Asia’s first mulberry fossil unearthed in India

Scientists have unearthed Asia’s first fossil record of mulberry from the Gurha lignite mines near Bikaner in western Rajasthan, a finding that they say, indicates the existence of a warm, humid climate in north-western India 56 million years ago.

Although mulberry (Morus genus) is now widely grown in India and Asia, no fossils of the tree have yet been found in the continent, say a team of scientists from HBN Garhwal University in Uttarakhand, University of Calcutta, and Sidho Kanho Birsa University in Purulia in West Bengal. They report in the journal Review of Paleobotany and Palynology that the presence of the fossil suggests that mulberry was an important component of tropical–subtropical evergreen forests growing in a warm humid climate in the area during the Eocene period, that is, 56-39 million years ago.

According to them, mulberry subsequently declined from the area which is now dry with desert vegetation, probably because of the drastic climate and latitudinal change in the area, related to the formation of the Himalayas, and rainfall seasonality since the Eocene.

Most mulberry trees are now found in the ‘Old World tropics’, particularly in Asia and Indo-Pacific Islands.

Mahasin Ali Khan, assistant professor at the department of botany, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, and one of the paper authors, told Mongabay India that “to date, no fossil Morus has been reported from Asia.”

This lack of fossil evidence limits scientists’ understanding of the diversification and evolution of Morus in Asia, Khan says. Leaf and fruit remains of Morus have been reported only from the preceding Palaeocene epoch dating to 66 million to 56 million years ago; and the later 33-million to 23-million-years-old Oligocene sediments of the United States. Hence, the Indian team’s discovery of Morus leaf remains from the early Eocene of India “is remarkable” and constitutes the first recognition of this mulberry genus from the Cenozoic (66 million years ago to present) sediments of Asia,” their report says.

Earlier fossil studies also indicate a tropical to sub-tropical, warm humid climate in western Rajasthan, unlike present-day dry, desert conditions, the report says.

The equatorial position of the Indian sub-continent during the Eocene period was “ideal” for the growth of tropical evergreen forests, while recovered fossils dating to the Eocene period from lignite mines in western Rajasthan also indicate the presence of tropical rainforests in western India, the report says.

n India, the genus is no longer found in western Rajasthan where the fossil was discovered, and the authors attribute its extinction from the area possibly to “drastic climate change” as well as latitudinal movement in the area as a result of the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates, uplift of the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, and evolution, strengthening and long-time fluctuations in the monsoonal conditions.

The scientists hope that the new study “provides a launching pad” for further detailed studies of the newly collected materials, providing a clear picture of their implications.

Eocene plant fossils

Scientists are particularly interested in the Eocene period, characterised by warm temperatures, for studies on the evolution, diversity, and dispersal within and among continents of modern-day plant and vertebrate species. While the authors report that the finding of the fossil in the region “provides unambiguous evidence” that mulberry plants were well-suited to the climatic conditions in the Eocene period, not all paleobotanists agree.

Rakesh Mehrotra, president of the Palaeobotanical Society and a scientist with the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences, Lucknow, says that he does not agree with the conclusions of the study as mulberry “is a temperate genus found naturally in central China and is cultivated in many countries, including India.”

“Its presence during the early Eocene in India is doubtful as the fossil flora during the period was typically tropical in nature,” says Mehrotra. Fossils recorded during the early Eocene of western India, including Gurha mine, support his theory, Mehrotra adds.

He points out that the early Eocene is characterised by a warmer phase, even at high latitudes. The carbon dioxide level was also higher, ranging from 1000 to 2000 parts per million (ppm) due to the increase in volcanic activity.

In 2018, Mehrotra and colleagues had published in Review of Paleobotany and Palynology that “the climate dynamics of the Indian subcontinent and biotic exchange between the neighbouring continents can be traced by studying the Eocene fossil assemblages which are nicely preserved in the rock records.” Fossil records from early Eocene sites are important for their potential contribution to our understanding of interactions between climate and biota, it said.

