Transcript

9.4.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
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Kelly Taylor. I'll have some articles on the topics of
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science and nature, but first a reminder that RADIOI is
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a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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We'll start out with an article from Wired magazine. This
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is dated September second. Hungry worms could help solve plastic pollution.
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Plastics that support modern life are inexpensive, strong, and versatile,
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but are difficult to dispose of and have a serious
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impact when released into the environment. Polyethylene in particular, is
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the most widely used plastic in the world, with more
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than one hundred million tons distributed annually. Since it can
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take decades to decompose, and along the way can harm
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wildlife and degrade into harmful microplastics, his disposal is an
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urgent issue for mankind. In twenty seventeen, European researchers discovered
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a potential solution. The larvae of wax moths commonly known
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as waxworms, have the ability to break down polyethylene in
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their bodies. Waxworms have been considered a pest since ancient times,
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because they parasitize beehives feeding on beeswax. However, we now
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know that they also spontaneously feed on polyethylene, which has
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a chemically similar structure. Around two thousand waxworms can break
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down an entire polyethylene bag in as little as twenty
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four hours, although we believe that co supplementation with feeding
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stimulants like sugars can reduce the number of worms considerably,
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says doctor Bryan Cassoni, professor of biology at Brandon University
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in Canada. Cassoni and his team have been researching how
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these insects could be har harnessed to help combat plastic pollution.
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Understanding the biological mechanisms and consequences on fitness associated with
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plastic biode biodegradation is key to using waxworms for large
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scale plastic remediation, he says. In previous experiments, Cassoni and
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his team found out exactly how waxworms break down polyethylene
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to understand their digestive mechanism. Cassoni's team fed polyethylene to
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waxworms for several days and followed the insect's metabolic processes
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and changes in their gut environment. They found that as
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the waxworms ate the polyethylene, their feces liquefied and contained
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glycol as a byproduct, but when the insects intestinal bacteria
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were suppressed by administering antibiotics, the amount of glycol in
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their feces was greatly reduced. This revealed that the breaking
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down of polyethylene is dependent on the waxworm's gut microbes.
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The team also isolated bacteria from the guts of waxworms
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and then cultured strains that could survive on polyethylene as
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their sole food source. Among them was a strain of
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a snot as I'm sorry a Sinetobacter, which survived for
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more than a year in the laboratory environment and continued
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to break down polyethylene. This revealed how robust and persistent
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the waxworm's gut flora is in its ability to break
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down plastics, yet in reality, when it comes to consuming plastic,
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gut bacteria are not working alone. When the researchers conducted
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genetic analysis on the insects, they found that plastic fed
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waxworms showed increased gene expression relating to fat metabolism, and
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after being fed plastic, the waxworms duly showed signs of
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having increased body fat. Armed with their plastic digesting gut bacteria,
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the larvae can break down plastics and convert them into lipids,
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which they then store in their bodies. However, a plastic
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only diet didn't result in waxworm's long term survival. In
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their latest experiment, the team found that waxworms that continued
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to eat only polyethylene died within a few days and
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lost a great deal of weight. This showed that it
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is difficult for waxworms to continually process polyethylene waste, but
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researchers believe that creating a food source to assist their
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intake of polyethylene would mean waxworms are able to sustain
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healthy viability on a plastic diet and improve their decomposition efficiency.
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Looking ahead, the team suggests two strategies for using the
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waxxworm's ability to consume plastics. One is to mass produce
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waxworms that are fed on a polyethylene diet while providing
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them with the nutritional support they need for long term survival,
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and then integrating them into the circular economy. Using the
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insects themselves to dispose of waste plastic. The other is
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to redesign the plastic degradation pathway of waxworms in the
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lab using only microorganisms and enzymes, and so create a
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means of disposing of plastic that doesn't need the actual
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insects in the insect rearing route. A byproduct would be
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large amounts of insect biomass countless larvae that have been
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fed on plastic. These could potentially be turned into a
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highly nutritious feed for the aquaculture industry, as according to
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the research team's data, the insects could be a good
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source of protein for commercial fish. And now will turnover
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to Scientific American and this article is headlined the Invisible
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toll of bird flu on wildlife. Twenty five thousand, six
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hundred and sixty nine northern ganets in Canada, one hundred
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and thirty four harbor and gray seals along the coast
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of Maine, twenty one California condors in the Western US.
