People who have a natural preference for staying up late tend to have poorer health habits, including sleep habits, which in turn is associated with reduced wages, according to new research published in Economics and Human Biology. The findings shed light on the links between people’s natural sleep patterns, known as chronotypes, and their financial well-being in midlife. While previous research has shown varying associations between sleep duration and wages, there have been inconsistencies and a lack of understanding about the underlying mechanisms driving these relationships. The researchers...
As Antarctic sea ice dwindled to match record low levels last year, it caused "catastrophic breeding failure" in four emperor penguin colonies.
The loss of more than 9,000 chicks was documented in a study published in Communications Earth & Environment Thursday. It's the first recorded case of such extensive breeding failure in the charismatic penguins due to sea-ice loss, but the study authors warn it may be a "snapshot of a future, warming Antarctica."
"There is hope: We can cut our carbon emissions that are causing the warming," study lead author Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) toldBBC News. "But if we don't we will drive these iconic, beautiful birds to the verge of extinction."
Antarctic sea ice is in the midst of a striking decline. Four of the years with the lowest sea-ice extent in the 45-year satellite record have been in the last seven years, with the lowest in 2021-22 and 2022-23, according to BAS. In February of this year, ice extent shrank to a record low. And it has not fully recovered during the Antarctic winter months, BAS pointed out. The winter extent as of August 20 was lower than the previous record low by about half of a square mile and differed from the 1981 to 2022 median by an area larger than Greenland.
Natural variations like El Niño can alter sea-ice extent year to year, and it will take more data and research to determine the cause of the current anomaly, polar scientist Caroline Holmes told BAS.
"However," she added, "the recent years of tumbling sea-ice records and warming of the subsurface Southern Ocean point strongly to human-induced global warming exacerbating these extremes."
"This paper dramatically reveals the connection between sea-ice loss and ecosystem annihilation."
This is bad news for emperor penguins. Between April and January, they spend their time on sea ice connected to the land. There, they lay and hatch their eggs in the Antarctic winter and rear them through the spring until the chicks develop waterproof plumage in December or January and are ready to strike off on their own, as Inside Climate News explained.
"But if it breaks earlier than that, the chicks basically lose that platform," study co-author Norm Ratcliffe told Inside Climate News. "So they either fall into the sea and they drown."
Ratcliffe added that while the chicks might be able to make it to an iceberg, their feathers would still be wet, so "they'll probably freeze to death."
That's exactly what the scientists think happened to 4 out of 5 emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea region. Researchers had been tracking the colonies using satellite imagery for years based on the buildup of guano on the ice. Then, in November, that ice suddenly disintegrated, with some areas seeing a loss of 100%. With the ice went the guano, leading the scientists to conclude the colonies were abandoned. They think it's unlikely that the chicks survived the loss.
"It's a grim story," Fretwell toldThe Guardian. "I was shocked. It's very hard to think of these cute fluffy chicks dying in large numbers."
While individual colonies have been impacted by sea-ice loss before, what happened in the Bellingshausen Sea region was "unprecedented," BAS said.
When sea ice disappeared locally from Halley Bay in the Weddell Sea after 2016, for example, penguins with a colony there relocated to Dawson Lambton Glacier, the study authors noted.
"However, such a strategy will not be possible if breeding habitat becomes unsuitable at a regional scale," the study authors wrote.
Up until now, emperor penguins have emerged relatively unscathed from the pressures of industrial capitalism, such as massive hunting, overfishing, or habitat loss. But that is changing. BAS observed that the study lends support to the prediction that more than 90% of emperor penguin colonies could be nearly extinct by 2100 if nothing is done to stop burning fossil fuels and curb predicted temperature rise.
"This paper dramatically reveals the connection between sea-ice loss and ecosystem annihilation," BAS sea ice physicist Jeremy Wilkinson said in a statement.
"It is another warning sign for humanity that we cannot continue down this path, politicians must act to minimize the impact of climate change," Wilkinson added. " There is no time left."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.OLIVIA ROSANE Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.Full Bio >
Education and community organizations can apply to receive a living piece of spaceflight history to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics: a seedling grown from a tree seed that flew around the Moon on the NASA’s Artemis I mission in late 2022. NASA and the USDA Forest Service will distribute Artemis Moon Tree seedlings of five different species to create new ways for communities on Earth to connect with humanity’s exploration of space for the benefit of all.
Imagine a jungle. It’s probably a lush forest, filled with different bird songs and the hum of thousands of different kinds of insects. Now imagine a tundra: barren, windswept terrain with relatively few kinds of plants or animals.
