Environment-Biodiversity-Effects: Difference between revisions
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{{#seo: | |||
|title=Curated News Gallery from all over the Web | |||
|description=Curated news selected for its relevance, longevity and non-prescriptive content. | |||
|keywords=climate change, biodiversity, extinction, | |||
|image=https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/04/01102829/flower.png | |||
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=====Climate crisis forecasts a fragile future for wildflowers and pollinators===== | |||
[https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/climate-crisis-forecasts-a-fragile-future-for-wildflowers-and-pollinators by Spoorthy Raman on 1 April 2022 Mongabay] | |||
A first-of-its-kind experimental study has found that climate change reduces the abundance of wildflowers and causes them to produce less nectar and fewer and lighter seeds. | |||
These changes also impact pollinating insects visiting the flowers: they have to visit more flowers, more frequently, to gather the required food. | |||
Fewer flowers imply reduced reproductive fitness in plants, as well as fewer food resources for invertebrates that rely on these plants for food, habitat and shelter. | |||
Overall, climate change may disturb the composition of wildflower species and their pollinators, impacting agricultural crop yields, researchers say. | |||
=====Mass die-off of birds in south-western US 'caused by starvation'===== | |||
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/26/mass-die-off-of-birds-in-south-western-us-caused-by-starvation-aoe The Guardian Phoebe Weston 12/26/20] | |||
The mass die-off of thousands of songbirds in south-western US was caused by long-term starvation, made worse by unseasonably cold weather probably linked to the climate crisis, scientists have said. | |||
Flycatchers, swallows and warblers were among the migratory birds “falling out of the sky” in September, with carcasses found in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. A USGS National Wildlife Health Center necropsy has found 80% of specimens showed typical signs of starvation. | |||
Muscles controlling the birds’ wings were severely shrunken, blood was found in their intestinal tract and they had kidney failure as well as an overall loss of body fat. The remaining 20% were not in good enough condition to carry out proper tests. Nearly 10,000 dead birds were reported to the wildlife mortality database by citizens, and previous estimates suggest hundreds of thousands may have died. | |||
=====Loss of bees causes shortage of key food crops, study finds===== | |||
<embed> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/29/bees-food-crops-shortage-study </embed> the Guardian Oliver Milman Wed 29 Jul 2020 00.01 EDTLast modified on Wed 29 Jul 2020 12.35 EDT | |||
Of seven studied crops grown in 13 states across America, five showed evidence that a lack of bees is hampering the amount of food that can be grown, including apples, blueberries and cherries. A total of 131 crop fields were surveyed for bee activity and crop abundance by a coalition of scientists from the US, Canada and Sweden. | |||
“The crops that got more bees got significantly more crop production,” said Rachael Winfree, an ecologist and pollination expert at Rutgers University who was a senior author of the paper, published by the Royal Society. “I was surprised, I didn’t expect they would be limited to this extent.” | |||
====='Landscape of fear': what a mass of rotting reindeer carcasses taught scientists===== | ====='Landscape of fear': what a mass of rotting reindeer carcasses taught scientists===== | ||
<embed> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/landscape-of-fear-what-the-rotting-carcasses-of-reindeer-taught-scientists-aoe </embed> | <embed> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/landscape-of-fear-what-the-rotting-carcasses-of-reindeer-taught-scientists-aoe </embed> | ||
When 323 reindeer were killed by lightning on a remote Norwegian plateau, their bodies were left for nature to take its course. | When 323 reindeer were killed by lightning on a remote Norwegian plateau, their bodies were left for nature to take its course. | ||
Scavenger birds such as ravens, crows and eagles visited the highest density of carcasses in 2017 and then were nearly absent in 2018. The reverse was true of rodents (such as root vole, lemming, bank vole and field vole), which were absent from the site in 2017 and then were everywhere in 2018. Scientists believe rodents were too fearful to go to the site while these larger birds were around. Carcasses are interaction hotspots, but not all interactions are positive: “It’s kind of like, here’s a buffet, you’ve got a lot of hungry folks coming in to eat, and maybe they don’t like one another very much,” says Frank. | Scavenger birds such as ravens, crows and eagles visited the highest density of carcasses in 2017 and then were nearly absent in 2018. The reverse was true of rodents (such as root vole, lemming, bank vole and field vole), which were absent from the site in 2017 and then were everywhere in 2018. Scientists believe rodents were too fearful to go to the site while these larger birds were around. Carcasses are interaction hotspots, but not all interactions are positive: “It’s kind of like, here’s a buffet, you’ve got a lot of hungry folks coming in to eat, and maybe they don’t like one another very much,” says Frank. | ||
=====The Rabbit Outbreak A highly contagious, often lethal animal virus arrives in the United States===== | |||
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-rabbit-outbreak?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_063020&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5ef586acfda7562feb3d736e&cndid=61512174&hasha=f0e57389b5b6ce947e27301c632cb161&hashb=aeac0b5ca6f36cc0019dc8d94ae23514280b8daa&hashc=0c33721abf404e89835e29b0b03b7c348ebcdc56eb2922e714366c4e01e510ad&esrc=bouncexmulti_first&utm_term=TNY_Daily&fbclid=IwAR3IoF7jdSJloWxipgLZPMB45Hr2KtgOAgTXijqGKk89JOfxT1ePGLBz3SQ The New Yorker June 2020] | |||
One of the lagoviruses of the family Caliciviridae causes a highly contagious illness called rabbit hemorrhagic disease. RHD is vexingly hard to diagnose. An infected rabbit might experience vague lethargy, or a high fever and difficulty breathing, or it might exhibit no symptoms at all. Regardless of the symptoms, though, the mortality rate for RHD can reach a gloomy hundred per cent. There is no treatment for it. The virus’s ability to survive and spread is uncanny. It can persist on dry cloth with no host for more than a hundred days; it can withstand freezing and thawing; it can thrive in a dead rabbit for months, and on rabbit pelts, and in the wool made from Angora-rabbit fur, and in the rare rabbit that gets infected but survives. It can travel on birds’ claws and flies’ feet and coyotes’ fur. Its spread has been so merciless and so devastating that some pet owners have begun referring to it as “rabbit Ebola.” | |||
=====Long-term predator–prey cycles finally achieved in the lab===== | =====Long-term predator–prey cycles finally achieved in the lab===== | ||
