#risk of extinction

[overdoso]

“A perda de gelo marinho significa que os ursos passam menos tempo caçando focas e mais tempo jejuando em terra”, diz Louise Archer, pós-doutoranda da Universidade de Toronto em Scarborough e principal autora do estudo. 🌎

[despazito]

i'd have to find it again in my parents' library but growing up i had this storybook about the very realistic life of a brown pelican. it's always stuck with me because one of the chicks straight up dies in it

[tanadrin]

Rarely do we predict the end of the world two or three generations hence; it’s always “this generation will not pass away before all these things have come to pass.” And I’m sure there are a lot of reasons for this—if you’re running a genuine doomsday cult, for instance, you don’t want to put the doomsday too far off. And I *think* part of the driving force there is that it’s really hard for us to imagine that the world will continue once we are gone, more or less intact. Like, it’s really weird to look at small children and know that, if everything goes right, they will see and do and think things you will never share in. That your life before they came along will be nothing more than the thinly imagined world beyond the borders of photographs that your parents’ or grandparents’ was before you. That however important and accomplished you are, the world will continue to spin when you have died.

That’s a hard fact to get your head around! And it’s sort of the inverse of the way we ofte treat our childhood as cosmogonic, as the default state against which all else rises and falls. We are prone to a solipsism where the bounds of the word are the bounds of our lives. That’s not a novel idea, but it does make me very skeptical of any eschatology positive or negative. The world has, so far, an extremely good track record of zero transformative catastrophes or eucatastrophes that take place with the sound of trumpets in the twinkling of an eye. Sure, it has lots of moments of *change.* Whole ages of them—dramatic sometimes, but always continuous. Differentiable, you might say, in that however rapidly the status quo is in flux you can see there is one, and how we got here from a previous state.

And not only do doomsayers have a pretty lousy track record, they frequently exhibit telltale signs that their doomsaying is based in something other than careful deduction—like Paul Ehrlich not only missing the Green Revolution (a forgivable error perhaps) but digging in even further the more reality continued to drift from his apocalyptic forecasts. One cannot help but think of Harold Camping, continually reissuing his predictions for the Second Coming. But also—peak oil was wrong; climate change has been bad but looks like it will not be “the end of industrial civilization” bad; a NATO/Warsaw Pact nuclear war never came to pass, (although arguably that’s the one that was in a lot of ways the most rational, and where we got luckiest). The non-doomsday-prophet types look at these fortunate turns and go “thank God that never happened!” But some people seem truly disappointed—after all, if the word will outlast you, how special can you or your era really be?

[hopesdreamssiliceousooze]

North Atlantic right whale 🤍

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

Could I take fem!Nightmare to the Barbie movie? 👉👈🥺(<- has no money)

dw she'll pay for you<333

[chipped-chimera]

Augh Fish Karlach video popping off right after she died ... swim in peace girl. You deserved better breeding than you were stuck with 😔

[xtruss]

Bananas Are At Risk of Extinction, But Scientists Have a Plan

A Fungus That Can Infect Over 100 Different Plants is Devastating the Popular Fruit.

— By Laura Baisas | August 16, 2024

Fighting a fungal pathogen on the molecular level is key to the banana’s survival. Deposit Photos

The bright bananas dotting your fruit bowl are in some serious trouble. A popular type of banana is facing extinction from a fungal pathogen. The disease Fusarium wilt of banana (FWB) blocks the flow of nutrients to the fruit and makes it wilt. During the 1950s, the pathogen wiped out commercial banana crops and made one species–Gros Michel bananas–functionally extinct.

But not all is lost for this colorful fruit. New research from an international team of scientists has pinpointed the molecular mechanisms behind the microbe that destroys bananas and it opens the door to new treatments and strategies against the pathogen. The findings are detailed in a study published August 16 in the journal Nature Microbiology.

What Is Hurting Bananas?

The crop failures are due to a fungal pathogen with a very long name–Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. Cubense (Foc) tropical race 4 (TR4). Abbreviated as Foc TR4, this fungus decimated several banana crops in the 1950s and wiped out one entire species, but bananas aren’t the only plants at risk.

“As a species complex, Fusarium oxysporum can infect over 100 different plant hosts,” study co-author and University of Massachusetts Amherst molecular biologist Li-Jun Ma tells Popular Science.”

Fusarium wilt of banana is currently decimating the Cavendish banana—the world’s most popular commercially available banana. Once present in a banana field, the fungus cannot be eradicated, making future production of Cavendish bananas almost impossible. Credit: A. Viljoen

Part of this virulence comes down to its genome and the ways it can change. According to Ma, each Fusarium oxysporum genome can be divided into two parts–a core genome and an accessory genome. The core genome does all of the main housekeeping functions of keeping the genome going. An accessory genome is then free to vary from strain to strain and can handle specialized functions–including the ability to infect a specific plant.