These two places highlight an interesting phenomenon — that some places on Earth have far more species than others. In fact, the distribution of species across the globe follows a curiously consistent pattern: generally, there are more species closer to the equator and fewer as you move towards the poles. This “latitudinal biodiversity gradient” can be observed across many different groups of organisms over time.
Our research team at the University of British Columbia turned to unique tools and species to track exactly how climate influences evolution, and what this means for where new species appear. And we conducted this research while we were stuck at home during COVID-19 lockdowns.
The fall webworm is a moth found from Mexico to Canada (a range of almost 4,000 km) whose caterpillars have either black or red heads. While this might seem like a subtle difference, caterpillars with these different colors seem to have different behaviours and appear at different times of the year, and genetic studies suggest that they are evolving into different species.
This moth is also found throughout vastly different climates, which allowed us to explore how latitude and climate might be affecting their ability to turn from one species into two.
However, we had a problem: with global lockdowns and travel restrictions, we couldn’t even leave our homes, much less sample caterpillars across an entire continent. So, we turned to crowd-sourced science. Some apps and websites use user-uploaded photos or audio clips to identify flora and fauna, creating huge databases of nature observations.
Thanks to backyard observers, we could access thousands of observations across North America from the comfort of our homes to begin investigating speciation on a large geographic scale.
Birth of new species
The process of speciation occurs when two groups of organisms belonging to the same species are separated by a barrier that prevents them from reproducing. The most well-known way that this can occur is through a physical barrier between the groups, like a mountain range or a highway.
For the fall webworm, the barrier causing them to become two different species is time. In general, moth species only appear and reproduce during the summer, and when they do, they breed for only a few weeks, at most.
Summers toward the equator tend to be much longer, so the fall webworms go through more life cycles in a year compared to northern populations, which are only able to breed once during short summers. If the red-headed and black-headed fall webworms closer to the equator have more flexibility in when they can breed, they may be able to avoid each other in time better, making speciation more effective.
Caterpillars in a lockdown
Thanks to the fall webworm’s fluffy appearance and garden pest status, thousands of geotagged and dated photographs were available on the crowd-sourced science site iNaturalist. We reviewed 11,000 fall webworm photos from over 7,000 users, manually checking the thousands of photographs for whether the caterpillar was red- or black-headed.
A photograph of a fall webworm caterpillar uploaded by a user in Sydney, N.S., on iNaturalist. (Sarah Smith/iNaturalist), CC BY
While quite a feat, these methods gave us a window into fall webworm populations from Florida to Ontario. To see how speciation was changing across latitudes, we compiled the times and dates each fall webworm photograph was taken and measured the colours of the caterpillars from each picture.
However, in their southern range, the black- and red-headed caterpillars were able to separate their generations more and had less similar colouration, meaning they may be further along in the process of becoming two species.
Climate and diversity
We found that differences in climate from the equator to the poles affect how well species can evolve when time is the barrier, mirroring the latitudinal biodiversity gradient. In short, climate can change how easily species form in the first place.
Humans have an immense effect on our planet’s ecosystems, and new species may be forming just as quickly as they disappear. So, to understand processes driving biodiversity on Earth, we need to understand how those processes impact the creatures that make up much of that biodiversity.
Shepherd Ibrahim Koc recalls his youth with fondness as he grazes cattle on a barren field that was once lush with vegetation on the edge of Turkey's largest lake.
An occasional shrub marks the spots from where Lake Van has retreated over years of global heating and drought.
"The animals are thirsty," the 65-year-old lamented.
"There is no water," Koc said, echoing sentiments expressed by a growing number of Turks who have watched their mountains lose ice caps and their water reservoirs dry up.
A weather map of Turkey -- an agricultural superpower stretching from Bulgaria in the west to Iran in the east -- shows much of the country suffering from a prolonged drought.
Shrinking shorelines are exposing lakebeds that pollute the air with a salty dust. Scientists fear the problems could grow only worse.
"I think these are our good days," Faruk Alaeddinoglu, a professor at Van Yuzuncu Yil University, told AFP.
"We will witness the lake continuing to shrink in the coming years."
Lake Van covers approximately 3,700 square kilometers (1,400 square miles), reaching a maximum depth of 450 metres (1,475 feet).
Its surface area has shrunk by around 1.5 percent in recent years, according to measurements Alaeddinoglu carried out last autumn.
"That is a terribly large amount of water for a 3,700 square kilometer area," he said.
