermometer measurements show the average global temperature has risen about 1.4 °F (0.8 °C) since 1880. Typically, this warming is illustrated visually with line plots or maps showing year-by-year changes in annual temperatures. As an alternative, Crawford used an approach called data sonification to convert global temperature records into a series of musical notes.

The final result, “A Song of Our Warming Planet,” came about following a conversation Crawford had with geography professor Scott St. George during an internship. St. George asked Crawford about the possibility of turning a set of data into music.

“Data visualizations are effective for some people, but they aren’t the best way to reach everyone,” says St. George. “Instead of giving people something to look at, Dan’s performance gives them something they can feel.”

Crawford based his composition on surface temperature data from NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. The temperature data were mapped over a range of three octaves, with the coldest year on record (–0.47 °C in 1909) set to the lowest note on the cello (open C). Each ascending halftone is equal to roughly 0.03°C of planetary warming.

In Crawford’s composition, each note represents a year, ordered from 1880 to 2012. The pitch reflects the average temperature of the planet relative to the 1951–80 base line. Low notes represent relatively cool years, while high notes signify relatively warm ones.

The result is a haunting sequence that traces the warming of our planet year by year since the late 19th century. During a run of cold years between the late 1800s and early 20th century, the cello is pushed towards the lower limit of its range. The piece moves into the mid-register to track the modest warming that occurred during the 1940s. As the sequence approaches the present, the cello reaches higher and higher notes, reflecting the string of warm years in the 1990s and 2000s.

Crawford hopes other researchers and artists will use or adapt his composition to support science outreach, and has released the score and sound files under a Creative Commons license.

“Climate scientists have a standard toolbox to communicate their data,” says Crawford. “We’re trying to add another tool to that toolbox, another way to communicate these ideas to people who might get more out of music than maps, graphs and numbers.”

The video ends with a stark message: Scientists predict the planet will warm by another 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. This additional warming would produce a series of notes beyond the range of human hearing.

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Story by Todd Reubold

Support for this project was provided by the Institute on the Environment, the College of Liberal Arts, the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program and the School of Music at the University of Minnesota.

Video production by Elizabeth Giorgi.

Sound recording and engineering by Michael Duffy.

Climate Change Global Change News

NYT’s: What Oysters Reveal About Climate Change

Post author By jcoker
Post date July 22, 2015

Mark Bittman learns how researchers are helping California seafood producers monitor the effects of ocean acidification.

Climate Change Evolution Global Change

New in Science: Polar bears fail to adapt to lack of food

Post author By jcoker
Post date July 17, 2015

From BBC NEWS

Polar bears are unable to adapt their behaviour to cope with the food losses associated with warmer summers in the Arctic. Scientists had believed that the animals would enter a type of ‘walking hibernation’ when deprived of prey. But new research says that that bears simply starve in hotter conditions when food is scarce.

The authors say that the implications for the survival of the species in a warmer world are grim.

Back in 2008 polar bears were listed as a threatened species in the US. At that time, the Secretary of the Interior noted that the dramatic decline in sea ice was the greatest threat the bears faced. Polar bears survive mainly on a diet of seals that they hunt on the sea ice – but increased melting in the summer reduces seal numbers and as a result the bears struggle to find a meal.

Some researchers have argued that polar bears would deal with a reduced calorie intake by entering a low-activity state termed ‘walking hibernation’, similar to the way that many species of bear cope with winter. To test this idea, scientists embarked on a dangerous and expensive trial where they attached satellite collars and surgically implanted logging devices to track the bears’ movements and to record physiological details. They studied more than two dozen bears in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska. They concluded that in the summer seasons, the bears didn’t slow down, they simply starved when food was short.

“Their metabolism is very much like a typical food limited mammal rather than a hibernating bear,” said John Whiteman from the University of Wyoming, the paper’s lead author. “If you or I were to be food-limited for weeks on end we would look like the bears’ data.”

