Has this summer’s bleaching killed many corals on the Barrier Reef – or will they recover? The answer is – we don’t know yet. The latest Australian Institute of Marine Science coral cover report, released today, reports coral cover has increased slightly in all three regions, reaching regional high points in two of them.

Related: A beautiful disaster

How can that be? The answer is simple: lag time. Between 2018 and 2022, large areas of the Great Barrier Reef had a reprieve. Marine heatwaves and bleaching still occurred, but the damage was not too extreme. Coral began to recover and regrow.

Over the 2023–24 summer, the heat returned with a vengeance, triggering widespread coral bleaching. But bleached coral isn’t dead yet – it’s very stressed. The summer’s bleaching is only just winding up now, in August. We won’t know how much coral actually died until we complete our next round of surveys. We’ll be back in the water from September to find out.

How can we reconcile high coral cover and intense shocks?

Bleached coral is very stressed, but it’s still alive.

Corals respond to intense heat by expelling their tiny symbiotic algae, or zooxanthellae. In the process, they lose their colours and become bone-white. If the heat eases, the zooxanthellae can sometimes return, and the corals can bounce back.

But if temperatures stay high, corals die. A dead coral is not bone-white – it’s covered in light green fuzz, a sign of colonisation by filamentous algae.

What this means is it takes time to say a coral is truly dead.

For almost four decades, AIMS scientists have monitored the Great Barrier Reef. It’s no easy task to monitor a reef system the size of Italy.

To do it, our team spends 120 days at sea between September and June, across six separate trips.

The two trips we did during the peak of the mass bleaching event in February and March recorded bleached coral as live coral cover – because they were alive when we did the surveys.

So while our new report provides an update on the state of the reef, we cannot use it to describe the full impacts of this summer’s bleaching. It’s a reference point.

Surveys found the average hard coral cover in the year to June 2024 was:

• 39.5 per cent in the northern region (north of Cooktown), up from 35.8 per cent last year.
• 34 per cent in the central region (Cooktown to Proserpine), up from 30.7 per cent.
• 39.1 per cent in the southern region (south of Proserpine), up from 34 per cent.

This year’s coral cover averages are higher than the last few years, but not by much. Statistically speaking, they’re within the margin of error.

By contrast, the reef recovered much more strongly during the less stressful years from 2018 to 2022. In the northern region, coral cover increased by 22.9 per cent.

If we were living in ordinary times, corals would grow back over a decade or two, giving rise to more diverse reefs.

But as the world heats up, the reprieve from heatwaves and extreme weather is getting shorter and shorter. In recent decades, both size and frequency of events causing severe damage to the reef have increased.

How bad was this year’s bleaching?

This year’s marine heatwaves peaked in February and March, when researchers from AIMS and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority conducted additional surveys from the air and underwater.

What this showed was the 2024 mass bleaching event was one of the most serious and widespread so far. It took place against the fourth recorded global bleaching event.

Heat stress is cumulative – it gets worse the longer corals have to endure warmer water.

Related: Another summer, another mass coral bleaching event hits GBR

Some of the southern reefs were exposed to up to 15 degree heating weeks, a measure of the accumulated heat stress. Such high levels have never been recorded on the reef before.

Our aerial surveys detected extreme levels of bleaching – affecting over 90 per cent of corals on a reef – across all three regions of the reef, though not equally. Extreme bleaching was widespread in the southern region of the reef, but less so in the northern and central regions.

Reports of coral death on bleached reefs are beginning to arrive, but it’s too early to draw broad conclusions about the full impact of this event.

What will happen next?

During the cooler months, bleached corals can recover, but it’s not guaranteed. Bleaching makes it harder for corals to grow and reproduce, and leaves them more susceptible to disease. If their symbiotic algae return, some corals will recover, but many corals will not make it. We won’t know the death toll until after we do our next roundDaniela Ceccarelli, David Wachenfeld and Mike Emslie of surveys.

While coral cover has increased and decreased over time, the variability has become much more erratic. Over the last 15 years, coral cover has had its highest highs and lowest lows on record.

Related: World first: trials begin to seed the threatened Great Barrier Reef with thousands of healthy baby corals

What we should take from this is the reef – the world’s largest living structure – is currently still able to recover from repeated shocks. But these shocks are getting worse and arriving more often, and future recovery is not guaranteed.

This is the rollercoaster ride the reef faces at just 1.1°C of warming. The pattern of disturbance and recovery is shifting – and not in the Reef’s favour.

Daniela Ceccarelli is a Reef Fish Ecologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

David Wachenfeld is the Research Program Director of Reef Ecology and Monitoring at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Mike Emslie is a Senior Research Scientist in Reef Ecology at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post How the Great Barrier Reef shows record growth AND intense bleaching appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The results are sobering confirmation that global warming – caused by human activities – will continue to damage the Great Barrier Reef.

All hope is not lost. But we must face a confronting truth: if humanity does not divert from its current course, our generation will likely witness the demise of one of Earth’s great natural wonders.

One-of-a-kind ecosystem

The Great Barrier Reef is the most extensive coral reef system on Earth. It is home to a phenomenal array of biodiversity, including more than 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of molluscs, as well as endangered turtles and dugongs.

However, mass coral bleaching over the past three decades has had serious impacts on the reef. Bleaching occurs when corals become so heat-stressed they eject the tiny organisms living inside their tissues. These organisms give coral some of its colour and help power its metabolism.

In mild bleaching events, corals can recover. But in the most recent events, many corals died.

The Great Barrier Reef has suffered five mass bleaching events in the past nine summers. Is this an anomaly, or within the natural variability the reef has experienced in previous centuries? Our research set out to answer this question.

A 400-year-old story

Coral itself can tell us what happened in the past.

As corals grow, the chemistry of their skeleton reflects the ocean conditions at the time – including its temperature. In particular, large boulder-shaped corals, known as Porites, can live for centuries and are excellent recorders of the past.

Our study sought to understand how surface temperatures in the Coral Sea, which includes the reef, have varied over the past four centuries. We focused on the January–March period – the warmest three months on the reef.

First, we collated a network of high-quality, continuous coral records from the region. These records were analysed by coral climate scientists and consist of thousands of measurements of Porites corals from across the Western tropical Pacific.

From these records, we could reconstruct average surface temperatures for the Coral Sea from the year 1618 to 1995, and calibrate this to modern temperature records from 1900 to 2024. The overall result was alarming.

From 1960 to 2024, we observed annual average summer warming of 0.12°C per decade.

And average sea surface temperatures in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2024 were five of the six warmest the region has experienced in four centuries.

Humans are undoubtedly to blame

The next step was to examine the extent to which increased temperatures in the Coral Sea can be attributed to human influence.

To do this, we used published computer model simulations of the Earth’s climate – both with and without human influence, including greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.

So what did we find? Without human influence, Coral Sea surface temperatures during January–March remain relatively constant since 1900. Add in the human impacts, and the region warms steadily in the early 1900s, then rapidly after the 1960s.

In short: without human-caused global warming, the very high sea temperatures of recent years would be virtually impossible, based on our analysis using the world’s top climate models.

Related: Australian scientist urges world to “slam the brakes” as report reveals climate change tipping point now closer

There is worse news. Recent climate projections put us on a path to intensified warming, even when accounting for international commitments to reduce emissions. This places the reef at risk of coral bleaching on a near-annual basis.

Back-to-back bleaching is likely to be catastrophic for the Great Barrier Reef, because it thwarts the chances of corals recovering between bleaching events.

Even if global warming is kept under the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, 70 to 90 per cent of corals across the world could be lost.

We must stay focused

The Australian government has a crucial role to play in managing threats to the Great Barrier Reef. The devastation is in their backyard, on their watch.

But what’s happening on the Great Barrier Reef should also be an international wake-up call. The fourth global mass coral bleaching event occurred this year; the Great Barrier Reef is not the only one at risk.

Every fraction of a degree of warming we avoid gives more hope for coral reefs. That’s why the world must stay focused on ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Emissions reduction targets must be met, at the very least. The solutions are available and our leaders must implement them.

Our research equips society with the scientific evidence for what’s at stake if we don’t act.

The future of one of Earth’s most remarkable ecosystems depends on all of us.

Related: A beautiful disaster

The authors of this piece gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Andrew King, Ariella Arzey, David Karoly, Janice Lough, Tom DeCarlo and Brad Linsley and the producers of the coral data which made this study possible.

Ben Henley is a Lecturer at the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences at The University of Melbourne.

Helen McGregor is a Professor of Environmental Futures & Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future at the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences at the University of Wollongong.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is a Professor at the School of the Environment at The University of Queensland.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post ‘Wake-up call to humanity’: research shows the Great Barrier Reef is the hottest it’s been in 400 years appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The alleged victim was not feeding crocodiles; he was reportedly just walking along a path when the river bank gave way, and he fell into the river. His wife had tried to save him but the doctor let go of her arm, with the woman quoted as saying:

He saved me – his last act was to not pull me in with him.

The doctor was reportedly taken by the crocodile within seconds.

Since the tragic attack, which occurred at the Annan River south of Cooktown, videos have surfaced appearing to show people feeding a large crocodile in that area.

This has prompted Queensland’s Department of Environment, Science and Innovation to post a media release stating, among other things, that the penalty for illegally feeding wild crocodiles is AU$6,452.

I have been researching human-crocodile conflict for years. If it’s true crocodiles in this area had been fed in the past, that is extremely concerning.

Illegal feeding linked to human-crocodile conflict

There have been concerns in the past over the illegal feeding of crocodiles in Queensland. Media outlets reported on people feeding crocodiles in the Prosperine and Russell rivers in 2022.

Outside of Australia, illegal feeding has long been associated with increased human-crocodile conflict.

At a bridge over the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica, a group of large American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) have been illegally fed by people for years.

Despite being less aggressive and responsible for far fewer deaths (typically only between one and three annually) than the saltwater crocodile, this feeding appears to have resulted in changes to the behaviour to these crocodiles. Normally wild crocodiles avoid humans but these crocodiles, who may have come to associate humans with food, appear to have grown bolder about approaching humans.

In 2013 a man was attacked and consumed by these crocodiles shortly after entering the waterway below the bridge.

The year prior, a photographer narrowly avoided being attacked while on shore.

Illegal feeding has also been implicated in conflict involving the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) in the United States.

What effect does feeding wild crocodiles have on risk?

When crocodiles are fed by people they tend to lose their typically timid behaviour regarding humans. They may even begin to seek people out in anticipation of being fed.

If crocodiles are consistently fed in the same location, they are likely to remain at or near the same spot awaiting the next feeding.

In the town of La Manzanilla, Mexico, for example, media reports detail how another group of large, wild American crocodiles are fed from the mangrove boardwalk on a daily basis and rarely leave the spot.

Related: Learning to live with a carnivore

As the Department of Environment, Science and Innovation put it in their statement released this week:

Feeding of crocodiles at riverbanks or boat ramps encourages them to hang around, waiting for their next meal. This can place future visitors to the area at a much greater risk of attack if they approach or enter the water.

Even in areas with extremely high numbers of saltwater crocodiles, people frequently do irresponsible things such as wading into water. Yet no attacks have occurred (so far) in this area.

This is likely due to a number of factors, including the abundance of natural prey. However, the fact these crocodiles aren’t fed by people (as far as we know) means they’re less likely to be waiting around seeking humans out.

How can we stop illegal feeding?

Harsher punishments, such as significantly increased and consistently enforced fines or jail time, might help.

After all, illegal feeding is linked to higher risk for both human and crocodile lives – a common refrain in my field is that a “fed croc is a dead croc”.

Targeting known trouble spots and consistently prosecuting offenders could also help reduce offending.

In this age of social media influencers, irresponsible and dangerous behaviour around crocodiles is sadly all too common.

Authorities could increase efforts to monitor social media sites (particularly Instagram), so they know where and who to target for investigation and, ultimately, prosecution.

Brandon Michael Sideleau is a PhD student studying human-saltwater crocodile conflict at Charles Darwin University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post How crocodile feeding is increasing fatalities appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The femur, ankle and nine toe bones were fully articulated – lying connected in the same position as when the animal died.

Finding an articulation like this is rare at Alcoota, where bones usually lie scattered in a random jumble.

Rich fossil field

The Alcoota site is about 150km northeast of Alice Springs and is the size of two football fields.

Concentrated inside its fossil beds are tens of thousands of bones, from thousands of individual animals, that died some 8 million years ago.

Widely regarded as Australia’s richest terrestrial vertebrate fossil site from the late Miocene, Alcoota has been excavated on-and-off since the 1960s and continues to deliver surprises.

“It seems no matter how much we dig there, there’s more to come,” Dr Adam Yates, senior curator of earth sciences at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) told Australian Geographic.

“This is the thing about Alcoota: once you start excavating one thing and start clearing around it, you find more things. It’s like a game of pick-up sticks in some ways.”

The extraordinary new articulation was found in a pit known as ‘Classy Corner’, which was opened at the beginning of MAGNT’s 2024 dig.

Lying close to the articulation is a shoulder joint and vertebra belonging to the same species.

“There could be a skeleton that belongs to one individual,” Adam said. “That’s really significant because there’s more than one [Ilbandornis] species and associating particular bone types with each particular species can be quite tricky.”

Ancient family of huge birds

The birds known as thunder birds or demon ducks belong to the now-extinct family Dromornithidae.

Many examples of this ancient group have now been excavated at Alcoota, including Dromornis, which weighed an estimated 600kg and stood 2–3m tall, making it the largest bird species to ever roam Earth. 

This family of huge flightless birds first appeared in the fossil record about 55 million years ago, until their extinction some 50,000 years ago.

More than 30 mammal, bird and reptile species are represented at Alcoota, including marsupial “rhinos” (diprotodontids), short-faced kangaroos, crocodilians and fearsome marsupial lions the size of a leopard.

Related: 100-million-year-old fossil find reveals huge flying reptile that patrolled Australia’s inland sea

These animals are the evolutionary ancestors of the Pleistocene megafauna that lived alongside the First Australians.

Paleontologists once thought the Alcoota fossils were the remains of animals that gathered around a surviving waterhole during a years-long drought.

But recent evidence that the animals were in breeding condition when they died has cast doubt on that hypothesis.

Now, Adam speculates they were killed in a flood.

“[After drowning], their carcasses drifted downstream and banked up at one spot, maybe a bend in the river or something like that. And that’s what we’re digging through, it’s just a giant pile of carcasses that piled up after a flood,” he said.

Read more about searching for Aussie dinosaurs in the next issue of Australian Geographic, available on newsstands and online from September 2024.

The post Stunning specimen of rare ‘demon duck’ fossil unearthed in Australian dig appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Hosted by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, the festival showcases traditional miny’tji (art), manikay (song), bunggul (dance) and storytelling. It is also an important meeting point for the regions’ clans and families.

This year, the festival’s theme was ‘fire, strength, renewal’ – a response to the rejection of the Voice by the Australian people on 14 October 2023, says Yothu Yindi Foundation Chairman, Djawa Yunupiŋu.

“Gurtha (Fire) is at the centre of the Yolŋu world; it is the foundation of life that gives strength, energy, and power. Gurtha is in the people and is of the land. Worrk (Renewal) is in the life of the land and the people. It is the goodness that rises in the country after fire has burnt the land and cleansing rains have come.”

Garma Festival also plays host to the Key Forum policy conference, which has become Australia’s premier platform for the discussion and debate of issues affecting Indigenous people. Although the conference agenda changes each year to reflect the Garma theme, topics such as land rights, health, education, economic development and government funding are regularly discussed.

(Clockwise from top left) The theme for this year’s Garma was ‘Gurtha-Wuma Worrk-gu’ – Fire, Strength and Renewal – which focused on the next generation of young Yolŋu. Image credits : Leicolhn McKellar/Yothu Yindi Foundation; Garma is an important meeting place for the families of Arnhem Land, drawing in clans from across the region. Image credit: Nina Franova/Yothu Yindi Foundation; All aboard: Garma road trip 2024. Image credit: Teagan Glenane/Yothu Yindi Foundation; Malati Yunupingu from the Diamond Dogs band – music has been a mainstay of Garma since its inception. Image credit: Teagan Glenane/Yothu Yindi Foundation; The Gumatj clan are the Traditional Owners of the Gulkula site where Garma is held. Image credit: Peter Eve/Yothu Yindi Foundation; Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is escorted to the dance grounds by Gumatj leader Djawa Yunupingu and Red Flag dancers during the opening ceremony. It was the first Garma Festival since the failed referendum on a First Nations Voice to Parliament. Image credit: Melanie Faith Dove/Yothu Yindi Foundation

Bunggul

The call of the yidaki (didgeridoo), the rhythm of the bilma (clapsticks) ring out and the voices of the Yolŋu song-men rang out across the Festival site each sunset, summoning all to the dance grounds. Here, the people of the different clan groups took turns performing traditional dances, sharing stories and songlines that stretch back millennia.

Around the grounds

Throughout the festival, attendees engaged in traditional Yolŋu experiences such as fireside chats, poetry readings, astronomy tours, and women’s healing sessions. Works from local and regional galleries were exhibited among a grove of stringy-bark trees in the open-air Gapan Gallery. Each night, as the sun went down over Gulkula, a cinema under the stars presented a series of films produced by First Nations people from Arnhem Land, Australia and the world.

Cultural workshops

A chance to practice different aspects of Yolŋu life, cultural workshops are hosted by senior Yolŋu knowledge-holders throughout the festival to teach skills such as weaving, spear-making and learning on country during a bush walk, as well as language and kinship lessons and Yidaki classes.

The information and photographs in this article have been collated with thanks to the Yothu Yindi Foundation.

The post In photographs: Garma Festival 2024 appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Some meteor showers are better than others. The faster the debris is travelling, or the more debris there is, the more meteors you will see. But generally, these showers are annual events – recurring whenever Earth returns to the same place in its orbit.

The end of July is one such time, with Earth going through several swathes of our Solar System’s debris at once.

Two of those showers reach their peak around July 31. While neither ranks among the very best showers of the year, taken together the two can put on a lovely show in the depths of our cold winter nights.

The Southern Delta Aquariids: the fast ones

The first, and most active, of the two showers is the Southern Delta Aquariids. For stargazers in Australia and New Zealand, they are the third-strongest meteor shower of the year after the amazing Geminids, in December, and the Eta Aquariids, which peak in early May.

The Southern Delta Aquariids are dust from comet 96P/Machholz – a dirty snowball that moves on a highly elongated and tilted orbit within the inner Solar System. 96P/Machholz is the largest object in a broad stream of debris which produces several meteor showers throughout the year.

The Southern Delta Aquariids are active for around six weeks, from mid-July to late August, and reach their peak on July 31. In a typical year, the shower is at its best for around 48 hours. During the peak, observers under perfect conditions can see up to 20–25 meteors per hour.

While many meteors from this shower are relatively faint (and so become harder to see if the Moon is above the horizon, or if you’re observing from a light-polluted site), the shower is known for producing some brighter meteors, particularly around their peak.

In addition, the Southern Delta Aquariids have produced at least two unexpected outbursts in the past, with enhanced rates observed in 1977 and 2003 – a reminder that meteor showers can sometimes throw up nice surprises!

The Alpha Capricornids: slow, with occasional fireballs

The Alpha Capricornids is a significantly weaker shower than the Southern Delta Aquariids – it produces fewer meteors per hour. Even at their best, on the nights of July 30 and 31, it is rare for observers to see more than four or five meteors from the shower in any given hour.

But where the Southern Delta Aquariids are plentiful, fast and often faint, the Alpha Capricornids are slow, and often bright. Indeed, the shower has a reputation for producing spectacular bright meteors and fireballs. Its meteors, infrequent as they are, are often the highlight of a winter night’s observing.

In 2010, two of the world’s leading meteor scientists identified the parent of the Alpha Capricornid meteor shower – a dim comet called 169P/NEAT. They suggest it’s just a small piece of a larger object which fragmented between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago.

Currently, Earth only passes through the very outer layers of a vast debris stream laid down by that ancient fragmentation. The scientists who identified it predict that in just 200–300 years we will instead move through the very centre of the stream.

If that comes to pass, the Alpha Capricornids will one day become by far the best meteor shower of the year.

Where and when should I look?

This year, the peak of both meteor showers falls mid-week, on Wednesday July 31. However, both showers have relatively broad peaks and will produce respectable numbers of meteors for a few days.

If you’re planning a camping trip on the weekend of July 27–28 or August 3–4, you might still get a decent show, particularly in the early morning hours after midnight.

But for the best rates you should head out on the nights of Tuesday July 30 and Wednesday July 31.

From across Australia and New Zealand, you can start observing from 9pm or 10pm, when the radiants for both showers – the place in the sky from which meteors appear to radiate – rise in the east. At first, rates from the showers will be low, but the higher in the sky the radiants rise, the more meteors will be visible.

The bright stars Altair and Fomalhaut are useful guides. As a bonus, the planet Saturn can be found in the same part of the sky, shining as bright as the brightest stars.

The longer you’re willing to stay out, the better your chance of seeing meteors. As the night progresses, the radiants will move across the sky, climbing higher until they culminate in the north after midnight. The best rates will be visible when the radiants are highest: between around 11pm and 3am.

Head out somewhere well away from city lights. Our eyes take a significant amount of time to adjust to the darkness, so it’s best to watch for at least half an hour, if not longer – particularly since meteors are not equally spaced out. You can wait 20 minutes and see nothing, then spot several in just a minute or two!

If you’re fortunate enough to find a site where the sky is dark in all directions, you should look to the northeast in the evening, to the north in the hours around midnight, and then northwest in the pre-dawn hours.

The darker the sky, the more you’ll see. By the peak of the two showers, the Moon will be all but out of the way, rising only a couple of hours before dawn.

As a result, this year is the ideal time to head out and watch an annual winter spectacle. And who knows, you might just get lucky and see a spectacular fireball caused by the debris shed by a dying comet 5,000 years ago.

Jonti Horner is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland.

Tanya Hill is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a Senior Curator of Astronomy at the Museums Victoria Research Institute.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Twice as nice: two meteor showers to light up Australia’s skies appeared first on Australian Geographic.

While much of the rest of Australia has dried out, the Wet Tropics have stayed wet. It’s here you find green-eyed treefrogs, wompoo fruit-doves and striped possums with elongated fourth digits, for digging out grubs. It’s a particular hotspot of endemic and unique plant species too, including the colourfully named idiotfruit tree (Idiospermum australiense).

Why is the region so distinctive? It has many different niches for species, from cool mountaintops down to hot and humid lowland rainforest. As a result of its unique evolutionary history, the Wet Tropics are a biodiversity hotspot, hosting an array of species found nowhere else on Earth.

Like many ecosystems, it is under serious threat from land clearing, invasive species and climate change. And these threats could be worse than we think due to the indirect, and often hidden ways they can affect the whole environment.

New research explores how species in these rainforests interact to forecast how rising temperatures and other environmental changes can lead not just to extinctions of individual species, but to the possibility of cascading extinctions as the loss of important species ripples through the web of life.

How does this ecosystem function?

These rainforests cover just 0.1 per cent of Australia’s landmass but harbour an exceptionally large share of the country’s biodiversity, where you can find about 45 per cent of the nation’s vertebrate species. It’s not just the largest tropical rainforest in Australia, but also one of the oldest in the world, holding immense indigenous cultural value.

Australia’s heaviest bird, the southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsoni), plays an essential role in Queensland’s ancient tropical rainforests. It gobbles down the large, bright blue and toxic fruit of the cassowary plum tree, whose seeds can only start to grow when they have passed through the bird’s digestive system.

This symbiotic relationship is essential for the regeneration of these trees, which in turn support countless other lifeforms. Without the cassowary, the cassowary plum would struggle to survive, and the forest structure would change.

This region is also home to the giant petaltail, one of the world’s largest dragonflies, flourishing along the pristine streams of the rainforest. It also boasts Boyd’s forest dragon (Gonocephalus liogaster), a tree-climbing master of camouflage, and the Victoria’s riflebird (Ptiloris victoriae) from the Bird of Paradise family, whose dazzling courtship dances captivate onlookers. The white-lipped tree frog also contributes to the rainforest’s nocturnal chorus. The Lumholtz tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus lumholtzi), an elusive arboreal marsupial, navigates the high canopies.

These tropical rainforests form a complex web. When one species suffers, it can affect other species. This can start a chain reaction that might harm more species or even lead to their extinction. This phenomenon is known as co-extinction, a domino effect that can decimate entire communities of species.

For smaller scale ecosystems on land such as the Wet Tropics, co-extinction is a largely overlooked threat. As a result, we’ve probably underestimated how vulnerable these communities are to threats such as climate change in the future.

Tackling threats

The Wet Tropics is World Heritage Listed. It’s one of the most effectively regulated and managed protected areas in the world, ranking in the top 0.1 per cent of the most important protected areas globally. Even so, it still faces many threats, including habitat loss and fragmentation as well as ongoing residential development, invasive species, and even changes in fire and water regimes, to name a few.

Only in the last few years, introduced virulent pathogens have been implicated in the extinction of the sharp snouted day frog and the mountain mist frog in this region.

Climate change is the region’s biggest threat. Extinction rates are forecast to soar if temperatures rise above 2°C.

Recent research suggests co-extinctions will cause up to 34 per cent more biodiversity loss by 2100 than that predicted from the direct effects of threats such as climate change.

The Wet Tropics are a landscape of ancient beauty, threatened by contemporary dangers. Protecting this primeval region is about maintaining the ecological processes sustaining life itself.

