Long delays in banning trade in threatened species Frank, Eyal G; Wilcove, David S
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
2019-Feb-15, 2019-02-15, 20190215, Letnik:
363, Številka:
6428
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Scientific knowledge should be applied with more urgency
The harvesting of wild animals and plants for international trade affects thousands of species, and compounds ongoing extinction threats such ...as habitat loss and climate change (
1
–
4
). The loss of overexploited species can result in cascading effects that reduce overall ecosystem functioning (
4
,
5
). The primary international framework for preventing the loss of species due to international wildlife trade is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Given that CITES aims to be as scientifically based as possible (
6
), we analyzed how quickly species that are identified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as being threatened from trade are subsequently protected under CITES. The Red List represents an authoritative body of scientific knowledge regarding extinction risks. We find that in nearly two-thirds of the cases, the CITES process of regulating trade in threatened species lags considerably behind the IUCN identification of species in need of protection from trade. Such delay in the application of scientific knowledge to policy formulation could result in species extinctions. With signatories to CITES set to gather in May to determine which species merit protection, we suggest opportunities to improve this process.
Balancing economic and ecological goals Frank, Eyal G.; Schlenker, Wolfram
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
08/2016, Letnik:
353, Številka:
6300
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Human activities are increasingly degrading ecosystems, resulting in habitat loss and reduced biodiversity. Extinction rates, a widely used metric of biodiversity loss, are estimated to be around ...1000 times as high as those historically experienced on Earth (1); even the most conservative estimate puts current extinction rates at 114 times as high as the background planetary norm (2). Simulations project that, under scenarios of increased economic growth and the accompanying land use change, critical habitat will further degrade and biodiversity will decline (3, 4). Are economic growth and ecosystem conservation incompatible objectives?
Environmental policies often draw criticism due to their potential impacts on labor market outcomes. Previous work has studied sector-specific impacts following air quality regulations, or examined ...overall employment effects of land-use policies. In the case of the protection of the Northern Spotted Owl under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, millions of acres of highly productive federal timberland in the Pacific Northwest and northern California were set aside. Concerns regarding declining employment in the timber industry following the listing are often mentioned as a cautionary tale regarding future listings under the Act. However, disentangling the policy impact from other economic factors affecting employment such as recessions and sector-specific trends is challenging. We use a range of control groups to estimate the impact of the 1990 listing of the Northern Spotted Owl had on labor market outcomes in the Lumber and Wood Products sector. Our set of main results indicate long-run declines in timber industry employment of 13.9% using a regional perspective, 28.1% using a national perspective, and a 9.5% decline in the number of establishments. In the owl habitat range there were 114,600 timber employees in the pre-treatment period; about 1.4% of total employment in those counties. In terms of jobs, the declines represent around 16,000 or 32,000 timber jobs within the Pacific Northwest and northern California. We find heterogeneous effects with areas having larger shares of protected federal timberland experiencing larger declines in employment. Our findings indicate land protection policies may pose significant employment impacts to land-reliant industries.
( 2021) critique our paper (Frank & Wilcove, 2019) in which we report that species assessed by the IUCN Red List as threatened with extinction that are also traded internationally can languish for ...well over a decade until they are protected under CITES (via Appendix I or II), if they are protected at all. ...we argue that having a mechanism that reduces the friction of parsing new scientific data can help in reducing those dangerously long time lags that have led to some species nearly disappearing after just a decade of heavy trading. ...the Red List criteria are based on objectively measured trends in populations sizes or area of habitat; policymakers can use that information to decide how to balance any competing interests between conservation and human activities.
Running rivers are very scarce in globally distributed hyperarid and arid coastlines (∼28,000 km worldwide), and it is ephemeral rivers that carry most terrestrial sediment into the sea in these ...regions. However, there is very little information regarding the contribution of terrestrial sediment and dynamics of transport of sediment that enter marine basins from these rivers. One hyperarid region, the Gulf of Aqaba received an exceptional number of flashflood events during the winter of 2012–2013. The results illustrate, for the first time, how the high volume of flashflood sediment influences the distribution of coral reefs; dwarfs the contribution of airborne dust; elevates floodwater densities to produce hyperpycnal flows, despite highest ocean salinities; and is subsequently transported to the deep basin where it may be preserved as a climate archive.
•Flashfloods cause hyperpycnal flows in the hyperarid Gulf of Aqaba (GOA).•First direct observations and video recording of a hyperpycnal flow underwater.•Sediments discharge from ephemeral rivers far exceed airborne fluxes to the GOA.•Flood sediments deposited on the shelf are later transported to the deep basin.•Intermittent flashfloods preclude coral growth at the northern shelf of the GOA.
