American Museum of Natural History’s Post

Global game changer for #coral conservation 🌊 Researchers at Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, and University of California, Berkeley have achieved a breakthrough in the fight to save the world’s coral reefs. In a Nature Communications paper released today, scientists describe the first successful technique for cryopreserving and reviving entire coral fragments. This proof-of-concept, funded by Revive & Restore, opens the door to collecting and preserving coral fragments easily and rapidly at an urgent moment for coral worldwide. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/dyHew8_x “This process holds enormous promise to conserve the biodiversity and genetic diversity of coral. If we can scale this up and refine the post-thaw husbandry, we will be able to work year-round rather than just a few days during spawning seasons. If we can do that, this will be a really viable process that changes how we see the security of corals going forward.” DR. MARY HAGEDORN Research scientist at Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute Video: Puffer fish in a healthy reef | Storyblocks

The recipe for unraveling the mysteries of the open sea includes several key ingredients: passionate scientists, financial backing and patience. Our Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology (SCOPE) has been helping to solve these mysteries since 2014: https://lnkd.in/ejA92-pE #science #lifesciences

OCEAN CITIZEN PARTNER (#UK) ~ The University of Exeter is a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive UK #universities and was ranked by the World University Rankings 2023 as one of the #top 150 universities in the world. The Centre for Ecology and Conservation is based at the University’s Cornwall campus, and its overarching #goal is to ‘understand, predict and conserve natural systems, including the benefits that humans gain from them’. Staff and students at the Centre conduct cutting-edge #research on topics as diverse as animal behaviour, terrestrial and #marine #ecology, #evolution and #conservation. Field-sites and study systems are both local and global, and span natural, agricultural and urban-dominated environments. You can find more details about #UNEXE on our website: https://lnkd.in/drVdaUBE #OceanCitizen #MissionOcean #OceanDecade #HorizonEurope #GenerationRestoration #OceanScience #BlueEconomy #OceanLiteracy #2030Agenda #biodiversity #marinescience #marineresearch #Exeter

I am happy we could contribute to the study led by Adam Smith, based on camera trap data from nine European study sites along a gradient in human disturbance. The study shows that that wolves can adjust to diurnal or cathemeral behaviours under low human disturbance, but quickly shift to nocturnality when human disturbance increases. Eurasian lynx, however, consistently maintain their nocturnal behavior. Maintaining nocturnal behaviours in human-dominated landscapes may be beneficial for large carnivore conservation, by decreasing interactions thereby contributing to a landscape of coexistence.   Smith, A.F., Kasper, K., Lazzeri, L., Schulte, M., Kudrenko, S., Say-Sallaz, E., Churski, M., Shamovich, D., Obrizan, S., Domashevsky, S., Korepanova, K., Bashta, A.-T., Zhuravchak, R., Gahbauer,M., Pirga, B., Fenchuk, V., Kusak, J., Ferretti, F., Kuijper, D.P.J., Schmidt, K., Heurich, M. 2024. Reduced human disturbance increases diurnal activity in wolves, but not eurasian lynx. Global Ecology and Conservation: e02985. https://lnkd.in/ec2FAHPf

Together, let's prioritize ecology for our shared future 🌍 In a #tribune published today in Les Echos, 300 stakeholders from the world of impact and economics, brought together at the initiative of ChangeNOW, call for overcoming divisions and positioning ecology and planetary boundaries as fundamental principles upon which society must build and organize itself, for a sustainable future. In a world that pushes us to polarize, to divide, threatening the very existence of our democracies, two elements unite us all: ecology and humanity. 👉 Ecology, as the science of our common home, because it defines, like a physical law, the framework in which we live. 👉 Humanity, because it defines, like a moral law, what we all are. It is time to consider ecology not as a constraint, but as the foundation of our common future. Discover this call to prioritize ecology for our shared future and sign up for #changeNOW2024 to be part of it  🖊️ https://lnkd.in/emubGqqN And sign up for #changeNOW2024 to be part of it  🖊️ https://lnkd.in/e-gS8Etz