Queensland’s Wet Tropics are recognised as one of the most irreplaceable natural World Heritage Areas in the world, considered by the UN as a region of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ – the same status given to other iconic biodiversity hotspots such as Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands and India’s Western Ghats.

To safeguard the future of the Wet Tropics and other regions like it, we must deepen our understanding of the ecological challenges it faces and develop strategies to address them.

Seamus Doherty is a PhD Candidate of the Global Ecology Laboratory at Flinders University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Idiotfruit and tree kangaroos: what makes Queensland’s Wet Tropics so unique appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Two days later, the vessel disappeared in the night beneath ten-metre waves, lashed by a violent storm. Tragically, only five of the 26 crew would be rescued during one of the largest searches for survivors in post-war Australian maritime history. As for the MV Noongah, its resting place would remain a mystery – until now.

While on a research voyage to study submarine canyons off the New South Wales coast, a team aboard the CSIRO research vessel RV Investigator became the first to set eyes on MV Noongah in nearly 55 years. This discovery was no accident. It was part of a collaborative project and a targeted investigation to help identify a mysterious shipwreck.

It’s also no coincidence there have been several shipwreck discoveries in the news recently. Australia’s national science ship has developed an impressive record as a shipwreck sleuth.

What is RV Investigator?

RV Investigator is part of the Marine National Facility – a national research infrastructure operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.

All Australian researchers and their international collaborators can access the capabilities of RV Investigator. This makes it a collaboration hub for marine research. And it’s been an important factor in many of the recent shipwreck discoveries.

Over the past ten years of operation, more than 150 institutions have collaborated to deliver science on voyages. Usefully, RV Investigator can accommodate multiple projects on each voyage. The research has ranged from fisheries’ surveys and seafloor mapping to atmospheric studies and, of course, maritime heritage surveys.

RV Investigator is equipped with a suite of advanced acoustic systems. It also has three seafloor mapping systems, called multibeam echosounders. These allow for high-resolution measurements (bathymetry, literally meaning “deep measurement”) of the seafloor, from shallow coasts to full ocean depth.

These systems map the seafloor everywhere the vessel goes, both through data collection while underway, and through targeted surveys.

Both the distance RV Investigator travels during its annual research program and the volume of bathymetric data it collects are immense. This greatly increases the likelihood of making seafloor discoveries.

Over the past ten years, RV Investigator has travelled more than 500,000km and mapped more than 3 million sq.km of Australia’s marine estate. It has circumnavigated the continent several times.

All this has provided an opportunity to investigate many suspected shipwreck sites. These are often “piggyback” projects – ones that are added to the voyage but use no additional resources.

The power of collaboration

Shipwreck discoveries are impossible without collaboration. The maritime community, heritage agencies, research agencies and members of the public have all contributed to the recent shipwreck finds.

It is not uncommon for searches to be targeted by local knowledge from fishing communities, volunteer shipwreck hunters and even historians who have pieced together clues on the potential location of shipwrecks.

Related: 21 historic shipwrecks around Australia

Outreach to those affected by the findings is also invaluable. This includes the survivors of these tragedies and the families of those lost at sea, to keep them informed throughout the process.

Shipwreck discoveries can literally change lives – like the reunion of two siblings who spent their lives apart as orphans after their father died onboard SS Iron Crown in 1942.

‘Eyes’ in the depths

RV Investigator also has specialised drop cameras that can provide a view of the seafloor at depths up to 5000m. The visuals provided by these have been essential for identifying shipwrecks once found.

In 2023, a CSIRO team used this camera system to help identify the wreck of SS Nemesis, a steamship that was lost in 1904 off the coast of New South Wales. Also in 2023, an unidentified wreck off the southwest coast of Tasmania gained a name – it was the coastal freighter MV Blythe Star which capsized and sank in 1973.

The large areas of seafloor mapped by RV Investigator have also led to unexpected discoveries. The wreck of the 1890s iron barque Carlisle in Bass Strait in 2017 was a “chance encounter” for the vessel.

Why hunt for shipwrecks?

These discoveries are important for several reasons. Finding and analysing a shipwreck can help us understand the circumstances that led to these tragedies. It can also help provide closure to affected communities whose loved ones were lost at sea.

Knowing the current state of the shipwreck is important for heritage professionals and agencies who manage and protect the sites. Some shipwrecks are at risk of creating environmental damage such as fuel or oil leaks, so having data on them is vital for managing those risks.

RV Investigator is currently scheduled for a series of scientific upgrades, including its acoustic systems. With 8000 shipwrecks scattered around Australia’s coastline, and more than half of those undiscovered, there are many more maritime mysteries to solve.

Toni Moate is Chair of the National Marine Science Committee and Director of National Collections and Marine Infrastructure at CSIRO.

Emily Jateff is an Adjunct lecturer in archaeology at Flinders University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Delivered from the deep

The post The ship finding shipwrecks appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The trio from the University of Melbourne’s Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation were heading to the municipality of Kabayan, Benguet to meet with local community members to request access to the area’s ancient rock shelters.

Tucked away within these secluded shelters are ‘meking’ or ‘fire mummies’ – the preserved ancestors of the Ibaloi people, one of the distinct ethnolinguistic groups of the mountainous Cordillera Benguet region.

Coming together

Fen, Camille and Sarah first met while studying the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation program at the University of Melbourne. In their shared class, Respect, the trio partnered to write a mock grant proposal.

They decided to investigate the Kabayan mummies – a topic especially close to home for Fen, an Ibaloi descendant.

“Growing up, I was very aware of my great-grandmother and her identity as an Ibaloi woman,” Fen says. “When she passed in 2021, I was starting this course and wanted to connect to her and her heritage.

“That led to this research pathway and learning about the mummies and my cultural heritage. As I was learning more, my grandmother flagged that we had somebody in our family within living memory who was, they say, ‘half-mummified’.

“They began the [mummification] process on her for a few weeks, but her children, who were Catholic, stopped the process and gave her a traditional burial. Her name was Kong, and she passed away in the 1920s.”

Camille also had a close connection with the project. Working on projects related to the mummies for several years, her expertise offered a unique insight. This led Fen, Camille and Sarah to learn about the mummies’ current deterioration and write their mock grant proposal on potential research into how they could work with the Kabayan community to conserve them.

However, the grant proposal didn’t stay in the classroom: “We realised we had this completed grant proposal with all the structural components,” Fen says. “We’ve got the budget, we’ve got the aims, we’ve got the significance; why don’t we actually submit it and see what happens?

“It was October when we submitted the grant, and we sort of forgot about it, especially with the holiday period. Then, in March of the next year, we got an email saying the grant was approved.”

The making of  ‘meking’

Most of the secrets of the Kabayan mummification process have been lost over time. The methodology was passed down solely through oral storytelling and anecdotes dating back to as early as 200 BCE.

According to Fen, the process involved drying and dehydrating human remains using heat and smoke from a fire – hence the term ‘fire mummy’.

“The actual process of mummification would take several weeks to do, and they would sit the body by a fire and have the chemical aspects of the smoke and heat dry it out over time,” Fen says. “Once that was done, they would enter the body into a wooden coffin, and that would be placed in a rock shelter or cave in the mountainside.

“If successful, the mummification was so effective it preserved tattoos and hair still visible today.”

Preserving an ancient people

While many of the rock shelters that house these ancient remains have been forgotten or remain purposefully hidden, around ten Kabayan sites are well known.

For hundreds of years, the cooler climate of the mountains helped preserve these mummies, but due to progressive environmental changes, the mummies are slowly deteriorating.

According to Sarah, the deterioration of the Kabayan mummies started increasing significantly in the 1970s due to climate change, growing industrialisation and a rise in tourism in the area.

These factors have led to environmental changes within the burial caves, causing the skin of some mummies to become brittle, and enabling mould growth and insect activity.

“Our project decided to use technology to monitor the environments that the mummies reside in and assess and monitor the agents of deterioration so that we can better understand why they are deteriorating,” Sarah says.

“We hope that by getting a better understanding of the temperature and the relative humidities of the rock shelters in which the mummies are housed, we can then figure out what we need to do so we can conserve the mummies and so they can remain in situ.”

To do this monitoring, Fen, Camille and Sarah would need to install data loggers in the caves where the mummies reside, which required permission from the locals.

“We wanted to make sure everything we were doing was going to be approved by the community and that we didn’t do anything that they would be even slightly uncomfortable with,” Sarah says.

“It was completely up to them whether or not they wanted us to come in and do this project. Even though it would be helping conserve like their ancestors, it was completely up to them whether they wanted outsiders to participate in the conservation.”

Fen adds that it was stressful making the long journey without knowing whether they would be allowed to conduct their research.

“It was a little bit scary having to face these Elders who are wary, and rightfully so,” she says. “There’s been a history of bad experiences with other research teams that have come to that community, so I think it was essential for us to make a good impression and to do right by them.

“At the end of our time in the community, there was a physical show of hands, like, stand up if you agree with the project,” Fen says. “It was almost like a moment from a movie – all the Elders stood up. It was unanimously agreed upon in terms of support.”

Connecting with culture

Fen, Camille and Sarah got to know the Kabayan locals and learned about their culture first-hand to ensure they showed respect to the ancestors whenever they conducted their research.

When meeting with the community, the team joined a Kabayan tradition known as ‘Cañao’, in which they danced and offered a pig to ask the gods for permission to do their research and as a blessing.

They also needed to be respectful of the mummies whenever they entered the caves.

“It’s really important to be respectful of the ancestors and the spirits of the mummies that are housed within the rock shelters, and before you can enter or even look into one of the rock shelters, you’re supposed to explain exactly what you’re going to be doing and then ask for permission,” Sarah explains.

The team would say hello and introduce themselves, explain what they were doing and why, and apologise for disturbing their rest. They would work with local spiritual guides to make offerings to the ancestors, providing them with items such as cigarettes, tobacco and gin.

The team believes the most essential part of their project was respecting and understanding the Kabayan culture so they could equip them with new skills and knowledge to continue caring for their ancestors.

Finding answers

The team partnered with the National Museum of the Philippines to continue the research and has now installed data monitors in seven separate sites.

These data loggers are specifically designed for outdoor temperature and environmental readings.

They will provide data on temperature and humidity at 30-minute intervals for ten months, allowing the team to understand the environment and recognise how it changes over seasons and times.

The loggers have Bluetooth functionality, so the caves don’t need to be disturbed to collect data. Each month, a team member in the Philippines visits the cave sites and downloads the data by remotely connecting to the loggers from within a 30m radius before sending the information back to Melbourne.

Fen says that this data will allow the team to best predict how environmental changes are impacting the mummies and provide insight on how to find practical solutions for their care and preservation in the future.

“At this point, it’s a bit too early to say exactly what those conservation actions will be, but we know that this information will provide a really good basis for us to start to understand why the mummies are deteriorating.”

The post Conserving the Kabayan mummies: from an Australian classroom to the Philippines mountains appeared first on Australian Geographic.

But in 2021, something fundamental changed. As the world grappled with COVID lockdowns and economic chaos, the birds of the world were encountering a new strain, known formally as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 2.3.4.4.b. It spread easily and was capable of causing disease and death in a far wider number of bird species than previously seen before.

Related: Australian bird flu cases: the potential impact on humans and native wildlife

So far, it has triggered the culling of half a billion farmed birds and killed millions of wild birds. (This is a different strain to the HPAI H7 strains which have infected poultry farms in Australia).

If this new strain gets to Australia, carried on a migratory wild bird, it could pose similar risks to our unique wildlife. But we haven’t been sitting still. Australian researchers, governments, veterinarians and wildlife rehabilitators have been urgently preparing for its arrival.

Why is this strain so bad?

This strain has now made it to every part of the world bar Australia, New Zealand and Pacific nations. The virus killed many birds in the northern hemisphere before crossing to the Americas. In South America it proved particularly lethal, infecting and killing massive numbers of birds and marine mammals such as sea lions.

Many strains of bird flu are “low pathogenicity”, meaning they tend not to cause severe disease. But these strains can evolve into highly pathogenic strains if they spill over from wild birds into poultry, as we’re seeing with the current outbreaks in poultry farms in Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT.

Prior to 2024, Australia had experienced eight previous outbreaks of H7 HPAI in poultry, all of which were eradicated by culling poultry and isolating farms.

This new H5N1 2.3.4.4.b strain is much more worrying for our wildlife, because it transmits very easily between wild birds. It has proven it can kill mammals, including marine mammals, predators and scavenger species that eat birds.

It also poses a real threat to our poultry industries. If H5N1 2.3.4.4b were to enter Australia, we could see more outbreaks in domestic poultry, which in turn could affect the supply of chicken and eggs – both very popular sources of animal protein in Australia.

Given the virus is present worldwide, including in Antarctica, you might wonder why it hasn’t made it to Australia yet.

Related: ‘We’re going to see some haunting images’: Bird flu has reached Antarctica

Avian influenza travels most easily in waterfowl such as ducks. Australia’s waterfowl are not migratory and only travel short distances between Australia and countries to the north.

But Australia is on the path of several flyways from Asia, along which millions of shorebirds migrate every year in spring. Some seabirds also migrate from the Atlantic.

How are we preparing?

The devastation the virus has caused overseas has given Australia time to prepare.

We can’t stop wild birds from migrating here. But we can slow the spread and protect at-risk wildlife from other threats such as invasive predators, giving them the best chance to survive the virus if it arrives.

Around Australia and on our sub-Antarctic islands, a network of veterinarians, researchers, government officials, rangers and wildlife rehabilitators is on alert looking for sick birds with signs, such as respiratory illness.

If a bird showing these signs is spotted, they will call the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline (1800 675 888). Members of the public are also encouraged to report sightings.

Other plans for the virus include:

• restricting human movements in and out of virus-affected areas, where appropriate
• surveillance to see how the virus is moving with wildlife
• triage and clinical responses to the virus, including euthanasia for dying birds.

We have created information toolboxes to help wildlife managers and carers to manage risk and reduce transmission if the virus is confirmed here. These include improving baseline biosecurity, clearing away carcasses, restricting human movement to reduce spread, and euthanasing dying birds.

For threatened species, we can explore the merits of vaccination trials for captive birds. New Zealand authorities are trialling this method.

But such vaccination must ultimately serve the welfare interests of wildlife. There are many complexities to consider.

Globally, vaccination of free-ranging wild birds has occurred for just one species – the endangered Californian condor, considered particularly at risk because of its low numbers.

Black swan event?

Overseas, waterfowl, shorebirds and seabirds have proven especially susceptible to the virus. Avian predators are also at risk if they eat sick birds or their carcasses.

Specific data on Australian species are limited, but at least one local species, the black swan, has been found to be highly vulnerable to the virus because they lack some protective genes.

The sheer variation of our ecosystems might offer some protection. We have many transient bodies of water, such as Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre. If the virus arrived during a period of drought, it could have a different impact than if it arrived during flooding rains, which fill lakes and encourage movement of wild waterfowl.

Related: Black swan: the impossible bird

Because this strain is very new, we don’t know yet what the long term outcome will be.

It’s possible birds which survive an infection will become immune and survive to breed. But some species and populations may not be able to survive this first assault.

This threat is new territory for Australia. Many of the other animal diseases we worry about and prepare for only attack one species, such as African swine fever, or only affect non-native wildlife (such as foot and mouth disease). But this strain of bird flu has attacked over 500 bird species and is infecting a growing number of mammal species.

What can you do? Keep an eye out for any sick or dead birds – and call the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline if you do.

Tiggy Grillo is Chief Operating Officer of Wildlife Health Australia and an Adjunct Lecturer at Charles Sturt University.

Simone Vitali is Wildlife Health Australia’s Program Manager (Emergencies) and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Murdoch University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Is Australia prepared for Avian Influenza H5N1? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Invasive alien species become much harder and more expensive to manage as they establish and spread through the landscape. So preventing their arrival is vital.

But which species will arrive next?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

To help manage the invasive species threat, national authorities compile official warning lists that identify species not yet within a country’s borders, but which may become a big problem if they do arrive.

The most important criteria for adding a species to the list is whether they have already invaded other parts of the world.

Authorities also consider if a species could feasibly be brought into the country by humans either deliberately, such as on the case of exotic pets, or accidentally, for example if they hitchhike on fresh produce, luggage or vehicles.

Authorities also consider if a species can survive and reproduce in the country (which precludes, say, a polar bear being added to the warning list in a tropical area).

Related: Australia’s least wanted – 8 alien species and diseases we must keep out of our island home

These warning lists can be effective. For example, the United Kingdom’s list was published in 2013; within two years, seven of their top-listed alien species had arrived in the country, including the notoriously invasive quagga mussel.

However, the lists are not foolproof. Most crucially, the emphasis on whether a species has invaded other parts of the world will not identify species that have not yet become invasive anywhere, but might in future.

In fact, a study in 2020 predicted the number of new alien species globally will increase by 36 per cent by 2050.

New research set out to address this blind spot in warning list systems.

Who’s arriving next?

The tool developed assesses a species’ invasion risk based on whether humans are likely to accidentally bring the species to a certain country, and if the species will become invasive beyond their natural range.

First, researchers collected data on attributes of species worldwide, such as their size, number of offspring, lifestyle, diet, preferred habitats, natural range, how often they are encountered, and their tolerance to humans.

Second, the researchers programmed the tool to analyse patterns in the attributes of species that have become invasive in different parts of the world. This means the tool identifies species that haven’t yet invaded new areas globally, but share attributes with species that have become invasive.

Those attributes include:

• a tendency to climb as opposed to staying on the ground, which means they are more likely to hitchhike into a country on produce and in luggage and vehicles

• being commonly encountered in a wide range of habitats, especially where humans live.

The tool was tested on about 16,000 (or 76 per cent) of all known amphibians and reptiles worldwide, with no invasion history. Of these, we identified 160 species that might pose an invasion risk to Australia and other countries.

What Australia should watch out for

The species the tool identified as a possible invasion concern to Australia, and which border officials should be monitoring for, included:

• Common European viper (Vivipera berus), a venomous snake widespread in Europe and northern Asia. It grows to a maximum length of about 85 centimetres. Other venomous snake species are native to Australia, but no viper species are currently known to exist here. Viper venom affects blood clotting and destroys tissues.

• Graceful chameleon (Chamaeleo gracilis), a lizard common in sub-Saharan Africa. While the species is commonly exploited by the pet trade, our tool indicates it can also be accidentally brought to Australia by humans. Chameleons can change their colour to either camouflage themselves and evade predators, or to intimidate them.

• American toad (Anaxyrus americanus), from eastern North America. They have a wart-like gland behind each eye. The toad is poisonous like the cane toad, which is already a problem in northern Australia. However, the American toad can live in temperate climates and could threaten southern Australia’s wildlife.

Next steps

Around the time the tool finished development last year, one of the predicted invaders – the Caspian Bent-toed Gecko (Tenuidactylus caspius) – began invading the Eastern European nation of Georgia.

This demonstrates the tool’s potential to identify future invaders and improve current warning systems.

But further work is needed before including the species identified on national warning lists. For example, research is needed to determine where each species can survive and reproduce.

And so far, researchers have applied the tool only to amphibians and reptiles, particularly those that can be accidentally transported by humans. In future, the tool will hopefully be applied to other animal groups and plants to identify invaders looming on our horizons.

Arman Pili is a Research affiliate at Monash University.

David Chapple is a Professor in Evolutionary and Conservation Ecology at Monash University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Alien invasion: which foreign species might enter Australia next? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Many cobras have tissue-damaging venoms that can’t be treated with current antivenoms. Research has discovered that cheap, readily available blood-thinning medications can be repurposed as antidotes for these venoms.

Using CRISPR gene-editing technology, researchers learned more about how these venoms attack our cells, and found out that a common class of drugs called heparinoids can protect tissue from the venom.

Snakebites are a serious problem

Snake venoms are made up of many different compounds. Generally, they target the heart, nervous system or tissue at the exposure site such as the skin and muscle.

Much snakebite research understandably focuses on the most deadly venoms. As a result, venoms that are less deadly but still cause long-term problems – such as cobra venoms – have received less attention.

In the regions where cobras live, serious snakebites can have devastating effects, such as amputation, leading to life-changing injuries and a loss of livelihood. The World Health Organization has declared snakebite a “Category A” neglected tropical disease and hopes to reduce the burden of snakebites by half by 2030.

Related: Turning toxins to therapies: the wild world of researching venom

The only current treatments for snakebites are antivenoms, which are made by exposing non-human animals to small amounts of the venom and harvesting the antibodies they produce in response.

Antivenoms save lives, but they have several drawbacks. Each one is specific to one or more species of snake, they are prohibitively expensive (when they are available at all), they need cold storage and they must be administered via injection in a hospital.

What’s more, antivenoms can’t prevent local tissue damage. This is mainly because the antibodies that make up antivenoms are too large to reach peripheral tissue, such as a limb.

How cobra venom kills cells

A team from the University of Sydney in Australia, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom and Instituto Clodomiro Picado in Costa Rica set out to look for other options to treat snakebites.

First, researchers wanted to try to understand how these venoms worked, starting with cobras which are found across Africa and South Asia.

They took venom from the African spitting cobra, which is known to cause tissue damage, and performed what is called a whole genome CRISPR screen.

They took a large mixture of human cells and used CRISPR gene-editing technology to disable a different gene from across the whole human genome in each cell. CRISPR technology uses a special enzyme to remove or change specific parts of the DNA in a cell.

Then they exposed all the cells to the cobra venom and looked at which ones survived and which ones died.

Cells that survived must have been missing whatever it is that the venom needs to hurt us, so researchers could quickly identify what these features were.

They found various cobra venoms need particular enzymes to kill human cells. These enzymes are responsible for making long sugar molecules called heparan and heparin sulfate.

Heparan sulfate is found on the surface of human and animal cells. Heparin sulfate is released from our cells when our immune systems respond to a threat.

The importance of these molecules intuitively made sense. Snake venoms have evolved alongside their targets, and heparan and heparin have changed very little throughout evolution. The venoms have therefore hijacked something common to animal physiology to cause damage.

How heparin decoys reduce tissue damage

Heparin has been used as a blood-thinning medication for almost 100 years.

The drug was tested on human cells to see if flooding the system with free heparin could be used as a decoy target for the venom. Remarkably, this worked and the venoms no longer caused cell death, even when the heparin was added to cells after the venom.

Researchers also tested heparin against venoms from distantly related Asian cobras and it had the same protective effect. Injecting a smaller synthetic version of heparin called tinzaparin could reduce tissue damage in mice with an artificial “snakebite”.

To figure out how heparin was blocking the venom, the researchers separated the venom into its major components. They found that heparin inhibits “cytotoxic three-finger toxins”, which are a major cause of tissue injury. Until now there were no drugs known to work against these toxins.

The next step will be to test the effects of heparin in people.

Cheaper, more accessible snakebite treatment

The goal is to make a snakebite treatment device containing heparin-like drugs called heparinoids, which would be similar to the EpiPen adrenaline injectors often carried by people at risk of severe allergic reactions. These devices could be distributed to people who face a high risk of cobra bites.

Heparinoids are already inexpensive essential medicines used to prevent blood clots. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved them for self-administration in humans which may reduce the time required for the lengthy process of getting a drug to market. Heparinoids are also stable at room temperature, meaning the drugs can be more accessible in remote regions and delivered faster in the field.

Related: Australia’s 10 most dangerous snakes

Other studies have also confirmed the usefulness of repurposing drugs for treating snakebites. These drug combinations could herald a new age for snake venom treatment that doesn’t solely rely on costly antivenoms.

CRISPR screening has been previously used to investigate box jellyfish venom and researchers on this study are currently looking at other venoms closer to home from bluebottles to black snakes. The screening technique lets the team uncover a wealth of information about a venom.

It’s early days, but they are finding many venoms rely on overlapping targets to attach to our cells. This research all feeds into the more lofty goal of making universal and broad-acting venom antidotes.

Tian Du is a PhD candidate in venom genomics at the University of Sydney.

Greg Neely is a Professor of functional genomics at the University of Sydney.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Biting back: Australian researchers say century-old drug could revolutionise cobra bite treatment appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Amber acts like a time capsule, capturing tiny animals, plants and even microorganisms from millions of years ago. These fossils – also known as inclusions – can appear astonishingly fresh, preserved just as they were when they died trapped in sticky tree resin.

Australian amber is now helping to understand the biological diversity of ancient Gondwanan environments from 42 million years ago and their connections to today’s Australian forests. From it, we can learn yet more reasons for why we must protect today’s forests.

The unique value of Australian amber

Unlike typical, squashed fossil rock shapes, palaeontologists value amber for its remarkable ability to preserve inclusions in full three dimensions. This means we can study fossil organisms that would otherwise not have been recorded in such detail.

This is especially important considering that around 85 per cent of modern biodiversity comes from arthropods – spiders, flies, beetles, bees and the like. Only 0.3 per cent is represented by the “bony” mammals more commonly found as fossils in rocks.

Overall, only a tiny fraction of all life throughout geologic time has been fossilised. This means we work with a biased fossil record that may not accurately represent past diversity.

Amber provides a unique opportunity to find less common specimens. It helps to reveal the diversity of past ecosystems and to reduce these biases in our understanding of ancient life.

Related: Rare local amber findings offer insight into ancient terrestrial ecosystems

Most amber discoveries come from the Northern Hemisphere in places such as the Baltic region, Spain, China and Myanmar. Australia is one of the rare places in the Southern Hemisphere where scientists can also study organisms trapped in amber.