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These are just a tiny fraction of the wild victims
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of a strain of high pathogenicity avian influenza. While we
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colloquially call bird flu, the virus, which scientists call H
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five N one, has spread like wildfire around the globe
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in recent years, surprising and horrifying scientists at every unpredictable turn.
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And while most people have fretted about the rising price
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of eggs, the possibility of viruses in our milk, and
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the risk of a pandemic in humans, countless wild animals
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are dying almost entirely out of our view, so many
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that even the limited tallies scientists can make are incomprehensibly large.
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Quote it's easier to treat the numbers as numbers and
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not think too hard about what they really represent, says
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Stephanie avery Gaum, a conservation scientist at Environment and Climate
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Change Canada. Quote, but if you do take that time
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to think about it, it's pretty sad. She lived that
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reality firsthand in early twenty twenty two. Soon after the
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killer strain of bird flu arrived in North America, Northern gannets,
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which span the Atlantic and spend most of their year
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out to sea, but breed every spring at six colonies
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in Eastern Canada, started washing up on beaches. Hundreds of
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their massive white bodies littered the shorelines across the region.
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Scientists couldn't figure out the source, so they enlisted a
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helicopter to fly over the largest breeding colony in the region,
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capturing footage that still makes Avery Gaum emotional years later.
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Quote it showed absolute devastations, she says, just so many
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dead ganets. Extrapolating from reports of dead birds, she and
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her colleagues calculated that in six months, avian influenza killed
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twenty five thousand, six hundred sixty nine of Canada's two
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hundred and thirteen thousand, seven hundred tallied breeding northern ganets,
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literally decimating the population. Totaling across all species, her team
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calculated more than forty thousand wild birds died in the
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regions months long outbreak. Common mirrors were the second most
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heavily affected species, with more than eight thousand dead. I
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don't think anything could have really prepared us for this
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mass mortality event, averygam says, But the numbers that came
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later were even harder to bear. Wildlife scientists knew all
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along they weren't seeing every bird flew casualty on land,
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much less at sea, where it is much more difficult
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to monitor species, and since avian influenza's devastation began, they
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haven't seen nearly as many birds at the breeding colonies
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as previous years. At the largest common MR breeding site
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in her area. Averygam says tallies are down nine percent
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from before the outbreak. Northern ganet reductions are more like
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forty percent of the Canadian population. We have a lot
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fewer ganets in North America than we did in twenty
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twenty one. Averygahm says quietly, a totally new bird flew
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seven thousand snow geese in Idaho, two thousand, seven hundred
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and twelve Humboldt penguins in Chile, ninety six hundred sandwich
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turns in the Netherlands. Bird flu viruses have been circulating
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for a couple centuries, popping up in historical records as
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foul plagues, says Windy Perrier, scientist at Tuft's University who
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tracts influence of viruses in wildlife. Ducks and geese tend
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to act as reservoirs for the virus, but domestic poultry
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are also susceptible. In crowded modern farming operations, poultry are
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very susceptible. Killer strains of bird flu can wipe out
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seventy five percent or more of a flock in just days,
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earning them the designation of high pathogenicity avian influences, a
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classification that traditionally only reflected fatality in farmed birds, not
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wild ones. Among a host of scientists who have been
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monitoring avian influenza strains in wild birds for decades now
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on guard for potential spillovers into poultry and humans, how
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wildlife weathered the virus has historically been of little concern.
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Wild Birds and water birds particularly have been carrying flu
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strains for ages without serious issues. Quote. There's this huge
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variation of influenza viruses that circulate out there in nature
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in wild birds, and most of those, as far as
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we are aware, really don't cause much in terms of disease.
