Climate change threatens amphibians and coral reefs in the Gede Pangrango National Park: the devastating bleeding toad lives in the wild
The 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity, or COP15, came to a dramatic end early this morning, with a final agreement that will see 30% of Earth’s land and sea protected by 2030.
Nevertheless, the feeling among scientists is optimistic. At times, it felt impossible to achieve a historic agreement. It has created, for the first time, biodiversity targets on par with the momentous 2015 Paris climate agreement, which set a crucial goal to to limit global warming to 1.5–2 °C above pre-industrial levels.
Among the most at-risk groups are amphibians and reef-forming corals. The critically-endangered bleeding toad lives in Mount Gede Pangrango National Park in Java, Indonesia, and is among more than 40% of the world’s amphibians who are threatened with extinction.
The toads were thought to be extinct until 2000 when some were spotted by a team led by a herpetologist. But the researchers found that the amphibians were infected with chytrid (Chytridiomycota sp.), a fungus that has devastated global amphibian populations. Kusrini says that climate change is probably making life hard for the tiny toad, which got its common name from the crimson, splatter-like spots covering its body. The toads are vulnerable because the warm weather can change the timing of their breeding season.
Coral reefs around the world are being harmed due to global warming. Over a period of 9 years, up to 2018, 14% of the world’s coral died out — a massive problem, because today, coral reefs support one-quarter of all marine species.
Biodiversity in ecosystems: How many species are there and how well do they function? Explaining Naeem’s findings
It’s difficult to predict, because doing so requires knowledge of which species are present in a particular ecosystem, such as a rainforest, and what functions they have, says Shahid Naeem, an ecologist at Columbia University in New York City. Much of that information is often unknown. However, scientists have shown3 that ecosystems with less biodiversity are not as good at capturing and converting resources into biomass, such as happens when plants capture nutrients or sunlight used for growth.
Both are good at decomposing and recycling. Studies show dead organisms are broken down and their nitrogen recycled more quickly when the forest is covered with a lot of plant litter. Ecosystems with low biodiversity also have low resilience — they are not as able to bounce back after a perturbation or shock, such as a fire, as more-diverse systems are, Naeem says.
“If we lose parts of our system, it simply won’t function very efficiently, and it won’t be very robust,” he adds. “The science behind that is rock solid.”
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04370-4
What do we need to do about biodiversity? The Canadian environment minister and environmental activist says the COP15 biodiversity conference had a great moment of progress
Ecosystems also provide clean water and can sometimes prevent diseases from spreading to humans. Kusrini says that when species are lost, these services get worse. Most animals eat bugs, many of which are considered pests, such as roaches and mosquitoes. Studies have shown a rise in cases of malaria — spread by mosquitoes — in areas in Central America where amphibian populations have collapsed5. When insect numbers increase and people start using more pesticides to kill them, you know they disappear.
Eradicating invasive species is another important conservation strategy, and the framework’s draft currently calls for cutting the introduction of such species in half. Some estimates suggest that invasive predators, such as cats and rats, are responsible for more than half of all extinctions of birds, mammals and reptiles7.
It’s important that nations agree on a framework with at least some quantifiable targets, so that progress can be measured, and so that countries can be held accountable if they fail to meet their targets, researchers say. “I’m afraid what will happen is, they will produce a long list of ‘waffle’,” Pimm says. We need more than one quantification.
Steven Guilbeault, the Canadian environment minister, described COP15 as the most significant biodiversity conference ever held. “We have taken a great step forward in history,” he said at a plenary session where the framework was adopted.
During the UN summit in December, arguments over details threatened to derail a deal. The framework was not funded in the final hours of negotiations as the Democratic Republic of theCongo objected. Nonetheless, Huang Runqiu, China’s environment minister and president of COP15, brought the gavel down on the agreement.
Some concerns and disappointments are still present. The deal doesn’t have a compulsory requirement for companies to track and disclose their impact on it’s surroundings. Eva Zabey, Executive Director of Business for Nature, says that the requirement for firms to compete on a level playing field is not enough. Andrew Deutz, an environment law and finance specialist at the Nature Conservancy, said that it is a powerful signal to industry that they need to reduce negative impacts over time.