The most promising site for finding these preserved organisms is a former coal mining area in Victoria. The amber and fossils from this site are estimated to be 42–40 million years old, dating back to the Eocene epoch.

At that time, Australia and Antarctica were still connected as part of the slowly fragmenting supercontinent called Gondwana. Australia had a warm and moist climate, and forests teeming with insects, arachnids and other creatures.

Living fossils

The amber we’re working with has been studied by researchers since 2014. Findings described in 2020 include biting midges, baby spiders, and even a pair of mating flies.

Our latest work reveals more details on the species. We’ve learnt not only where these organisms lived in the past, but also the surprising fact that many of them still exist in Australia’s forests today, albeit in greatly reduced geographic ranges.

This means creatures from ancient Gondwana have persisted for more than 40 million years. Their survival for so long gives even more reason to protect them into the future.

One major breakthrough in our research is based on new advancements at ANSTO’s Australian Synchrotron research facility in Melbourne. Improved resolution and the capability to scan smaller samples with X-rays have greatly improved how we can produce images of organisms trapped in amber. This allows us to create detailed 3D reconstructions, and we can identify the species more easily.

The synchrotron has also made it possible to finally detect inclusions within large, opaque pieces of amber that were hard to examine previously with traditional microscopes.

What have we found in Australian amber?

Some of the new major findings have been a “non-biting” or “feather” midge from the Podonominae insect subfamily. It’s the first fossil record of the genus Austrochlus in the Southern Hemisphere. Even though it was widely distributed globally in the past, it is now restricted to Australia.

With the synchrotron, we revealed not only the specimen’s sex and position in its family tree, but also internal structures of what are potentially wing muscles. Even in amber fossils, that’s a rarity.

A true biting midge that’s still around today known as Austroconops was also found. It’s the first fossil of its kind dating back to the Cenozoic, spanning the last 66 million years. Once widespread, today this midge is only found in Western Australia, again restricted just to our continent.

A wasp from the family Embolemidae, recognised today from all around the world to be a parasite on planthopper nymphs, is another highlight from Australian amber. This group has quite a scarce fossil record, and this is only the second time one has been found in the Southern Hemisphere.

All of these insect fossils are the first of their kind found in Australia. And we’ve only scratched the surface – there are many more yet to be described.

Remarkably, these insects are still around in Australian forests today, tracing their lineage back in time to ancient Gondwana. Without realising it, we exist among living fossils.

Related: Feathered dinosaur tail found in amber

While we know these species were widely distributed in the past, today most of them are found only on this continent. They now face new challenges which threaten their habitats. The threats include climate change, deforestation and urban sprawl.

Protecting these ancient “living fossils” and their environments is essential for the health of our native ecosystems.

Maria Blake is a PhD student at Monash University.

Jeffrey Stilwell is an Associate Professor of Palaeontology of the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Australian amber reveals our ‘living fossils’ existing for 42 million years appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Most of the time T CrB, which is 3,000 light years away, is much too faint to be seen. But once every 80 years or so, it brightly erupts.

A brand new star suddenly seems to appear, although not for long. Just a few nights later it will have rapidly faded, disappearing back into the darkness.

A burst of life

During the prime of their lives, stars are powered by nuclear fusion reactions deep inside their cores. Most commonly, hydrogen is turned into helium creating enough energy to keep the star stable and shining for billions of years.

But T CrB is well past its prime and is now a stellar remnant known as a white dwarf. Its internal nuclear fire has been quenched, allowing gravity to dramatically compress the dead star.

T CrB also has a stellar companion – a red giant that has puffed up as it enters old age. The white dwarf mops up the swollen red giant’s gas, and this forms what’s known as an accretion disc around the dead star.

The matter keeps piling up on a star that’s already compressed to its limit, forcing a continual rise in pressure and temperature. Conditions become so extreme, they mimic what once would’ve been found inside the star’s core. Its surface ignites in a runaway thermonuclear reaction.

When this happens, the energy released makes T CrB shine 1,500 times brighter than usual. Here on Earth, it briefly appears in the night sky. With this dramatic reset, the star has then expelled the gas and the cycle can begin all over again.

How do we know it’s due?

T CrB is the brightest of a rare class of recurrent novae that repeat within a hundred years – a time scale that allows astronomers to detect their recurrent nature.

Only ten recurrent novae are currently known, although more novae may be recurrent – just on much greater timescales that aren’t as easily tracked.

The earliest known date of T CrB erupting is from the year 1217, based on observations recorded in a medieval monastic chronicle. It’s remarkable that astronomers can now predict its eruptions so precisely as long as the nova follows its usual pattern.

The star’s two most recent eruptions – in 1866 and 1946 – showed the exact same features. About ten years prior to the eruption, T CrB’s brightness increased a little (known as a high state) followed by a short fading or dip about a year out from the explosion.

T CrB entered its high state in 2015 and the pre-eruption dip was spotted in March 2023, setting astronomers on alert. What causes these phenomena are just some of the current mysteries surrounding T CrB.

How you can see it

Start stargazing now! It’s a good idea to get used to seeing Corona Borealis as it is now, so that you get the full impact of the “new” star.

Corona Borealis currently reaches its best observing position (known as a meridian transit) around 8:30pm to 9pm local time across Australia and Aotearoa. The farther north you are located, the higher the constellation will be in the sky.

The nova is expected to be a reasonable brightness (magnitude 2.5): about as bright as Imai (Delta Crucis), the fourth brightest star in the Southern Cross. So it will be easy to see even from a city location, if you know where to look.

There’s not long to observe

We won’t have long once it goes off. The maximum brightness will only last a few hours; within a week T CrB will have faded and you’ll need binoculars to see it.

It almost certainly will be an amateur astronomer that alerts the professional community to the moment when T CrB outbursts.

These dedicated and knowledgeable people routinely monitor stars from their backyards on the chance of “what if” and therefore fill an important gap in night sky observations.

The American Association of Variable Star Observing (AAVSO) has a log of over 270,000 submitted observations on T CrB alone. Amateur astronomers are collaborating here and around the world to continually monitor T CrB for the first signs of eruption.

Hopefully the nova will erupt as expected sometime before October, because after that Corona Borealis leaves our evening sky in the Southern Hemisphere.

Tanya Hill is a Senior Curator in Astronomy at Museums Victoria and Honorary Fellow at University of Melbourne’s Museums Victoria Research Institute.

Amanda Karakas is an Associate Professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Under the guidance of GunaiKurnai Elders, archaeologists from the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation and Monash University excavated at Cloggs Cave near Buchan, in the foothills of the high country near the Snowy River in East Gippsland, Victoria.

What they found was extraordinary. Under the low, subdued light in the depth of the cave, buried under layers of ash and silt, two unusual fireplaces were revealed by the tip of the trowel. They each contained a single trimmed stick associated with a tiny patch of ash.

A sequence of 69 radiocarbon dates, including on wood filaments from the sticks, date one of the fireplaces to 11,000 years ago, and the deeper of the two to 12,000 years ago, at the very end of the last Ice Age.

Matching the observed physical characteristics of the fireplaces with GunaiKurnai ethnographic records from the 19th century shows this type of fireplace has been in continuous use for at least 12,000 years.

Enigmatic sticks smeared with fat

These were no ordinary fireplaces: the upper one was the size of the palm of a human hand.

Sticking out from the middle of it was a stick, one slightly burned end still stuck into the middle of the ashes of the fire. The fire had not burned for long, nor did it reach any significant heat. No food remains were associated with the fireplace.

Two small twigs that once grew from the stick had been trimmed off, so the stem was now straight and smooth.

Microscopic and biochemical analyses were performed on the stick, showing it had come into contact with animal fat. Parts of the stick were covered with lipids – fatty acids that cannot dissolve in water and can therefore remain on objects for vast lengths of time.

The trimmings and layout of the stick, tiny size of the fire, absence of food remains, and presence of smeared fat on the stick suggest the fireplace was used for something other than cooking.

The stick had come from a Casuarina tree, a she-oak. The branch had been broken and cut when green. We know this because of the splayed fibres at the broken end. The stick was never removed from the fire during its use; we found it where it was placed.

A second miniature fireplace slightly deeper down in the excavation also had a single branch emanating from it, this one with an angled-back end like on a throwing stick, and with five small twigs trimmed flush with the stem. It had keratin-like faunal tissue fragments on its surface; it too had come into contact with fat.

The role of these fireplaces in ritual

Local 19th-century ethnography has good descriptions of such fireplaces, so we know they were made for ritual practices performed by mulla-mullung, powerful GunaiKurnai medicine men and women.

Alfred Howitt, government geologist and pioneer ethnographer, wrote in 1887:

The Kurnai practice is to fasten the article [something that belonged to the victim] to the end of a throwing stick, together with some eaglehawk feathers, and some human or kangaroo fat. The throwing stick is then stuck slanting in the ground before a fire, and it is of course placed in such a position that by-and-by it falls down. The wizard has during this time been singing his charm; as it is usually expressed, he ‘sings the man’s name,’ and when the stick falls the charm is complete. The practice still exists.

Howitt noted that such ritual sticks were made from Casuarina wood. Sometimes the stick mimicked a throwing stick, with a hooked end. No such miniature fireplace with a single trimmed Casuarina stem smeared with fat had ever been found archaeologically before.

Related: Aboriginal inventions: 10 enduring innovations

500 generations

The miniature fireplaces are the remarkably preserved remains of two ritual events dating back 500 generations.

Nowhere else on Earth have archaeological expressions of a very specific cultural practice known from ethnography, yet traceable so far back, previously been found.

GunaiKurnai ancestors had transmitted on Country a very detailed, very particular cultural knowledge and practice for some 500 generations.

GunaiKurnai Elder Uncle Russell Mullett was on site when the fireplaces were excavated. As the first one was revealed, he was astounded:

For it to survive is just amazing. It’s telling us a story. It’s been waiting here all this time for us to learn from it. Reminding us that we are a living culture still connected to our ancient past. It’s a unique opportunity to be able to read the memoirs of our Ancestors and share that with our community.

What does it mean to be one of the oldest living cultures in the world? It means despite millennia of cultural innovations, the Old Ancestors also continued to pass down cultural knowledge and know-how, generation after generation, and have done so since the last Ice Age and beyond.

Related: Awakening a sleeping language

The authors are just six of the 17 authors of the journal article, including Birgitta Stephenson, who undertook the residue analyses.

Russell Mullett is a Traditional Custodian — Kurnai, Indigenous Knowledge; Ashleigh Rogers is a Lecturer in Archaeology at Monash University; Bruno David is a Professor at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage at Monash University; Carney D. Matheson is an Associate Professor at Griffith University; Fiona Petchey is an Associate Professor and Director of the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the Te Aka Mātuatua – School of Science at the University of Waikato, and Nathan Wright is a Lecturer in Archaeology (UNE) and Senior Research Archaeologist of the Everick Foundation at the University of New England.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This catastrophic and ongoing biodiversity loss surpasses the devastation wrought by other notorious invasive species such as cats, rats and even cane toads. Short of removing species from the wild and treating them in captivity, few strategies exist to deal with the chytrid threat.

Related: Impact of fungus on world frog populations revealed

New research, published in the journal Nature, offers a promising option.

Outbreaks of chytrid (pronounced “KY-trid”) are more common in cold winter months – just like seasonal human flu. We found a way to combat these winter outbreaks using heat. Our purpose-built “frog saunas” allow affected amphibians to warm up and bake off their infections. They are so simple you can build a frog sauna using supplies from the hardware store.

Why should we care about frogs?

If frogs’ good looks are not enough for you to care about their welfare, perhaps learning how they contribute to the environment or human health will pique your interest.

Frogs eat insects that carry and spread human diseases. Their skin is also a rich source of new medicines that could help us combat antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” or curb the startling increase in opioid addiction. The frogs themselves are food for many predators, including humans.

Often starting life as a tadpole eating algae, before morphing into a carnivorous adult, frogs carry energy from aquatic ecosystems onto land – where it can be transferred throughout the food web. So losing a single frog species can have serious flow-on effects.

The origin and spread of chytrid

It’s likely the chytrid fungus originated in Asia, where the pathogen seems to coexist with native amphibians. But chytrid is deadly elsewhere, possibly because other frogs have no natural defences.

Chytrid harms frogs by disrupting the integrity of their skin, depleting electrolytes needed for heart function. Infected frogs can die of cardiac arrest.

Chytrid has spread worldwide through the trade of amphibians, becoming a seemingly permanent part of ecosystems. As eradicating chytrid from the wild is not possible, we need a way to help frogs battle infection.

Introducing frog saunas

Research has shown chytrid is worse in winter. My colleagues and I wondered whether, if frogs had access to warmth during winter, could they fight off infection?

The fungus can’t tolerate high temperatures, so if we gave frogs a place to stay warm – even for a few hours a day – perhaps they could survive and recover.

We tested this idea, both in the laboratory and in outdoor experiments.

First we established that endangered green and golden bell frogs will select temperatures that reduce or eliminate chytrid infections, when given the opportunity.

Then we conducted experiments in the lab, with 66 infected frogs. The group given the option of choosing the temperature they liked best rapidly cleared their infection. The group placed in a set, warm temperature also cleared their infection, but it took longer. The low-temperature control group remained infected.

Next, we wanted to see what would happen if frogs that cured infections with heat would still get sick. Or were they immune? The group of 23 heat-cured frogs were 22 times more likely to survive the second infection than the 23 frogs that were heat-treated but not previously infected. So frogs cured with heat acquire resistance to future infections.

Related: How to make your backyard frog-friendly

Finally, we wanted to see if this could work in a natural setting. We ran outdoor experiments with 239 frogs. Half were infected with chytrid one week before the experiment began. Then they were placed in enclosures with artificial structures that heat up in the sun, called “frog saunas”. But the frogs could choose from shaded and unshaded areas, with or without saunas.

We found frogs flocked to the sunny saunas, heated up their little bodies, and quickly fought off infection. Think of frog saunas as little factories that pump out healthy, chytrid-resistant frogs.

The frog saunas could be used on a wider scale. We believe they would be best suited to supporting populations of Australian green and golden bell frogs, but they could be useful for other species too.

The saunas are made of inexpensive materials that can be found at your local hardware store, making them accessible to the general public and wildlife managers alike.

We are already building shelters at Sydney Olympic Park, working with Macquarie University and the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. The park is home to one of the largest remaining populations of green and golden bell frogs.

Want to get involved?

You can become a citizen scientist and help save frogs from extinction. Start by downloading the FrogID app to learn how frogs are faring. Record frog calls with the app for scientists to identify them. This helps provide valuable data for frog conservation.

You can also build a frog sauna for your backyard, to help keep them healthy through winter.

It’s essentially a brick-filled greenhouse, warmed by sunlight. All you need is some common clay ten-hole masonry bricks, black paint and cable ties – and a little greenhouse to put the sauna inside.

Changing the fate of frogs

Since the discovery of chytrid more than 25 years ago, the pathogen has been a seemingly insurmountable challenge to endangered frog conservation. Now, we have developed a promising, inexpensive and widely applicable strategy to combat chytrid.

Amphibians are such a diverse group that no single approach will be suitable for all species. So this is no silver bullet. But a useful tool for even one threatened or endangered species is cause for optimism.

The concept could also be applied to other wildlife diseases, where differences between the physiology of the host and pathogen can be exploited.

Related: Hot frog bodies fight deadly infection

Anthony Waddle is a Schmidt Science Fellow in Conservation Biology at Macquarie University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching occurred in at least 53 countries. In 2022, bleaching affected 90 per cent of coral reefs assessed at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s largest coral reef ecosystems.

Despite bleaching events and rising sea temperatures causing widespread decline, a glimmer of hope emerges from an unexpected source — the remote Kimberley coast of Western Australia.

The Kimberley region is known for its landscapes, gorges and waterfalls. These reefs located along the vast 12,000km Kimberley coastline contain a hidden treasure: a network of pristine intertidal reefs, teeming with life including dugongs, sharks, stingrays and seabirds.

It is home to the Montgomery Reef, the world’s largest inshore reef with a total area of 400 square kilometres, which rises from the ocean floor at low tide, creating cascading waterfalls and revealing a vibrant underwater ecosystem.

Coral cover at the Kimberley region averages about 23 per cent, similar to what is recorded on the Great Barrier Reef.

More than 225 species of coral have been documented — other intertidal reefs around the world usually have just a handful.

Taxonomic studies have revealed many species recorded in the Kimberley are known only from Indonesia and they do not occur anywhere else in Australia, hinting that the corals that now live in northwest Australia may be closely related to corals in Indonesia, although this remains to be tested with population genetic studies.

What is most remarkable about these corals is their resilience.

Taking on a harsh climate

Unlike reefs elsewhere, Kimberley corals thrive under harsh conditions. The reefs endure hours of exposure at low tide to scorching sun and intense UV light. Even a major global mass bleaching in 2016 failed to trigger mass mortality, while neighbouring reefs suffered devastating losses.

Scientists believe the answer lies in the corals’ unique genetic makeup.

Recent studies have identified genes in Kimberley corals that are under evolutionary pressure, suggesting an adaptation process. These naturally resilient corals may hold the key to understanding how coral reefs can survive a changing climate.

An examination of the whole genomes of Kimberley corals has found genes under recent selective pressure providing evidence that the corals are actively evolving in response to changes in the environment. While the exact function of these genes is not known, it is likely their increased prevalence helps corals survive extreme environmental conditions.

Researchers discovered that less tolerant corals have historically been eliminated from the Kimberley coast, resulting in a collection of locally adapted corals with the genetic make-up to withstand current climate stress.

Coral of the future

Further research is required to understand how Kimberley corals have developed higher thermal thresholds. However, these corals offer significant opportunities to enhance our knowledge of coral adaptation.

Despite their potential, the vast diversity of naturally thermally tolerant Kimberley corals has been largely overlooked in the coral adaptation narrative.

Related: Tough Aussie corals thrive under pressure

These corals serve as a natural laboratory to study how diverse corals have adapted to climate change and to uncover the nature of these beneficial adaptations.

Integrating Kimberley corals into the broader coral adaptation discourse is essential, as they offer evidence that corals can adapt to environmental pressures.

Associate Professor Zoe Richards is a coral taxonomist at Curtin University, Australia whose research revolves around coral biodiversity and how best to monitor and protect it. Working in the areas of systematics, phylogenetics, population genetics, ecology and conservation biology, she has conducted research on coral reefs across the globe for over 25 years. She is also curator of marine invertebrate zoology at the Western Australian Museum.

This article was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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Garnet is rare in beach sand, as it is destroyed by prolonged exposure to the waves and currents of the ocean. If we find large amounts of garnet in beach sand, it means there must be a local source of garnet-bearing rock. But where is this rock?

The hunt for the source of South Australia’s pink sand took us thousands of kilometres and half a billion years back in time, to a previously undiscovered mountain range we believe is now buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

A local source?

Geologists get excited when we find garnet in beach sand or other sediments, because these minerals grow deep in Earth’s crust, in the same kind of conditions in which diamonds are formed.

One way diamonds or garnets can reach the surface is via carrot-shaped volcanic structures called kimberlite pipes. There are kimberlites (and diamonds) to be found in South Australia – at Eurelia, for example. However, these deposits are far from the coast, are not very abundant, and are only around 170-190 million years old – so they are unlikely to be the source of our beach garnets.

Another way garnet can reach the surface is via prolonged erosion.

Garnet typically forms in greater volumes in places where the crust is thick, such as under mountains. As the mountains erode, the garnet may be revealed as a record of the former mountain belt.

So another possible origin for the beach garnets is the erosion of the Adelaide Fold Belt. This mountain belt, which stretched north from Adelaide for hundreds of kilometres, developed between 514-490 million years ago.

A third possible source is the Gawler Craton, a huge slab of ancient rock beneath South Australia with outcrops in the Adelaide Fold Belt. The Gawler Craton contains plenty of garnet, which formed in several episodes between 3.3-1.4 billion years ago.

To find the source of our beach sand garnets, we set out to find their ages. Very old garnets could be from the Gawler Craton, while younger ones would have the Adelaide Fold Belt as a more likely origin.

A timing mismatch

We analysed several hundred grains of coastal garnet, and found the majority of them formed around 590 million years ago. Far from answering our questions, this result only raised more.

The beach sand garnets were far too young to have come from the Gawler Craton, but too old to have come from the eroding Adelaide Fold Belt. In fact, this time around 590 million years ago is thought to have been a tectonically quiet period in the region, where we would not expect garnet to grow.

Our dating results effectively ruled out a local source for the garnets. So what was left?

Long-distance travellers

If the garnets did not come from a local source, we can say two things about them. First, they must have travelled in a way that would not grind them to smithereens. Second, they must have been stored locally in a protected environment before finding their way onto the beaches.

A possible solution that meets both these criteria can be found at Hallet Cove Conservation Park, located on the South Australian coast around 20km south of Adelaide.

Here we find exposed sedimentary rocks that were formed around 280 million years ago, during a very icy phase of Earth’s history. The ice is important, because glaciers and icebergs can transport large volumes of rock over long distances without damaging their internal structure.

Furthermore, garnets found in glacial sediments on Kangaroo Island, which were deposited around the same time as the Hallet Cove sediments, were dated to around 590 million years as well. The garnets were not born in these deposits, but were transported into them by ice flow.

A former land bridge

So, if the beach garnets were stored in sedimentary glacial deposits along the South Australian coast since the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age, before being washed onto the shore, where did they come from originally?

During the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age around 280 million years ago, Australia was connected to Antarctica in a large landmass called Gondwana, covered by a massive ice sheet.

Reconstructions of ice flow at this time suggest glaciers would have brought ice northwest from what are now the Transantarctic Mountains in East Antarctica.

The Transantarctic Mountains are the expression of an older mountain belt, the Ross Orogen, which started developing around 550 million years ago but was not experiencing any peak garnet-forming conditions until around 520 million years ago – 60 million years after the garnet in the pink sands. So we are getting warmer, but the Transantarctic Mountains are not a suitable source either.

Related: How an Australian lake turned bubble-gum pink

A hidden treasure

There is one outcrop of rock in East Antarctica where garnets of the right age have been found, near the Skelton Glacier in Southern Victoria Land. However, such a small outcrop could not have produced the large volume of garnet we see on Australian shores.

This outcrop sits at the edge of a colossal area of some 2 million sq.km buried beneath a thick ice sheet. We postulate that this area contains abundant garnet that grew in an unknown mountain belt around 590 million years ago.

It is currently not possible to sample the rock under this ice sheet to confirm our theory. But it is conceivable that millions of years of ice transport eroded the bedrock beneath, and transported the ground-up rock – including garnets – northeastwards towards the area that has now split into the coastlines of Antarctica and Australia.

The transported rock was then delivered to the South Australian coast some 280 million years ago and stored in sedimentary deposits such as Hallet Cove. Here it sat undisturbed until erosion eventually released the garnets into the sea – and then, finally, onto South Australia’s beaches.

Stijn Glorie is an Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Adelaide; Jack Mulder is a Lecturer in Geology at the University of Adelaide, and Sharmaine Verhaert is a PhD Candidate in Geology at the University of Adelaide.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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In our recent research, my colleagues and I observed Norfolk Island green parrots applying chewed pepper tree bark and shoots to their feathers and skin during preening. We believe this is a rare example of a bird using plant matter to rid themselves of parasites. But there may be more to it. These birds do seem to be enjoying themselves.

For more than a century, scientists have puzzled over the purpose of anting. When birds engage in this behaviour, they either actively spread ants or simply allow ants to move through their feathers. In defence, the ants release formic acid. Could birds be getting high on the fumes?

Maybe pepper tree bark has more than medicinal effects too. It’s highly likely such self-medicating is stimulating.

Stimulating substances

Both formic acid and piperine (from pepper trees) are pungent chemicals with proven medicinal, antimicrobial and insect-repelling qualities.

Our green parrots appeared extra animated while they busily snipped, chewed and rubbed the pungent pepper tree bark and foliage through their plumage.

Almost a century ago, in 1931, Prussian naturalist Alfred Troschütz noted of anting “the formic acid must have an especially agreeable effect”.

Then, in 1957, US ornithologist Lovie Whitaker concluded the bird she was studying “appeared to derive sensual pleasure, possibly including sexual stimulation” from anting. Her views were quickly dismissed and anting declared “strictly functional”. But is it?

The apparent ecstatic state reached by some anting birds is well known. People often come across Australian magpies with their feathers fluffed, body contorted, perhaps staggering and seemingly unable to respond normally — that is, to flee.

In humans, piperine (the key ingredient in pepper) is mildly stimulating. And several potentially hallucinogenic or mind-altering substances, notably formic acid, have been isolated from ant toxins.

Formic acid has been used to tone the muscles, increase muscular energy and ease the sense of fatigue. In 17th-century Europe, it was the “secret” ingredient in a popular tonic believed to improve wellbeing, calm digestion and increase sexual appetite.

Indigenous groups across southern California used red harvester ants for medicinal purposes as well as religious rituals. The ants were ingested alive, in massive quantities, to induce prolonged catatonic states punctuated by hallucinogenic visions.

Flying under the influence

Many birds become intoxicated after eating fermented fruits and berries. Their drunken state is often detected when they collide with windows or cars, get caught by cats while in a stupor, or suffer from alcohol poisoning.

In 2021, about half a dozen drunk red-winged parrots were handed in to Broome Veterinary Hospital in Western Australia after feasting on overripe mangoes. Many more never made it to the clinic.

The drunken reputation of the Kereru saw it voted in as New Zealand’s Bird of the Year in 2018. This pigeon is known for occasionally becoming tipsy, even falling out of trees.