- 'Barren land'-
In the Celebibagi neighbourhood on the lake's northern shore, the waters have receded by around four kilometers.
A long walk along the exposed lakebed is littered with bird bones, craggy bushes and dried dirt covered with sodium and other minerals.
"We are walking in an area which was once covered with the lake's waters," said Ali Kalcik, a local environmentalist.
"Now, it's a barren land without a living thing."
The sight of dazzling flamingos dancing in the air against the backdrop of mountains signals the spot where the lake finally begins.
Alaeddinoglu said the lake's size had changed in the past because of rifts in tectonic plates that make Turkey into one of the most active earthquake zones in the world.
But he blamed the ongoing water loss on rising temperatures that result in "less precipitation and excessive evaporation".
Almost three times as much of the lake's water evaporates than comes back down in the form of rain, Alaeddinoglu said.
Lush gardens of newly-built summer cottages are also draining water from the region, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has built a government retreat.
- 'Business is dying' -
The problem has become so severe that officials are urging local farmers not to grow crops requiring too much water.
This means farmer Kinyas Gezer can no longer afford to grow sugar beets, which are a particularly thirsty vegetable.
"All my labour has been wasted," the 56-year-old lamented, pointing to his shrivelled apricots.
"If it goes on like this, we will abandon farming. The business is dying."
The water's loss also exposes pollution, according to Orhan Deniz, a professor of Yuzuncu Yil University, whose campus sits on the lake's shore.
"Large patches of slime mixed with mud give off a bad smell and make human pollution more evident," he said.
"In the 1990s, we would swim during lunch break and then go back to university," he said, gazing at the lake from his office.
"Now it's not possible to step in the water, let alone swim in it," he said.
- 'A bird massacre' -
The lake is still popular with tourists and some locals swim along its more scenic parts.
Van Governor Ozan Balci said his office has spent 80 million lira ($3 million) cleaning up the lake.
"We are doing our best to protect the lake because of its cultural heritage and people's common memory," he told AFP.
In the shoreline village of Adir, some locals swam and others picnicked under a tree.
But dead gulls lying not too far from the vacationers betrayed the ecological problems facing the lake.
Experts say pearl mullets that form the basis of the gulls' diet migrated early this year because of the drought.
Deprived of food, the gulls simply starved to death.
"The remaining birds here have one more week. Then they will also die," local villager Necmettin Nebioglu, 64, said.
"In the past, the seagulls would follow us while we were swimming. Now look, it's a bird massacre," he said, pointing to a pile of carcasses on the shore.
On the banks of the River Wye on the border between England and Wales, Pat Stirling flings a plastic measuring jug tied to a rope into the water.
Up and down the river, a team of 250 others have been doing the same, hoping to save it from an unfolding ecological crisis.
"The river is declining. The next thing is it's partially dead, then it's completely dead," Stirling told AFP between tests.
The researchers say that after years of being ignored, their data has finally forced admissions about a pollution problem caused mostly by chicken manure.
The Wye Valley and its meandering river have notably inspired the Romantic poet William Wordsworth who eulogized it in the 1798 poem "Tintern Abbey".
Stretching 250 kilometers (155 miles) from its source in mid-Wales to the Severn estuary, the Wye cuts through stunning countryside.
But in 2020 signs began to emerge that the river and its rare wildlife were under threat.
People noticed that the usually smooth stones on the floor of the river had become "slimed up", said Stirling, 43, a carbon footprint consultant originally from Australia.
- 'Disgusting stuff' -
Bird and insect life dwindled and anglers noticed that fish were struggling to grow to larger sizes.
Most noticeably, the Water Crowfoot -- an aquatic flowering plant that the river was once thick with -- was disappearing.
First thoughts turned to a nearby sewage treatment plant.
But as nothing had changed in the way the plant operated locals concluded that it was no more polluting than previously.
"You can take a shot of sewage overflow but what you can't take a photo of is the shocking amounts of animal manure coming out of the intensive poultry units," Stirling said.
A study of planning applications on both sides of the border pointed to the vast number of poultry units that had sprung up along the river in recent years.
Campaigners estimate that there are now 20 million farmed birds in the area of the River Wye in over 760 units.
The units supply a chicken processing plant run by Avara Foods in Hereford, which a decade ago won a huge contract to supply UK supermarket giant Tesco.
After one reported pollution incident, Stirling investigated and found "this horrendous smell and this truly disgusting stuff everywhere".