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Perrier says, you don't see die offs, you don't see
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an impact on their migration patterns, any sort of thing
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that we've been able to pick up. But influenza viruses
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are slippery beasts. Their genetic material is packaged on eight
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segments of RNA that can easily get swapped around into
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new arrangements. When two different flu viruses infect the same
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animal times this trading results in novel strains that cause
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more severe illness, spread more easily, or survived better in
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particular species. Scientists trace the heritage of the H five
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N one virus that decimated northern ganets back to a
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goose in southern China in nineteen ninety six. In the
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three decades since that infection, the virus has hopped around
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the world, swapping genes with local influenza viruses all along
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the way. In twenty twenty, while the virus that causes
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covid devastated humans worldwide, a group of bird flu viruses
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that scientists call two point three point four point four
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B emerged and spread across swaths of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
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By the late days of twenty twenty one, a virus
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in that killer strain made the leap across the Atlantic Ocean,
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showing up first in Canada than the US. And this
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bird flu strain a whole new bird flu quote. We
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are in uncharted territory, Perrier says. It's doing things that
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we had not observed with flu ever in the past,
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and it doesn't show signs yet of going away. Within
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months a bird flu reaching North America, scientists began detecting
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the virus in wild mammals, terrestrial and marine alike in
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both the US and Canada. As wild birds continue to
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turn up dead. Next, the virus zipped down into South America,
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then finally breached Antarctic highlands and even the mainland in
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early twenty twenty four, and the harsh Antarctic winter didn't
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clear the disease, which returned with a vengeance during this
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year's southern summer. Quote the entire Antarctic Peninsula is covered
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in outbreaks, says Marcella Uhart, a wildlife veterinarian at the
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University of California Davis. Today, at least four hundred and
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six wild bird species and fife fifty one wild mammals
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globally have been infected. Australia is the only continent to
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remain free of the virus. As it has spread, the
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virus has devastated some species and regions while leaving others unaffected.
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Quote what's emerged is just this really complex picture, says
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Brian Millsap, a raptor ecologist at New Mexico State University.
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It flares up in a place kind of out of
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the blue, and then fades away. Then it pops up
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somewhere else. The hidden declines. Seventeen thousand, four hundred Southern
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Elephant Seal pups in Argentina, twenty two hundred eighty six
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Dalmatian pelicans in Greece, twenty four thousand, four hundred and
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sixty three cape cormorants in South Africa. Scientists have seen
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glimpses of the virus's devastation, but the public has been
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largely unaware of the death unfolding, often in the far
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reaches of the planet. Quote this is a massive event,
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but I think it's pretty much invisible, Ouhart says. She
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watched as avian influenza blazed through a massive breeding colony
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of Southern elephant seals in Argentina in late twenty twenty
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three of the year's pups, ninety six percent died some
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seventeen four hundred animals. Even a few adults died at
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the colony, which, as is an unusual occurrence and much
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like Avery Gorman's team or Avery Gahm's team, Euhart and
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her colleagues have only gotten worse news in the virus's wake.
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In late twenty twenty four, only one third of as
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many adult females arrived at the colony's most densely populated
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beaches to breed, as researchers were used to seeing quote,
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instead of seeing long lines of animals, hundreds of animals
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and listening to their vocalization, says Claudio Campagna wildlife conservationists,
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it was a silent beach with a few animals, and
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that's it. The huge reduction in animals at the colony
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suggests that many adult elephant seals had died of avian
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influenza at sea. Out of scientist's view, says Campania, who
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worked with Uhart to model potential recovery scenarios. Quote, it
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could take a century before we get back to twenty
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twenty two, he says. Fortunately, many of the mammals in
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the US being reported ill or dead with avian influenza
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are of common species. Infected red foxes, coyotes, and raccoons,
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for instance, are appearing relatively frequently, but not nearly at
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the scale of the marine mammal mass mortalities, and these
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are plentiful species, says David Drake, urban wildlife ecologist at
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the University of Wisconsin Madison, so he isn't too concerned.
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Other species aren't aren't as fortunate. Bald eagles were one
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of the early species to suffer from bird flu and
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scattered populations continue to fall ill. Between January and June
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of twenty twenty two, one hundred and thirty six dead
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eagles were confirmed to have avian influenza across twenty four states.