In the western part of the Indian subcontinent, extensive lignite deposits are known in Gujarat (Kutch and Cambay basins) and Rajasthan (Barmer and Bikaner-Nagaur basins). Based on analysis of nearest living relatives (NLRS) of the plant and animal remains in the lignite deposits of these areas, ‘it has been concluded that a highly diversified tropical evergreen forest was present in most of the basins of western India,” says Mehrotra.

The equatorial position of the Indian subcontinent during the early Eocene also supports this theory, says Mehrotra.

The lignite mines of Gujarat and Rajasthan have proved to be a rich treasure house of Eocene fossils, pointing towards the existence of dense tropical forests in the arid region of today and equatorial climatic conditions in the Indian subcontinent 55 million years ago.

In 2019, Mehrotra’s team reported a rare fossil record of a fruit of Mallotus mollissimus, a plant from the spurge family and whose fruits are too soft to be preserved, from the Gurha mines of Rajasthan. The fossil indicates the existence of tropical forests in the area and the origin of the plant from Gondwanaland.

Similarly, a fossil wood found in the Vastan lignite mine of the early Eocene age near Surat district in Gujarat, by Mehrotra’s team, shows a strong resemblance to the modern genus Chisocheton of the mahogany family of trees known as Meliaceae. Such plant fossils are the best source to reconstruct the past environment of any region, and the locality likely had a “luxurious, highly diverse tropical evergreen forest” in contrast to the tropical thorn forest of the present-day Mehrotra and colleagues’ 2018 report in Paleoworld says.

“This early Eocene highly diverse equatorial forest, once covered a significant portion of the Indian subcontinent, is now restricted in fringes known as the Western Ghats in south India attesting to changes in climate,” it adds.

Read the full report here: https://india.mongabay.com/2021/12/asias-first-mulberry-fossil-unearthed-in-rajasthans-lignite-mines/

#science #paleontology #fossils

Land use changes are driving Himlayan forest bird loss

Land-use changes in the western Himalayan forests, a global biodiversity hotspot with huge numbers of endemic species, have resulted in a massive decline in forest birds in the region, Mongabay India reports citing new research.

Forest specialists like wedge-tailed green pigeon, provide important ecosystem services like seed dispersal. Photo by Ghazala Shahabuddin via Mongabay India

Scientists from the Centre for Ecology, Development and Research (CEDAR), Dehra Dun and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, studied the effects of land-use change on forest bird species and ‘guilds’ (any group of species that exploit the same resources, or that exploit different resources in related ways) in areas in the western Himalayas. They surveyed the birds systematically during their breeding season, in six land-use types. These include natural, protected oak forests; degraded, lightly used oak forests; lopped, heavily used oak forests; pine forest areas which are now steadily encroaching into natural oak forests; cultivated land; and built-up sites, in two adjoining landscapes, over two consecutive years. 

The study shows “moderate to drastic species loss in all modified land-use types in comparison to natural oak forest.”

The scientists report changes in the types of birds, especially a 50 percent or more loss of forest specialists, pollinators, and insect-eating birds in degraded forests, urbanised sites, and areas with monoculture plantations. The forest specialists have been partially replaced with commensals and open country species. Species richness was lowest in pine and built-up sites, compared to natural oak, and forest specialists and insect-eating birds declined by 60–80 percent in modified forests.

Recent studies in the Eastern Himalayas too show similar disturbing trends. Srinivasan and David Wilcove from the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University have studied the survival of birds in forests of Arunachal Pradesh in the Eastern Himalayas. As temperatures warm, forest birds are steadily moving upwards to find cooler habitats conducive to their survival. But their survival is imperilled if they end up in disturbed habitats such as logged forests or agricultural land, they report in Ecology.