While the bears may not be able to change their behaviour when it comes to food, they do seem to have a significant adaption that helps them to cope with swimming in cold water. “They have this ability to temporarily allow the outermost portion of the core of the body to cool off substantially and this protects the innermost vital organs – there was not an expectation of that, it was very surprising,” said Whiteman. The researchers detailed the extraordinary swimming ability of the bears in their study, with one female surviving a nine day, 400 mile swim from shore to ice. When she was re-captured some seven weeks later, the bear had lost 22% of her body mass, as well as her cub.

The scientists say that despite this strong performance in cold water, it doesn’t compensate for the lack of food and the inability of the bears to slow down their metabolism in response. “We’ve uncovered what seems to be a fascinating adaptation for swimming in cold arctic waters, but I don’t think that is going to play as big a role in determining their fate as the loss of hunting opportunities will,” said Whiteman.

“We think this data also points towards their eventual decline.”

VT Scientists work to preserve biodiversity in the Amazon Rainforest

Post author By jcoker
Post date July 15, 2015

From VT News:

July 8, 2015

The Amazon Basin’s vast tropical rainforests, rivers, and soils are rich ecosystems vital to the basic functioning of the planet. They churn moisture into the atmosphere, sequester global carbon, regulate climate patterns, and house much of the world’s biodiversity.

But those extensive, interconnected ecosystems are increasingly fragmented and degraded by unsustainable agriculture and ranching, illegal logging, unmitigated mining, and exploitative commercial fishing practices.

Scientists from Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment — economists, fisheries and wildlife biologists, and international policy experts — are deeply engaged in the region, working in the Amazon’s critical ecosystems to understand and help reshape the daily land-use and natural resource management decisions that are currently driving deforestation, over-fishing, water degradation, and social inequity.

Leandro Castello, assistant professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, recruits community-based fishermen to guide fisheries management, leveraging local knowledge of habitat and ecology for the conservation of arapaima — a 400-pound, air-breathing, bird-eating top-predator fish species so relentlessly fished its localized extinctions have rewritten what has been long believed about the self-balancing nature of fisheries management.

“Many, many fishing communities are developing their own management strategies,” Castello pointed out. “They are the ones asking scientists and governments to better manage fisheries.”

Now is the time to reverse current trends, according to Castello.

“In Brazil’s Amazonas State — an area of about 1.5 million square kilometers — there have been significant strides,” he said. “The arapaima fishery there is coming back, whereas it was going under 10 years ago.”

In other places things are not looking as promising, but Castello says his research “has the primary goal of influencing policy, not just creating knowledge. I think there is evidence with the arapaima that it has helped.”

Read the full story at VT NEWS.

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Interfaces of Global Change IGEP News Student Spotlight

Postcards from the field: Maya Wilson studies swallows in the Bahamas

Post author By jcoker
Post date July 13, 2015

July 12, 2015
Postcard from Maya Wilson

“I am just finishing up my four-month field season in The Bahamas! Overall, it has been a success!

I am here studying the Bahama Swallow, a poorly known and endangered bird species that only breeds on three islands in the northern Bahamas. I was here last summer for two months, but this is my first full season as a PhD student. I have spent most of the time on Abaco Island with my field assistants Nicole and Tivonia (see photo above). I also took a few trips to Andros Island, which is the largest island in The Bahamas but also one of the least developed. I haven’t made it to Grand Bahama yet, but maybe next year!

We have been collecting data to answer several questions, which will all be part of my dissertation. One of our main goals was to capture as many swallows as we could, and we just reached #100! We have also been locating and monitoring active nests, including “peeping” nests in pine snags with a specialized camera on a telescoping pole. We were able to follow several pairs as they built their nests, laid eggs, and raised their nestlings. We have also been surveying breeding habitats to assess the availability of nesting cavities, which are necessary for the Bahama swallow and other cavity-nesting species on the islands.

Although the heat and insects can get to us sometimes, we have been having a blast, surrounded by such natural beauty! I’ll be home in Blacksburg soon!

Warm regards,

Maya”