Small Ponds Help Minnow→

PHYS.ORG, by Greg Stanley, Star Tribune

Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The Topeka shiner, a rare and endangered fish, is only found in the few remaining prairies of Minnesota and a handful of other states in the Midwest. A decade ago it looked well on the way to extinction. But a group of scientists in a branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service along with nonprofit conservationists at the Nature Conservancy may have unlocked the secret to bringing it back, as well as a host of other prairie life. And it all depends on small unnamed ponds called oxbows.

Oxbow ponds get their name from a horseshoe shape resembling the old yokes used on teams of oxen. They form from the bend of streams and rivers that cut through grasslands. Over time some of those bends naturally separated from the larger stream, leaving behind small pools. Once a year, or every few years, the stream reconnects to these orphaned pools when the water is high enough, briefly allowing fish to move from one to the other.

The isolation and shallow water of an oxbow pond provides a nice little sanctuary and breeding ground for a slew of small fish, like Topeka shiners, protected from fast currents and predators, said Nick Utrup, the Fish and Wildlife Service's lead biologist for the Topeka shiner recovery.

Derek Lynch: Our Relationship with the Environment→

The Conservation:

NASA

“Has Nature, framed as being separate to humanity, lost its relevance? Does humanity’s exceptionalist mindset, as famed biologist E.O. Wilson suggests, leave us “contemptuous towards lower forms of life”? Globally, we have entered the Anthropocene, with humans the dominant force driving change in all ecosystems. Through our overwhelming influence on the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere, no ecosystem anywhere is sheltered from our influence.

... is it now the time to go beyond “nature” as a concept external to humanity? Instead, we could promote a deeper understanding of biodiversity and community as the shared long history and future fate both of humanity and non-human life. Such revised paradigms are closer to Indigenous viewpoints of community, in which land management is conducted in partnership with our relatives within all ecosystems.

Have we reached the end of nature in its traditional meaning as distinct from us? Reframing our relationship with nature is an important step to deepen our commitment to addressing these human-made environmental crises.”

Barbara Heitkamp: Minnesota's Vanishing Shorelines→

knickpoints:

“The most noticeable projects for the boat tour participants were the scattered pops of color along the shoreline where several residents have worked with the SWCD and LID to install native plant shoreline buffers. These buffers provide multiple benefits to both the homeowner and the lake, with one of the largest benefits being that buffers help slow and infiltrate stormwater runoff that carries pollutants into the lakes – much more effectively than traditional turf grass. Plus, the long roots of the native plants hold the shoreline in place, preventing shore erosion while also providing habitat for pollinators and other wildlife.

Still, as I sat there in the boat, the number of properties with shoreline buffers were greatly outnumbered by those with no buffers, riprapped shores, extensive gravel beaches, or lawn down to the shore. It made me think of a recent paper that was published by the Minnesota Natural Shoreline Partnership that speaks to Minnesota’s “Vanishing Shorelines.” In effect, how we live along our shorelines has a direct impact to the health and vitality of the lake and its ecosystems. While individual shoreline property owners may not think their actions can influence water quality and aquatic life, the cumulative impact of a majority of neighbors developing these shorelines and removing vegetation and/or rocking the shore has an extensive impact.”

Adriana Craciun: Vagrant, Invasive or Pioneer?→

The Conversation:

“When migratory birds like this sea eagle appear outside their typical range, ornithologists call them “vagrants.” The scientific language of belonging draws on a shared cultural vocabulary for both human and nonhuman beings. Terms like vagrant, native, invasive, migrant and colonist all emerge from centuries of political discourses describing which persons belong where.”

University of Bristol: Underwater Sounds of Ponds→

PHYS.ORG:

Old Sneed Park; credit: Dr Jack Greenhalgh

““Ponds are packed full of bizarre and mysterious sounds made by scratching aquatic insects, booming fish, and popping plants. It’s like an underwater disco,” explained lead author Dr. Jack Greenhalgh from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences.

To better understand these mysterious soundscapes, the team collected 840 hours of underwater sound recordings from five ponds in the southwest of England using an underwater microphone (a hydrophone). In findings published in the journal Freshwater Biology, analysis of the audio files revealed clear daily acoustic activity cycles in each pond.

Typically, a nocturnal chorus is made by aquatic insects that compete to attract mates by producing strange scratching sounds as they rub their genitals against their abdomens. During the daytime, however, aquatic plants dominate the underwater orchestra with rhythmic whining and ticking sounds produced as tiny oxygen bubbles are released by plants respiring in the hot sun.”