- 'Declining' -
"Something had gone awfully wrong. I took samples and identified that it was coming from a specific farm", he said.
The manure produced by the chicken sheds contains high levels of the essential nutrient phosphorus, excessive amounts of which damage water quality.
The manure is either spread onto farmland and then washed into the river by rain or into the river directly from the ground where it is dropped by free-range chickens.
Wye phosphorus levels were "nearly 60 percent greater than the national average", Lancaster University scientist Paul Wither told MPs last year.
Conservation watchdog Natural England, which advises the government, in May downgraded the water quality rating of the river, following declines in important species like Atlantic salmon and white-clawed crayfish.
Stirling said he believed the updating of the classification to "unfavorable-declining" only happened due to the noise generated by campaigners and "citizen scientists" like him.
He welcomed the body's interest but added: "We also know they would never have done anything if we hadn't (got involved in testing)."
- Positive signs -
If the river is to avoid the two lowest categories -- "part-destroyed" or "destroyed" -- the authorities need to urgently pull the right "levers", he said.
Some of the signs are positive.
In a letter to farmers this month, Avara foods explained that contracts would be changed so their manure could not be sold within the Wye catchment area.
Its aim was to make sure that "our supply chain is demonstrably not part of the problem by 2025", it said.
The firm told AFP that although they would play their part to "mitigate the impact of our supply chain" Avara Foods were not "direct polluters".
"Farms in our supply chain use or sell poultry litter... yet we recognize the potential impact this may have," it added.
Stirling said he believed Avara's new position was linked to a law suit in the United States involving its joint owner, food giant Cargill, and other poultry producers.
A judge in January ruled that the companies were responsible for degrading the Illinois River in a similar way to the pollution of the Wye.
For now Stirling and his team of citizen scientists will carry on testing and feel hopeful they can make a difference.
"What gets measured gets managed and we are seeing that happen. We are getting traction because of the public data noise," he said.
A new paper published in the journal The Humanistic Psychologist articulates the clinical utility of individualizing psychological assessment by making use of the Enactivist Big-5 Theory of Personality, an approach that is grounded in the enactivist perspective of human cognition. The authors argue for a mutual synthesis of enactivist cognitive science and individualized psychological assessment. “Theoretically, I believe it can be very rewarding to see the ways in which theories in scientific psychology, like the Big Five, can become more humanized by dialoguing them with phenomenology,” said...
Parents should limit the amount of time children spend on social media and video games, researchers have said, after a new study found inactive teenagers are more likely to have signs of heart damage when they are young adults.
Academics said that this heart damage could be setting the stage for heart attacks and strokes in later life.
Even children who have a normal weight were still at risk, experts found. In the new study 766 British youngsters were tracked for 13 years. Sitting time was assessed using smartwatches with an activity tracker for seven days.
By the end of century, more than one billion cows worldwide could suffer from heat stress if global warming continues unabated, threatening their fertility, milk production and lives, according to research published on Thursday.
Nearly eight out of 10 cows across the planet are already experiencing excessively high body temperatures, spiked respiration rates, bowed heads and open-mouthed panting -- all symptoms associated with severe heat stress, the study said.
In tropical climates, 20 percent of cattle endure those symptoms year-round.
These numbers are projected to balloon if cattle farming continues to expand in the Amazon and Congo basins, where temperatures are on track to rise more quickly than the global average.
If emissions of climate-heating greenhouse gases continue to rise, the study predicts heat stress will become a year-round problem in Brazil, southern Africa, northern India, northern Australia and central America by 2100.
"A very important determinant of how many cows are exposed to this heat is decisions about land-use change," lead author Michelle North of University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa told AFP.
"Deforestation of tropical forests for livestock expansion is not a viable development future, because it makes climate change worse and will expose hundreds of millions more cattle to severe heat stress," she added.
The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, found that in a worst-case scenario, cattle husbandry will nearly double in Asia and Latin America and increase more than fourfold in Africa.
Losing livelihoods
If greenhouse gases are curbed sufficiently -- including by cutting the use of fossil fuels and by limiting the expansion of cattle farming -- the number of cows suffering could be reduced by half in Asia and by four-fifths in Africa.
Commercial ranchers stand to lose a lot of money from heat stress. It already costs as much as 1.7 billion dollars annually in the United States alone.
But these farmers usually have insurance, good relations with banks and the ability to draw on loans to help them recover from heat-related losses, said North.
When heat or other climate disasters hit small-scale farmers, however, "it can lead to farmers literally losing their livelihoods, even if the net losses may appear 'negligible'", she said.