Read the full report here, with information on significance of cultivation sites and losses in Eastern Himalayas

#Himalayas #Forestbirds #Birds #Biodiversity #Conservation #Ecology #Science #Research #Environment

Pharmaceuticals pollute the Ganges

Photo credit: The steps of Har Ki Pauri lead down to the banks of the Ganges in Haridwar, India. Urban runoff, personal care products, and effluent from sewage treatment may be sources of chemical pollutants recently identified in the river around Haridwar. Credit: Wolfgang Maehr/Wikimedia, CC BY-2.0

Scientists report a cocktail of antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, and personal care products found near two pilgrimage cities along the river.

Studies increasingly point to the presence of pharmaceutical and personal care products in urban stretches along the Ganges River, which originates pristine in the Himalayas but is heavily polluted with industrial effluents and domestic sewage when it empties into the Bay of Bengal., reports EosNews published by the American Geophysical Union.

Researchers from Doon University, Dehra Dun, India, have reported the presence of 15 pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in the Ganges near two Hindu pilgrimage cities. These pollutants include caffeine, anti-inflammatory drugs, common antibiotics, beta blockers, antibacterials, and insect repellents.

Over three seasons, Doon scientists studied the river waters of two cities in the rapidly industrializing Himalayan state of Uttarakhand: Haridwar, where the Ganges enters India’s northern plains from the Himalayas, and Rishikesh, 21 kilometers away. Haridwar and Rishikesh, with a combined population of 400,000, attract an estimated 20 million tourists and pilgrims annually.

In particular, the scientists analyzed the water at its point of entry into the two cities and at sites before its entry into a sewage treatment plant and after sewage treatment. The study could provide useful baseline data for forecasting and evaluating the efficiency of future antipollution measures of the river basin restoration program, the authors added.

“Compared to previous studies that analyzed samples along various locations along the Ganges, this is the first comprehensive, intensive study in a particular city along the river,” said Surendra Suthar, an associate professor at Doon University and one of the study’s authors.

PPCP concentrations near the cities varied, with the highest measured concentration being 1,104.84 nanograms per liter. Researchers found higher PPCP concentrations at the lower, more populated reaches of the river. The concentrations, especially of anti-inflammatory drugs and antibiotics, were also higher in winter, possibly because of decreased biodegradation associated with lower temperatures and inadequate sunlight, the report said. The study also showed that PPCPs in the region were associated with a higher risk of algal blooms and a moderate risk to the health of river fish.

“The high load of PPCPs during summer and winter could be attributed to the excessive tourist visits for recreational activities and spiritual congregations during these seasons,” according to the report, to be published in Chemosphere in April.

Read the full report in Eos News here:

#pollution #Ganges #environment # rivers #science # research #india

Can dogs rapidly learn words?

From Eurekalert News Release:

A new study found that talented dogs can learn new words after hearing them only four times.

While preliminary evidence seems to show that most dogs do not learn words (i.e. names of objects), unless eventually very extensively trained, a few individuals have shown some exceptional abilities.

The Family Dog Project research team at the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest is investigating on these exceptionally talented dogs who seem to learn words in the absence of any formal training, but simply by being exposed to playing with their owners in the typical way owners do, in a human family.

Caption
The Family Dog Project research team is investigating on these exceptionally talented dogs
Credit
Photo by Claudia Fugazza

Via Eurekalert:

Video abstract of the study: https://youtu.be/Wr_P5NR1A3k

A new study, just published in Scientific Reports, has provided surprising results about how quickly the gifted dogs can learn new words. Two gifted dogs, a Border Collie named Whisky, from Norway, already famous for her spontaneous categorization skills and a Yorkshire terrier named Vicky Nina, from Brazil, participated in this experiment. Their ability to learn a new word after hearing it only four times was tested.

While it is natural to think that dogs, like human children, would learn words mostly in a social context, previous studies tested the ability of talented dogs to learn object names during an exclusion-based task. In such task the dog was confronted with a setup in which seven familiar, already named dog toys were present, together with a novel one and his ability to choose the novel object upon hearing a novel name was tested.

“We wanted to know under which conditions the gifted dogs may learn novel words. To test this, we exposed Whisky and Vicky Nina to the new words in two different conditions” explains Claudia Fugazza, first author of the study, “during an exclusion-based task and in a social playful context with their owners. Importantly, in both conditions the dogs heard the name of the new toy only 4 times”.