Nicholson and Haywood: There Isn’t Another Planet for Us→

Aeon Essay:

“Given all our technological advances, it’s tempting to believe we are approaching an age of interplanetary colonisation. But can we really leave Earth and all our worries behind? No. All these stories are missing what makes a planet habitable to us. What Earth-like means in astronomy textbooks and what it means to someone considering their survival prospects on a distant world are two vastly different things. We don’t just need a planet roughly the same size and temperature as Earth; we need a planet that spent billions of years evolving with us. We depend completely on the billions of other living organisms that make up Earth’s biosphere. Without them, we cannot survive. Astronomical observations and Earth’s geological record are clear: the only planet that can support us is the one we evolved with. There is no plan B. There is no planet B. Our future is here, and it doesn’t have to mean we’re doomed.”

Rachel Riederer: Talking about Nature→

Dissent Magazine - The Lost Art of Looking at Nature:

By John Cairns - The Bodleian Libraries, CC BY 4.0

“In the late 1970s, when Attenborough was working as a manager of BBC2, he produced two major series about the history of humanity: Civilisation and The Ascent of Man. Both were successful, but he wanted to make a series that would give the spotlight to natural history. In Life on Earth, he became the host and traveled the world presenting a narrative about the evolution of species. In one of the show’s most famous moments, he appears in a leafy thicket next to a giant gorilla. He goes off script and, in an ad-lib commentary, whispers, “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know.” He gives the naturalist’s explanation for why this is so: we have the same sensory apparatuses and live in comparable social groups, so these apes offer our best chance at achieving cross-species understanding. It is this aim that sets his work apart. Close observation of a gorilla offers the “possibility of escaping the human condition and living imaginatively in another creature’s world,” he says, crouched in the greenery. It’s an almost radical idea, to show humanity all the corners of the world, emphasizing that it belongs to other creatures.

Perhaps we love Attenborough because he is an advocate and practitioner of a special way of seeing and relating. His interest in the natural world begins not with the gaze of an empath, for whom another’s feelings become real because he feels them himself, but with the humility of an observer content to be an outsider.”

Trout Lake Food Web Changes→

UW-Madison Center for Limnology:

“The story in Trout Lake played out in three acts. From 1981, when data collection began, to 2006, the Trout Lake ecosystem was humming along in a state scientists often refer to as “equilibrium” with its food web dominated by three main characters.

Tiny, free-floating crustaceans called zooplankton formed the base of the food web and ate large quantities of algae, which helped keep the water clear. A small, silvery species of prey, or “forage,” fish called cisco ate the zooplankton. And lake trout, the large, apex predator that gave the lake its name, ate the cisco.

During this “first act,” cisco dominated the food web. They were the more numerous of the two fish species, which is the common arrangement in predator/prey dynamics, and their high numbers kept zooplankton populations in check.”

Jeremy Miller: Trojan Trout→

bioGraphic:

Nick Hawkins/NPL

“How this beautiful interloper from eastern North America got to this place is unclear, beyond that it was part of a human-aided diaspora that loosed brook trout into high-altitude lakes and creeks across the West, from northwest Washington to southern New Mexico. There, brookies’ voracious appetites and rapid sexual maturation have spelled trouble not only for native trout like bull, rainbow, California golden, and cutthroat, which they outcompete, but also for a host of other aquatic organisms, including frogs and salamanders.

As Miller and Field shock and scoop their way upcreek, though, a pattern that could be the key to Leandro Creek’s salvation becomes apparent. Brook trout may greatly outnumber the Rio Grande cutthroat here, in some stretches by more than five to one, but nearly every single one of the brookies the crew captures is male.

That’s because many are a lab-produced variety known as “Trojan” brook trout. They are unique in that they carry not one, but two copies of the Y chromosome that codes maleness; they have no X chromosome to pass on. Unlike many creatures, including humans, fish can survive without an X, and seem unimpaired by the lack. And since 2018, Miller, the lead researcher on the project, and his predecessors have been carrying out a bold new experiment, stocking various streams across the Vermejo reserve with this strain in an attempt to tilt the brook trout sex ratio so far male that eventually the population will stop breeding and blink out on its own. Similar efforts are also underway in a handful of creeks in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and Nevada plans to embark on its own stocking program this summer.
”

Christina Larson: Bald Eagle Lead Poisoning is Sickening→

Phys.org:

Pixabay

“The blood, bones, feathers and liver tissue of 1,210 eagles sampled from 2010 to 2018 were examined to assess chronic and acute lead exposure.