North and her team found that global milk supplies would be reduced by 11 million tonnes per year by 2050 under a high greenhouse gas emission scenario.
If emissions are aggressively reduced, nearly half of that amount would still be lost, mostly in Asia and Africa, where milk supplies are already low.
In the near term, overheated cows can be helped by providing them with access to shade and fans, and feeding them earlier in the day.
The microscope is an iconic symbol of the life sciences – and for good reason. From the discovery of the existence of cells to the structure of DNA, microscopy has been a quintessential tool of the field, unlocking new dimensions of the living world not only for scientists but also for the general public.
For the life sciences, where understanding the function of a living thing often requires interpreting its form, imaging is vital to confirming theories and revealing what is yet unknown.
This selection of stories from The Conversation’s archive presents a few ways in which microscopy has contributed to different forms of scientific knowledge, including techniques that take visualization beyond sight altogether.
1. Seeing as identifying
Over the past few centuries, the microscope has undergone a gradual but significant evolution. Each advance has allowed researchers to see increasingly smaller and more fragile structures and biomolecules at increasingly higher resolution – from cells, to the structures within cells, to the structures within the structures within cells, down to atoms.
But there is still a resolution gap between the smallest and largest structures of the cell. Biophysicist Jeremy Berg drew an analogy to Google Maps: Though scientists could see the city as a whole and individual houses, they couldn’t make out the neighborhoods.
“Seeing these neighborhood-level details is essential to being able to understand how individual components work together in the environment of a cell,” he writes.
Scientists are working to bridge that resolution gap. Improvements to the 2014 Nobel Prize-winning superresolution microscopy, for example, have enhanced the study of lengthy processes like cell division by capturing images across a range of size and time scales simultaneously, bringing clarity to details traditional microscopes tend to blur.
Cryo-electron tomography shows what molecules look like in high resolution – in this case, the virus that causes COVID-19. Nanographics, CC BY-SA
Another technique, cryo-electron microscopy, or cryo-EM, won a Nobel Prize in 2017 for bringing even more complex, dynamic molecules into view by flash-freezing them. This creates a protective glasslike shell around samples as they’re bombarded by a beam of electrons to create their photo op. Cryo-ET, a specialized type of cryo-EM, can construct 3D images of molecular structures within their natural environments.
These techniques not only generate images at or near atomic resolution but also preserve the natural shape of difficult-to-capture biomolecules of interest. Researchers were able to use cryo-EM, for instance, to capture the elusive structure of the protein on the surface of the shape-shifting hepatitis C virus, providing key information for a future vaccine.
Further enhancements to science’s visual acuity will reveal more of the fine details of the building blocks of life.
“I anticipate seeing new theories on how we understand cells, moving from disorganized bags of molecules to intricately organized and dynamic systems,” writes Berg.
2. Seeing as scoping
Microscopy images are often framed as snapshots – circumscribed parts of a whole that have been magnified to reveal their hidden features. But nothing in an organism works in isolation. After discerning individual components, scientists are tasked with charting how they interact with each other in the macrosystem of the body. Figuring this out requires not only identifying every component that makes up a particular cell, tissue and organ but also placing them in relation to each other – in other words, making a map.
Researchers have been charting the brain by stitching together multiple snapshots like a photo mosaic. They use different techniques to label a specific cell type and then image the whole brain at high resolution. Layer by layer, each run-through creates an increasingly detailed and more complete model. Neuroscientist Yongsoo Kim likens the process to a satellite image of the brain. Combining millions of these photos allows researchers to zoom into the weeds and zoom out to a bird’s-eye view.
Zooming in on this image of a mouse brain reveals rectangular lines where images were stitched together, with each colored dot representing a specific brain cell type. Yongsoo Kim, CC BY-NC-ND
But building a map of a city, however detailed, is not the same as understanding its rhythm and atmosphere. Likewise, knowing where every cell is located relative to each other doesn’t necessarily tell researchers how they function or interact. Just as important as charting out the landscape of an organ is coming up with a working theory of how it all fits together and performs as a whole. Right now, Kim notes, analysis lags behind technical advances in data collection.
“Incredibly rich, high-resolution brain mapping presents a great opportunity for neuroscientists to deeply ponder what this new data says about how the brain works,” Kim writes. “Though there are still many unknowns about the brain, these new tools and techniques could help bring them to light.”