We have previously implicated transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) channels and alveolar macrophages in initiating the permeability increase in response to high peak inflation pressure ...(PIP) ventilation. Alveolar macrophages were harvested from TRPV4(-/-) and TRPV4(+/+) mice and instilled in the lungs of mice of the opposite genotype. Filtration coefficients (K(f)) measured in isolated perfused lungs after ventilation with successive 30-min periods of 9, 25, and 35 cmH(2)O PIP did not significantly increase in lungs from TRPV4(-/-) mice but increased >2.2-fold in TRPV4(+/+) lungs, TRPV4(+/+) lungs instilled with TRPV4(-/-) macrophages, and TRPV4(-/-) lungs instilled with TRPV4(+/+) macrophages after ventilation with 35 cmH(2)O PIP. Activation of TRPV4 with 4-alpha-phorbol didecanoate (4alphaPDD) significantly increased intracellular calcium, superoxide, and nitric oxide production in TRPV4(+/+) macrophages but not TRPV4(-/-) macrophages. Cross-sectional areas increased nearly 3-fold in TRPV4(+/+) macrophages compared with TRPV4(-/-) macrophages after 4alphaPDD. Immunohistochemistry staining of lung tissue for nitrotyrosine revealed increased amounts in high PIP ventilated TRPV4(+/+) lungs compared with low PIP ventilated TRPV4(+/+) or high PIP ventilated TRPV4(-/-) lungs. Thus TRPV4(+/+) macrophages restored susceptibility of TRPV4(-/-) lungs to mechanical injury. A TRPV4 agonist increased intracellular calcium and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species in harvested TRPV4(+/+) macrophages but not TRPV4(-/-) macrophages. K(f) increases correlated with tissue nitrotyrosine, a marker of peroxynitrite production.
Mesophotic coral communities are increasingly gaining attention for the unique biological diversity they host, exemplified by the numerous mesophotic fish species that continue to be discovered. In ...contrast, many of the photosynthetic scleractinian corals observed at mesophotic depths are assumed to be depth-generalists, with very few species characterised as mesophotic-specialists. This presumed lack of a specialised community remains largely untested, as phylogenetic studies on corals have rarely included mesophotic samples and have long suffered from resolution issues associated with traditional sequence markers.
Here, we used reduced-representation genome sequencing to conduct a phylogenomic assessment of the two dominant mesophotic genera of plating corals in the Indo-Pacific and Western Atlantic, respectively, Leptoseris and Agaricia. While these genome-wide phylogenies broadly corroborated the morphological taxonomy, they also exposed deep divergences within the two genera and undescribed diversity across the current taxonomic species. Five of the eight focal species consisted of at least two sympatric and genetically distinct lineages, which were consistently detected across different methods.
The repeated observation of genetically divergent lineages associated with mesophotic depths highlights that there may be many more mesophotic-specialist coral species than currently acknowledged and that an urgent assessment of this largely unstudied biological diversity is warranted.
The influence of temperature on diversity and ecosystem functioning is well studied; the converse however, that is, how biodiversity influences temperature, much less so. We manipulated freshwater ...algal species diversity in microbial microcosms to uncover how diversity influenced primary production, which is well documented in biodiversity research. We then also explored how visible‐spectrum absorbance and the local thermal environment responded to biodiversity change. Variations in the local thermal environment, that is, in the temperature of the immediate surroundings of a community, are known to matter not only for the rate of ecosystem processes, but also for persistence of species assemblages and the very relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In our microcosm experiment, we found a significant positive association between algal species richness and primary production, a negative association between primary production and visible‐spectrum absorbance, and a positive association between visible‐spectrum absorbance and the response of the local thermal environment (i.e., change in thermal infrared emittance over a unit time). These findings support an indirect effect of algal diversity on the local thermal environment pointing to a hitherto unrecognized biodiversity effect in which diversity has a predictable influence on local thermal environments.
We investigate the effect of biodiversity on the local thermal properties of the community in a microcosm experiment. We find an hitherto undescribed (indirect) effect of community diversity on local thermal environments that warrants further investigation.
Objective Autologous blood transfusion from the placenta to the neonate at birth has been proven beneficial. Transfusion can be accomplished by either delayed cord clamping or cord stripping. Both ...are equally effective in previous randomized trials. We hypothesized that combining these 2 techniques would further improve outcomes in preterm neonates. Study Design This was a prospective randomized trial for singleton deliveries with estimated gestational ages between 22 and 31 6/7 weeks. The control protocol required a 30-second delayed cord clamping, whereas the test protocol instructed a concurrent cord stripping during the delay. The primary outcome was initial fetal hematocrit. We also examined secondary outcomes of neonatal mortality, length of time on the ventilator, days to discharge, peak bilirubin, number of phototherapy days, and neonatal complication rates. Results Of the 67 patients analyzed, 32 were randomized to the control arm and 35 were randomized to the test arm. The gestational ages and fetal weights were similar between the arms. Mean hematocrit of the control arm was 47.75%, and the mean hematocrit for the test arm was 47.71% ( P = .98). These results were stratified by gestational age, revealing the infants less than 28 weeks had an average hematocrit of 41.2% in the control arm and 44.7% in the test arm ( P = .12). In the infants with gestational ages of 28 weeks or longer, the control arm had an average hematocrit of 52.9%, which was higher than the test arm, which averaged 49.5% ( P = .04). The control arm received an average of 1.53 blood transfusions, whereas the test arm received 0.97 ( P = .33). The control arm had 3 neonatal deaths, and the test arm had none ( P = .10). The average number of days until discharge was 71.2 for the control arm and 67.8 for the test arm ( P = .66). The average number of days on the ventilator was 4.86 for the control arm and 3.06 for the test arm ( P = .34). Conclusion Adding cord stripping to the delayed cord clamp does not result in an increased hematocrit. Data suggest trends in lower mortality and higher hematocrit in neonates born less than 28 weeks, but these were not statistically significant.
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