”This is the first time for any wildlife species that we’ve been able to evaluate lead exposure and population level consequences at a continental scale,” said study co-author Todd Katzner, a wildlife biologist at U.S. Geological Survey in Boise, Idaho. “It’s sort of stunning that nearly 50% of them are getting repeatedly exposed to lead.”

Lead is a neurotoxin that even in low doses impairs an eagle’s balance and stamina, reducing its ability to fly, hunt and reproduce. In high doses, lead causes seizures, breathing difficulty and death.

The study estimated that lead exposure reduced the annual population growth of bald eagles by 4% and golden eagles by 1%.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”

This does not need to happen. Many of us hunters have used copper or other non-toxic ammo for years.

Kieran Lindsey: The Great Pumpkinseed

Center for Humans and Nature:

August Rode

This colorful Centrarchidae with scarlet-lipped ear flaps is sheathed in seedy speckles of colors that range from Caramel orange to Lemon Drop yellow, Red Hots red to Starburst blue-raspberry blue and Lifesavers lime green. The “official” origin story is that the common name for this mid-sized fish (4-11″ or 10-28 cm, tipping the scales at a maximum of 1.5 lbs or 680 g) derives from the oval contour of the body rather than the coloration pattern.

Annie Roth: Sturddlefish→

New York Times:

Flórián Tóth

“At first glance, American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon seem about as different as two fish can be. The Russian sturgeon, whose eggs are used to make top-shelf caviar, is a carnivore that hoovers crustaceans and smaller fish off the floor of rivers, lakes and coastal areas the world over. The American paddlefish, found in only 22 of the United States, is a filter feeder that strains zooplankton from the water. It has a comically long snout covered with tens of thousands of sensory receptors.

Yet somehow, when sperm from an American paddlefish and eggs from a Russian sturgeon were combined in a lab, life found a way and a hybrid of the two species was born. “I did a double-take when I saw it,” said Solomon David, an aquatic ecologist at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. “I just didn’t believe it. I thought, hybridization between sturgeon and paddlefish? There’s no way.””

Sometimes nature finds a way.

Dr. Stan Temple: Leopold and Earth Day→

Sand County Foundation:

“Seventy-two years ago, on April 14, 1948, Aldo Leopold received a letter from Oxford University Press informing him that they would publish the book manuscript he had been working on during the war years. After it had been rejected by several publishers, Leopold must have been pleased that his masterpiece would finally be published, but his delight was to be short-lived. On April 21 he died of a heart attack while helping a neighbor fight a grass fire near his beloved shack, which was the setting for the essays in the first half of the manuscript.”

Boris Kondratieff: Mayflies and Stoneflies→

The Conversation:

Andrew/flickr, CC BY-NC

“Mayflies and stoneflies thrive in unpolluted water – a fact my colleagues and I have witnessed firsthand on our numerous expeditions. Not only do we see greater overall abundance of these insects in clean streams, but more diversity of species, as well. In polluted areas, we observe the exact opposite. Without a doubt, the presence or absence of mayflies and stoneflies in a stream is a reliable indicator of the quality of its water.

The role of mayflies and stoneflies in the food chain is fundamental, as well. Immature mayflies and stoneflies consume algae, living plants, dead leaves, wood and each other. In this nymph phase, when they have gills and live exclusively underwater, they are an important food source for many animals further up the food chain, including fish and wading birds. When the mayflies and stoneflies emerge from the water as adults, they are essential food for spiders, other insects such as dragonflies and damselflies, and many kinds of birds and bats.”

Jim Egenrieder: Underwater, Early and Often

Center for Humans & Nature:

“One of my favorite experiences is lying on the bottom of moving water and watching a smallmouth bass or sunfish use the micro-eddies created by my body to rest from swimming in the current. Less fun is when smaller fish nibble the air bubbles that form on your body hair, which they mistake for tiny eggs of other animals.

Those early exposures have formed the core of who I’ve become, and inform much of what I do. They influence not only my hobbies but the research projects and grants I pursue, the friends I spend time with, how I operate our riverfront farm, the trees I plant, and especially why I work with teachers and others to provide similar experiences for young people.”

Yes, experiences and places make people. Go out and explore nature every day.

Stan Temple: What Did We Do to Deserve Cranes?→

The Aldo Leopold Foundation:

“In recent years islands and sandbars along the Wisconsin River have hosted ever-growing numbers of Greater Sandhill Cranes as they prepare to depart for their wintering areas. In Fall 2015, flocks that swelled to upwards of 10,000 birds converged on the stretch of the river above and below Aldo Leopold’s Shack. That’s a large proportion of the cranes that now nest in Wisconsin. Why has there been such an impressive resurgence in the crane population since Aldo Leopold worried about its impending extirpation 80 years ago, and what attracts all these birds to the vicinity of the Shack?”