3. Seeing as recognizing
Every improvement in technology brings a parallel improvement in the data it collects, both in quality and in quantity. But that data is only useful insofar as researchers are able to analyze it – high granularity isn’t helpful if those details aren’t appreciable, and high output isn’t beneficial if it’s too overwhelming to organize.
Automated microscopes, for example, have made it possible to take time-lapse images of cells, resulting in massive amounts of data that require manual sifting. Neuroscientist Jeremy Linsley and his team encountered this dilemma in their own work on neurodegenerative disease. They’ve been relying on an army of interns to scour hundreds of thousands of images of neurons and tally each death – a slow and expensive process.
These images show living neurons colored green and dead neurons colored yellow. Jeremy Linsley, CC BY-NC-ND
So they turned to artificial intelligence. Researchers can train an AI model to recognize specific patterns by feeding it many sample images, pointing out structures of interest and extrapolating the algorithm to new contexts. Linsley and his team developed a model to distinguish between living and dead neurons with greater speed and accuracy than people trained to do the same task.
They also opened the black box of the model to figure out how it was finding dead cells, revealing new signals of neuron death that researchers previously weren’t aware of because they weren’t obvious to the human eye.
“By taking out human guesswork, (AI models) increase the reproducibility and speed of research and can help researchers discover new phenomena in images that they would otherwise not have been able to easily recognize,” writes Linsley.
4. Seeing as appreciating
Even before they had the instruments to zoom in on samples, researchers had a tool in their arsenal to study the living world that they still use today: art.
Centuries ago, scientists and artists examined plants, animals and anatomy through illustration. Sketches of unfamiliar species in their natural environments aided in their classification, and drawings of the human body advanced study of its structure and function. With the help of the printing press, these artistic renderings – which later included the view under the lenses of early microscopes – popularized scientific knowledge about the natural world.
Though hand drawings have since given way to advanced imaging techniques and computer models, the legacy of communicating science through art continues. Scientific publications and BioArt competitions highlight laboratory images and videos to share the awe and wonder of studying the natural world with the general public. Using visualizations in classrooms and art museums can also promote science literacy by giving students a chance to look through the eye of the microscope as a scientist would.
Biologist and BioArt Awards judge Chris Curran believes that making visible the processes and concepts of science can grant a greater depth of understanding of the natural world necessary to being an informed citizen.
“That those images and videos are often beautiful is an added benefit,” she writes.
This video of cells migrating in a zebra fish embryo won first place in the 2022 Nikon Small World in Motion Competition.
And the abstract qualities of science can be made tangible in ways that don’t involve sight. Proteins, for instance, can be translated into music by mapping their physical properties into sound: amino acids turn into notes, while structural loops become tempos and motifs. Computational biologists Peng Zhang and Yuzong Chen enhanced the musicality of these mapping techniques by basing them on different music styles, such as that of Chopin. Consequently, a protein that prevents cancer formation, p53, sounds toccata-like, and the protein that binds to the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin flutters with recurring motifs.
Framing scientific images as art often requires no more than a change in perspective. And uncovering the poetry of science, many researchers would agree, can help reveal the artistry of life.
A video showing a close encounter between a hiker in Utah and a mountain lion defending her cubs went viral in 2020. The video, during which the hiker remained calm as the mountain lion followed him for several minutes, served as a visceral reminder that sharing the land with carnivores can be a complicated affair.
For conservation scientists like me, it also underscored that Americans have a fraught relationship with large carnivores like wolves, bears and mountain lions. My colleagues and I have proposed a federal policy that, when combined with other initiatives, could allow for sustainable coexistence between people and carnivores.
In a 2020 viral video, a Utah hiker encounters a mountain lion on the trail. Warning – strong language.
Major state and federal government efforts are underway to reintroduce grizzly bears to the Northern Cascades and gray wolves to Colorado. These are places where stable populations of these animals have not roamed for many decades.
More human development and, in some cases, expanding carnivore populations have led to more encounters between humans and carnivores. Coyote attacks on pets are more common, alligator bites are on the rise in some regions, and the killing of livestock by wolves has spread.
To manage these risks, people too often default to the widespread killing of carnivores. In 2021 alone, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services euthanized nearly 70,000 bears, wolves, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and foxes.
In the same year, controversial laws passed in Idaho and Montana that substantially reduced wolf numbers because people perceive these animals as risks to livestock production and game species hunting.
Thousands of animals die every year in wildlife killing contests that often target carnivores such as coyotes and bobcats. These contests are legal in more than 40 U.S. states – under the guise that they help with wildlife management and protect livestock.