“I would have liked more ambition and precision in the targets” to address those drivers, says Sandra Diaz, an ecologist at the National University of Córdoba, in Argentina.
Stuart Pimm, head of Saving Nature, says the framework is a good start with clear quantitative targets, that will allow us to understand progress and the reasons for success and failure.
Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including the DRC, had called for a brand-new, independent fund for biodiversity financing. Lee White, environment minister from Gabon, told Nature that biodiversity-rich LMICs have difficulty accessing the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the current fund held by the World Bank in Washington DC, and that it is slow to distribute funds.
France and the EU objected to the idea of a new fund because they thought it would take too long. The framework compromises by establishing a trust fund next year. The GEF needs to reform its process in order to address the concerns of LMICs.
Biodiversity, profits and the COVID-19 death wave in China: a global agreement on biodiversity and what scientists can do to solve the energy crisis
The benefits of genetic data collected from Plants, animals and other organisms were a sticking point in the negotiations. Communities in biodiversity-rich regions where genetic material is collected have little control over the commercialization of the data, and no way to recoup financial or other benefits from them. But countries came to an agreement to set up a mechanism to share profits, the details of which will be worked out by the next international biodiversity summit, COP16, in 2024.
Model predicts a wave of COVID-19 deaths as China reduces its strict health protections. Plus, a historic global agreement on biodiversity and how researchers can help to solve the energy crisis.
NASA’s Perseverance rover will drop ten Martian rock samples that could be fetched and returned to Earth by another spacecraft. The most likely place to find evidence of past life on Mars is the ancient river delta. The cache is only a back-up — Perseverance will keep duplicate samples on board, so the retrieval mission can collect them directly from the rover in about ten years.
One million people in China could die from COVID-19 within the next few months as the country reduces its strict health protections, a preprint study predicts. The fourth vaccine dose, antiviral drugs for those at risk, mask mandates, and temporary restrictions could reduce the number by up to 35%.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04541-3
What scientists can help to do about the energy crisis: five key issues to work on in the 2023 global agreement on energy markets, climate action, and decarbonization
The conference for Nature has a reporter reporting on the dispute, who said that it highlighted the gulf between good intentions and hard work to come. “Will this undermine the integrity of the framework?” she asks. “It’s all very well pushing a document through, but what really matters is how it is implemented.”
How will the market turmoil caused by Russia affect global energy supplies? And how will the energy crisis affect climate action? These are some of the questions researchers must help to answer in 2023, say Andreas Goldthau and Simone Tagliapietra. They lay out five areas in which scientists can make a difference, including assessing routes to decarbonization in the face of the sky-high energy prices, informing heavy industries’ business models, and shedding light on how energy poverty and inflation threaten political stability.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04541-3
An environmentalist’s perspective on COVID-19: revealing the risk of infection to attendees and creating artificial reef balls in the tidelands of San Diego Bay
Conference organizers should start doing post-event COVID-19 surveys and disclose infection rates to attendees, argues environmental scientist James Kirchner. He ran an online survey of attendees after he became sick from the conference. More than 80% responded, and 28% of them had COVID-19. “We had no idea that the risks were so high,” he writes. “The organizers could have made changes to better protect attendees, if they had known they had a problem in the first place. And they could have been aware of this issue simply by surveying recent attendees, as I did.” Event organizers say that they follow COVID-19 guidelines and that data-protection concerns hamper surveys.
Ant pupae aren’t the useless, immobile sacks scientists thought they were. The juveniles produce ‘milk’, a nutritious fluid that the adult ants drink and feed to the larvae. Without it, they remain stunted and die sooner, explains social-evolution and behaviour researcher Orli Snir. She thinks that this discovery will make people think that ant colonies are interdependent networks rather than being led by adults.
Eileen was protecting the tidelands with giant concrete spheres. Her team sank 360 of these reef balls in the San Diego Bay in 2021. Oysters prefer to settle on the sand and oyster shells in the spheres. It creates an artificial reef that protects the shoreline from being eroded during storms and combats climate change by sequestering carbon dioxide. 3 min read.