A lot of people worked hard to save habitat, so when the population would recover from over hunting there would be a place for this beautiful bird.

Caleb A. Scharf: The Urgency of Agency→

Scientific American Blog Network:

“I recently noticed something about myself. Whenever I am thinking about the nature of living systems (as happens a lot in the field of astrobiology), and reading or studying work done on evolutionary biology, I have to refresh my mind constantly about the central tenets of Darwinian selection. This is not because they are particularly complex. Indeed, their remarkable simplicity is what makes the ideas so powerful. Instead it is because of what my mind wants to do with these ideas.

Putting aside the specifics of phenomena like DNA and genetics, the most critical element of Darwinian evolution is that biological forms exist, species emerge, change, persist or go extinct, entirely because they can. In a purely probabilistic sense. We look around at the world and perhaps marvel at the exquisite adaptations of an organism, but in truth those adaptations are just the result of a very refined winnowing out of other experimental possibilities that don’t increase the probability of reproduction and survival in the same way. And it is almost certainly a temporary victory amidst the turbulence of change and interaction that life deals with every millisecond of every day. ”

Insightful article on our often misunderstandings of nature.

Mike McFeely: Bigmouth Buffalo Centenarians→

Duluth News Tribune:

“Don’t call the bigmouth buffalo a “rough fish,” a common and derisive moniker slapped on species viewed as less desirable than the sainted walleye and other hotly pursued fish. “They are amazing,” said Alec Lackmann, a North Dakota State University researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences. “They are one of the most exceptional freshwater fish species in the world.”

Lackmann would know. He led an NDSU team that unearthed this amazing fact: Bigmouth buffalo can live to be more than 100 years old, making them the oldest age-validated freshwater fish in the world. Lackmann’s study included one specimen that was 112 years old, and most of the fish he researched were more than 80 years old. The oldest fish came from lakes near Pelican Rapids, Minnesota...

According to NDSU, the bigmouth buffalo is now known as the longest-lived freshwater teleost (ray-finned fish) and the oldest age-validated freshwater fish in the world. “This is a paradigm shift in how we’re looking at these fish and should open a discussion about their real value,” Lackmann said. “They should not be called ‘rough fish,’ which carries a negative connotation. They should be viewed as an ecological asset.””

Tessa Plint: The Extinct Giant Beavers→

The Conversationist:

Illustration by Scott Woods/Western University

“Giant beavers the size of black bears once roamed the lakes and wetlands of North America. Fortunately for cottage-goers, these mega-rodents died out at the end of the last ice age.

Now extinct, the giant beaver was once a highly successful species. Scientists have found its fossil remains at sites from Florida to Alaska and the Yukon.

A super-sized version of the modern beaver in appearance, the giant beaver tipped the scales at 100 kilograms. But it had two crucial differences. The giant beaver lacked the iconic paddle-shaped tail we see on today’s modern beavers. Instead it had a long skinny tail like a muskrat. The teeth also looked different. Modern beaver incisors (front teeth) are sharp and chisel-like; giant beaver incisors were bulkier and curved, and lacked a sharp cutting edge...

Towards the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, the climate became increasingly warm and dry and wetland habitats began to dry up. Although the modern beavers and the giant beaver co-existed on the landscape for tens of thousands of years, only one species survived. The ability to build dams and lodges may have given the modern beaver a competitive advantage over the giant beaver. With its sharp teeth, the modern beaver could alter the landscape to create suitable wetland habitat where it needed it. The giant beaver couldn’t.”

Jason Bittel: Dragonfly Migrations→

onEarth:

JUDY GALLAGHER VIA FLICKR

“According to a study published by the Royal Society last fall, common green darners, which are found from Cuba to Canada, make a long, complex journey that takes three generations and spans a distance of more than 1,500 miles. Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how they do it, but temperature seems to play a key role in telling the animals when to move. Unfortunately, this means climate change could well wreck the whole event even before we fully understand it. Worse, it would leave much of eastern North America without an important member of its food web.

The news that dragonflies migrate probably won’t shock people who study insects, says the study’s senior author, Colin Studds, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Maryland. “We’ve had an inkling of how many insects migrate,” he says. “There are moths, there are beetles, and there are probably about 20 species of dragonflies that we have expected of migration. But we don’t know much about it other than that it’s a phenomenon.””