In the exclusion-based task, the dogs showed that they were able to select the new toy when their owner spoke a new name, confirming that dogs can choose by exclusion – i.e., excluding all the other toys because they already have a name, and selecting the only one that does not. However, this was not the way they would learn the name of the toy. In fact, when tested on their ability to recognize the toy by its name, as this was confronted with another equally novel name, the dogs failed.

The other condition, the social one, where the dogs played with their owners who pronounced the name of the toy while playing with the dog, proved to be the successful way to learn the name of the toy, even after hearing it only 4 times. Whisky and Vicky Nina were able to select the toys based on their names when they had learned the names this way.

“Such rapid learning seems to be similar to the way human children acquire their vocabulary around 2-3 years of age”, comments Adam Miklósi, head of the Department of Ethology and co-author of the study.

To test whether most dogs would learn words this way, other 20 dogs were tested in the same condition, but none of them showed any evidence of learning the toy names, confirming that the capacity to learn words rapidly, in the absence of formal training is very rare and is only present in few gifted dogs.

After such few exposures, however, Whisky’s and Vicky Nina’s memory of the learned words decayed quite fast. While in the first test, conducted a couple of minutes after hearing the toy names, the dogs were successful, they did not succeed in most of the tests conducted after 10 minutes and 1 hour.

To find out more about the number of words that the gifted dogs can learn in a short timeframe, the researchers of Eötvös Loránd University have also recently launched the Genius Dog Challenge a project that became viral in the social media.

Vicky Nina, unfortunately, passed away in the meantime and could not take part in the Genius Dog Challenge. Whisky is participating in it, together with other five talented dogs that the scientists found all over the world in the past two years of search.

#animals #dogs #science #research

New Evidence of Indus Valley Civilisation’s Mixed Diet Including Pig, Buffalo Meat

There is new evidence that the people of the Indus Valley civilisation (IVC) had a mixed diet, with meals possibly including pig, buffalo, sheep and goat meat. The evidence comes from a new study of fat residues in ancient ceramic vessels unearthed from northwest India and adds to our currently meagre knowledge of ancient food in South Asia.

A new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science claims to be the first to investigate absorbed lipid residues in pottery from multiple Indus sites. This allows scientists to compare data from different IVC settlements across space and time time, Akshyeta Suryanarayan, one of the study’s authors and a postdoc at the Culture et Environnement,  Prehistoire, Antique, Moyen Age, France. Suryanarayan was with the University of Cambridge when she conducted the study.

According to her, previous studies have examined the remains of plants and animals dated to the time of the IVC – but “lipid residue analyses enable us to get a glimpse into foodstuffs and the cultural use of pottery vessels,” Suryanarayan told The Wire Science. “This study provides chemical evidence for cooking of milk products, meat and possible mixtures of products or plants in pottery vessels.”

Our paper contributes to a growing body of evidence that suggests people in the Indus Civilisation ate a mixed diet that included a wide range of plant products, as well as meat and also freshwater (and marine) resources,” she added.

Prabodh Shirvalkar, an assistant professor at the Deccan College Postgraduate Research Institute, Pune, and an expert in Harappan archaeology, said the study provides useful insights. However, he also cautioned that the study’s findings are sweeping. The researchers examined samples obtained from seven sites, and according to Shirvalkar, their findings are applicable only to areas with the same ecological and environmental characteristics.

“It is too early to extrapolate the findings to the entire Harappan civilisation,” Shirvalkar told The Wire Science. The researchers’ paper also says the same thing: that they need “a large number of samples from different regions to confirm the conclusions.”

Read the full report here: https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/new-evidence-of-indus-valley-civilisations-mixed-diet-including-pig-buffalo-meat/

Harmful algae in the Arabian Sea linked to Himalayas warming

Global warming is transforming the ecosystem of the Arabian Sea, new research has found. Scientists have linked snow melting in the Himalayas to the loss of important plankton more than 1,000 miles away, which is affecting fish populations and the fisheries and coastal people that depend on them.