All of these pissed parrots and pigeons lend themselves to jokes about party animals, but there is a deeper evolutionary context to such behaviour.

As fruit ripens it becomes sweeter and more nutritious. As it overripens, the sugar begins to ferment and the alcohol concentration increases.

Volatile compounds (alcohols) produced during fermentation can be carried in the air, helping birds locate the rich food source. Ethanol is also a source of energy in its own right and stimulates the appetite.

Fruit eaters including birds, our human ancestors and other animals may have come to associate the presence of ethanol with a sugar hit and mild pleasure. In turn, the fruit eaters reward the fruit or nectar producing plants by dispersing seeds, or facilitating cross-pollination.

This evolutionary explanation for an attraction to alcohol is sometimes referred to as The Drunken Monkey Hypothesis, first suggested by US biologist Robert Dudley.

Related: Drunk birds: inebriation in the wild

Eat, drink and be merry

While some birds are inclined to imbibe, it seems most can handle their liquor. Like humans, their central nervous system may well reward moderate alcohol consumption, making them feel less fatigued, more relaxed and sociable.

Such pleasure-seeking may seem like an evolutionary dead end, but nature generally contrives to limit availability to alcohol. Stimulation is mild and cases of drunken excess are the exception. The latter often occur in situations where the fleshy fruits are in abundance, other food is scarce or conditions have produced unusually high sugar content, which yields an extra potent brew when it ferments. Often, the boozy casualties are young birds. Sound familiar? Just as well smart birds haven’t figured out how to distil alcohol.

Likening green parrots rubbing aromatic vegetation through their plumage to inebriated pigeons falling from trees may seem a stretch. But nature rewards behaviour that offers evolutionary advantage, often, it seems by tapping into animals’ pleasure centres. The pursuit of pleasure is an important, usually overlooked, aspect of animal behaviour, worthy of attention and further research.

Penny Olsen is an Honorary Professor in Ecology and Evolution at Australian National University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The forested outskirts of the sea were home to dinosaurs and the skies above were filled with birds. But all of them would have been shaded by the largest flying creatures of the age – the pterosaurs.

In November 2021, an avocado farmer turned museum curator named Kevin Petersen discovered a fossilised skeleton near Richmond in Queensland. The previously unknown species turned out to be the most complete pterosaur fossil found in Australia. It comprises around 22 per cent of the skeleton of an animal with a wingspan of some 4.6m.

My colleagues and I have now described the fossil in the journal Scientific Reports. It represents a new species of pterosaur, and we’ve named it Haliskia peterseni, meaning Petersen’s sea phantom.

Pterosaur fossils are rare

Pterosaur fossils have been found on every continent. However, they are far less common than fossils of dinosaurs or ancient marine reptiles.

Pterosaurs had hollow, thin-walled bones. This was a great evolutionary adaptation for life in the air, but the lightweight skeletons are not easily fossilised.

Few complete pterosaur skeletons are known worldwide, and most come from a handful of sites with unusually excellent conditions for fossil preservation. When pterosaur bones have been found at other sites, they are often crushed and distorted.

As a result, many pterosaur fossils are the only one of their kind. This includes the oldest flying reptile fossils ever found in Australia.

Related: Australian fossil findings result in deep dive of whale evolution

What the skeleton tells us about how Haliskia lived

The newly described fossil is only the second partial pterosaur skeleton ever found in Australia. It preserves twice as many bones as Ferrodraco lentoni.

Haliskia preserves a complete lower jaw, the tip of the upper jaw, 43 teeth, vertebrae, ribs, bones from both wings, and a partial leg. Also preserved are delicate, spaghetti-thin hyoid bones which would have helped support a strong muscular tongue.

We can tell Haliskia was fully grown when it died because its shoulder bones, and others in the skeleton, have fused.

Almost all pterosaur fossils described from Australia (including Haliskia’s contemporaries Mythunga camara, Aussiedraco molnari and Thapunngaka shawi) have been placed in the same family. These species, collectively known as Anhangueria, have long been viewed as fish-eaters.

Although fish fossils are often found in rocks laid down in the Eromanga Sea, squid-like cephalopods called belemnites are even more common. Based on Haliskia‘s long hyoid bones and conical, interlocking teeth, it would have eaten a diet of fish and squid.

Related: Is the “echidnapus” the Rosetta Stone of early mammal evolution?

A labour of love

The Haliskia specimen was prepared by fossil enthusiast Kevin Petersen using a combination of pneumatic tools, the paleontological equivalent to a dentist’s drill, and a hand-wielded metal pin. The pterosaur bones are flattened, and although one surface has been exposed, they remain encased in rock to provide stability and support to the fossil.

Kevin spent many hours preparing the pterosaur fossil. However, when we asked if he would like to join the team of researchers studying this specimen, he politely declined, stating he was happy to simply be acknowledged for his efforts.

Without Kevin, this specimen wouldn’t be on public display or known to science. It seemed only fitting that this new species Haliskia peterseni be named in honour of its discoverer.

More fossils to be found

This was not the first pterosaur fossil Kevin had found. He uncovered his first flying reptile fossil a few years earlier, when he visited Richmond in Queensland as a tourist.

Since the discovery of the Haliskia specimen in 2021, even more pterosaur fossils have been found at the public dig pits outside Richmond.

Kevin is proof you do not need a degree to make significant contributions to science and the field of palaeontology. It takes dedication and determination – and it helps to be in the right spot at the right time.

Related: Near-complete 50,000-year-old kangaroo skeleton retrieved from underground cave

It requires some imagination to visualise pterosaurs at sea, hunting fish and squid-like creatures alongside massive marine reptiles millions of years ago, in what is now the dry Australian outback. But the process is made easier with the fossils in front of you.

Haliskia provides a tantalising glimpse into an ancient ecosystem, and provides hope we might find more complete skeletons of these winged reptiles.

Adele Pentland is a PhD candidate at Curtin University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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These relationships have been captured in people’s homes, such as with Molly the magpie and Peggy the dog, in zoos, such as with Baloo the bear, Leo the lion and Shere Khan the tiger, and even in the wild, such as one case of a fox and cat living together in Turkey.

A plethora of research on primates, birds, kangaroos, dolphins, horses, cats and dogs has shown many non-human animals can develop deep social bonds with their own kind.

And while inter-species bonding hasn’t been studied to the same extent, videos like those mentioned above show animals from different species displaying the same affection to each other as they would to their own, such as through cuddling, playing and grooming.

Why do we, as people, find these stories so enjoyable? Answering this question requires us to consider some of the nicer aspects of our own nature.

When animals reflect us

Witnessing animals get along well together isn’t just cute, it can also make us feel like we have things in common with other species, and feel more connected with the other life on the planet. Decades of research reveals how feeling connected to nature fosters happiness in humans.

While the mechanisms behind inter-species bonding are not fully understood, one 2022 research review suggests the mechanisms that operate in other animals’ brains during social interactions with their own are similar to those that operate in human brains.

The researchers suggest that, due to the evolution of common brain mechanisms, animals engaged in social interaction may experience similar emotions to humans who engage with their own friends or loved ones.

So while it’s very hard to know what this subjective social experience is like for other animals – after all, they can’t report it on a questionnaire – there’s no reason to think it isn’t similar to our own.

Humans like co-operation and pleasant surprises

Humans have evolved to enjoy co-operation, which might also help explain why we enjoy seeing co-operation between different animal species. Some scholars suggest the human instinct for co-operation is even stronger than our instinct for competition.

Another reason we may be drawn to unlikely animal friendships is that they are, in fact, so unlikely. These interactions are surprising, and research shows humans enjoy being surprised.

Our brain has evolved to be incredibly efficient at categorising, solving problems and learning. Part of the reason we’re so efficient is because we are motivated to seek new knowledge and question what we think we know. In other words, we’re motivated to be curious.

Inter-species friendships are indeed a very curious thing. They contradict the more common assumption and observation that different species stick with their own kind. We might think “cats eat birds, so they must not like each other”. So when we see a cat and a bird getting along like old pals, this challenges our concept of how the natural world works.

Neuroscientists have documented that, when surprised, humans experience a release of brain chemicals responsible for making us more alert and sensitive to reward. It is this neurochemical reaction that produces the “pleasantness” in the feeling of being pleasantly surprised.

A desire for peace and harmony

Perhaps another explanation for why humans are so intrigued by inter-species friendships is because they feed a human desire for peace and harmony.

These connections may be symbolic of what many people yearn for: a world where differences can be put aside in favour of a peaceful co-existence. These friendships might even prompt us to imagine, consciously or subconsciously, a future in which we become more enlightened as a species.

One could argue a key reason behind the success of the TV series Star Trek is its optimistic take on the future of humanity. Inter-species co-operation is a central theme of the show.

Inter-species friendships may serve as a concrete example of breaking free of the “natural” way of being for a more peaceful way of being. And while it might only be a dream, it’s nice to watch cute animal videos that help us feel like this dream might be possible.

Shane Rogers is a Lecturer in Psychology at Edith Cowan University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Unlikely animal friendships appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Charming and irreverent as they were, The Beatles themselves were only part of the reason the tour was so memorable.

It was the hordes of screaming fans who followed their every move that astonished onlookers.

The rise of Beatlemania

By 1964, Australian teenagers had access to a global youth culture. As the feminist author Anne Summers, then an Adelaide teenager, recalled in her memoir Ducks on the Pond:

It was rare for world-famous pop stars to come to Adelaide and unheard of for a group at the height of their celebrity.

That Australian teenagers had the opportunity to see The Beatles in person in 1964 was due to a stroke of luck for tour promoter Kenn Brodziak. In late 1963, Brodziak secured the then up-and-coming Beatles for a three-week tour of Australia at a bargain rate.

By the time the tour took place, The Beatles was the biggest band in the world.

Their popularity had skyrocketed throughout 1964. I Want To Hold Your Hand went to number one on the Australian charts in mid-January and the top six singles that year were all by The Beatles.

So when the band arrived here, Beatlemania was the predictable result: crowds of surging, screaming young people, who turned out in massive numbers wherever The Beatles appeared.

While the earliest rock ‘n’ roll fans (and even performers) in the late 1950s were often labelled juvenile delinquents, there were too many teenagers swept up in Beatlemania for them to be dismissed in the same way. The crowds became a spectacle in themselves.

‘A chanting mass of humanity’

Beatlemaniacs were loud and unruly. The Daily Telegraph reported:

50,000 screaming, chanting, struggling teenagers crowded outside Melbourne’s Southern Cross Hotel this afternoon to give The Beatles the wildest reception of their careers.

It was a similar story in Adelaide. The Advertiser described:

police, their arms locked together and forming a tight circle around the car carrying the Beatles, had to force a path through the surging, screaming crowd […] Police said they had never seen anything like it.

The crowds overwhelmed observers with their sheer size – a “solid, swaying, chanting mass of humanity”, according to The Age – and noise. The Daily Telegraph consulted an acoustics expert to conclude “Beatles fans scream like [a] jet in flight”.

Beatlemania was visible (and noisy) evidence of a growing teenage consumer market and the assimilation of rock music, dancing and youth culture into the leisure practices of middle-class youth. It was proof (if anyone still needed it) the youth market was highly developed and extremely lucrative.

The speed with which companies found a ready audience for Beatles merchandise (wigs, souvenirs, magazines) demonstrated the relative affluence of the youthful consumer in mid-1960s Australia. This market would continue to grow throughout the decade.

A new idea of youth

Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of Beatlemania was its femaleness. While not all Beatles fans were girls, it was the crying, screaming girls who attracted the most media comment.

The Daily Telegraph described them this way:

It was the girls, the nymphets of 1964 in their uniform of black slacks and duffle coats and purple sweaters – who showed the orgiastic devotion due to the young men from the damp and foggy dead end of England […] the girls wept, screamed, grimaced, fainted, fell over, threw things, stamped, jumped and shouted […] [The Beatles] were the high priests of pop culture, taking due homage from a captive, hypnotised hysterical congregation.

The references to “nymphets” with their “orgiastic devotion” tells us many Australians thought these young women were transgressing the norms expected for their era. Young women in the early 1960s were still expected to be demure and responsible. Beatles fans were breaking these rules, and helping to rewrite the meanings of youth and gender in 1960s Australia.

Beatlemania was an expression of female desire. The Beatles were powerful objects of fantasy for many fans in a world where sexual mores were slowly changing but where women were still expected to police male desire, stopping young men from “going too far”. A fantasy relationship with a Beatle became a way for young women to dream about their ideal relationship.

Screaming, chasing a Beatle down the street: these were acts of rebellion and joy that prefigured the rise of women’s liberation, with its embrace of rebellious femininity.

Beatlemania reminds us that, even if women were not always behind the microphone or playing the guitar, they have been important to the history of rock ‘n’ roll music as fans and audience members.

Beatlemania marked the ascendancy of a new idea of youth: these young people weren’t mere replicas of their parents, but they were not juvenile delinquents, either. The Beatles tour drew young Australians more closely into a transnational youth culture, fostering the development of a distinctively Australian variant here.

Beatlemania also demonstrated the massed power of youth. By the end of the 1960s, many Australian teenagers were gathering on the streets to protest, rather than celebrate, and to make political demands, rather than to scream.

Michelle Arrow is a Professor of History at Macquarie University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Beatlemania: the enduring legacy of the Beatles’ tour of Australia, 60 years on appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Upon exiting the aircraft, I experienced a blast of cold air that — despite having lived and worked in chilly Alaska — was somehow profoundly different.

The temperature was a brisk -53.6°C with a windchill of -75.5°C and a wind speed of 9 knots. The physiological altitude was equivalent to being 3370 metres above sea level. We were constantly warned to take it easy upon arrival to avoid experiencing any of the symptoms of high-altitude sickness, such as pulmonary edemas.

This is one of the highest, driest, and coldest places on Earth where humans have a permanent presence.

Only the Russian Vostok Station is higher in altitude further up the polar plateau, and therefore colder, with the lowest ever ground temperature of −89.2°C recorded in the southern winter of 1983.

Related: Antarctica: a continent in crisis

The physical and mental challenges

Living in such conditions comes at a price that people pondering an ice change may not be prepared to pay — both physically and mentally.

Antarctic stations must bring in all supplies from the outside and the costs of keeping the stations running and their crews fed and housed are as extreme as the environment itself. Supplies are brought in by plane and sometimes by tractor traverse — or across the ice. The South Pole station is 1353km by air and 1601km by tractor traverse from McMurdo Station on the coast.

Energy has been traditionally provided by diesel generators burning AN8, a jet fuel mixture suited for the cold temperatures of Antarctica. Approximately 1.7 million litres are used at the station each year and in 2012 it was estimated that fuel cost between USD$9.25 to $10.60 a litre by the time it travelled from the beginning to the end of the supply chain. The cost has likely increased since.

So, not only is Antarctica high, dry, and cold, it is costly for humans to be there on a permanent basis.

Although coastal Antarctic conditions are not as extreme as the middle of the continent, it is still cold, windy, subject to storms, and extremely isolated from any human population centres. The sustainability of a permanent settlement with little to no outside support would be fraught with problems.

For example, the ability to grow food is problematic. Greenhouses could potentially work, however, during the long dark winters, grow lights would be needed. Grow lights consume energy and energy, in the form of fossil fuels, must be brought in from the outside.

There is potential for other renewable sources of energy involving wind and solar. Whereas the South Pole is a good candidate for solar during the southern summer, given it has many cloudless days and 24 hours of sunlight, the coast of Antarctica is much more subject to cloudy conditions.

Wind may be a reasonable alternative on the coast, but the extreme cold temperatures are very hard on equipment, thereby making wind generators challenging to maintain.

Early Antarctic expeditions, such as Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition, took advantage of marine mammal and bird resources for food during their winter-over periods. However, the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty today prohibits any molestation of the flora and fauna.

Why anyone would want to live in Antarctica permanently?

Antarctic research stations are crewed by adults that are a mix of scientists and support personnel, for example mechanics and electricians. They are there for the sole purpose of scientific research.

Winter-over crews rotate through on a mostly yearly basis. Social and psychological research has documented a wide variety of psycho-social and physiological stresses experienced by winter-over crew members.

Long periods of isolation and confinement can lead to increases in tension, anxiety, fatigue and depression. Research has also found that people’s abilities to adapt to these conditions and seek social support over time can be influenced by their cultural background.

Indians at Maitri Station reported the highest levels of depression, the Chinese at Great Wall Station reported the highest levels of confusion, whereas the Russians at Vostok Station reported the highest levels of anxiety in contrast to the Americans at South Pole Station who reported the lowest.

However, it is important to note the important role of group dynamics: some winter-over groups do better than others in terms of group cohesion and this impacts overall levels of depression, confusion and anxiety experienced by crew members. We can only imagine how these psychological and physiological stressors would play out if people lived permanently on the continent.

I have worked with the Iñupiaq Alaskan Natives in northwestern Alaska, and they have a culture that has specifically adapted to the isolation and extreme environmental conditions. Permanent settlements would equally require the emergence of an adaptive culture, and all that it entails, in order to survive and flourish.

Antarctica is isolated and hard to get to. Family and friends cannot just hop on a plane and visit. On the other hand, there are stations in Antarctica that do have whole family units living, working, and going to school at the station.

Both Chile and Argentina have stations that include families in moderate numbers. These stations are on the Antarctic Peninsula where conditions are less extreme, and the bases are nearer geographically to both Argentina and Chile. They are the closest thing to a ‘normal’ community on the continent.

Nevertheless, the stations still need significant outside support for supplies, families still miss out on important life events back home, and residents rotate through on a periodic basis so in essence their stay there is not permanent.

Reasons to stay

There have been permanent settlements that have existed historically in other extreme and isolated areas — such as South Georgia Island, a British Overseas Territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The island has an important historical connection to Antarctica.

As a part of Ernest Shackelton’s failed Transantarctic Expedition, he sailed 1253km from Elephant Island off the Antarctic Peninsula to South Georgia Island in a small lifeboat to save his crew after the ship Endurance was caught in the ice and crushed in the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Shackelton, one of the greatest Antarctic explorers, is buried on South Georgia Island.

There were seven whaling stations on the island from 1904 to 1965. The island had a community of workers and government officials, some with families. There was a Norwegian Lutheran Church and a meteorology station.

Despite being isolated, a community emerged on the island to service the whaling industry for well over 60 years, a company town of sorts. The island was eventually abandoned following the decline of whaling.

Related: Echoes of Shackleton

Antarctica has a variety of precious minerals and other unexploited natural resources. The mining and extraction of these resources would have the potential for more ‘company towns’ to emerge, not unlike what happened on South Georgia Island.

Economics is a powerful incentive and, without constraints, the emergence of mining settlements in Antarctica would not be beyond the realm of possibility.

Under current treaty agreements this is not permissible.

Professor Jeffrey C. Johnson is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. He has conducted extensive long-term research supported by the National Science Foundation comparing group dynamics of over-wintering crews at the American South Pole Station, with those at the Polish, Russian, Chinese, and Indian Antarctic Stations. He has also done research funded by the National Science Foundation on Iñupiaq Alaskan Natives traditional ecological Knowledge of sea ice and climate change.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

The post What it would be like to live permanently in Antarctica appeared first on Australian Geographic.

As a result, the exploiter can diverge from its original population and ultimately become a new species. Charles Darwin proposed this process more than 160 years ago, but it has been difficult to observe in practice.

In new research published in Science, we show how this process drives the creation of new species of cuckoos. These birds lay their eggs in the nests of other species, and their chicks mimic the appearance of their host’s chicks to avoid detection.

An escalating arms race

The deceptive behaviour of bronze-cuckoos imposes heavy costs on their hosts. They lay their eggs in the nests of small songbirds, such as fairy wrens and gerygones, and abandon their young to the care of the host.

Soon after hatching, the cuckoo evicts the host eggs or chicks from the nest to become the sole occupant. The host parents not only lose all their own offspring, but also invest several weeks rearing the cuckoo, which eventually grows to around twice the size of its foster parents.

Not surprisingly, given these high costs, hosts have evolved the ability to recognise and reject odd-looking chicks from their nests.

Only the cuckoo chicks that most closely resemble the host’s chicks will evade detection, and so with each generation, the cuckoo chicks become a closer and closer match to the host chicks. This is why the chicks of each species of bronze-cuckoo look almost identical to their hosts’ chicks.

Divergence between populations that exploit different hosts

This exquisite mimicry has evolved to an even more fine-tuned level. Within a single species of bronze-cuckoo that exploits several different hosts, the appearance of the chicks tracks that of their hosts.

In response to chick rejection by hosts, both the little bronze-cuckoo and the shining bronze-cuckoo have diverged into several separate subspecies. Each subspecies exploits a different host and produces a chick that matches that of the host.

This divergence can happen even when two hosts live in the same geographic area. In northern Queensland, the little bronze-cuckoo exploits both the large-billed gerygone and the fairy gerygone. The cuckoos have undergone selection to match the chicks of their respective hosts, leading to genetic divergence into two separate subspecies.

This shows the split into subspecies cannot be explained by geographic separation.

A higher cost for hosts leads to more new species

It was difficult to find out exactly what was happening with these birds, because we couldn’t easily find cuckoo chicks in host nests in the wild. So we developed a non-destructive method for extracting DNA from the shells of tiny cuckoo eggs (2.5cm long), which allowed us to sample museum egg specimens that have been collected over many decades.

Our results also suggest that the evolution of cuckoos and their hosts is most likely to drive the creation of new species when the cuckoos impose a high cost on their hosts – such as by killing off all the host’s own offspring. This leads to an “evolutionary arms race” between the host’s defences and the cuckoo’s counter-adaptations.

This finding was supported by our broad analysis using evolutionary modelling across all cuckoo species. We found lineages that are most costly to their hosts split into new species more often than less costly cuckoo species (those that live alongside their host’s chicks) and their non-parasitic relatives.

Interactions between exploiters and their victims may be one of the main drivers of biodiversity. The process of speciation we described, in which the exploiter shows very specialised adaptations to their victim, may occur in other parasites and hosts, and in predators and prey. These tightly coupled interactions might even explain why there are millions, rather than thousands, of uniquely specialised species across the globe.

Related: The channel-billed cuckoo is a magpie’s worst nightmare

Naomi Langmore, Professor, Australian National University; Alicia Grealy, Research Projects Officer, CSIRO; Clare Holleley, Senior Research Scientist, Australian National Wildlife Collection, CSIRO, and Iliana Medina, Lecturer in Ecology, The University of Melbourne.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post What’s that in my nest? How parasitic relationships create new species appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Members of Aboriginal communities are warned that this story may contain images and names of deceased people.

Thomas Watson had an “awesome childhood” growing up in Katherine, in the Northern Territory, but being away from his ancestral home in Queensland, he always longed to connect with his family’s culture. “I always knew I was Aboriginal and have been proud of it, but there was missing knowledge and a hole that I felt I needed to fill.”

Born in Melbourne, Thomas spent most of his childhood in the NT because his grandmother moved there in her twenties.

“At two-and-a-half-months old, my grandmother and her twin sister were moved to St Joseph’s Home, Neerkol, because their mother was unable to support them. Their mother was a domestic servant, and their father was a stockman, so they were incredibly poor. They were able to see their parents on occasion, but my grandmother has very little memory of her mother, which is really sad,” Thomas said.

“Because of all the policies, restrictions and general treatment of Aboriginal people and our culture and languages at that time, my nan was never taught anything about our culture, and therefore neither were we. My grandmother couldn’t even remember the name of our mobs.”

It wasn’t until he started university that Thomas caught a proper glimpse of his ancestry.

At the start of his Bachelor of Health Science and Bachelor of Applied Science (Osteopathy) at RMIT University, Thomas participated in Gama-dji, an orientation week for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. He took a seat at random, and during an icebreaker activity, the students started talking about their families. Thomas met someone whose last name was White – his grandmother’s maiden name.

“We found out that her great-grandfather is my great-grandfather’s brother,” Thomas said. “And so that is how I discovered that my family is Gangulu. I finally had a mob that I could say I belonged to, which was very special. I had a bit of a cry over that.”

Armed with this new information, Thomas – then 21 years old – prepared for a family reunion, purchasing a GoPro and a notebook to record everything he could learn about his culture when he returned to Country. However, upon arrival, Thomas discovered he couldn’t learn his language as nobody spoke it anymore.

“That experience lit the fire in my belly because I didn’t want to accept that my language wasn’t there anymore,” Thomas said. “I was so excited to learn it, and then it no longer being there didn’t sit right with me.”

Rediscovering what was once lost

At the time of European colonisation, about 250 distinct First Nations languages were spoken across Australia. Approximately 150 languages are still actively spoken, with only 14 considered strong. Around 110 languages are considered severely or critically endangered, according to the National Indigenous Australians Agency.

Languages that no longer have native speakers – that is, no one who learned it as a child – are often described as being “extinct”. Thomas, however, prefers the term “sleeping language”, which has an important distinction – a sleeping language can be reawakened.

Refusing to give up on his language, Thomas started his research where every young adult does – with a Google search on his phone.

“I started by searching for the name of my mob on the internet,” Thomas said. “I clicked on every link and tried to work my way through the menus of all these different websites and resources until I came across a word list or a book.

“Initially, I was trying to find anything, but as I began learning more, I could search for more specific things.”

Related: Speaking up

Throughout his investigation, Thomas repeatedly came across references to the book Linguistic Survey of South-Eastern Queensland. It was written by a Swedish linguist named Nils Holmer, who conducted fieldwork on languages from Queensland, northern New South Wales and the Torres Strait during the 1960s–70s.