📢 Great new publication!! 🚨 Invasive species are the second most important reason for species extinction since 1500 AD, causing substantial economic losses. 📚 In this study, we compiled a database of 112,399 marine species, including 966 alien species and 1,655 listed as threatened by invasive species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 💡 Furthermore, we developed an interactive Web toolkit (MarINvaders) to visualize and analyze species distributions, aiding in understanding the impact of invasive species. The MarINvaders toolkit not only contains taxonomic details of marine alien species but also allows users to create maps for each species, distinguishing their alien and non-alien ranges. It provides interactive querying and data collection functionalities. Francesca Verones Philip Gjedde Maximilian Koslowski Radek Lonka Konstantin Stadler #invasivespecies #marinebiodiversity #sustainability #ecosystem #ecology #biodiversityloss #research #MarINvaders Read the full paper here 👇

A recently published manuscript in the Marine Ecology Progress Series reinforces known stressors for critically-endangered North Atlantic right whales. Besides vessel collisions, scientists attribute the decreasing whale population to two main issues: entanglement in gear and the availability of prey. Both factors impact the whales’ energy, leading to reduced body condition, health and reproduction. The paper also highlights substantial uncertainties around some modeling parameters used to study whales’ energy balance. These uncertainties suggest that we should be cautious about how right whale bioenergetics models are interpreted. 📲Read the study: go.whoi.edu/NARW-Moore

New paper! Research from Alice Trevail and fantastic team 📰 Tracking #seabird migration in the tropical Indian Ocean reveals basin-scale #conservation need. Available #openaccess in Current Biology ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eur6nJJ4 Seabirds roam far and wide in the Indian Ocean, so they need ocean-wide protection - new study by University of Exeter Heriot-Watt University Zoological Society of London (ZSL) Universit�� de La R��union All other oceans contain “hotspots” where predators including seabirds feast - but the study found none in the Indian Ocean Researcher Alice Trevail said: “As the birds roam widely and spend much of their time outside national waters, we need international action – like the recent #HighSeasTreaty – to protect them. No country can act in isolation to protect these birds.” Press release 👉 https://lnkd.in/ePwHfHmA University of Exeter Centre for Ecology and Conservation

Via aims_gov_au - Links between the three-dimensional movements of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) and the bio-physical environment off a coral reef - Movement Ecology via BioMedCentral Springer Nature Group: Measuring coastal-pelagic prey fields at scales relevant to the movements of marine predators is challenging due to the dynamic and ephemeral nature of these environments. Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are thought to aggregate in nearshore tropical waters due to seasonally enhanced foraging opportunities. This implies that the three-dimensional movements of these animals may be associated with bio-physical properties that enhance prey availability. To date, few studies have tested this hypothesis. https://lnkd.in/eFrVTGsG

While we tend to think of trumpeting when we think of the sounds that elephants make, it is their low “rumbles” that provide rich insight into how elephants communicate. 🐘 Because elephant rumbles are difficult for human ears to hear, an international team of researchers who conducted a recently published study relied on machine learning to aid their analysis. They identified 469 distinct calls made by family groups of elephants at Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park and analyzed the calls and responses to determine whether there was reliance on imitation of sounds, or distinct sounds. The study, recently published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution concluded that "African savannah elephants address members of their family with individually specific, name-like calls." Researchers found: "the receiver of a call could be predicted from the call’s acoustic structure, regardless of how similar the call was to the receiver’s vocalizations. Moreover, elephants differentially responded to playbacks of calls originally addressed to them relative to calls addressed to a different individual." One of the study's co-authors, Colorado State University ecologist George Wittemyer, says of their results: “Elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other — this naming is probably one of the things that underpins their ability to communicate to individuals.” https://lnkd.in/gvgn7f5T #FeelGoodFriday #animalprotection #animalcommunication