Understanding how the pathogen and its genome work on a molecular level is key for developing ways to combat it and prevent more banana species from going extinct.

Not Your Grandparents’ Bananas–Or Fungus

Over 50 years ago, the first victims of this fungal war were the Gros Michel bananas. Largely in response to banana wilt, the Cavendish variety was bred to be a disease-resistant replacement and is the most popular type of commercially available banana today. This worked for a while, but by the 1990s, there was another outbreak of banana wilt that spread from Southeast Asia to Central America.

Ma and her team have spent the last decade studying how TR4’s genome works to combat the new outbreak of banana wilt in the Cavendish banana. Surprisingly, they found that it is actually not derived from the same pathogen that wiped out crops in the ‘50s.

“We now know that the Cavendish banana-destroying pathogen TR4 did not evolve from the race that decimated the Gros Michel bananas,” Ma said in a press release accompanying the study. “TR4’s genome contains some accessory genes that are linked to the production of nitric oxide, which seems to be the key factor in TR4’s virulence.”

Harmful Gasses

In this new study, Ma and co-authors from institutions in the United States, China, and South Africa sequenced and compared 36 different Foc strains from all over the world. These strains include the ones that attack Gros Michel bananas. The sequences revealed that the Foc TR4 that is responsible for the current outbreak of banana wilt. It also uses some accessory genes for two purposes when invading a host. These genes both produce and detoxify fungal nitric oxide.

“As expected, we found accessory sequences in the TR4 genome that contribute to its virulence, including the production of the harmful gas, nitric oxide, that facilitates the host invasion,” says Ma.

External Symptoms of FWB in Cavendish bananas. Credit: Zhang et al.

The team still doesn’t know how this gas specifically contributes to disease infestation in Cavendish banana. However, they were able to determine that the virulence of Foc TR4 was greatly reduced if the two genes that control nitric oxide production were eliminated.

“Identifying these accessory genetic sequences opens up many strategic avenues to mitigate, or even control, the spread of Foc TR4,” Yong Zhang, study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher at UMASS Amherst, said in a statement.

‘Always Remember To Say Thank You To a Farmer’

In future research, the team would like to better understand how the fungus can produce such a harmful gas without hurting itself. They would like to test various ways to interrupt the production of nitric oxide and explore genes that can take the gas away before it damages plant cells.

Importantly, work like this raises awareness about the dangers of monocropping in agriculture and relying on a single species.

“Growing a single cultivar of any crop, also called monoculture agricultural production, provides breeding ground for the development of pathogens,” says Ma. “To help increase the demand for diverse bananas in the market, we can intentionally pick up different varieties of bananas from the shelf. We can support local producers by shopping locally.”

It is also a lesson in the importance of valuing the time and effort of those who produce all of the food we put on our tables.

“We, consumers, should appreciate that bananas or other fruits/vegetables do not grow from grocery stores,” says Ma. “There are tremendous efforts to bring food to our tables and feed our bodies. Always remember to say thank you to a farmer when you see one with dirt and soil all over his/her body.”

[zahra-hydris]

starfield is very fun, but it continues the modern Bethesda tradition of mixing some truly wild game design choices with some basic ass writing

[tracle0]

I think some of the research I have been doing over the past few weeks won't be used :(???

[ayyydra]

Finding translations for Pontic Greek songs are the worst because translations are so far and few in between

Even if there's a Greek translation of the song, I can work with it and translate it into English. Love expressed in Pontic Greek songs is so... otherworldly? Much more intense as well... and how love is expressed in those songs is just so wonderful gjfkdghd

[asgardian--angels]

Planet's Fucked: What Can You Do To Help? (Long Post)

Since nobody is talking about the existential threat to the climate and the environment a second Trump term/Republican government control will cause, which to me supersedes literally every other issue, I wanted to just say my two cents, and some things you can do to help. I am a conservation biologist, whose field was hit substantially by the first Trump presidency. I study wild bees, birds, and plants.

In case anyone forgot what he did last time, he gagged scientists' ability to talk about climate change, he tried zeroing budgets for agencies like the NOAA, he attempted to gut protections in the Endangered Species Act (mainly by redefining 'take' in a way that would allow corporations to destroy habitat of imperiled species with no ramifications), he tried to do the same for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (the law that offers official protection for native non-game birds), he sought to expand oil and coal extraction from federal protected lands, he shrunk the size of multiple national preserves, HE PULLED US OUT OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, and more.