Many other linguists critiqued Holmer’s publication, believing it did not provide sufficient evidence to support his observations. “They were effectively saying that they didn’t trust his publication, but this could be solved with the original notes, or what they call a ‘corpus’,” Thomas said. “So, that got me thinking, ‘Where is this guy’s corpus?’”

At this time, Thomas was working with linguist Andrew Tanner from Living Languages, an organisation supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their efforts to preserve and grow their languages. The pair would meet each week to do language revitalisation work, their efforts now set on finding Holmer’s corpus.

One day, while researching, the pair emailed Claire Bowern, an Australian linguist currently working at Yale Linguistics, who knows Nils Holmer’s son, Arthur, a linguistics professor at Lund University in Sweden.

“They had a conversation 20 years ago, and she recalled that he said he had a collection of his father’s work sitting in his attic, but he’d never looked at it before. We thought that maybe if he had all this stuff he had never looked at, the corpus we were after could be there.”

The only problem was this collection was halfway around the world. Thomas and Andrew contacted Arthur and asked if he knew anything about the corpus they sought.

Initially, Arthur said no, but after a week, Thomas received an email with 12 scanned notebooks of Holmer’s original works. A week later, 14 more notebooks and six audio tapes appeared in Thomas’ inbox.

“Each of the 26 manuscripts – the field notebooks – are handwritten, and they contain languages from northern New South Wales, all of Queensland and up to Torres Strait,” Thomas said. “Seven of them were significant to me and my work in my language.”

Each notebook had around 160 handwritten pages on First Nations languages, meaning Thomas now had around 2660 pages worth of content to sift through.

Putting the pieces together

Thomas shifted from his career as a health professional and applied to become an Industry Fellow for Indigenous Language at the University of Melbourne, where he currently works part time on a grant for his language studies.

He is working for a platform called Nyingarn, an online database that makes manuscript sources of Australian Indigenous languages available as searchable and reusable text documents to support language revitalisation.

Thomas transcribed all seven Holmer notebooks about the Gangulu language.

“Now, using all the information I have collected over the years, me and a small team are writing the first Gangulu dictionary and learners guide,” Thomas said. “My greater goal is to bring back Gangulu, my language, and I want to speak it fluently.”

The awakened language will inevitably differ slightly from the original one, as Thomas and his team make judgements to the best of their knowledge and take inspiration from other local languages that are part of the same language family as Gangulu.

Because the language stopped being spoken around the 1970s, some words must be ‘invented’ to fill the dictionary with modern phrases. The primary ways of introducing new words to the dictionary is by adapting English words using the Gangulu phonetic system, or using the same process that other languages in Australia use to make words in their own languages that don’t draw any inspiration from English.

“A common one we already use is the word for car,” Thomas said. We say ‘murraga’, which is a phonetic take on ‘motor car’. When said in a sentence, you hardly even realise that it is technically an English word.”

Another word Thomas and his team have created is ‘dibi’ which means television, and is a phonetic play on ‘TV’.

Related: Mapping Indigenous language across Australia

Speaking to the future

Having his language back is extraordinarily special for Thomas, and he hopes that when he has finished the key work on Gangulu, he can start looking into other sleeping languages documented in Nils Holmer’s further 19 notebooks.

“Once this learners’ guide dictionary is complete, we’ll move straight onto making a new, updated version because we’re still coming across and trying to figure out the language as we go,” Thomas said. “Then, when we bring back Gangulu, we can use that to revive other languages from around us.

“When you start to come across language materials and word lists, you realise all the puzzle pieces are here. We just need to put them back together again.”

Thomas also emphasises the need for the current generation to take the initiative to learn about their Indigenous culture before it is too late.

“We are at a critical point where we must be passionate about and willing to uncover this stuff because otherwise when our Elders pass away, that knowledge will be gone forever.”

There is much hope for reawakening sleeping First Nations languages, and Thomas has proven that it is possible.

“I can now string together sentences off the top of my head, and although my grandmother can’t speak the language and doesn’t necessarily understand what I’m saying, I can see that she’s so excited when I talk to her in our language.

“It will take a little while, probably a couple of generations, but hopefully, by the time I have grandkids, they will be speaking Gangulu, too.”

The post Awakening a sleeping language appeared first on Australian Geographic.

If you were wading ashore in Australia in 1788 and walked into the forest, what would this forest have looked like? Would it have been an easy stroll because the forest was open and park-like with widely spaced trees and grassy ground cover? Or would the forest have been characterised by closely spaced tall trees and a dense, wet understorey of tree ferns and other mesic plants?

There has been much debate about the state of tall, wet forests when the British first arrived in Australia. This matters for several reasons.

First, the condition of forests 236 years ago is linked to how they were managed by First Nations people. An open and park-like forest would develop if it was subject to repeated, low-intensity cultural burns and “farmed” by First Nations people. Conversely, in the absence of repeated fire and farming, the forest would be dense and wet with many large trees.

Second, understanding what forests were like when the British first arrived provides crucial insights into how best to repair these ecosystems to their “natural state” and conserve the species dependent upon them.

My research team assembled different kinds of evidence to determine what tall, wet forests dominated by mountain ash – the world’s tallest flowering plant – were like 236 years ago.

We checked diaries of early British expeditioners such as Paul Edmund de Strzelecki, Hamilton Hume and William Hovell, and examined early paintings, photographs and the testimonies of First Nations Elders. We also compiled evidence from carbon dating, dendrochronology (the study of tree rings) and pollen cores taken from swamps and wetlands.

Finally, we assembled information on the basic biology and ecology of mountain ash and the other plants and animals found in these tall, wet forests. Our particular focus was on the mountain ash forests of Victoria’s Central Highlands, but our findings are highly likely to be relevant to other kinds of tall, wet forests elsewhere in eastern Australia.

The diaries, testimonies, paintings, photographs and ecological information all contained consistent evidence that tall, wet mountain ash forests were not open and park-like at the time of colonisation. These forests were not subjected to repeated and widespread cultural burning, nor was there any indication they were farmed by First Nations people.

Rather, the dense, wet condition of these forests is the natural state of mountain ash ecosystems. Bushfires did occur in mountain ash forests but were rare. Aboriginal people ventured into the forests to collect lyrebird feathers, harvest the pith of tree ferns and gather roots and leaves of key plants.

The forests also featured a number of sites of great cultural significance and contained pathways to helped facilitate journeys to the High Country to feast on bogong moths, for example.

Because the natural state of mountain ash forest is dense and wet, management activities such as repeated fires are inappropriate.

Thinning these forests could make them more fire-prone, generate more greenhouse gas emissions and destroy habitat for wildlife, including the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum.

The management for mountain ash forests is to leave them alone. Let them mature and recover from the almost 120 years of logging that has dreadfully degraded them.

The post OPINION: The real natural history of our tall, wet forests appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The work was published this week in the journal Alcheringa.

The weird new species, dubbed the “echidnapus” (Opalios splendens), is just one of several remarkable creatures identified from a batch of previously overlooked fossils found in the Australian Museum in Sydney.

Also of note is evidence of a 100-million-year-old platypus that’s almost identical to the modern platypus, a species that was previously thought to have only arisen some 50 million years ago. It’s been assigned the new genus name of Dharragarra, which means platypus in the Gamilaraay, Yuwaalaraay and Yuwaalayaay languages of the First Nations people from the Lightning Ridge area of north-western New South Wales.

“There are a number of big takeaways from this work,” Tim told Australian Geographic. “One is that we hadn’t really suspected before that there was a period in Australia’s history where there was a great diversity of monotremes, [at a time] when there were no other mammals living on the continent.

“Today, Australia is known as a land of marsupials, but discovering these new fossils is the first indication that Australia was previously home to a diversity of monotremes. It’s like discovering a whole new civilisation.”

Monotremes are egg-laying mammals, and are only represented today by the echidna and the platypus. Most modern mammals, such as humans, are in the placental mammal group. Marsupials, which survive mostly in Australia and nearby islands, make up the third group of mammals.

Related: Discovery identifies Australia as birthplace of all modern mammals

This new work has now identified six monotreme genera surviving some 100 million years ago (mya), all roaming across the landmass that would ultimately become Australia.

The fossils have come from Lightning Ridge, which is well-known for its fish and reptile fossils.

“Lightning Ridge was then [100mya] at 60 degrees south, so it was a very polar environment,” Tim said. “The earliest monotremes we’ve got – which look like they are the beginning of the group – are about 126 million years old and are from southern Victoria.”

The “echidnapus” is just one of six remarkable monotremes identified to have been roaming 100 million years ago across the landmass that would ultimately become Australia.
Illustration credits: Peter Shouten

This new work shows that within 26 million years of when monotremes were thought to have arisen, the group was rapidly evolving.

“By 100mya the group had really started to diversify. We’ve got pig-sized species, rat-sized species, and everything in between – some terrestrial, some aquatic. There’s quite a diversity of types,” Tim explains.

It means that Australia experienced a kind of “Age of Monotremes” during the first part of the late Cretaceous, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and placental mammals were lurking around in the form of tiny, shrew-like creatures. 

It’s a period referred to as the “Cenomanian” – the earliest age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” Tim said. “In all the time that people have been looking at fossils from Lightning Ridge, previously they’ve only found four jawbones of mammals, and here we have five new jawbones – so, more than double the number of specimens, which is hugely enlightening.”

“[These fossils] came to the museum and were then somehow lost – no-one took much notice of them or realised how important they were. Then between lockdowns there was a period when the museum was open and I went in and accessed a particular drawer and there were these amazing fossils – they were kind of like a Rosetta Stone to understanding the past.”

The Rosetta Stone is considered one of the British Museum’s most important objects because it holds the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The prestigious team, led by Tim, which has been crucial to unlocking the meaning of the recent Australian Museum find, includes Dr Tom Rich, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Museums Victoria Research Institute; Professor Kris Helgen, the Australian Museum’s Chief Scientist and Director; Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich, Honorary Researcher at Museums Victoria Research Institute; Dr Matthew McCurry, a vertebrate palaeontologist and functional morphologist and palaeontologist; and Dr Elizabeth Smith, a palaeontologist, author and artist.

Related: Stunning breakthrough: the platypus and echidnas came from the South Pole

The post Is the “echidnapus” the Rosetta Stone of early mammal evolution? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Daisy, a seven-year-old Italian water-dog from Zoos Victoria’s Wildlife Detection Dog Squad, was put to the test in a recent study comparing her ability to locate critically endangered tea-tree fingers (TTF) to that of highly skilled human surveyors.

The study, published in iScience in April 2024, revealed Daisy outperformed humans by detecting more TTF specimens in a shorter amount of time, while producing fewer false negatives in the process.

It’s the first time wildlife detection dogs have been used in fungi conservation.

Related: Bizarre mushrooms give Australian forests an otherworldly vibe

The fungus

Tea-tree fingers (Hypocreopsis amplectens) is a unique-looking fungus that resembles dark, chubby fingers clutching a piece of wood. The critically endangered species has been sighted in just six known locations in Victoria in the past decade, with populations varying from a single specimen to dozens.

Lead author Dr Michael Amor, from RGBV, describes TTF as a “very specialised species” that needs a precise recipe of environmental conditions in order to occur. This is partly because TTF is most likely a mycoparasite – a fungus that parasitises other fungi species.

“TTF obtains its food from another fungus,” Michael says. “That means the right plants have to be abundant to suit the wood-rotting host fungus.”

Host plants for TTF include flowering shrubs common in the region, such as prickly tea-tree (Leptospermum continentale), silky tea-tree (Leptospermum myrsinoides), prickly broom heath (Monotoca scoparia) and Yarra burgan (Kunzea leptospermoides), as well as other less-common species.

Michael says the presence of TTF in an area indicates the health of an environment. “TTF’s rarity speaks quite loudly about the degraded state of the entire east coastal ecosystem that we have in Victoria,” Michael says. “That means it’s incredibly vulnerable to the impacts that humans are having on the environment.”

It’s no coincidence that the largest-known population of TTF is found inside French Island National Park, about 60km south-east of Melbourne. It’s the only TTF population inside a national park, and the populations are healthier and more abundant compared to those seen on the mainland. 

“That’s a direct reflection of the habitat protection that are in place and the general health of the environment on French Island within that national park, compared to the relatively under-protected sites on the mainland,” Michael says.

Threats to TTF include urbanisation and habitat loss, sand mining and climate change. TTF’s small population size means a single extreme weather event such as a fire could wipe out an entire population.

“We also haven’t seen TTF anywhere there’s been fire in the past two decades,” Michael says. “So post-fire colonisation is very slow. That’s another thing to add to the list of what makes TTF so picky and potentially so rare.”

The fungus’s scarcity makes researching it a challenge – TTF remains a bit of an enigma to scientists. Researchers know certain types of moth larvae eat the fungus, for example, but are still speculating about the other animals that may feed on it.

“Things are eating it, potentially as a primary food source…but we don’t know if that’s helping or harming [the fungus],” Michael says. “It could be harmful if it’s removing the entire reproductive potential of that specimen, but it may be helping in that by doing that it’s ingesting all the fleshy material and helping to disperse the spores as it moves along. That’s a critical bit of information that would be very helpful for us to know.”

Related: Stinkhorns: the fungi that smell like rotting flesh on purpose

Call in the hounds

And that’s where wildlife detection dogs, like Daisy, come in. Italian water-dogs (also known as Lagotto Romagnolo) have historically been used to find truffles. Instead, Daisy was trained to detect TTF by her handler, Dr Nick Rutter, Zoos Victoria Wildlife Detection Dog Officer.

“All of Zoos Victoria’s wildlife detection dogs are trained to detect their target species using positive reinforcement, pairing the smell of the species with a reward,” Nick says. For some dogs, this might be a tennis ball or a tug toy, but Daisy is mostly motivated by praise, engagement and play. “During initial training, Daisy learnt that sniffing the unique odour of tea-tree fingers was exciting because it meant that she received lots of snacks, pats and cuddles from me.”

But sniffing out a mycoparasite is no easy feat; TTF’s sporing body is partially made from the tissue of its host, creating an “in-built scent contamination for Daisy to contend with,” says Michael. But Daisy proved capable of ignoring this host fungus.

“You can usually tell when Daisy has caught a whiff of TTF because she starts to get excited. Her happy tail wags, then her whole bum wiggles and her sniffing rate increases as she works to pinpoint the exact location of the fungus,” says Nick. “Once she’s confident she has found it, Daisy alerts by sitting and looking at me with a big grin on her face to let me know she’s found the special fungus and that it’s time for me to come over and have a party with her.”

Daisy’s skills extend beyond her nose. She’s able to move easily through fragile habitats and crawl through small gaps in vegetation without damaging the surrounding plants. “Daisy is a great TTF detection dog because she naturally moves carefully through fragile environments, she can search for a long time without giving up and she isn’t distracted by wildlife that we might come across while searching,” Nick says.

Related: Puff go the spores: this is what happens when you poke earthstar fungi

The post On the nose: wildlife detection dog successfully trained to find rare ‘finger’ fungus appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The strain was detected after an investigation into unexpected poultry deaths on the farm.

Agriculture Victoria released a statement saying the property has been placed into quarantine with a reported 400,000 birds being “depopulated”, and that staff are on the ground to support the business and investigate further.

“Movement controls are now in place to prevent any spread of avian influenza. This includes a Restricted Area covering a five-kilometre radius around the affected property and a broader Control Area buffer zone covering a zone off [sic] 20 kilometres around the affected property.

“The Control Area Order requires permits for the movement of poultry, poultry products and equipment on or off the properties in these areas. Penalties apply for those who do not follow these restrictions.”

What is bird flu?

Avian influenza is a viral infection most prevalent in birds. There are a variety of subtypes and strains, with strains classified as ‘low pathogenicity’ (LPAI) and ‘high pathogenicity’ (HPAI) in relation to poultry.

Professor Raina MacIntyre, Head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW, says the virus is typically spread by wild birds flying long distances on migratory routes. “It’s the waterfowl – which are ducks, swans and geese – that normally spread a highly pathogenic avian influenza. However, the waterfowl that originate in Asia, their flyways bypass Australia, which is why we’ve been spared some of the really bad outbreaks that other countries have had.”

Although an outbreak of an HPAI virus has never been detected among Australia’s wild birds, LPAI viruses are “part of the natural virus community of wild birds worldwide, including in Australia,” according to Wildlife Health Australia (WHA). The independent coordinating body reports almost all LPAI subtypes (H1-16, excluding H14) have been detected in Australian wild birds. LPAI viruses tend to be carried by wild birds with no apparent symptoms, and fatality from the virus has not been reported in Australia.

However, there are concerns native wildlife could be devastated if an HPAI virus outbreak were to occur in Australia, and with no way to prevent migratory birds from entering the continent, some researchers believe it will only be a matter of time before an outbreak will occur.

How concerning is H7N3?

Professor MacIntyre says the strain of bird flu detected in Victoria is highly infectious. “It’s highly pathogenic, which causes the birds to be very sick.”

“It’s a cause for concern because, obviously, any avian influenza outbreak in farmed poultry has an economic impact. Generally, you’ve got to cull the birds to control the outbreak, so there are significant losses for farmers, and of course, you don’t want it to spread,” says Professor MacIntyre.

“However, in the past, we’ve had about nine H7 outbreaks in poultry in Australia, and they’ve all been brought under control fairly quickly, usually through the culling of the birds.

“If it has got to the poultry, then yes, our native wildlife probably has been exposed to H7N3. There would have been exposure, but it hasn’t been apparent in the way that the H5N12.3.4.4B has been in the US and Europe. They’ve noticed wild animals dying.”

Past cases of HPAI virus in Australia

The rise of H5N1

A new HPAI virus that became known as H5N1 began concerning researchers when it was first detected in China’s southern Guangdong region in 1996. With a fatality rate in reported cases of 59 per cent, this highly infectious strain swiftly killed large numbers of birds across Asia before spreading through Europe, Africa, North and South America, and the Middle East. In less than three decades, it has caused a panzootic (the animal equivalent of a pandemic), while over half a billion poultry have been euthanased in an effort to prevent further spread of the virus.

Although it is impossible to calculate the true toll on wildlife due to the difficulties of monitoring, millions of fatalities have occurred globally. Around 650,000 wild birds have been reported dead in South America alone.

The H5N1 virus reached the Antarctica mainland in February, with scientists especially concerned for the continent’s vulnerable wildlife. It leaves Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) as the only remaining region unaffected by the strain.

“The clinical picture for H5N1 is really quite scary,” says Professor MacIntyre. “It’s more than just a severe respiratory infection, we’re seeing quite severe brain infection and effects on the neurological system in mammals and birds that are infected.”

Human transmission

H5N1 is known to have crossed the species barrier at least three times, with at least 26 species of mammals having been infected. Despite being first reported on Antarctica’s mainland less than three months ago, the virus has already been found in penguins, elephant seals and fur seals.

This also means transmission to humans is possible. In a separate incident to the H7N3 outbreak at the egg farm, Victorian authorities also announced yesterday the first confirmed human case of H5N1 avian influenza in Australia. The patient was a child who had travelled to India in March and acquired the infection. Clare Looker, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, said it was unclear how the child had contracted the virus, although it was likely from coming into contact with infected poultry.

The World Health Organization has reported a total of 889 cases and 463 deaths from 2003 to 1 April 2024 from H5N1.

The H7N3, H7N7 and H9N2 avian influenza viruses are also known to have been transmitted to humans.

While most transmission of avian influenza occurs from birds to humans, mutations in the strains are leading to changes in how the virus works. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports nine states are struggling with H5N1 outbreaks among dairy cattle. However, it today reported a second case of transmission from cows to humans after the infection of a Michigan dairy worker.

“Scientists have gone and just tested the milk on the [US] supermarket shelves and found more than 30 per cent of the milk samples are contaminated with H5N1,” says Professor MacIntyre. “Pasteurisation should kill the virus, but there is quite a big trend in the US to drink raw milk. And of course, there’s also incidents where the milk is inadequately pasteurised. 

“There’s also eating of meat, so eating a rare steak, for example, could be quite a risk. Once it gets into the food chain at that level, which it clearly is in the US, there’s a much greater risk of a mutation arising that becomes transmissible in humans.”

Australia’s safety measures

Australia has so far avoided an outbreak of the H5N1 strain. We know this due to a nationally coordinated surveillance system for avian influenza in wild birds, which includes monitoring long-distance migratory birds.

Between July 2005 and December 2022, over 135,000 wild birds were tested for influenza viruses across Australia. In 2022 and 2023 alone, researchers from WHA collected almost 1000 samples from recently arrived migratory birds without detecting the virus. Other routine testing of dead birds around Australia also found no trace of HPAI strains.

Australia has some of the world’s strictest biosecurity measures to protect against diseases entering the country through imported birds or poultry products.

These measures include screening incoming goods and passenger luggage with x-rays, inspections, and detector dogs at airports, seaports and mail centres.

Poultry producers also have monitoring systems that quickly detect disease in flocks, leading to veterinary investigations.

While there is no way to prevent H1N5 from entering the country through wild birds, Australia does have an emergency response plan for HPAI outbreaks.

The AUSVETPLAN Response Strategy for Avian Influenza outlines a nationally agreed approach to avian influenza outbreaks in Australia.

During the most recent outbreak in 2020 and early 2021, there were three different strains of avian influenza across three local government areas – three egg farms with HPAI H7N7, and two turkey farms and an emu farm with LPAI strains.

These outbreaks were controlled through the destruction of approximately 433,000 domestic birds, and continued surveillance of both domestic and wild birds.

There is currently no permitted treatment for infected birds due to the strict policy of eradication of HPAI and LPAI.

As of August 2020, one avian influenza (H5N2) vaccine is registered in Australia, and three other active constituents (H7N1, H5N9, H5N2) have been approved by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA).

If any of these vaccines or active constituents were to be considered for use in the case of an Australia-wide HPAI outbreak, the APVMA would need to be consulted.

Any suspicion of an emergency animal disease (EAD) should be immediately reported to the 24-hour EAD Hotline on 1800 675 888 or to your local vet.

Related: ‘We’re going to see some haunting images’: Bird flu has reached Antarctica

The post Australian bird flu cases: the potential impact on humans and native wildlife appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Others quipped on Twitter (now X) : “I’m hearing reports of wombats ushering forest creatures into their burrows, mixing them a killer mango daiquiri and asking them to ‘kick back and listen to a few tunes’”, and, “We’re seeing more leadership and empathy from these guys than the entire federal government”.

But if the idea of altruistic wombats sounds too good to be true, that’s because it was. The story was soon debunked. 

Accidental heroes

While wombats do not actively herd other animals into their fireproof homes, the burrows do provide refuge – and a food and water source – even if it’s not the wombat’s intention.

How do we know this? It’s been captured on camera.

Between 29 December 2019 and 18 February 2020, more than 18,000ha of bush burned in Woomargama National Park and Woomargama State Forest in southern New South Wales.

Following the fires, scientists set up sensor cameras to monitor the recovery of wildlife in the area, focusing on the role of wombat burrows.

In a collaborative project between Charles Sturt University’s Gulbali Institute and WWF-Australia, the team placed camera traps in front of 28 burrows of bare-nosed wombats (Vombatus ursinus), also known as common wombats. The locations were chosen to include areas of varying degrees of fire damage. Cameras were also placed at 28 nearby control locations – with the same levels of fire damage, but without burrows.

Food and water

The analysis of these camera recordings, published in the May 2024 issue of Journal of Mammalogy, reveals “wombat burrows play a valuable and underappreciated role in Australia’s fire-prone forests”.

“The burrow sites had higher native mammal species richness,” says the study’s lead author Grant Linley, an ecologist and PhD Candidate at Charles Sturt University. “Wombats alter the soil, topography and vegetation around their burrows. They turn over tonnes of soil [while] constructing a burrow and their scats increase nitrogen levels, which boosts herb cover.”

Grant and the team think these ground changes increase foraging opportunities for small insectivore and omnivore species, such as the bush rats, agile antechinus, grey shrike-thrush and painted button-quails captured on camera.

“More small vertebrates hanging around wombat burrows could then be drawing in larger native predators, such as lace monitors, so the impact of burrows may be cascading through the system,” Grant says.

Related: AI discovers bushfire-ravaged native species are bouncing back

Between June 2021 and April 2022, the cameras recorded more than 15,000 individual animals. Of the 56 species identified, 47 were native and nine introduced.

The cameras recorded 30 species inspecting a burrow, 11 foraging at a burrow and 10 entering or leaving a burrow.

During this time 19 burrows also filled with water at least once. Four species were recorded drinking from one of these flooded burrows, and one was seen bathing in another.

This suggests that in dry periods, wombat burrows could be providing a critical service, serving up an important water source.

Examples of animal species and behaviours observed at the wombat burrows.
Image credits: Grant Linley

Shelter

Then there’s the well-publicised service wombat burrows provide – shelter. The study found small animals not only seek refuge in burrows to escape an active fire, but also after a fire to avoid predators.

“Many resources critical for species survival, such as logs, were destroyed by severe fires,” says co-author Dale Nimmo, a Professor in Ecology at Charles Sturt University.

“We found associations between species and burrows were often strengthened in fire-impacted habitat. For example, agile antechinus, bush rats and painted button-quails – all smaller-sized animals – were most active at burrows subject to high-severity fire,” says Dale.

The study found smaller species benefit most, with larger species less active around the burrows because they are unable to take full advantage of the shelter and foraging potentials due to the size of the burrow openings.