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Rebecca Poulson, wildlife disease researcher at the University of Georgia,
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watched the outbreak unfold along the Georgia coast. Quote the
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reports of devastation from the field were just really sobering
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and daunting, she says. Bird flu has also hit bald
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eagle populations in the Great Lakes region, where Bill Bowerman,
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a wildlife ecologist and toxicologist at the University of Maryland,
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has been studying the animals for forty years. Here, too,
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devastation in Minnesota's Voyageurs National Park, dubbed eagle Nirvana, the
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iconic bird is now much harder to find than just
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a few years ago. Across the park, researchers found on
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only four chicks last year. Breeding adults are scarce two
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two thirds of the nesting pairs are gone. Bowerman says
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it may take three decades for them to recover. The
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limits of data fifty five hundred Peruvian pelicans, six hundred
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Arctic tern chicks in the US at least one, Walworth's
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plausibly six on the Norwegian small barred Islands in the Arctic.
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The tallies of known dead animals and the calculations of
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missing breeders at colonies are heartbreaking, but there's a third
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number that's more distressing, the number of invisible deaths. A
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lot of mortality happens in wildlife and no one sees it.
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Polson says these events might be happening in expanses of
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the country where there just aren't a lot of human
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eyeballs to see them and characterize them. Much of what
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Bowerman knows about bald eagles in the Great Lakes, for example,
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come from the National Park and from five sites he's
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monitoring as part of a pollution remediation project, watching eagles
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as a signal for the health of the ecosystem overall.
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The rest of the nation doesn't have that kind of
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monitoring in place, and the problem isn't limited to bald eagles.
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Millsap says quite the opposite. Bald eagles and peregrine falcons
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have more monitoring in place than most species he studies.
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After their near extinction in the twentieth century. Other species
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Merlin's Cooper sacks sharp shinned hawks may be equally vulnerable
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to bird flu but have never come as close to extinction.
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That means they don't have any dedicated surveys at all,
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so there's no sense of local or even regional declines. Quote.
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The bottom line is we're in a place where we
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don't know, and we may not have a mechanism two
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really know unless it's hugely catastrophic, Millsap says. And in
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order to really see the real effects of avian influenzas,
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scientists needed these programs in place before the outbreak began,
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says Frank Baldwin while waterfowl biologists at Canadian Wildlife Service.
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Because hunters target snow geese, the birds that he studies,
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the government tracks them with a program that involves putting
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id bans on individuals at their nesting sites across the Arctic.
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When a hunter kills a banded snow goose, they report
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it to the government, allowing scientists a glimpse of that
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animal's story. The strategy has shortcomings. In the first few
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seasons of avian influenza, the team hadn't been able to
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band many birds as a result of the COVID pandemic,
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but the hunting data results look normal. Then this spring
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Baldwin began hearing more reports of dead geese, but he
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won't have any data until hunting season beginning in the fall. Still,
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it's better than no data at all, and it's exactly
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the sort of program that needs to be in place
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long before any unusual event begins in order to offer
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helpful insight. Quote. You can't just build these monitoring programs
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in a few years. The value of them is in
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their long term nature. Baldwin says, understanding the numerical impact
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on individual populations and species is only the first step
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of grasping the outbreak's scale. Ouhart worries that the devastated
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Southern Elephant seal colony in Argentina won't be able to
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breed as successfully into the future because of how many
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animals perished, and that this can have larger repercussions. Already
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she's seen changes to the intricate harem system that governs
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breeding at the colony. Quote, the whole reproduction system was damaged,
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She says, there was no social structure anymore. Large animal
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die offs could also throw whole ecosystems in disarray as
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deaths unfold within a network in which every species fills
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particular niches. The northern ganets of Canada, for example, act
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as apex predators for the ocean Avery Goam says, feasting
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on fish such as mackerel and herring with a few
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gannets to eat them. Fish populations may grow, potentially throwing
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off local balance, and during breeding season the birds are
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on land, depositing nutrients they gobbled from the ocean into
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terrestrial ecosystems through their droppings. Each changed dynamic can send
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ripples deeper into the ecosystem, often in ways too subtle
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for scientists to detect. Now we'll go to the Guardian
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and we have a headline reading We're winning a battle.
