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

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

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

 

 

 

 

New blood tests for antibodies could show true scale of coronavirus pandemic

Excerpts from a report in Science by Gretchen Vogel

“Labs and companies around the world have raced to develop antibody tests, and a few have been used in small studies and received commercial approval, including several from China. But so far, large-scale data from such tests—for example showing what fraction of people in the hard-hit city of Wuhan, China, might now be immune—is still lacking or at least not public. Scientists hope that will soon change as more tests become available.

“A new recipe could offer labs an alternative to waiting for or buying commercial tests. Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and his colleagues posted a preprint yesterday describing a SARS-CoV-2 antibody test they have developed, and directions for replicating it. It’s one of the first such detailed protocols to be widely distributed, and the procedure is simple enough, he says, that other labs could easily scale it up “to screen a few thousand people a day,” and quickly amass more data on the accuracy and specificity of the test. Together with increased availability of commercial tests, that means some important answers about immunity to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, may be available soon, he says.

The full report from the journal Science

Shola sky islands and infection in wild birds

What India’s shola sky islands tell scientists about infections in wild bird population: my report in Mongabay India:

Photo credit, From MOngabay India, Kerala laughing thrush (Montecincla fairbanki), one of the four species of Chilapan genus which is endemic to Western Ghats of India. Photo by Prasenjeet Yadav.

The evergreen forests in the highest reaches of Western Ghats, known as shola sky islands, hold clues on how infectious diseases spread in wild birds.

Latest research on the wild birds in the shola sky islands shows that some malarial parasites are more likely to invade avifauna communities than others.

Climate change is likely to hasten the spread of infectious diseases among wild bird in the tropics, and better knowledge of disease dynamics will help us prepare for the future.

 

The shola sky islands are a biologist’s delight. Surrounded by lowlands, these highest reaches of Western Ghats in peninsular India host radically different habitats and species. Covered in montane evergreen forests, the shola mountains rise from a ‘sea’ of low-elevation habitats, much like oceanic islands such as New Zealand that are surrounded by a sea of water.

In both cases, the isolation limits the dispersal of species, making them ideal for studying the flora, fauna and avifauna. The latest in such research, conducted by scientists from India and the United States in the shola sky islands, may hold clues on how malaria-causing parasites in birds co-evolved with their hosts. This, in turn, might help understand how patterns of the disease emerge in natural wildlife or human communities.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society journal, provides insights into why some parasites can rapidly establish themselves in novel places and impact native wildlife health, while others are less capable. It might help in checking the spread of infectious diseases that kill wild birds in large numbers.

Some malarial parasites in birds, such as the unicellular Plasmodium species, are what scientists call generalists, which can rapidly invade a wide range of birds and cause large-scale infections and deaths. Whereas there are some so-called specialists parasites such as Haemoproteus species that can infect only a few bird hosts.

Read more : https://india.mongabay.com/2019/09/what-shola-sky-islands-say-about-diseases-in-wild-birds/

Video — India plans to reintroduce cheetahs

The last Indian cheetah died in 1948, and the Asiatic cheetah became extinct in the country in 1952 Now, Indian wildlife experts plan to introduce.

In January 2020, in response to a application filed by India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority, the country’s apex court, the Supreme Court (SC), passed an order that the African cheetahs be introduced “on an experimental basis” in carefully chosen habitats.

Caption: Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) female, Phinda Private Game Reserve, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Credit: Sharp Photography. Author: Charles J Sharp From Wikipedia

Here is a nice video from The Hindu daily: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/african-cheetahs-to-be-introduced-in-india/article31008415.ece

and an interview with wildlife expert M K Ranjitsinh in IndiaSpend, in which he says that the task is “challenging but worth doing.” Here is the link: https://www.indiaspend.com/introducing-african-cheetah-in-india-challenging-but-worth-trying/

#cheetah #wildlife #conservation #biodiversity #nature

 

 

Indian scientists urged to speak out about pseudoscience

A leading Indian science-advocacy group is urging the country’s researchers to speak out against pseudoscience, which it fears has gained a foothold in the past few years, partly through support from some agencies of the Indian government.

The call to arms, made by the non-profit Breakthrough Science Society, comes after some members of an alumni association of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, planned a workshop on astrology at the IISc for 25–26 November.

Strong backlash from scientists resulted in the event being cancelled on 28 October. The society’s general secretary, Soumitro Banerjee, says that it would be “detrimental to Indian science” for researchers to remain neutral on such issues. “India’s scientific community must be proactive in propagating a scientific bent of mind,” says Banerjee, a physicist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

Two days before the alumni association cancelled the workshop, dozens of scientists signed letters to the IISc director, Anurag Kumar, objecting to the workshop. The IISc director and the faculty were not involved in organizing the workshop.

Muthya Ravindra, a computer scientist and president of the alumni association, says that the event, organized by one of its members, was still under discussion when “due to some miscommunications”, e-mails promoting the event were sent out.

Read my full report in Nature

 

Thousands across India in support of science

Thousands of scientists, university students and science enthusiasts gathered in dozens of Indian cities to march in support of science on 9 August — lamenting their country’s low levels of funding for research, and complaining about government promotion of ‘unscientific ideas’.

But several scientists also stayed away from the event, either because they had been directly asked not to attend, or because they feared repercussions from higher authorities if they did. They included some researchers at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in Delhi, who said they had been sent an email on 8 August directing them not to take part in the march, without specifying a reason. Other researchers, who did not want to be identified, said they had been asked not to engage in anti-government activity.

he Indian demonstrations come 4 months after the global March for Science on 22 April, which saw people gather in at least 600 cities around the world in support of scientific research and evidence-based policymaking. On that day, only two Indian cities, Hyderabad and Coimbatore, took part. “We felt that the global march was more to do with the [US President Donald] Trump administration’s anti-science perspective, and not related to Indian science problems,” says Satyajit Rath, an immunologist at the Agharkar Research Institute in Pune who attended a march in his city. “In retrospect, we should have participated more keenly in the global march,” he says.

Read my full report in Nature :