Instead, coexisting with carnivores can benefit both carnivores and people. For example, the presence of wolves and mountain lions lowers the frequency of vehicle collisions with deer, saving money and human lives. Foxes, likewise, reduce an abundance of small mammals that carry ticks, likely reducing cases of Lyme disease in humans. Sea otters maintain healthy kelp forests that support tourism and fisheries and capture carbon.
Many carnivores’ presence on the landscape benefits people. Foxes, for example, eat rodents that may carry Lyme disease. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
However, the U.S. has no unified approach for making interactions with carnivores more peaceful in the spaces that people share with them. Shared spaces – like multiuse forests and grasslands, coastlines, croplands and even cities – constitute over 70% of the continental U.S. by one estimate.
A federal policy like the one my colleagues and I propose that sets goals for sharing spaces with carnivores could allow for coexistence between people and carnivores while also recognizing local priorities.
While much of wildlife management takes place at the state level, having a federal policy framework could provide resources and incentives for states and communities to adopt specific coexistence strategies relevant to the carnivores in their area.
Large-scale policy goals may include lowering conflicts, increasing human tolerance to risks and fostering self-sustaining carnivore populations.
Coexistence strategies should prioritize using proven, nonlethal deterrence methods such as properly disposing of trash or other attractants, bringing pets inside, erecting barriers to separate livestock from carnivores in risky places and times, and working with guard animals such as dogs that are trained to protect herds from carnivores. These strategies not only reduce carnivores’ impact on human property and well-being but also facilitate carnivore recovery.
Several local projects demonstrate that nonlethal deterrence programs work. In Montana’s Blackfoot watershed, natural resource managers and local residents coordinate the disposal of livestock carcasses away from ranches. This prevents grizzlies and wolves from approaching the ranches.
The city of Durango, Colorado, has supplied its residents with automatically locking bear-resistant trash containers. These containers keep bears from damaging property or scaring residents while looking for food in them. A study found that these new trash containers reduced trash-related conflicts with bears by 60%.
A bear in Anchorage, Alaska, sifts through trash. Some cities have issued their residents locking trash cans, which prevent bears from encroaching on local residences. AP Photo/Mark Thiessen
Negative encounters with carnivores still occur in these cases, but now that the communities are collectively adapting to them, they are less severe. And these carnivores are less likely to be euthanized.
Some states are also taking incremental steps toward coexistence. For example, to reduce animal suffering, New Mexico passed the Wildlife Conservation and Public Safety Act in 2021 that bans the use of a trap, snare or poison to kill an animal on public land.
In 2023, Maryland and Colorado authorized provisions that help fund provisions to prevent lethal encounters with black bears and gray wolves, respectively.
A broader coexistence framework
These local and state-level successes are encouraging, but not enough to address the issue at a broader, national scale. A federal coexistence policy could harness the insights from these individual communities’ coexistence efforts and encourage other communities to adopt these techniques.
For example, members of universities, businesses, tribes, government and nongovernmental organizations and the public could come together at regional coexistence workshops to showcase their coexistence actions, receive support for new ideas and share tools and best practices.
A federal policy could allow states and communities to try out high-risk, high-reward initiatives, like Pay for Presence programs. One such program, established in northern Mexico near the U.S. border in 2007, compensates landowners for the documented presence of jaguars on their properties.
A federal policy might also facilitate the adoption of market-based solutions like predator-friendly meats. The predator-friendly certification enables ranchers who do not use lethal predator control to sell their meat products at a premium price.
A federal coexistence policy could also support community outreach and education programs. Teaching communities about carnivore behavior can help them to avoid potentially risky situations, like jogging with a dog or leaving children unattended in mountain lion territory.
By reducing negative encounters, these programs can enhance the adoption of nonlethal coexistence strategies, foster more positive attitudes toward carnivores and share the benefits carnivores offer humans.
There are promising signs that the federal government and some states are starting to pay more attention to coexistence with carnivores. As the segment of the American public that views wildlife as deserving of rights and compassion grows, translating an ethic of coexistence into good policy could better align policy with public values.
Our new study, published today, shines a new light on rock art of Sarawak (a state of Malaysia on the island of Borneo). The rock art we have dated records resistance to colonial forces in Malaysian Borneo during the 17th to 19th centuries.
The two rock art drawings that were dated and interpreted by our new research. Digital tracing and design by Lucas Huntley., CC BY-ND
Gua Sireh is one of the region’s best-known rock art sites, attracting hundreds of visitors each year. The cave is about 55 kilometres south-east of Sarawak’s capital, Kuching.