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Mexico's jaguar numbers up thirty percent in conservation drive. This
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is from September first. In twenty ten, Gerardo Cabayos and
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a group of other researchers set out to answer a
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burning question, how many jaguars were there in Mexico. They
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knew there weren't many. Hunting, a loss of habitat, conflict
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with cattle orys, and other issues had pushed the population
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to the brink of extinction. Cabyos and his team from
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the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation the a NCJ thought
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there were maybe one thousand jaguars across the country. They
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decided to carry out the country's first census of the
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animal to find out exactly how many there were. They
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found four thousand, one hundred. It was a great surprise,
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terrific news, Cabyos said. Obviously, four thousand means the species
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is still in danger of extinction, but four thousand is
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a lot better than one thousand. Fast forward fifteen years
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and the news has got even better. The group's latest
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census found that in twenty twenty four, there were five
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three hundred and twenty six jaguars in Mexico, a thirty
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percent increase. Quote. The fact that the country has managed
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to maintain an increase its population over the last fourteen
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years is extraordinary, Cabyo said. For me, it's great news
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for the country. Mexico and the world need good news.
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The census took place over ninety days across fifteen states,
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using nine hundred and twenty motion capture cameras and involving
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nearly fifty researchers, as well as local community leaders. Researchers
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looked at an area of four hundred and fourteen thousand hectares,
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making it the largest census for any mammal in Mexico.
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Jaguars are found across the country, with the largest number
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in the Yucatan Peninsula, followed by the South Pacific area,
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Northeast and Central Mexico, and North Pacific and Central Pacific Coast.
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Cabayo's credits three main factors for the population increase, maintaining
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natural protected areas where jaguars can roam freely, reducing the
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conflict between cattle ranchers and jaguars, and a publicity campaign
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that has put the jaguar on the map. Before when
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we started, the jaguar was virtually unknown, Cabayo said. Right
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now now it's one of the most well known species
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in Mexico. Still, at the current rate of population increase,
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it'll take twenty five to thirty years the jaguar and
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no longer be considered at risk of extinction in Mexico.
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Cabayos and his team aim to reduce that time to
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just fifteen years. There are many challenges in their way.
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The forestation and loss of habitat continue to be a
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major issue. Mexico has lost six hundred thousand hectares of
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forest and jungle in the last six years. In the
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Yucatan Peninsula alone, the country loses sixty thousand hectares of
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forest and jungle each year, vastly reducing the areas in
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which the jaguar can live and hunt. Quote. On the
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one hand, it's a travesty, said Kebyos. But on the
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other hand, it means that where there are still jungles
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and forests, the populations are growing. Quote. Cabayos said there
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was also a thriving online marketplace for jaguar teeth, skin,
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and claws, among other body parts. He hopes to work
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with social media companies to have pages marketing such products
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taken down. The construction of new highways is a continuing challenge.
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Not only do they fragment a jaguar's territory, but they
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increase the risk of the animals being run over. This
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can be mitigated by building specific points where animals such
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as jaguars can cross safely. There is continuing conflict with
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cattle ranchers, and the spread of diseases from domesticated animals
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also poses a threat to the jaguar population. Cabayo said
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a greater financial commitment to conservation from the federal government
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was needed, as well as support from the private sector,
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from scientists and from landowners to protect areas where jaguars
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may be living if they were to meet their goal. Quote,
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we are winning a battle in a war that is
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being lost, but it is a very important battle, he said.
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It gives us hope that if we are toulate the
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right policies, we can achieve great results. And a quick
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little story from The Guardian, the world's biggest iceberg breaks
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up after forty years. Most don't make it this far.
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From September tewod nearly forty years after breaking off of Antarctica,
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a colossal iceberg, ranked among the oldest and largest ever recorded,
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is finally crumbling apart in warmer waters and could disappear
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within weeks. Earlier this year, the Megaburgh, known as A
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twenty three A, weighed a little under a trillion tons
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and was more than twice the size of Greater London,
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a behemoth unrivaled at the time. It is now less
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than half its original size, but still a hefty seventeen
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hundred and seventy square kilometers and sixty kilometers at its
27:51
widest point. According to analysis of satellite images. In recent weeks,
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enormous chunks have broken off, while smaller chip many still
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large enough to threaten ships litter the sea around it. Well,
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that's all for this week's Diary of Science and Nature.
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Reader is Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for further programming
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on RADIOI