Regardless, Dale says the study has certainly proven “wombat burrows are potentially aiding in the survival, persistence and recovery of animal populations following severe wildfire events”.

The post Wombat burrows provide refuge from fires appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Heavy rains like these can trigger a surge in wildlife activity, prompting frogs into a frenzy of courtship and breeding, making them easier to detect.

Hear the call of the Tanami toadlet

Dr Tim Henderson, AWC Wildlife Ecologist at Newhaven, who captured the above audio, said the team visited one of the claypan lakes at the sanctuary after the rains to look for frogs and see if they could track down the Tanami toadlet.

“The lake was extremely full at the time, and while we were there, we heard lots of frogs calling. The calls were distinctive, and unlike any other species we find out here regularly, so we suspected it could be the toadlet,” Dr Henderson said.

“We were eventually able to pinpoint the calls through the undergrowth to locate these little frogs, which matched the description for Tanami toadlets.

“They appear to only emerge after significant rainfall, and call for a very short time to look for mates – there was probably less than a week after they emerged that they stopped calling, so we were very fortunate to encounter them during such a short space of time.”

Dr Henderson was able to confirm that the call belonged to the Tanami toadlet using the Australian Museum’s FrogID app.

FrogID is a national citizen science initiative that enables smartphone users to record frog calls using the free app. Experts then verify recordings to provide scientific data on Australia’s frog populations to help aid conservation efforts.

Related: 20 Aussie frogs you need to know about

First identified by scientists in 1981, little is known about the Tanami toadlet.

The tiny frog grows to just four centimetres and is found in the Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It’s one of 28 small, inconspicuous frog species in the genus Uperoleia, commonly known as toadlets because of their bumpy skin, even though they are not closely related to toads.

Dr Jodi Rowley, Lead Scientist of FrogID and Curator of Amphibians at the Australian Museum, said she was thrilled to confirm the toadlet’s call.

“It’s taken 43 years since we first recognised this species for someone to record its call – that’s pretty amazing! There’s still so much to discover about Australian amphibians, and this recording will make it easier for other people to detect Tanami toadlets in the future.”

The post Tiny Tanami toadlet call captured for the first time appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Many cat owners are now voluntarily keeping their cats indoors or in secure runs, and local governments mandate it in some areas. But most pet cats in Australia still roam local streets and gardens.

Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should pet owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property, as dogs are?

We put that question to thousands of people in a national survey in late 2023, and recently published the results.

We found most people support requiring owners to contain cats. Just one in 12 people (eight per cent) are opposed. The time might be right for nationwide change in how we manage our pet cats.

Local councils are embracing cat containment

From November 1, Geelong City Council will join a fast-growing group of local governments in urban and regional areas that require pet cats to be securely contained 24 hours a day.

More than a third of local councils in Australia now require cats to be contained overnight or 24 hours a day. Most are in the ACT and Victoria.

Given how good cats are at climbing and jumping, containing cats usually requires keeping them indoors or in secure runs.

The main reasons cited by local govenments for these regulations are:

• Improving pet welfare: contained cats live longer and healthier lives with fewer vet bills because they are protected from traumatic injuries from car accidents, dog attacks and cat fights, infections, diseases and other misadventures.

• Saving wildlife: four out of five cats allowed outside will hunt and kill an average of two to three animals per week. With millions of pet cats in Australia, each year this adds up to 6,000–11,000 animals killed in our suburbs per square kilometre and 323 million native animals killed nationally. Night curfews only protect nocturnal species such as possums.

• Reducing nuisance to neighbours: containment results in less disturbance from cat fights and prevents the neighbour’s cat killing the birds and lizards living in your backyard or nearby park, which many community members value.

Related: How you can protect native wildlife from your pet cat

The public health toll of roaming cats

Another major benefit is less talked about. Stopping pet cats from roaming would greatly reduce rates of cat-borne diseases.

Several diseases which could not exist without cats can be passed to humans. These cost Australia more than $6 billion a year based on costs of medical care, lost income and other related expenses.

The most widespread of these diseases is toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be passed to humans but must complete its life cycle in cats. Australian studies have reported human infection rates between 22 per cent and 66 per cent of the community.

Cat-borne diseases cause considerable community harm, with an estimated 8,500 hospitalisations and 550 deaths from acute infections and also from increased rates of car accidents, suicides and mental health issues in infected people.

Pet cats are crucial to the rates of these diseases in the community. In suburbs that do not require containment, you’ll find up to 100 roaming pet cats per square kilometre.

Eliminating stray cats from our suburbs is also important to reduce disease rates – just one of the reasons why people should not feed stray cats.

Related: Feather boas lure feral cats, study finds

Most of us support containment

A policy requiring all cats to be contained has clear benefits. But would it have support? Rules only produce benefits if people follow them.

This is why colleagues at Monash University and I surveyed more than 3,400 people on whether they would support policies that “require cat owners to keep their cat contained to their property”.

We found a clear majority (66 per cent) of people support cat containment. A strikingly small proportion of people, about one in 12 people (eight per cent), are opposed. The remaining 26 per cent were ambivalent, selecting “neither support nor oppose”.

Other surveys have found almost half (42 per cent or 2.2 million) of Australia’s pet cats are already kept contained by their owners.

Some councils can’t legally require cat containment

Our findings suggest communities would broadly support their local councils if they moved to require cats to be contained.

While councils are responsible for pet issues, state and territory laws greatly influence what councils can and can’t do.

Rules are just the start

To boost compliance, councils need to invest in communicating new rules and the reasons for them. After a grace period, council officers will also need to monitor and enforce the rules.

Communities may need support too, especially if there are costs involved. Councils could, for example, offer rebates for flyscreens to stop cats slipping out of open windows.

Working with other colleagues in 2020, we surveyed Australia’s local governments about their approaches to cat management. Most reported tiny budgets for cat management.

Local governments should not be left to shoulder the cost alone. Federal, state and territory governments are also responsible for Australia’s wildlife (and human health). These governments have a range of projects covering both feral and pet cats.

The Australian government collects A$3 billion a year in GST from spending on pets. Diverting a small proportion into responsible pet ownership programs would make an enormous difference.

Containment has wide backing

Our research shows the community is ready for widespread reform of how we manage all these cats.

Requiring pet cats to be contained is a sound policy choice. But to realise the full benefits, we also need to invest in effective communication for communities, provide rebates to help contain cats, and make sure the rules are followed.

This research was a team effort, involving Kim Borg, Melissa Hatty and Emily Gregg for the national survey, and Sarah Legge, John Woinarski and Tida Nou for the research on cat impacts and management.

Jaana Dielenberg, University Fellow, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: “A diabolical problem needing radical answers”: when cats are not so cute

The post Should Australians have to keep pet cats indoors? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Under the right conditions, peat soils accumulate from carbon-rich, semi-decomposed plants. But if things go wrong, the carbon balance can be tipped in the other direction, releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

We wanted to know if feral horse grazing and trampling is reducing the amount of carbon Australia’s alpine peatlands can store. These peatlands are found in alpine and mountainous regions of Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. But they’re quite rare on the mainland, restricted to areas such as those frequented by feral horses in the Snowy Mountains.

In our new research, we sampled peat soils from areas with and without feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park, NSW. We found peatlands untouched by feral horses store almost 50 per cent more carbon. In degraded peatlands, where horses had trampled all of the plants leaving bare soils at the surface, carbon storage was even lower.

Related: Where the wild horses are

Brumby numbers are booming

Australia has more feral horses than any other country and their numbers have been growing.

A 2020 survey estimated the alpine horse population was increasing at 23 per cent a year. A more recent survey published in December 2022 estimated there were more than 18,000 horses in Kosciuszko National Park alone.

Unfortunately, these large, hard-hooved animals are causing soil erosion and compaction.

In peatlands, where soils are soft and wet, the damage from grazing and trampling is even more pronounced.

Horses travel through peatlands to access drinking water in creeks and pools. This has degraded peatlands in the Australian Alps.

In March 2022, we sampled soils from 12 alpine and subalpine peatlands in Kosciuszko National Park. Seven of these sites had been degraded by feral horses and five hadn’t.

Where there was no evidence of horse activity, the peatlands were storing 45 per cent more carbon in their soils than peatlands with evidence of horses. In heavily trampled areas, where all vegetation had been removed by horses, carbon storage was 16 per cent lower than where vegetation remained.

Why are brumbies bad for carbon storage?

When peatlands are intact, healthy sphagnum moss and other plants capture atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) through photosynthesis. Over time, carbon-rich plant material including decaying plant matter builds up as the peat soil.

But if the plants are grazed or trampled, they can no longer capture CO₂.

We also found degraded peatlands also had higher soil nitrogen concentrations, likely due to inputs (fertilisation) from horse waste.

In agricultural systems, having more nitrogen in the soil is generally a good thing. Unfortunately the opposite is true for peatlands, which are naturally low in nitrogen. Even small increases in nitrogen can reduce moss growth and survival and allow other types of plants to displace them, while also promoting the growth of microbes that break down carbon-rich plant matter and release yet more CO₂.

Increased peat nitrogen can also lead to higher emissions of nitrous oxide (N₂O), a very potent greenhouse gas. This means the global warming potential of degraded peatlands might be even higher than previously thought.

We know from our previous research that much of the peat carbon lost from horse-impacted peatlands is emitted as CO₂. Peatlands degraded by horses are losing CO₂ to the atmosphere, while intact peatlands are taking up CO₂.

Related: OPINION: Feral horses will rule a third of the Kosciuszko National Park under NSW government plan

Peatlands can recover, but they need our help

Our findings support land managers’ efforts to protect and restore these peatlands, which are recognised as a threatened ecosystem under national environmental law. Facilitating long-term peatland carbon storage is a nature-based climate solution – we need to ensure our peatlands can perform at their best now, more than ever before.

Australia’s alpine peatlands deserve our protection. They are important for many reasons. These include controlling freshwater flows at the source of our most valuable water catchments. Peatlands also provide vital habitat for rare and endangered species such as the corroboree frog, alpine water skink and broad-toothed rat.

The good news is we know, through this study and our previous research, that grazed and degraded peatlands can recover over time. The peatlands we sampled that didn’t have evidence of feral horses had historically been grazed by sheep and cattle, which were widespread throughout the Australian Alps last century.

In the decades since domestic livestock grazing ended in the NSW Alps, a thick healthy layer of moss and other peatland plants has regenerated. High concentrations of peat soil carbon are building up again.

Recovering soil carbon, however, is not quick. In the midst of the climate crisis, we don’t have 50 years to wait for our peatlands to regain their carbon storage function while they recover from degradation by feral horses.

We have already lost about half of our peatlands, mainly through grazing and fire. Many may never recover.

The best way to ensure the health of Australia’s remaining peatlands is to protect them from harm to begin with. We need to keep horses and other large feral animals out of our peatlands.

Protect and restore Australia’s alpine peatlands

Under the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan, adopted in 2021 and amended in 2023, the NSW government is taking steps to protect the alpine environment. However, horses will remain in defined in “retention areas” (albeit in lower numbers). This will require extensive fencing of peatlands within the National Park to protect them from horses.

In most situations, other interventions are needed to restore peatlands such as slowing drainage to keep water within the peatlands. This will encourage peatland plants to regrow.

Where surface vegetation has been removed, mosses can be transplanted from healthy peatlands. Shading may help speed their recovery.

By protecting Australia’s alpine peatlands from feral animals, we can help them fight climate change, while looking after our water catchments and threatened species.

Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University and Samantha Grover, Senior Lecturer, Environmental Soil Science, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Despite its highly restricted range, many Australians would have seen this turtle. In the 1960s and ’70s, thousands of turtle eggs were harvested from the banks of the Mary River and hatched in captivity. The hatchlings were sold as “penny turtles” throughout the country.

Back then, no one knew these turtles belonged to a unique species restricted to a single river. Neither did anyone know that their sale – often as Christmas gifts due to their hatching time – was pushing the species towards extinction.

Related: Moonlight basking and queer courting: The secret lives of freshwater turtles

Intense egg harvesting, habitat changes and introduced predators such as foxes have drastically reduced the Mary River turtle population. Breeding female numbers fell 95 per cent between 1970 and 2000. Even more worrisome is that the population consists mainly of older adults. That’s often a warning sign of a species’ imminent extinction.

However, it is not all doom and gloom for the Mary River turtle. In 2001, the people of the Tiaro district bordering the river launched a conservation program. A recent review of this community-led program found things seem to be turning around for this iconic species.

A community-driven rescue

Tiaro is a small town with about 800 residents. Some of the most productive Mary River turtle nesting areas are close to the town. This inspired the Tiaro & District Landcare Group to take action.

Their work was mainly focused on protecting turtle nests. Tiaro is surrounded by farms, mainly for cattle. The group erected fences to stop cattle trampling the nests, placed covers over nests to shield them from predators and recorded nesting activities.

These efforts have resulted in thousands of young Mary River turtles entering the river every year.

Enlisting the help of experts

The community soon realised they needed scientific help to develop an effective management plan. They hit upon an inventive fundraiser, selling homemade chocolate turtles, to support research.

The money provided scholarships for several higher-degree research students. It also paid for research equipment.

And the support went beyond money. The people of Tiaro provided accommodation, transport, local knowledge, land access and enthusiasm.

To date, the joint efforts of the community and scientists have resulted in 16 peer-reviewed scientific articles and six higher-degree research theses. We now know much more about the turtles’ ecological requirements, population status and threats.

The published works have featured heavily in development, environmental management and natural resource planning throughout the catchment. As federal environment minister, Peter Garrett even cited information from this research program when he vetoed controversial state government plans for the Traveston Crossing Dam in 2009.

This long-term research effort has raised the profile of the turtle and the community that supports its preservation. A bronze turtle statue now stands proudly in the middle of Tiaro.

The statue is testament to the community’s dedication and the turtle’s local significance. It’s both a symbol of successful conservation and a tourist attraction.

Our turtles still need protection

The Mary River turtle remains threatened, as do other Australian turtle species. A scientific assessment panel has recommended upgrading the species to critically endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

This is due to the knowledge gained through the community-led research program rather than an increased extinction risk.

We argue that the outlook for the Mary River turtle is brighter now than when it was first listed as endangered 22 years ago. This is because the research program has enabled national priorities to be set accurately. As a result, local water resource planning and strategic development throughout the catchment properly take the turtle’s ecology into account.

By playing to each other’s strengths, community members and scientists have given the Mary River turtle a much better outlook.

The Mary River turtle is unique in its appearance and evolutionary history. It stands out as the sole species in its genus, having diverged from all other living species about 50 million years ago. To put this into perspective, humans separated from our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, less than 10 million years ago.

The species is listed at number 30 on the EDGE of Existence program, a global conservation initiative focusing on evolutionarily distinct threatened species.

Australia’s freshwater turtles play a vital role in maintaining freshwater ecosystems. They are also culturally important for First Nations people.

The advent of similar community-researcher conservation projects, such as 1 Million Turtles and Turtles Forever, suggests the future is looking brighter for Australia’s freshwater turtles.

Related: Mary River turtle added to world’s most endangered list

Mariana Campbell, Research Lecturer, Conservation, Charles Darwin University and Hamish Campbell, Professor – Spatial Science, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This figure comes from research undertaken by the French engineer Sadi Carnot and published 200 years ago this year.

We now know there’s more to the story. Yes, a hotter atmosphere has the capacity to hold more moisture. But the condensation of water vapour to make rain droplets releases heat. This, in turn, can fuel stronger convection in thunderstorms, which can then dump substantially more rain.

This means that the intensity of extreme rainfall could increase by much more than seven per cent per degree of warming. What we’re seeing is that thunderstorms can likely dump about double or triple that rate – around 14–21 per cent more rain for each degree of warming.

Related: Australian scientist urges world to “slam the brakes” as report reveals climate change tipping point now closer

Thunderstorms are a major cause of extreme flooding around the world, contributing to Brazil’s disastrous floods, which have submerged hundreds of towns, and Dubai’s flooded airport and roads.

For Australia, we helped develop a comprehensive review of the latest climate science to guide preparedness for future floods. This showed the increase per degree of global warming was about 7–28 per cent for hourly or shorter duration extreme rain, and 2–15 per cent for daily or longer extreme rain. This is much higher than figures in the existing flood planning standards recommending a general increase of five per cent per degree of warming.

Why are thunderstorms important for extreme rain?

For thunderstorms to form, you need ingredients such as moisture in the air and a large temperature difference between lower and higher air masses to create instability.

We typically associate thunderstorms with intense localised rain over a short period. What we’re seeing now, though, is a shift towards more intense thunderstorm downpours, particularly for short periods.

Extreme rain events are also more likely when thunderstorms form in combination with other weather systems, such as east coast lows, intense low pressure systems near eastern Australia. The record floods which hit Lismore in February 2022 and claimed the lives of many people came from extreme rain over many days, which came in part from severe thunderstorms in combination with an east coast low.

Related: Waterlogged: Lismore in images

Climate change pumps up extreme flood risk factors

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that:

Frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land areas for which observational data are sufficient for trend analysis (high confidence), and human-induced climate change is likely the main driver.

This increase is particularly clear in short-duration extreme rains, such as those caused by thunderstorms.

Why? In part, it’s because of the seven per cent figure – warmer air is able to hold more water vapour.

But that doesn’t explain everything. There’s something else going on. Condensation produces heat. So as water vapour turns into droplets, more heat becomes available, and hot air rises by convection. In thunderstorms, more heat fuels stronger convection, where warm, moisture-laden air is driven up high.

This explains why thunderstorms can now drive such extreme rainfall in our warming world. As water vapour condenses to make rain, it also makes heat, supercharging storms.

We are seeing these very rapid rates of rainfall increase in recent decades in Australia.

Daily rainfall associated with thunderstorms has increased much more than the seven per cent figure would suggest – about 2-3 times more.

Hourly rainfall extremes have also increased in intensity at similar rates.

What about very sudden, extreme rains? Here, the rate of increase could potentially be even larger. One recent study examined extreme rain for periods shorter than one hour near Sydney, suggesting about a 40 per cent increase or more over the past 20 years.

Related: Australia’s worst floods

Rapid trends in extreme rainfall intensity are also clear in other lines of evidence, such as fine-resolution modelling.

To model complex climate systems, we need the grunt of supercomputers. But even so, many of our models for climate projections don’t drill down to grid resolutions smaller than about 100 kilometres.

While this can work well for large-scale climate modelling, it’s not suitable for directly simulating thunderstorms. That’s because the convection processes needed to make thunderstorms form happen on much smaller scales than this.

There’s now a concerted effort underway to perform more model simulations at very fine scales, so we can improve the modelling of convection.

Recent results from these very fine scale models for Europe suggest convection will play a more important role in triggering extreme rainfall including in combined storms, such as thunderstorms mingling with low pressure systems and other combinations.

This matches Australian observations, with a trend towards increased rain from thunderstorms combining with other storm types such as cold fronts and cyclones (including low-pressure systems in southern Australia).

Does this change how we plan for floods?

The evidence for supercharged thunderstorm rainfall has grown in recent years.

Australia’s current flood guidance recommendations, which influence how infrastructure projects have been built, are based on extreme rain increasing by just five per cent for each degree of warming.

Our research review has shown the real figure is substantially higher.

This means roads, bridges, tunnels built for the five per cent figure may not be ready to deal with extreme rain we are already seeing from supercharged thunderstorms.

While Australia has become more conscious of links between climate change and bushfires, studies show we are less likely to link climate change and more intense storms and floods.

This will have to change. We still face some uncertainties in precisely linking climate change to a single extreme rain event. But the bigger picture is now very clear: a hotter world is likely one with higher risk of extreme floods, often driven by extreme rain from supercharged thunderstorms.

So what should we do? The first step is to take climate change influences on storms and flood risk as seriously as we now do for bushfires.

The next is to embed the best available evidence in how we plan for these future storms and floods.

We have already loaded the dice for more extreme floods, due to existing human-caused climate change and more to come, unless we can quickly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Related: What are the effects on wildlife during flooding and how can you help?

Andrew Dowdy, Principal Research Scientist in Extreme Weather, The University of Melbourne; Conrad Wasko, ARC DECRA Fellow in Hydrology, University of Sydney; Jennifer Catto, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Exeter, and Seth Westra, Hydrologist, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Why are we seeing ‘supercharged thunderstorms’ in Australia? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Within 24 hours we received 160 reports of sick and dying frogs, sometimes in their dozens, from across the country. That winter, we received more than 1,600 reports of more than 40 frog species.

We needed help to investigate these deaths. We asked people across New South Wales to collect any dead frogs and store them frozen until travel restrictions eased and we could pick them up for testing. Hundreds of people stepped up to assist.

What could be causing these deaths? Aside from the obvious suspect, disease, many people wondered about pesticides and other chemicals. One email we received pondered:

Maybe a lot of these green frogs that are turning up dead have in fact died from chemicals.

Another asked:

Is there any relationship between chemicals being used to control the current mice plague in eastern Australia and effects on frogs?

In our newly published research, we detected pesticides in more than one in three frogs we tested. We found a rodenticide in one in six frogs.

Pesticides have been shown to be a major cause of worldwide declines in amphibians, including frogs and toads. In the case of the mass deaths in Australia, we don’t believe pesticides were the main cause, for reasons we’ll explain.

What did the research find?

As soon as travel restrictions eased, we drove around the state with a portable freezer collecting these dead frogs. We began investigating the role of disease, pesticides and other potential factors in this awful event.

We tested liver samples of 77 frogs of six species from across New South Wales for more than 600 different pesticides. We detected at least one pesticide in 36 per cent of these frogs.

Our most significant discovery was the rodenticide Brodifacoum in 17 per cent of the frogs. This is the first report of rodenticides – chemicals meant to poison only rodents – in wild frogs.

We found it in four species: the eastern banjo frog (Limnodynastes dumerilii), green tree frog (Litoria caerulea), Peron’s tree frog (Litoria peronii) and the introduced cane toad (Rhinella marina).

How did these poisons get into frogs?

How were frogs exposed to a rodenticide? And what harm is it likely to be causing? Unfortunately, we don’t know.

Until now, frogs weren’t known to be exposed to rodenticides. They now join the list of non-rodent animals shown to be exposed – invertebrates, birds, small mammals, reptiles and even fish.

It’s possible large frogs are eating rodents that have eaten a bait. Or frogs could be eating contaminated invertebrates or coming into contact with bait stations or contaminated water. Whatever the impact, and the route, our findings show we may need to think about how we use rodenticides.

Two pesticides detected in frogs were organochlorine compounds dieldrin and heptachlor. A third, DDE, is a breakdown product of the notorious organochlorine, DDT.

These pesticides have been banned in Australia for decades, so how did they get into the frogs? Unfortunately, these legacy pesticides are very stable chemicals and take a long time to break down. They usually bind to organic material such as soils and sediments and can wash into waterways after rain.

As a result, these pesticides can accumulate in plants and animals. It’s why they have been banned around the world.

We also found the herbicide MCPA and fipronil sulfone, a breakdown product of the insecticide fipronil. Fipronil is registered for use in agriculture, home veterinary products (for flea and tick control) and around the house for control of termites, cockroaches and ants. MCPA has both agricultural and household uses, including lawn treatments.

What are the impacts on frogs?

There’s very little research on the impact of pesticides on frogs in general, particularly adult frogs and particularly in Australia.

However, from research overseas, we know pesticides could kill frogs, or cause sub-lethal impacts such as suppressing the immune system or malformations, or changes in growth, development and reproduction. Pesticides are considered a threat to almost 700 amphibian species.

Unfortunately for them, frogs do have characteristics that make them highly likely to come into contact with pesticides.

Most frog species spend time in both freshwater systems, such as wetlands, ponds and streams (particularly at the egg and tadpole stage), and on the land. This increases their opportunities for exposure.

Second, frogs have highly permeable skin, which is likely a major route for pesticides to enter the body. Frogs obtain water through their skin – you’ll never see a frog drinking – and also breathe through their skin.

Our findings are a reminder that frogs are sensitive indicators of environmental health. Their recognition as bioindicators, or “canaries in the coalmine”, is warranted.

Frogs and other amphibians are the most threatened group of vertebrates on the planet. More research is needed to determine just how our use of pesticides is contributing to ongoing population declines in frogs.

So, were pesticides the major driver of the mass frog deaths in 2021? We don’t believe so.

We didn’t detect pesticides in most frogs and the five pesticides detected were not consistently found across all samples. It’s certainly possible they contributed to this event, along with other factors such as disease and climatic conditions, but it’s not the smoking gun.

Our investigation, with the help of the public, is ongoing.

Chris Doyle, from the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, contributed to this article.

Jodi Rowley, Curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum, UNSW Sydney and Damian Lettoof, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Wildlife Ecotoxicology, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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It might seem obvious, but the fact that nature does not, and cannot, align itself with national and international jurisdictions proves a huge challenge for migratory species conservation. A world-first report into the State of the World’s Migratory Species, launched at COP14, reveals the extent of these challenges. 

Populations are declining in close to half (44 per cent) of the almost 1200 species tracked by the convention. The problem is much worse underwater: fish species listed under the convention have declined, on average, 90 per cent since 1970. A further challenge is that not all migratory species are listed. Australia’s regional responsibility should be brought into sharp focus by the finding that unlisted migratory species in Oceania are experiencing the fastest rate of decline of any group, in any region.