We are at a crucial tipping point in being able to slow the pace of climate change, where we decide what emissions scenario we will operate at, with existential consequences for both the environment and people. We are also in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of species extinctions far surpassing background rates due completely to human actions. What we do now will determine the fate of the environment for hundreds or thousands of years - from our ability to grow key food crops (goodbye corn belt! I hated you anyway but), to the pressure on coastal communities that will face the brunt of sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather events, to desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, melting permafrost (yay, outbreaks of deadly frozen viruses!), and a breaking down of ecosystems and ecosystem services due to continued habitat loss and species declines, especially insect declines. The fact that the environment is clearly a low priority issue despite the very real existential threat to so many people, is beyond my ability to understand. I do partly blame the public education system for offering no mandatory environmental science curriculum or any at all in most places. What it means is that it will take the support of everyone who does care to make any amount of difference in this steeply uphill battle.

There are not enough environmental scientists to solve these issues, not if public support is not on our side and the majority of the general public is either uninformed or actively hostile towards climate science (or any conservation science).

So what can you, my fellow Americans, do to help mitigate and minimize the inevitable damage that lay ahead?

I'm not going to tell you to recycle more or take shorter showers. I'll be honest, that stuff is a drop in the bucket. What does matter on the individual level is restoring and protecting habitat, reducing threats to at-risk species, reducing pesticide use, improving agricultural practices, and pushing for policy changes. Restoring CONNECTIVITY to our landscape - corridors of contiguous habitat - will make all the difference for wildlife to be able to survive a changing climate and continued human population expansion.

**Caveat that I work in the northeast with pollinators and birds so I cannot provide specific organizations for some topics, including climate change focused NGOs. Scientists on tumblr who specialize in other fields, please add your own recommended resources. **

We need two things: FUNDING and MANPOWER.

You may surprised to find that an insane amount of conservation work is carried out by volunteers. We don't ever have the funds to pay most of the people who want to help. If you really really care, consider going into a conservation-related field as a career. It's rewarding, passionate work.

At the national level, please support:

The Nature Conservancy

Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

Cornell Lab of Ornithology (including eBird)

National Audubon Society

Federal Duck Stamps (you don't need to be a hunter to buy one!)

These first four work to acquire and restore critical habitat, change environmental policy, and educate the public. There is almost certainly a Nature Conservancy-owned property within driving distance of you. Xerces plays a very large role in pollinator conservation, including sustainable agriculture, native bee monitoring programs, and the Bee City/Bee Campus USA programs. The Lab of O is one of the world's leaders in bird research and conservation. Audubon focuses on bird conservation. You can get annual memberships to these organizations and receive cool swag and/or a subscription to their publications which are well worth it. You can also volunteer your time; we need thousands of volunteers to do everything from conducting wildlife surveys, invasive species removal, providing outreach programming, managing habitat/clearing trails, planting trees, you name it. Federal Duck Stamps are the major revenue for wetland conservation; hunters need to buy them to hunt waterfowl but anyone can get them to collect!

THERE ARE DEFINITELY MORE, but these are a start.

Additionally, any federal or local organizations that seek to provide support and relief to those affected by hurricanes, sea level rise, any form of coastal climate change...

At the regional level:

These are a list of topics that affect major regions of the United States. Since I do not work in most of these areas I don't feel confident recommending specific organizations, but please seek resources relating to these as they are likely major conservation issues near you.

PRAIRIE CONSERVATION & PRAIRIE POTHOLE WETLANDS

DRYING OF THE COLORADO RIVER (good overview video linked)

PROTECTION OF ESTUARIES AND SALTMARSH, ESPECIALLY IN THE DELAWARE BAY AND LONG ISLAND (and mangroves further south, everglades etc; this includes restoring LIVING SHORELINES instead of concrete storm walls; also check out the likely-soon extinction of saltmarsh sparrows)

UNDAMMING MAJOR RIVERS (not just the Colorado; restoring salmon runs, restoring historic floodplains)

NATIVE POLLINATOR DECLINES (NOT honeybees. for fuck's sake. honeybees are non-native domesticated animals. don't you DARE get honeybee hives to 'save the bees')

WILDLIFE ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER (support the Mission Butterfly Center!)