Blooms of Noctiluca scintillans in the northern Arabian Sea, seen by satellites form space. Photo: Norman Kuring/NASA

As snow and ice melt in the Himalayan mountains, the winter winds that blow down from them are becoming warmer and more humid, the researchers say. This alters the currents of the Arabian Sea and distribution of nutrients – and in turn the marine food chain, with fish struggling in the new conditions. This is happening at a much faster rate than that predicted by global models, the study says.

The Arabian Sea is a unique marine ecosystem in the Indian Ocean. Its currents are controlled by monsoon winds that reverse direction in summer and winter. Normally, during the summer south-west monsoon season, winds and the rotation of the Earth bring cold, nutrient-rich waters to the surface. During winter, the cold north-east monsoon winds chill surface water, causing it to sink and deeper waters to rise. The mixing of waters fertilises them, and tiny ocean plants and microorganisms proliferate, which fish feed on.

Global warming has had a “disproportionately strong influence on the Eurasian land surface”, the team of scientists from China, Oman and the US say in their report. The result is a steady decline in snow cover over the Tibetan Plateau region of the Himalayas.

Joaquim Goes is Lamont research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in the US and one of the authors of the new study. He told The Third Pole that research by his team published in 2005 found that the summer monsoon winds were becoming stronger because of the melting of snow on the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau. This was creating conditions for phytoplankton to increase.

“The new study shows how the snowmelt on the Tibetan Plateau is continuing along the same trajectory [whereby snow melting causes the monsoon to change and more marine plants to grow] into the winter monsoon too,” Goes said.

Read the full report: https://www.thethirdpole.net/2020/06/22/harmful-algae-blooms-arabian-sea/

And for additional reading on algal blooms in the Arabian Sea, visit the blog at State of the Planet, Earth Institute, Columbia University

#globalwarming #climatechange #himalayas #arabiansea #algaeblooms

Do Biodiversity losses aggravate infectious disease transmission

Do biodiversity losses aggravate transmission of infectious diseases spread by animals to humans? The jury is still out but several scientists say there is a ‘biodiversity dilution effect’ in which declining biodiversity results in increased infectious-disease transmission.

The rationale is that greater host diversity in a biodiversity-rich region provides range of hosts, many incompetent, for the pathogen. The presence of a range of hosts and incompetent reservoir hosts ‘dilutes’ the risk of exposure to zoonotic infections spread by animals and the transmission chain to humans, say scientists.

Photo courtesy Pexels Cottonbro

Among those who see clear links between biodiversity losses and increased risk of transmission is Rajan Patil, associate professor of epidemiology at SRM University, Chennai who says that “biodiversity has great influence on magnitude and impact of epidemics.”

Scientists have observed a clear link between decrease in disease frequency with increase in host diversity, says Patil, citing examples of West Nile Disease and Lyme Disease whose incidence has been linked to the biodiversity dilution effect.

In a 2018 report in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine, Patil’s group attributed an outbreak of anthrax in Chhattisgarh state to the loss of biodiversity.

Patil says that biodiversity and human health are inter-connected because man is part of ecological systems comprising diverse flora and fauna. Any human action that alters the ecological balance and puts some species at risk of extinction can directly impact human health, he says.

Patil and colleagues had earlier explained in the Annals of Tropical Medicine and Public Health that biodiversity can be described in terms of ‘species richness’ which represents the diversity or different types of species, and ‘species evenness’ which represents the proportional representation of each of these species, explains Patil. In the case of disease transmission dynamics, species evenness is important as it indicates the total distribution of vectors available for a pathogen to feed from, he says.

Read the full report in Mongabay India:  https://india.mongabay.com/2020/04/can-biodiversity-loss-lead-to-more-infectious-disease-spread/

#biodiversity #Covid19 #infectiousdiseases   #zoonosis #environment #science

How deforestation and natural habitat destruction can fuel zoonotic infections

My report in Mongabay India:

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) pandemic, believed to have been triggered by the transmission of the virus from animals to humans, has brought into sharp focus zoonotic diseases that are spread by animals forced to move out of their natural habitats that are increasingly being destroyed, say experts.