Related: Hunters kill migrating birds on their 10,000km journey to Australia

Unfortunately for migratory species, efforts from a single country simply cannot halt their dramatic population declines. Even if, for example, Australia effectively protects albatross breeding colonies on every island in our jurisdiction, populations will keep declining if adults and juveniles continue to die as bycatch in commercial fisheries when the birds migrate around Antarctica. Coordinated threat management is required among all countries whose waters overlap the birds’ migratory range, along with effective management of fisheries in the high seas.

Though it may seem a daunting task, it is possible to reverse population declines. Species such as the humpback whale and Latham’s snipe (a migratory shorebird) have seen population growth after multiple countries agreed to stop hunting. In addition to stopping intentional (and unintentional) killing of migratory animals, we must also ensure that key habitat areas are identified, protected and well connected.

The collaborative agreements required to undertake coordinated protection are well defined in some parts of the globe. For example, the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) brings together governments, inter-governmental organisations and NGOs to conserve migratory waterbirds throughout our region.

Many key stopover sites in the EAAF are intertidal wetlands, located on or near hubs of human activity such as ports. Although these sites are highly visible, more research is required to understand how they are connected. Do all migratory waterbirds attend all sites? Do some sites support single populations, while others support individuals of different origins? Recovery requires protection of a continuous migratory path, and our efforts will fail if we accidentally protect disconnected habitats.

Related: Flying for their lives

The impact of animal migrations extends far beyond the species themselves. Migratory animals transfer essential nutrients and energy from one place to another. The pulse of mass arrival and departure is a phenomenon not only critical to ecosystem function but also of great cultural significance. National governments, international organisations, NGOs, local communities and First Nations groups all have important roles to play – but no-one can do it alone. While nature knows no borders, humans do. It is our responsibility to see – and then act across – anthropogenic divisions if we wish to preserve great migrations for generations to come.

Dr Lily Bentley is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at The University of Queensland. She attended COP14.

Related: OPINION: Leading by example

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PsiQuantum claims it will build the world’s first “useful” quantum computer. Such a device could be enormously helpful for applications like cracking codes, discovering new materials and drugs, modelling climate and weather, and solving other tough computational problems.

Companies around the world — and several national governments — are racing to be the first to solve the quantum computing puzzle. How likely is it Australia’s bet on PsiQuantum will pay off?

Related: Conservation meets machine learning

Quantum 101

Quantum computers are computers that run quantum algorithms. These are step-by-step sets of instructions that change data encoded with quantum information. (Ordinary computers run digital algorithms, step-by-step sets of instructions that change digital information.)

Digital computers represent information as long strings of 1s and 0s. Quantum computers represent information as long lists of numbers. Over the past century, scientists have discovered these numbers are naturally encoded in fine details of energy and matter.

Quantum computing operates fundamentally differently from traditional computing. It uses principles of quantum physics and may be able to perform calculations that are not feasible for digital computers.

We know that quantum algorithms can solve some problems with far fewer steps than digital algorithms. However, to date nobody has built a quantum computer that can run quantum algorithms in a reliable way.

A bet on light

Researchers around the world are trying to build quantum computers using different kinds of technology.

PsiQuantum’s approach uses individual particles of light called photons to process quantum data. Photon-based quantum computers are expected to be less prone to errors than other kinds.

The Australian government has also invested around AUD$40 million in Sydney-based Silicon Quantum Computing. This company aims to encode quantum data in tiny particles trapped in silicon and other familiar materials used in current electronics.

A third approach is “trapped ions” — individually captured electrically charged atomic particles, which have the advantage of being inherently stable and all identical. A company called IonQ is one taking this track.

However, many believe the current leading approach is artificial atoms based on superconducting circuits. These can be customised with different properties. This is the approach taken by Google, IBM, and Rigetti.

There is no clear winning technology. It’s likely that a hybrid approach will eventually prevail.

The timeline set by PsiQuantum and supported by federal endorsements aims for an operational quantum computer by 2029. Some see this projected timeline as overly optimistic, since three years ago PsiQuantum was planning to meet a deadline of 2025.

Progress in quantum technology has been steady since its inception nearly three decades ago. But there are many challenges yet to overcome in creating a device that is both large enough to be useful and not prone to errors.

Politics before progress?

The announcement represents a significant commitment to advancing quantum computing technology both within Australian borders and worldwide. It falls under the Albanese government’s “Future Made in Australia” policy.

However, the investment risks being overshadowed by a debate over transparency and the selection process.

Criticisms have pointed to a lack of detailed public disclosure about why PsiQuantum was chosen over local competitors.

These concerns underscore the need for a more open dialogue about government spending and partnership selections to maintain public trust in such large-scale technological investments.

Public trust is difficult to establish when little to no effort has been made to educate people in quantum technology. Some claim that “quantum literacy” will be a 21st-century skill on par with digital literacy.

An Australian quantum future

Australia has made its quantum hardware bet. But even if the hardware works as planned, it will only be useful if we have people who know how to use it — and that means training in quantum theory and software.

The Australian Quantum Software Network, a collaboration of more than 130 of the nation’s leading researchers in quantum algorithms, software, and theory — including myself — was launched in late 2022 to achieve this.

The government says the PsiQuantum project is expected to create up to 400 specialised jobs, retaining and attracting new highly skilled talent to both the state and country. The media release also contains the dramatic forecast that success could “lead to up to an additional $48 billion in GDP and 240,000 new jobs in Australia by 2040.”

Efforts like the Sydney Quantum Academy, the Australian Centre for Quantum Growth, and my own quantum education startup Eigensystems, which recently launched the Quokka personal quantum computing and quantum literacy platform, will help to meet this goal.

In the coming decade, education and training will be crucial, not only to support this investment but also to expand Australia’s expertise so that it may become a net exporter in the quantum industry and a substantial player in the global race for a quantum computer.

Related: Will AI ever reach human-level intelligence?

Christopher Ferrie, A/Prof, UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research and ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The ‘incredible’ specimen Tim is referring to is the fossil of an extinct short-faced kangaroo from the Pleistocene (Ice Age) epoch.

And he’s not wrong when he says there isn’t much a palaeontologist like himself wouldn’t do to get their hands on something like this.

It was Tim who recently led a team deep underground to retrieve the fossil skeleton from a cave system on Gunaikurnai Country near Buchan in East Gippsland, Victoria.

In total, the team – including Tim’s Museums Victoria Research Institute colleagues, other palaeontologists and scientists, Parks Victoria rangers and recreational cavers – spent a total of 58 hours underground (over a two-year period) to painstakingly bring the precious specimen safely to the surface.

Rigged up with harnesses and other safety equipment, the team entered the cave by “squeezing down through a hole about the width of my shoulders across,” Tim explains.

From there, things only get trickier.

“We then abseiled for 8m through a constricted passage to reach the bottom.

“Then we went through a u-bend on our bellies to corkscrew into the cave proper.”

From that point it was another 20m to the site where the specimen lay – on a protected ledge within a vertical shaft. All up, just getting to the fossil took a full hour each time.

Then, the work began to cautiously extract each bone, piece by piece.

At one stage Tim even took the shirt off his own back to wrap the precious skull bones in to ensure they made it – unharmed – to the surface.

‘Extremely rare’

So, why is this specimen so special?

The near-complete skeleton is one of the most complete fossils ever found in Australia, and the most complete fossil skeleton ever discovered in a Victorian cave.

The exceptionally well preserved 150 bones, amounting to 71 per cent of the original skeleton, include a near-complete skull. They belong to an extinct short-faced kangaroo (Simosthenurus occidentalis).

Radiocarbon dating of closely-associated sediment indicates the skeleton is at least 49,400 years old.

‘Fossils of this quality and completeness are extremely rare in Australia. This skeleton has lain in a pitch-black cave for 50,000 years!” adds Tim.

Discovery

The fossil was first sighted in 2011 by local recreational cavers. “They were the ones who first laid eyes on its skull,” explains Tim.

“When I first visited the cave 10 years later I saw what looked like a whole skeleton with its bones in life position even after tens of thousands of years.”

On a return visit over a decade later, Tim saw the condition of the fossil had begun to degrade, so hastily began planning a way to retrieve and conserve it.

“It’s been a privilege to bring it back to the light,” he says.

The fossil will be on public display at Melbourne Museum from June 24

The post Near-complete 50,000-year-old kangaroo skeleton retrieved from underground cave appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Currently, we are passing through the outskirts of one such debris stream, left behind by Halley’s comet. It creates the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, one of the best visible from the southern hemisphere. Every year, when Earth reaches this point in its orbit, you can see the Eta Aquariids in the morning sky.

This year’s display promises to be extra special. The peak coincides with a new Moon, meaning skies will be extra dark in the hours before dawn – perfect conditions to watch fragments of a famous comet rain down. There are even hints the shower might be more “active” than usual.

Related: How to see the ‘devil comet’ from Australia

Fragments of the most famous comet

Halley’s comet (1P/Halley by its official name) orbits the Sun every 76 years or so, and has spent thousands of years on its current path.

Every time it swings through the inner Solar System, the comet sheds dust and gas. This dust has slowly spread through space, shrouding the comet’s orbit in a broad swathe of debris.

Earth runs through that debris twice per year, giving birth to two famous meteor showers. In October, we get the Orionid meteor shower, visible from both hemispheres and relatively well known.

But the better of the two showers from Halley’s debris peaks in early May – the Eta Aquariid meteor shower. Earth begins encountering that debris in mid-April, and then spends approximately six weeks traversing the broad debris stream left behind by the mighty comet.

For much of that time, Earth passes through the outskirts of the stream, and the number of meteors produced remains low. But for around a week centred on May 6, Earth moves through the densest part of the stream, and the Eta Aquariids reach their peak.

How can I watch the meteor shower?

The Eta Aquariids are actually one of the best meteor showers of the year, but are relatively poorly known for a simple reason – they are best seen from the southern hemisphere, and are very hard to observe from locations north of the equator.

The reason is that in northern locations, the Eta Aquariid radiant (the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to radiate) does not rise until it is already morning twilight. As a result, all but the brightest meteors get lost in the rising daylight.

Southern observers are more fortunate. For most Australian locations, the radiant – located in the constellation Aquarius – rises at around 1:30am to 2am local time. This gives us several hours before dawn to observe the spectacle.

A general rule of thumb when observing meteor showers is the higher in the sky the radiant rises, the better the display will be as your location on Earth is turned into facing the oncoming shower of cometary dust.

The first hour after radiant rise will likely not produce many meteors. It is still worth staring skyward though, as the few meteors you do see will be crashing into the atmosphere at a very shallow angle, allowing them to streak from horizon to horizon. These are known as “earthgrazing” meteors.

As the radiant climbs higher, so, too, will the number of meteors you observe. At their peak (on the morning of May 6th), in the hour or two before dawn, the Eta Aquariids could easily produce 20 to 30 meteors per hour. Similar rates should be visible for a couple of mornings either side of the maximum, making the weekend of May 4 and 5 a perfect time to do some morning meteor spotting.

However, meteors don’t come at an even rate. You can wait 15 minutes and see none, then four may come along at once. So remember to wrap up warm, get comfortable and gaze towards the eastern sky as you relax to enjoy the show.

An extra special year?

The Eta Aquariids are always a fabulous autumn treat for observers in Australia, but this year promises to be extra special. First, the skies will be dark thanks to a new Moon, making meteors easier to spot.

But there’s more. Scientists modelling the behaviour of the Eta Aquariids over the past few decades have found tantalising hints that this year could see significantly enhanced rates. In fact, they suggest the 2024 Eta Aquariid meteor shower could prove to be the strongest of the entire 21st century.

Predicting the activity of meteor showers is really hard, however. Other researchers have argued this year might just be “business as usual”.

Even if the latter is true, this is still an excellent meteor shower to try to catch. With perfect conditions, and the peak falling on the morning of May 6 (a public holiday in Queensland and the Northern Territory), it’s the ideal time to plan a weekend trip to the country – to settle down somewhere dark, and wake up to spend a few hours enjoying a display of natural fireworks before watching a beautiful autumn sunrise. What’s not to love?

Related: When is Australia’s next total solar eclipse?

Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland and Tanya Hill, Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria and Honorary Fellow at University of Melbourne, Museums Victoria Research Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The term symbiosis was first used in the 19th century to describe the lichen relationship, which was thought to be highly unusual. Since then, we’ve discovered symbiosis is the norm, rather than the exception. In fact, it has shaped the evolution of most life on Earth.

Related: Hidden realms: the tinier marine creatures of Australia’s coral reefs

Symbiosis is almost everywhere we look

Lichens are diverse. They grow on tree trunks, on roof tiles and on ancient rocks.

The symbiosis of two different species allows both to survive in environments they might not be able to colonise otherwise. The fungus provides a suitable environment for its partnering species of algae or cyanbacteria to grow – it might otherwise be too exposed or dry, for example. In return, the fungus gets to share some of the carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis.

This is an example where both partners benefit from their relationship. It’s called mutualistic symbiosis.

Lichens are often very good indicators of air quality and more general ecosystem health. Their absence can indicate poor air quality. Because they absorb air pollutants such as heavy metals they can be used as biomonitors.

In another very common example of mutualistic symbiosis, most plant species live in a close relationship with fungi in the soil. It’s known as a mycorrhizal association.

The plants harness the energy in sunlight to make sugar from water and carbon dioxide in the process called photosynthesis. The plants share this food with the fungus, which relies on them for survival. In return, the fine threads of the fungus greatly increase the surface area of the plant roots for absorbing water and nutrients.

Not all partners benefit

Not all symbiotic relationships benefit both partners.

In parasitic symbiosis, one partner benefits at the expense of the other. Examples include the fungi Phytophthora, Fusarium and Armilleria, which often kill their plant hosts.

In cases of commensalism, one organism benefits and the other neither gains nor loses. Small birds, for example, sometimes perch on large herbivores, eating insects disturbed by the larger animals.

As in any relationship, it’s possible things can change over time. For example, a mutualistic symbiosis between a tree and its mycorrhizal fungus might change to parasitism as the tree ages and declines, or if environmental conditions change.

Symbiosis has driven evolution

Symbiosis has played a huge role in the evolution of life. The cells that make up the bodies of animals and plants are the result of symbiotic relationships.

Cells are complex. They contain structures called organelles, such as the nucleus (the control centre of the cell) and mitochondrion (involved in cellular respiration, which uses oxygen to break down food molecules to make energy available). Plant cells also contain chloroplasts, the sites of photosynthesis.

These complex cells evolved from much simpler, ancient forms of life that came together symbiotically.

The organelles of complex cells were once single-celled life forms that survived being engulfed by other simple cells. They formed a more complex and efficient cell, which has become the basic cell type for large multicellular life forms.

All large multi-cellular organisms living on Earth – animal and plant – possess this type of cell. It’s proof of how successful this evolutionary symbiotic strategy has been.

Cell respiration in both plant and animal cells involves mitochondria, which indicates they were engulfed early in evolutionary history. Later a cell type already containing mitochondria engulfed the chloroplast. This led to the evolution of complex plants.

When two become one

The incorporation of one cell type into another is called endosymbiosis. It allowed cells and parts of cells to become highly specialised. This specialisation improved their efficiency and capacity to survive under a wider range of conditions.

When I was a postgraduate botany student in the late ’70s, colleagues one day brought samples of common sea lettuce, Ulva latuca, to the laboratory, where I was studying photosynthetic physiology. Sea lettuce is a seaweed found in many shallow waters around the Australian coast.

We noticed a little marine slug grazing on the plant, so we popped it into our system for studying photosynthesis. To our surprise the slug was photosynthesising! We discovered the slug partly digested the sea lettuce cells, but some chloroplasts passed through the lining of the slug’s gut and continued to photosynthesise.

We thought we had made an important discovery, only to learn others had published similar work. After that I never doubted the validity of endosymbiosis, which was still a controversial theory at the time.

Symbiosis turns out to be the norm

We now know symbiosis is the norm for most organisms, including humans.

Our gut flora represent symbiosis on a massive scale. The diversity and huge numbers of bacteria living happily in our gut can have a huge impact on our general health and wellbeing. In the case of a healthy gut, both the person and the bacteria do well out of the relationship: a nice example of mutualistic symbiosis.

COVID focused public attention on viruses. But not all viruses are harmful; many actually benefit the organisms they infect. Some viruses even protect us from disease-causing viruses. For example, in people who are HIV-positive the disease progresses more slowly in those who are also infected with GB virus C (GBV-C).

Of course, the full range of symbiotic relationships with viruses is possible, from mutual benefit to an infected host suffering great harm. And, as with bacteria, there is accumulating evidence viruses have helped many species evolve, including our own.

An organism must live within a complex set of relationships to survive and thrive in any environment. Some relationships will be more positive than others, but it should not surprise that mutualistic symbiosis is so often the key to success.

Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post What is symbiosis? And what makes a relationship symbiotic? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Our global analysis confirms there are indeed more insects out at night than during the day, on average. Almost a third more (31.4 per cent), to be precise. But this also varies extensively, depending on where you are in the world.

High nocturnal activity may come as no surprise to entomologists and nature photographers. Many of us prowl through jungles wearing head torches, or camp next to light traps hoping to encounter these jewels of the night.

But this is the first time anyone has been able to give a definitive answer to this universal childlike question. And now we know for sure, we can make more strident efforts to conserve insects and preserve their vital place in the natural world.

Related: How ‘secret agents’ protect our crops and gardens

Building a global dataset of sleepless nights

We searched the literature for studies that sampled insect communities systematically across day and night.

We narrowed these down to studies using methods that would not influence the results. For instance, we excluded studies that collected insects by using sweep nets or beating branches, as these methods can capture resting insects along with active ones.

Studies using light traps or coloured pan traps had to be excluded too. That’s because insects are only attracted to these well-lit traps when there’s low light in the surrounding environment, so they don’t work so well during the day.

Instead, we targeted studies that sampled insects during the day and night with traps that specifically caught moving insects. These include pitfall traps (for crawling insects), flight interception traps (for flying insects) and aquatic drift nets (for swimming insects).

Related: Ladybirds, every child’s favourite bug

We also accepted studies using food baits such as dung, for some beetles or honey (for ants).

One of the most memorable studies we encountered sampled mosquitoes using (unfortunate) human subjects as bait. Another had devised innovative automatic time-sorted pitfall traps to minimise the labour required, as the specimens collected would automatically be delivered into different compartments at different times of the day.

But in most of the studies that we ended up including in our analysis, the data had been collected by entomologists who set up many traps before dawn, returned before sunset to collect the day’s samples and prepare more traps for the night, and finally, returned once more before dawn to retrieve the night’s samples.

To improve their estimates of insect activity, many studies reported data that spanned multiple days and field sites. The sacrifice of sleep in the name of science is a true testament to their dedication.

Eventually, we homed in on 99 studies published between 1959 and 2022. These studies spanned all continents except Antarctica and encompassed a wide range of habitats on both land and water.

What did we find?

We found more mayflies, caddisflies, moths and earwigs at night. On the other hand, there were more thrips, bees, wasps and ants during the day.

Nocturnal activity was more common in wetlands and waterways. In these aquatic areas, there could be twice as many insects active during the night.

In contrast, land-based insects were generally more active during the day, especially in grasslands and savannas. We found the number of insects out and about could triple during the day in these habitats.

This may have something to do with avoiding predators. Fish tend to hunt aquatic insects during the day, whereas nocturnal animals such as bats make life on land more hazardous at night.

Related: Opinion: Conservation efforts must include small animals

We also found insects were more active at night in warmer parts of the globe, where there are higher maximum temperatures. Insects are “ectotherms”, which means they are unable to regulate their body temperature. They are particularly susceptible to extremes in temperature, both hot and cold. This finding underscores the role of climate in regulating insect activity.

Given temperatures peak during the day, higher maximum temperatures may foster increased nocturnal activity as more individuals seek to avoid heat stress by working in the dark.

Findings underscore the threats to nocturnal insects

Insects perform many vital “ecosystem services” such as pollination, nutrient cycling and pest control. Many of these services may be provided at night, when more insects are active.

This means we need to curtail some of our own activities to support theirs. For instance, artificial lighting is detrimental to nocturnal insects.

Our research also points to the threat of global warming. In the hottest regions of the globe such as the tropics, the warming trend may further reduce the activity of nocturnal insects that struggle to cope with heat. To this end, we hope our study motivates day-loving ecologists to embrace night-time ecology.

Insects are among the most diverse and important organisms on our planet. Studying their intricate rhythms represents not just a scientific endeavour, but an imperative for preserving wildlife.

Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia and Raphael Didham, Professor of Ecology, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Things that go buzz in the night appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Before you get too excited, let me quash your hopes. Comet Pons–Brooks is visible to the naked eye, but only if you know where to look. It will look like a fuzzy glowing patch, but nonetheless promises some amazing photo opportunities for the coming weeks.

Even better, it may serve as a celestial warm-up act for an even more special comet later in the year.

Here’s everything you need to know about Pons–Brooks, and how to get the best view.

Related: How to see the Eta Aquariid meteor shower from Australia

Why do people call it the ‘devil comet’?

Named after two astronomers who independently discovered it in the 19th century, Comet 12P/Pons–Brooks (its full, official name) was last visible in 1954.

It takes around 71 years to orbit the Sun, making the comet’s visits to the inner Solar System a rare treat for us here on Earth.

At its heart (its nucleus), Pons–Brooks is a dirty snowball around 34 kilometres in diameter. As the comet came swinging back towards us in its orbit, astronomers spotted it back in 2020. At that time, the comet was almost 1.8 billion kilometres from the Sun, and lay dormant.

As the comet kept falling inwards toward the Sun, its surface temperature began to rise, making it “active”. Exposed ices started to sublime, turning directly from solid to gas. This activity is how a comet gets its tail: the nucleus becomes shrouded in a diaphanous “coma” of dust and debris from its sublimated surface, which is then blown away from the Sun by the solar wind.

But comet 12P/Pons–Brooks didn’t activate gently and smoothly. Instead, it produces several large outbursts of activity, each time, emitting vast amounts of gas and dust in a very short period of time before settling down again.

In the first of those significant outbursts, on July 20, 2023, the comet brightened by a factor of a hundred times, shedding an estimated ten million metric tons of dust and ice.

The solar wind pushed the resulting dust, gas and debris away from the Sun, giving the comet an unusual appearance. To some, the comet looked like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. To others, it looked vaguely demonic – sporting the cometary equivalent of horns.

The moniker of ‘devil comet’ took hold in media articles and appears to have stuck – even though the comet’s horned appearance is now a thing of the past.

Where (and when) should I look?

Over the last few days, the first confirmed sightings of 12P/Pons–Brooks have come in from around Australia. It is currently visible low in the western sky after sunset, albeit almost lost in the glow of twilight.

In the next few weeks, the comet will slowly climb higher in the evening sky. The two videos below show the location of the comet’s head at 6:30pm from mid-April through to mid-June, as seen from Toowoomba and Melbourne.

Remember, the comet is a diffuse object, rather than a single point of light. The head is where the comet is brightest (centred on its nucleus). The comet’s tails point away from the Sun – so will rise upwards from the western horizon in the evening sky.

While the comet is visible with the naked eye, you really need to know where to look. The best bet is to search with binoculars. Make sure to wait until the Sun is well below the horizon. Once you find the telltale blur of the comet, you will know where to look, and can switch to see if you can spot it with the naked eye.

For me, the most exciting time with Pons–Brooks will come during the first two weeks of May. At that point, the comet will be passing underneath the constellation Orion, which will serve as a signpost.

That period will be prime astrophotography season, so I expect to see many spectacular images of the comet’s tails cutting through the celestial hunter, shining next to the spectacular nebulae dotted throughout Orion’s body.

But wait… there’s more!

While comet 12P/Pons–Brooks currently basks in the limelight, a potentially great comet is currently moving sunward, promising a spectacular show later this year.

That comet, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), was discovered in January 2023, and astronomers soon realised it has the potential to become truly dazzling.

Comet behaviour is hard to predict, so take the following with a pinch of salt, but things still look really promising.

Current predictions suggest Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be at least as bright as the brightest stars in late September and early October this year. During that time, it will pass almost directly between Earth and the Sun. It might even briefly become visible in broad daylight at that time.

In the days following that chance alignment, the comet will gradually become visible in the evening sky and could be an incredible sight, up to a hundred times brighter than Pons–Brooks at its best.

So, with any luck, the current apparition of 12P/Pons–Brooks is merely the warm-up act, with an even greater spectacle to come later this year. Fingers crossed!

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A post shared by Anthony Lopez Photography (@anthonynightscapes)

Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: When is Australia’s next total solar eclipse?

The post How to see the ‘devil comet’ from Australia appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 356141 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/saving-the-eastern-bristlebird/ Tue, 16 Apr 2024 07:33:58 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355958 Eight captive-bred eastern bristlebirds (Dasyornis brachypterus) were recently released into the Border Ranges region of north-eastern New South Wales where they're considered a critically endangered species.

The post Bringing back the eastern bristlebird appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The eastern bristlebird is a small, ground-dwelling bird with cinnamon-brown plumage and a cute cleft tail that forages on insects and inhabits the dense, grassy understorey around open forest and heathlands along the east coast of Australia.

It may sound like a common bird, but the species is considered endangered by Commonwealth and state legislation, with only four populations left in the wild, amounting to less than 2500 birds.

The smallest and most critically endangered of these populations is found in northern NSW and only consists of an estimated 40 to 50 birds.

At its lowest point in the late 1980s and early 90s, the northern population consisted of only 15 birds, but long-term habitat restoration work and captive breeding programs are successfully bolstering eastern bristlebird numbers.