Hundreds of charcoal drawings cover the walls of Gua Sireh. People are shown wearing headdresses. Some are armed with shields, knives and spears in scenes of hunting, butchering, fishing, fighting and dancing.
Excavations in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s revealed people intermittently used Gua Sireh for around 20,000 years, before abandoning the site around 1900. The Indigenous people who used the cave were the ancestors of the contemporary Bidayuh (inland tribal people), also known as “Land Dayaks” in early ethnographic accounts.
Malayo-Polynesian Austronesian speakers (whose language originates in Taiwan) spread across Island South-East Asia and the Pacific starting around 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Austronesian influence at Gua Sireh dates from about 4,000 years ago, indicated by the first appearance of charred rice and pottery.
The presence of Austronesian communities at Gua Sireh is a part of broader evidence for dynamic human migrations in the region over thousands of years.
Further cultural interactions at the site occurred around 2,000 years ago, with grave goods, such as glass beads, showing contact between the Bidayuh and coastal traders.
In the 17th to 19th centuries, there was a period of increasing conflict when Malay elites controlling the region exacted heavy tolls on local Indigenous tribes. Using radiocarbon dating, we have been able to date two large, elaborate human figures to this period. They were drawn between 1670 and 1830.
We interpreted our results informed by the oral histories of the Bidayuh, who have continuing custodial responsibilities over the site today.
In addition to radiocarbon dating and oral history, another strand of evidence we used to interpret these new dates were the images themselves.
One figure we looked at in our carbon dating brandishes two short-bladed Parang Ilang, the principal weapon used during the warfare that marked the first decades of white rule in Borneo. We have dated this figure as drawn between 1670 and 1710 when Malay elites dominated the Bidayuh.
Bidayuh descendant Mohammad Sherman Sauffi William (Sarawak Museum Department) and Jillian Huntley harvesting a sample from the rock art. Paul S.C. Taçon, CC BY-ND
In another image we studied, large human figures are shown holding distinctive weapons such as a Pandat – the war sword of Land Dayaks, including the Bidayuh. Pandat were used exclusively for fighting and protection, never in agriculture or handicrafts, suggesting the drawing relates to conflict.
We have dated this figure to between 1790 and 1830. This was a period of increasing conflict between the Bidayuh and Iban (Indigenous peoples from the coast, also known as Sea Dayaks) and Brunei Malay rulers.
The Pandat in this rock art was used exclusively for fighting and protection, suggesting the drawing relates to conflict. Andrea Jalandoni, CC BY-ND
During this period many Indigenous Sarawakians moved into the upland interior, including the Gua Sireh area, to escape persecution.
Brunei rulers were known to not only bully and enslave people but also allowed expeditions of Ibans to attack the Bidayuh. The Ibans were said to keep the heads of the people they slaughtered and handed over the “slaves” they captured to the Brunei authority.
An example from Bidayuh oral histories of the cave being used as a refuge during territorial violence comes from 1855. The British diplomat Spenser St John was shown a skeleton in Gua Sireh. A local tribesman said he had shot this man years earlier, before the rule of James Brooke, which began in 1839.
The shooting resulted from a skirmish with a very harsh Malay chief who had demanded the Bidayuh hand over their children. They refused and retreated to Gua Sireh where they held off a force of 300 armed men.
Suffering some losses (two Bidayuh were shot, and seven were taken prisoner and enslaved), most of the tribe escaped through the far side of the cave complex, saving their children.
Oral histories combined with the figures holding weapons of warfare contextualise the ages we now have for the rock art.
Plan of the Gua Sireh cave system showing passage through Gunung Nambi (limestone hill) via the connecting passage between Gua Sireh and Gua Sebayan. Blue indicates water. CC BY-ND
The direct dates we have produced demonstrate distinct periods of drawing can be identified.
The ubiquity of black drawings across the region and their probable links to the migrations of Austronesian and Malay peoples opens exciting possibilities for further understanding the complexities of rock art production in Island South-East Asia.
This article was coauthored with Mohammad Sherman Sauffi William from the Sarawak Museum Department.
Most passengers believe saying hello has a positive impact on their bus driver, but less than a quarter bother to do so, according to research in the UK.
People were more likely to acknowledge the driver on buses which had signs encouraging them to, a pilot project by the University of Sussex, Transport for London (TfL) and social connection enterprise Neighbourly Lab found.
A small survey of 77 drivers suggested a greeting from a passenger was meaningful to them, the researchers said..