INVASIVE PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES (this is everywhere but the specifics will differ regionally, dear lord please help Hawaii)

LOSS OF WETLANDS NATIONWIDE (some states have lost over 90% of their wetlands, I'm looking at you California, Ohio, Illinois)

INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE, esp in the CORN BELT and CALIFORNIA - this is an issue much bigger than each of us, but we can work incrementally to promote sustainable practices and create habitat in farmland-dominated areas. Support small, local farms, especially those that use soil regenerative practices, no-till agriculture, no pesticides/Integrated Pest Management/no neonicotinoids/at least non-persistent pesticides. We need more farmers enrolling in NRCS programs to put farmland in temporary or permanent wetland easements, or to rent the land for a 30-year solar farm cycle. We've lost over 99% of our prairies to corn and soybeans. Let's not make it 100%.

INDIGENOUS LAND-BACK EFFORTS/INDIGENOUS LAND MANAGEMENT/TEK (adding this because there have been increasing efforts not just for reparations but to also allow indigenous communities to steward and manage lands either fully independently or alongside western science, and it would have great benefits for both people and the land; I know others on here could speak much more on this. Please platform indigenous voices)

HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS (get your neighbors to stop dumping fertilizers on their lawn next to lakes, reduce agricultural runoff)

OCEAN PLASTIC (it's not straws, it's mostly commercial fishing line/trawling equipment and microplastics)

A lot of these are interconnected. And of course not a complete list.

At the state and local level:

You probably have the most power to make change at the local level!

Support or volunteer at your local nature centers, local/state land conservancy non-profits (find out who owns&manages the preserves you like to hike at!), state fish & game dept/non-game program, local Audubon chapters (they do a LOT). Participate in a Christmas Bird Count!

Join local garden clubs, which install and maintain town plantings - encourage them to use NATIVE plants. Join a community garden!

Get your college campus or city/town certified in the Bee Campus USA/Bee City USA programs from the Xerces Society

Check out your state's official plant nursery, forest society, natural heritage program, anything that you could become a member of, get plants from, or volunteer at.

Volunteer to be part of your town's conservation commission, which makes decisions about land management and funding

Attend classes or volunteer with your land grant university's cooperative extension (including master gardener programs)

Literally any volunteer effort aimed at improving the local environment, whether that's picking up litter, pulling invasive plants, installing a local garden, planting trees in a city park, ANYTHING. make a positive change in your own sphere. learn the local issues affecting your nearby ecosystems. I guarantee some lake or river nearby is polluted

MAKE HABITAT IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Biggest thing you can do. Use plants native to your area in your yard or garden. Ditch your lawn. Don't use pesticides (including mosquito spraying, tick spraying, Roundup, etc). Don't use fertilizers that will run off into drinking water. Leave the leaves in your yard. Get your school/college to plant native gardens. Plant native trees (most trees planted in yards are not native). Remove invasive plants in your yard.

On this last point, HERE ARE EASY ONLINE RESOURCES TO FIND NATIVE PLANTS and LEARN ABOUT NATIVE GARDENING:

Xerces Society Pollinator Conservation Resource Center

Pollinator Pathway

Audubon Native Plant Finder

Homegrown National Park (and Doug Tallamy's other books)

National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder (clunky but somewhat helpful)

Heather Holm (for prairie/midwest/northeast)

MonarchGard w/ Benjamin Vogt (for prairie/midwest)

Native Plant Trust (northeast & mid-atlantic)

Grow Native Massachusetts (northeast)

Habitat Gardening in Central New York (northeast)

There are many more - I'm not familiar with resources for western states. Print books are your biggest friend. Happy to provide a list of those.

Lastly, you can help scientists monitor species using citizen science. Contribute to iNaturalist, eBird, Bumblebee Watch, or any number of more geographically or taxonomically targeted programs (for instance, our state has a butterfly census carried out by citizen volunteers).

In short? Get curious, get educated, get involved. Notice your local nature, find out how it's threatened, and find out who's working to protect it that you can help with. The health of the planet, including our resilience to climate change, is determined by small local efforts to maintain and restore habitat. That is how we survive this. When government funding won't come, when we're beat back at every turn trying to get policy changed, it comes down to each individual person creating a safe refuge for nature.

Thanks for reading this far. Please feel free to add your own credible resources and organizations.

[tintysun]

NGL, this TikTok made my week. 🤣🤣🤣

[dyanamic]

Discover the challenges polar bears face as climate change, habitat loss, and dwindling sea ice push them closer to extinction. Learn about their fight for survival and efforts to protect these iconic Arctic creatures.

[squidmaid]

idk if you wanted a genuine answer but it’s because kiwis are usually nocturnal! so if the regular person wants to film one in the wild this is pretty much the only way. I cannot however attest to the reason behind the quality itself other than Bad Camera

edit: I’ve seen the original video in high def, it’s actually just bad upload lol

blogging

[great-and-small]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)