Destruction of forests for growing crops, urban expansion and building road networks and a parallel intensification of wildlife trade has resulted in ecological conditions and movement of wild animals, which are reservoirs of some viruses or bacteria, towards human settlements. This, in turn, results in the emergence of new pathogens, they say.

The COVID-19 pandemic “is likely a global effect of natural habitat destruction combined with the effects of globalisation,” says Maria Cristina Rulli, professor at the department of civil and environmental engineering at Politecnico di Milano, who has worked extensively on the links between Ebola virus disease outbreaks and forest destruction in Africa.

The pandemic shows how vulnerable humanity is to major environmental and human health emergencies and how a local event may soon turn into a global crisis,” she told Mongabay-India.

“This is something scientists have been predicting could have happened,” Rulli says, adding that one of the key lessons pandemics teach us is “the existence of a nexus between human health and the environment.”

While scientists have not yet identified the “index case” or where exactly the spillover to humans took place, “the province of Hubei and the surrounding provinces in China have indeed been affected by landuse change and habitat destruction,” says Rulli. “But it might (also) be that the virus arrived from another region through illegal importation of bushmeat.”

Ramesh Dhiman, former scientist with the National Institute of Malaria Research, New Delhi, agrees that there are strong links between destruction of natural habitats of animals, and a rise in man-vector contact, leading to an upsurge in zoonotic diseases. “India is among the top geographical hotspots” for zoonotic diseases, and “in recent past, India has seen emergence and re-emergence of high priority and neglected zoonoses,” Dhiman had earlier cautioned in a report in Medical Reports and Case Studies in 2018.

Read the full report in Mongabay India

India Covid — Aggressive lockdown fine, but where is aggressive testing, ask experts

 

 

As India enters an extended lockdown to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, experts are worried whether community spread of the virus has started, and if so to what extent; or whether the country still has a small window of opportunity to stop the spread.

There are indications that community transmission has begun, with reports of people who have had no contact with travellers from abroad acquiring the virus, Ritu Priya, a professor at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, said. “But the level to which it will go is yet uncertain. The scenario is not very hopeful.”

“It is difficult to predict how it will fan out,” Anant Bhan, a public health expert and adjunct professor at the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, said in agreement.

Three crucial facts – that the virus is contagious, ordinary social contact is enough for transmission, and that there is no vaccine – mean such viruses will spread widely, T. Jacob John, one of India’s top virologists and a retired professor at the Christian Medical College, Vellore said. “It is only when a big number of infected people, ill or well, develop immunity that the spread will slow down.”

For each virus introduction, the second generation of transmitted infections are traveller-related. The third and fourth generations are community transmission and, therefore, each location has a tipping point and that had begun to occur in a few spots a week ago,” John added.

The transmission dynamics of infectious diseases are centred on a number called the basic reproductive ratio: it represents the number of susceptible people that one infected person could infect, if we assume everyone lacks natural immunity and there is enough time for the virus to incubate. So in order for the microbe to survive, each infection must generate at least one more new infection, and during an outbreak, each infection generates more than one new infection.

In an editorial published by the journal Current Science in March, John had argued that the COVID-19 pandemic “is an avalanche, gathering momentum as it grows. Virus receptors are in upper respiratory tract and lungs – so infection spreads easily and is more virulent than flu.” Indeed, as Arun Panchapakesan explained in The Wire Science, the new coronavirus has evolved to establish stronger bonds with cells in the human respiratory tract than the SARS virus did.

Read my full report in The Wire and here is the full link

Aggressive Lockdown Gets On, so Where’s the Aggressive Testing, Experts Ask

#Covid19 #coronavirus #India #health

 

 

 

 

Wanderlust — 3

Sheesh mahal or hall of mirrors in Amer Fort, Jaipur