ApocaDocuments (6) for the "Species Collapse" scenario from this week
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Fri, Jul 2, 2010
from Times of Malta:
Ships' ballast water adds a new alien species to the Mediterranean every nine days
Mediterranean states have started discussing measures to control the discharging of ship's ballast after scientists found that one alien species enters the Med every nine days, mostly with the water which the ships discharge after arriving from other regions.
"The Mediterranean Sea is a world's major shipping area with more than 300,000 port calls per annum and more than 10,000 ships transiting this busy highway every year. Ballast water discharges by ships can have a negative impact on the marine environment," said Fréderic Hébert, Director of the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre (REMPEC).
"Large tankers and bulk cargo carriers, commonly operating in the Mediterranean, use a large amount of ballast water, which is often taken on in the coastal waters in one region after ships discharge wastewater or unload cargo, and discharged at the next port of call, wherever more cargo is loaded".
There are hundreds of organisms carried in ballast water, including plants, animals, viruses and bacteria. These materials often include non-native, nuisance, exotic species that can cause extensive ecological and economic damage to the aquatic ecosystem - generally referred to as alien or invasive species. ...
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It's a small world, after all.
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Thu, Jul 1, 2010
from New Scientist:
Zoo plans to bring rare animals back from the dead
TAKE frozen cells from a dead animal, reprogram them to become sperm and eggs, then use these to bring endangered species back from the brink.
That's the aim of a collaboration between the San Diego zoo and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.... The team's long-term goal is to coax iPS cells into becoming sperm and eggs. They will be making iPS cells from tissue held by San Diego zoo's Frozen Zoo project - which has samples from some 8400 individuals representing more than 800 species. The sperm and eggs could be used in IVF treatments to add genetic diversity to captive breeding programmes. "You could actually breed from animals that are dead," says Loring. ...
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Great! Then we can recreate their habitats, too!
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Thu, Jul 1, 2010
from Oregon State University:
'Trophic cascades' of disruption may include loss of woolly mammoth, saber-toothed cat
A new analysis of the extinction of woolly mammoths and other large mammals more than 10,000 years ago suggests that they may have fallen victim to the same type of "trophic cascade" of ecosystem disruption that scientists say is being caused today by the global decline of predators such as wolves, cougars, and sharks.
In each case the cascading events were originally begun by human disruption of ecosystems, a new study concludes, but around 15,000 years ago the problem was not the loss of a key predator, but the addition of one - human hunters with spears.
In a study published today in the journal BioScience, researchers propose that this mass extinction was caused by newly-arrived humans tipping the balance of power and competing with major predators such as saber-toothed cats. An equilibrium that had survived for thousands of years was disrupted, possibly explaining the loss of two-thirds of North America's large mammals during this period.
"For decades, scientists have been debating the causes of this mass extinction, and the two theories with the most support are hunting pressures from the arrival of humans, and climate change," said William Ripple, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at Oregon State University, and an expert on the ecosystem alterations that scientists are increasingly finding when predators are added or removed.... "Rather, we think humans provided competition for other predators that still did the bulk of the killing. But we were the triggering mechanism that disrupted the ecosystem."... "The tragic cascade of species declines due to human harvesting of marine megafauna happening now may be a repeat of the cascade that occurred with the onset of human harvesting of terrestrial megafauna more than 10,000 years ago. This is a sobering thought, but it is not too late to alter our course this time around in the interest of sustaining Earth's ecosystems." ...
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What can we learn from early times?/ that history's different, but still, it rhymes.
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Wed, Jun 30, 2010
from PhysOrg:
World's smallest whale population faces extinction
The world's smallest known whale population has dwindled to about 30 individuals, only eight of them females, according to a study released Tuesday.... The Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska once teemed with tens of thousands of North Pacific right whales.
But hunting in the 19th century wiped out most of them, with up to 30,000 slaughtered in the 1840s alone, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Poaching by the Soviet Union during the 1960s claimed several hundred more, making Eubalaena japonica probably the most endangered species of whale on Earth.
"Its precarious status today ... is a direct consequence of uncontrolled and illegal whaling, and highlights the past failure of international management to prevent such abuse," said the study, published in the British Royal Society's Biology Letters.... "The probability of ship-strike mortalities may increase with the likely future opening of an ice-free Northwest Passage," the researchers note. ...
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At least now we can remember their names!
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Tue, Jun 29, 2010
from BBC:
Finless porpoises in China on brink of extinction
Finless porpoises, a rare type of toothed whale, may be even more endangered than previously thought.
A survey of finless porpoises in Asia has revealed there are two species, not one, and that they rarely intermingle.
More worrying, finless porpoises living in the freshwater of China's Yangtze river are genetically unique, say scientists, who warn that greater efforts must be made to prevent these animals, numbering fewer than 1000, from following another Yangtze cetacean, the Baiji, to extinction.... "The most recent field survey conducted in 2006 suggested that there were around 1000 individuals in the Yangtze River," says Prof Yang.
"This is much smaller than previous estimates, suggesting a significant population decline in the past two decades." ...
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Compared to the Baiji, there's lots of 'em!
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Mon, Jun 28, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk:
Giant salmon will be first GM animal available for eating
Usually Atlantic salmon do not grow during the winter and take three years to fully mature.
But by implanting genetic material from an eel-like species called ocean pout that grows all year round, US scientists have managed to make the fish grow to full size in 18 months. They hope that the sterile GM salmon can offer an efficient and safe way to breed salmon in fish farms, so that the wild fish can be left in the oceans.
US watchdog the Food and Drug Administration is currently considering whether the GM Atlantic salmon, called AquAdvantage, is safe to eat. The fish could be on supermarket shelves within a year.... "Once you have bombarded an animal with other genes, the DNA is unstable, and there is no guarantee these fish remain sterile. It poses far too great a risk to wild salmon. A fish that grows that quickly is likely to lose some of its environmental benefits. There is no such thing as a free salmon lunch and we will pay the price," he said. ...
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Me, pout about a Salmonster? How unnatural!
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