The eight recent releases directly result from these programs, bringing the number of birds released in the past year to 23.

Related: Endangered western whipbird returns to Kangaroo Island after bushfires

The importance of diversity

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in Queensland is home to a captive breeding program for eastern bristlebirds, which is creating a sustainable captive population to support the reintroduction of the birds into the wild and act as an insurance population against extinction.

Currumbin’s Avian Conservation Supervisor, Allison Beutel, says the birds were once a common sight in South East Queensland, eastern NSW and Victoria, but numbers have dropped by 80 per cent since the 1980s due to urban development, habitat loss, climate change and inappropriate fire burning regimes, according to Allison.

“In response to plummeting numbers, a captive breeding program was started at the David Fleay Wildlife Park in 2004 with the acquisition of two young chicks from a nest in the wild,” Allison says. “Those chicks turned out to be a male and a female and they started the program which was inherited by Currumbin in 2014.”

Currumbin received five birds from David Fleay Wildlife Park, but they were all offspring of the initial breeding pair, creating many challenges due to a lack of genetic diversity.

“We knew we had to grow the genetic diversity – and we knew that we needed to get those new genetics from the wild – but with such low numbers in the wild, you can’t go and collect adult birds,” Allison says. “The next best thing is to take eggs or chicks, and that way the pairs that are out in the wild can continue to re-clutch and it doesn’t have a significant impact on them.”

Birds were collected from a population in central NSW (the species’ stronghold with a population estimated at 1500 birds) with the help of a conservation detector dog – an English springer spaniel named Penny – and added to the breeding program to create a more robust population for future releases.

Conservation genetic experts were then brought in to analyse the birds and find the most ideal pairings.

“We want to maintain or improve genetics in our captive population as much as possible, but we also have a window of compatibility to work with,” says Allison.

You see, although eastern bristlebirds are small in stature, they’re big in personality: “When it comes to re-pairing around breeding season, we have to be quite particular with who we pair and match their personality traits,” Allison says. “Some birds, for whatever reason, simply don’t like each other.

“We have some very dominant females that we need strong males for. We also have some females that get a little bit upset when they hear their males replying to other females and vice versa – it’s almost like a little marital dispute goes on in the cage.

“Sometimes, the females simply don’t like their males anymore, and other times, we have a little bit of a bust-up between pairs – it’s like Days of Our Lives but for birds!”

Related: Building a future for our birds: what we are doing right, and wrong

How to make a home

Before offspring from the captive breeding program at Currumbin can be released into the wild, eastern bristlebird habitats must be restored, which is where the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) comes in.

Through the Saving Our Species (SOS) program, DCCEEW works with private landholders to recreate eastern bristlebird habitat through weed control and canopy thinning, while the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) performs fire management.

Senior Threatened Species Officer Kelly Roche says through SOS, DCCEEW now performs fire management over more than 200ha along the border Rangers National Park Estate each year and has done 130ha of weed and fire management on private lands.

“The response of the environment to the habitat management works has been very successful,” she says. “We’ve seen birds returning to areas they had previously abandoned due to weed pressures or overstorey encroachment.

“We’ll be looking to continue restoring and reconnecting fragmented areas and maintaining the gains that we’ve already made, and we’ll be continuing releasing offspring from the captive breeding program.”

Life in the wild

As captive numbers continue to grow steadily and more land becomes available for habitat restoration, eastern bristlebirds are being released into the northern population twice yearly.

During the release, the birds are set up for three days in a tent enclosure in the wild for a ‘soft release’, during which they can acclimate to the environment’s noises and scents.

“Right from the get-go, we’ve seen a lot of interactions from wild birds coming up to our birds, especially the females, as they acclimate,” says Allison. “This makes us think there must be quite a big bias for males in this wild population.

“During the October release, we had a wild male approach and he picked between two female siblings, visiting her every day during the three-day acclimation window. When we opened the tab on the fourth day, he was hanging around. He approached and escorted her out of the tent, and off they went together!”

According to DCCEEW, the release program is designed to continue for at least nine more years, or until numbers reach the levels that would have been seen in the late 1980s when there were about 70 territories of birds existing in wild populations of between 150 and 170 birds.

You can learn more about the captive breeding project on the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary website.  

The post Bringing back the eastern bristlebird appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355958 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/society/ag-society-news/2024/04/solo-yachtswoman-lisa-blair-racks-up-two-big-sailing-records/ Tue, 16 Apr 2024 06:37:53 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355951 Breaking world sailing records seems to come naturally to Lisa Blair. Her beaming face and calm, but celebratory, arrivals in destination ports give little away of the perils, discomforts and sheer loneliness of the epic ocean voyages she completes.

The post World-beater solo yachtswoman Lisa Blair racks up two big sailing records while taking her climate message across the ditch appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The 2022 Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year and 2017 Spirit of Adventure winner has just set two new sailing speed records (yet to be ratified by WSSRC) for the fastest time from Sydney to Auckland, slicing an incredible more than 4 days off the old record to finish in 8 days, 3 hours and 19 minutes on 9 April 2024. She also achieved the first woman, solo monohull record for the ocean crossing.

The journey of more than 1200 nautical miles was marked by unpredictable winds, lightning storms, squalls of more than 30 knots and long hours of calm. There was a dramatic knockdown and close encounters with other vessels.

“On this trip the weather and seas threw every element at me, and because it was a short window I have hardly slept and really pushed my settings the whole way,” says Lisa. “The boat has performed superbly but I’m pretty exhausted.”

Lisa’s campaign is to “Cross the Ditch for Climate Action Now.” She’s raising awareness of ocean pollution and advocating for everyone to make a change for the health of the ocean.

She began the campaign during her most recent round-the-world voyage which she completed on 25 May 2022 when she became the fastest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around Antarctica. Lisa seized the opportunity to amplify her message of climate action now (the name of her yacht) by collaborating with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Institute of Marine Science and Seabed 2030 to gather weather data and collect water samples for evidence of microplastics and to monitor general ocean health.

Society-sponsored Lisa hopes to raise awareness of ocean threats as she heads off on her next voyage. In the coming days, she will embark on a new campaign; a voyage from Auckland to Auckland right around the coastline of New Zealand. She hopes to become the first person to complete the trip, solo, non-stop and unassisted, a journey she anticipates will take 15 to 18 days to complete.

Following the New Zealand projects, Lisa has plans for an Arctic world record. A feature film about her Antarctic voyage, Ice Maiden, will have its world premiere at the Dock Edge Film Festival in New Zealand in June 2024.

You can follow Lisa’s progress on her live tracker.

Setting the record

• 2017 – First woman to sail solo around Antarctica with one stop, below 45 South
• 2017 – Australian Geographic Spirit of Adventure awardee
• 2017 – Seamanship Award
• 2018 – 2x World Records while sailing solo, non-stop and unassisted around Australia
• 2022 – 2x World Records while sailing solo, non-stop and unassisted around Antarctica
• 2022 – Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year

Related: World beater: Aussie solo sailor Lisa Blair shares her story

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]]> 355951 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/even-as-the-fusion-era-dawns-australia-is-still-in-the-steam-age/ Fri, 12 Apr 2024 07:30:26 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355814 Steam locomotives clattering along railway tracks. Paddle steamers churning down the Murray. Dreadnought battleships powered by steam engines.

The post Even as the fusion era dawns, Australia is still in the Steam Age appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Many of us think the age of steam has ended. But while the steam engine has been superseded by internal combustion engines and now electric motors, the modern world still relies on steam. Almost all thermal power plants, from coal to nuclear, must have steam to function. (Gas plants usually do not).

But why? It’s because of something we discovered millennia ago. In the first century CE, the ancient Greeks invented the aeolipile – a steam turbine. Heat turned water into steam, and steam has a very useful property: it’s an easy-to-make gas that can push.

This simple fact means that even as the dream of fusion power creeps closer, we will still be in the Steam Age. The first commercial fusion plant will rely on cutting-edge technology able to contain plasma far hotter than the sun’s core – but it will still be wedded to a humble steam turbine converting heat to movement to electricity.

Why are we still reliant on steam?

Boiling water takes a significant amount of energy, the highest by far of the common liquids we’re familiar with. Water takes about 2.5 times more energy to evaporate than ethanol does, and 60 per cent more than ammonia liquids.

Why do we use steam rather than other gases? Water is cheap, nontoxic and easy to transform from liquid to energetic gas before condensing back to liquid for use again and again.

Steam has lasted this long because we have an abundance of water, covering 71 per cent of Earth’s surface, and water is a useful way to convert thermal energy (heat) to mechanical energy (movement) to electrical energy (electricity). We seek electricity because it can be easily transmitted and can be used to do work for us in many areas.

When water is turned to steam inside a closed container, it expands hugely and increases the pressure. High pressure steam can store huge amounts of heat, as can any gas. If given an outlet, the steam will surge through it with high flow rates. Put a turbine in its exit path and the force of the escaping steam will spin the turbine’s blades. Electromagnets convert this mechanical movement to electricity. The steam condenses back to water and the process starts again.

Steam engines used coal to heat water to create steam to drive the engine. Nuclear fission splits atoms to make heat to boil water. Nuclear fusion will force heavy isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) to fuse into helium-3 atoms and create even more heat – to boil water to make steam to drive turbines to make electricity.

Related: 6 great Australian train trips

If you looked only at the end process in most thermal power plants – coal, diesel, nuclear fission or even nuclear fusion – you would see the old technology of steam taken as far as it can be taken.

The steam turbines driving the large electrical alternators which produce 60 per cent of the world’s electricity are things of beauty. Hundreds of years of metallurgical technology, design and intricate manufacturing has all but perfected the steam turbine.

Will we keep using steam? New technologies produce electricity without using steam at all. Solar panels rely on incoming photons hitting electrons in silicon and creating a charge, while wind turbines operate like steam turbines except with wind blowing the turbine, not steam. Some forms of energy storage, such as pumped hydro, use turbines but for liquid water, not steam, while batteries use no steam at all.

These technologies are rapidly becoming important sources of energy and storage. But steam isn’t going away. If we use thermal power plants, we’ll likely still be using steam.

Why can’t we just convert heat to electricity?

You might wonder why we need so many steps. Why can’t we convert heat directly to electricity?

It is possible. Thermo-electric devices are already in use in satellites and space probes.

Built from special alloys such as lead-tellurium, these devices rely on a temperature gap between hot and cold junctions between these materials. The greater the temperature difference, the greater the voltage they can generate.

The reason these devices aren’t everywhere is they only produce direct current (DC) at low voltages and are between 16–22 per cent efficient at converting heat to electricity. By contrast, state-of-the-art thermal power plants are up to 46 per cent efficient.

If we wanted to run a society on these heat-conversion engines, we’d need large arrays of these devices to produce high enough DC current and then use inverters and transformers to convert it to the alternating current we’re used to. So while you might avoid steam, you end up having to add new conversions to make the electricity useful.

Related: ‘A year of opposites’: Australia’s 2023 environment scorecard details mixed results

There are other ways to turn heat into electricity. High-temperature solid-oxide fuel cells have been under development for decades. These run hot, at between 500–1,000°C, and can burn hydrogen or methanol (without an actual flame) to produce DC electricity.

These fuel cells are up to 60 per cent efficient and potentially even higher. While promising, these fuel cells are not yet ready for prime time. They have expensive catalysts and short lifespans due to the intense heat. But progress is being made.

Until technologies like these mature, we’re stuck with steam as a way to convert heat to electricity. That’s not so bad – steam works.

When you see a steam locomotive rattle past, you might think it’s a quaint technology of the past. But our civilisation still relies very heavily on steam. If fusion power arrives, steam will help power the future too. The Steam Age never really ended.

Andreas Helwig, Associate Professor, Electro-Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 355814 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/saving-wildlife-against-cane-toads/ Wed, 10 Apr 2024 00:57:07 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355745 Australia can claim more than its fair share of environmental blunders, but the introduction of cane toads (Rhinella marina) in 1935 surely ranks as one of the worst.

The post Teaching toads: how we can save native species from cane toads appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The toads were imported from Hawaii and released in Queensland, purportedly to manage pest beetles in sugar cane crops. The toads failed to control the pests and instead spread westwards at an ever-increasing pace. They are expected to reach Broome on Western Australia’s coast within a few years.

Along the way, cane toads have created havoc. Any predator that tries to eat an adult cane toad is likely to die a quick and painful death. In particular, monitor lizards – once abundant across the Australian tropics – have virtually been wiped out.

Cane toads have so far proven unstoppable. But research suggests even if we can’t eradicate the toads, we may still be able to reduce the damage they cause. By exposing native animals to less toxic baby cane toads, we can teach them not to eat the deadly adults.

‘Teacher toads’

Many threats imperilling ecosystems worldwide are virtually impossible to eradicate. In some cases, the only way to reduce the impacts of such invaders may be to build the resilience of native species.

This can be achieved through a method known as “conditioned taste aversion” – a learned association between the taste of a particular food and illness. One approach involves exposing native predators to small individuals of a toxic prey type, in the hope the predator will fall ill but not die, and learn to avoid eating that species in future.

Our previous lab and field research provided encouraging results. It suggested if we expose wild predators to small, non-lethal cane toads they learnt to delete cane toads from their diets, increasing their chance of survival after the larger toads invade.

Related: Toad sausages are saving our quolls

We wanted to test this approach at a bigger scale – in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia – to help protect yellow-spotted monitors (a type of goanna). Across Australia’s tropics, many populations of this species have declined more than 90 per cent due to ingestion of cane toads.

The loss has affected the entire food web. Smaller predators have become more abundant and have access to more food, which means they can have larger impacts on prey species.

As well as their ecological role, yellow-spotted monitors are also an important cultural species and traditional food source for Indigenous people.

Our project set out to teach wild yellow-spotted monitors to leave the toxic amphibian alone, by exposing them to “teacher toads”: young individuals less poisonous than adult toads.

The results were clear

Rolling out a conservation strategy in an area as huge and rugged as the Kimberly wilderness is no easy task. To take on this challenge, we assembled a coalition of stakeholders including researchers, wildlife management agencies, non-government organisations, private landowners and Indigenous groups.

We worked with the Bunuba Rangers and the WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions. First, we captured adult female toads that were about to lay their eggs. Once the eggs were laid we transported them, or the tadpoles, to places we knew would be invaded by the toads within a few months.

Related: Swamphens have learnt how to make a meal of cane toads

It might seem unusual to release many thousands of baby pest toads into the environment. But we knew vast numbers of adult toads would soon reach the area anyway. And importantly, we didn’t add any more cane toads into the landscape – we took female toads that were about to lay their eggs from one place, and released those eggs and babies into another place not too far away.

To monitor goanna populations, we used trail cameras set up to record any animal that approached our bait – a punctured tin of sardines. Goannas are strongly attracted to that smelly stimulus, so the method worked well. It also allowed us to work out how many goannas lived in each site before toads arrived.

The results of our intervention were clear. In three sites where we deployed our “teacher toads”, goannas remained abundant even after toads invaded. But in four nearby sites where goannas were equally abundant beforehand, their numbers plummeted.

Lessons for the future

It will never be possible to deploy “teacher toads” across all of tropical Australia. But our results suggest strategic use of this method can help maintain pockets with healthy predator populations. Over time, the offspring of those survivors may repopulate other areas.

We’re optimistic that even a single deployment of baby toads may have long-term effects. That’s because once adult cane toads invade an area and begin breeding, it creates plenty of baby toads to “train” the next generation of goannas, without us having to keep adding more toads to the system.

Related: Baby cane toads to teach goannas important lesson

Our study is a good example of bringing research results through to actual on-ground management. It also shows the benefits of academics working with Indigenous communities and government authorities to achieve real outcomes for wildlife conservation.

We have also demonstrated the promise of our technique for conservation challenges globally. If we can’t eliminate a threat to native wildlife, we might at least teach individual animals how to deal with it.

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Georgia Ward-Fear, Post doctoral fellow and Conservation Ecologist , Macquarie University and Rick Shine, Professor in Evolutionary Biology, Macquarie University

The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable contribution of the Bunuba Rangers to the research underpinning this article.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Defining Moments in Australian History: Introduction of cane toads

The post Teaching toads: how we can save native species from cane toads appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355745 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/49-new-galaxies/ Mon, 08 Apr 2024 07:12:45 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355679 Stars are born from huge clouds of mostly hydrogen gas floating in space.

The post Searching the stars: how scientists discovered 49 unknown galaxies appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Astronomers like me study this gas because it helps us understand how stars and galaxies form and grow.

Hydrogen gas gives off a faint glow that is invisible to human eyes but can be observed with a telescope tuned to detect radio waves.

Recently, my colleagues and I were using a telescope like this – a radio telescope called MeerKAT, in South Africa – to look for hydrogen gas in a particular galaxy. We were only observing for less than three hours, which is quite a short amount of time since the hydrogen glow is so faint.

When we looked at the results, we were in for a huge surprise. Instead of discovering hydrogen gas in the galaxy we aimed at, we spotted it in no less than 49 previously unknown galaxies. Our findings are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Gas in galaxies

The giant clouds of gas in which stars are born are called nebulae. When stars eventually die, they expel their gas into their surrounding environment, where it eventually cools and forms new nebulae.

Galaxies are like huge factories where the life cycle of stars repeats itself over and over. To properly understand galaxies and how they grow and evolve, astronomers need to consider both the stars and the gas making up the galaxy.

One thing we are particularly interested in is “merger events”, when two galaxies collide and merge into a single, larger galaxy. These events can also impact the gas, and kickstart star formation.

Studying gas can often help us understand a galaxy’s history. Gas often extends far further out than the stars in galaxies.

When we see trails of disturbed gas, it is a classic clue that a recent galaxy merger or interaction has occurred.

But we don’t see galactic gas easily with optical telescopes. Thankfully, radio telescopes are a great tool for finding hydrogen gas.

The MeerKAT radio telescope

The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa recently celebrated its fifth birthday. It is one of the “pathfinder” telescopes for the much larger Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a project under construction in South Africa and Australia.

MeerKAT has already achieved some great results, from detecting giant radio galaxies to studying the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

There are large survey projects underway with MeerKAT to study the star-forming hydrogen gas in galaxies. These include the MIGHTEE-HI and LADUMA surveys, the latter of which will use MeerKAT for more than 3,000 hours searching one part of the sky for hydrogen gas in very distant galaxies. These surveys are specifically focused on finding hydrogen gas and are carefully planned and carried out with that goal in mind.

Related: A puzzle in the infant universe

But that’s not the only way MeerKAT can be used. Astronomers can also pitch ideas for “open time” observations to tackle other science questions or goals.

That’s how this discovery came about. I was hoping to detect hydrogen gas in one specific galaxy with MeerKAT, as it is the most sensitive telescope for these studies.

We did not find hydrogen gas in that galaxy, which was fine. We astronomers don’t always find what we are looking for.

But when I inspected the MeerKAT data, I spotted some gas located away from the target galaxy. So we investigated further.

By using techniques developed for the larger MeerKAT science surveys such as LADUMA, we found a lot more gas. In total, we had 49 detections.

Meet the 49ers

Each detection of the gas in these galaxies was brand new. In little more than two hours of observing time, MeerKAT had revealed several collections of neighbouring galaxies.

Some of these neighbours are even interacting with each other, as their gas content shows. This was not at all obvious from just looking at the optical images of their stars.

In one case, a galaxy is stealing gas from two companion galaxies, and using it to fuel its own star formation.

I’ve informally nicknamed this collection of galaxies the 49ers, a reference to the miners of the 1849 California gold rush.

While MeerKAT took the observations containing the 49 gold nuggets in just a couple of hours, winnowing them out required several other tools. These included the ilifu cloud supercomputer, where we reduced the MeerKAT observations (“data reduction” is a kind of pre-processing that makes the raw observations useful) and a data visualisation tool called CARTA which we used for the initial discovery of the 49 new galaxies.

We also examined our data with iDaVIE-v, a virtual reality software for viewing astronomical datasets in 3D. This software has already been used for new discoveries such as polar ring galaxies.

More gold nuggets to be found

Finding 49 new galaxies in such a short amount of observation time is quite unusual, even with a telescope as powerful as MeerKAT. However, we know there are more galaxies waiting to be found in upcoming and existing MeerKAT observations.

In some other recent work, our team found traces of gas in more than 80 galaxies (most brand new) across three separate MeerKAT observations. Each of these observations was originally focused on a single galaxy, like the “open time” observation in which we found the 49ers.

What will we find next? We don’t know, but with MeerKAT – and eventually its more powerful successor, the SKA telescope – we’re confident astronomers will turn up plenty more pieces of gold.

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Marcin Glowacki, Research Associate, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Searching the stars: how scientists discovered 49 unknown galaxies appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355679 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/southern-ocean-cleanest-air/ Mon, 08 Apr 2024 04:38:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355648 The Southern Ocean is renowned for having the cleanest air on Earth. But the precise reasons why have remained a mystery, until now.

The post Honeycomb clouds give the Southern Ocean the Earth’s sweetest air appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> There’s more to it than just a lack of human activity. Yes, there are fewer people down there using industrial chemicals and burning fossil fuels. But there are natural sources of fine particles too, such as salt from sea spray or dust whipped up by the wind.

Regardless of origin, fine solid particles or liquid droplets suspended in air are known as “aerosols”. We consider clean air to have low levels of aerosols, without discriminating between natural or industrial sources.

Our recent research discovered clouds and rain play a crucial role in scrubbing the atmosphere clean.

Related: An ocean like no other: the Southern Ocean’s ecological richness and significance for global climate

Understanding the role of clouds and rain

Aerosol levels over the Southern Ocean are influenced by a range of factors. These include the amount of salt spray and seasonal variation in the growth of tiny plant-like organisms called phytoplankton, which are a source of airborne sulphate particles.

Fewer sulphates are produced during winter, which is when the air over the Southern Ocean is most pristine.

But that’s not the full story. The Southern Ocean is also the cloudiest place on Earth. It experiences short-lived, sporadic showers like nowhere else. We wanted to understand the role of clouds and rain in cleaning the air.

The biggest barrier to understanding these processes has always been the lack of high-quality observations of clouds, rainfall and aerosols in this poorly observed region of the world.

Thankfully, a new generation of satellites allows us to study images of clouds in unprecedented detail. We developed a computer program to recognise different cloud patterns over a vast area of the Southern Ocean.

In particular we were on the lookout for distinctive honeycomb-shaped patterns in the cloud field. These honeycomb-like clouds are of great interest because they have a major role in regulating the climate.

When the honeycomb cell is filled with cloud or “closed” it is whiter and brighter, reflecting more sunlight back to space. So these clouds help keep the Earth cool.

Empty or “open” honeycomb cells, on the other hand, let more sunlight in.

These intricacies remain a source of error in modelling the Earth’s climate because they are not being properly included. It’s important to get the balance of open and closed cells right, or the results can be way off.

Whether the honeycomb cells are open or closed also relates to the amount of rainfall they can produce.

The cells are big enough to be seen from space, around 40-60km in diameter. So we can study them using satellite images.

Our research is particularly timely given this month’s launch of a cloud and precipitation experiment at Kennaook/Cape Grim in Tasmania. It aims to get higher resolution data on clouds, rain and sunlight.

Scrubbing aerosols out of the sky

We compared the honeycomb cloud patterns with measurements of aerosols from the kennaook/Cape Grim observatory and also with the Bureau of Meteorology’s rainfall observations from a nearby rain gauge.

Our results showed days with the cleanest air were associated with the presence of open honeycomb cloud. We think this is because these clouds generate sporadic but intense rain showers, which seem to “wash” the aerosol particles out of the air.

It’s somewhat counter-intuitive, but it turns out the open cells contain more moisture and produce more rain than the fluffy white closed cells filled with cloud. We found the open honeycomb clouds produce six times as much rain as the closed ones.

So what looks like less cloudy weather by satellite actually triggers the most effective rain showers for washing the aerosols out. Whereas the filled or closed honeycomb pattern, which looks cloudier, is less effective. That was one of the more surprising aspects of our findings.

We found the empty honeycombs to be far more common during the winter months, when the air is cleanest.

We also wanted to know what makes cloud fields look the way they do. Our analysis suggests large-scale weather systems control the pattern of the cloud field. As unruly storms track across the Southern Ocean, they produce these open and closed cells.

Fresh air and better climate models

Our research has added a new piece to the puzzle of why the Southern Ocean has the world’s cleanest air. Rainfall is the key, especially rain from these clear, open honeycomb cell-type clouds. We were first to discover they are truly responsible for cleaning up all the air flowing over the Southern Ocean.

These honeycomb patterns are also found in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific regions during winter. So our work will also help explain how these clouds remove aerosols including dust and pollution in these locations. And our findings will help improve climate models, enabling more accurate predictions.

Rain scrubs the aerosols out of the sky in much the same way as a washing machine acts to clean clothes.

After the cold front comes through, the air is clean. If you’re wintering on the south coast of Australia, you can breathe in the benefits as this fresh air comes in off the Southern Ocean.

Related: Where there’s upwelling, there’s whales

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The author would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of CSIRO, ANSTO and the Bureau of Meteorology to this research.

Tahereh Alinejadtabrizi, PhD student, Monash University; Steven Siems, Professor in Cloud Microphysics, Monash University, and Yi Huang, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Honeycomb clouds give the Southern Ocean the Earth’s sweetest air appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355648 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2024/04/daylight-saving/ Sat, 06 Apr 2024 04:54:13 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355604 Daylight saving has 80 per cent support in Australia and a majority in every state.

The post Why (most) Aussies love daylight saving appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Two out of three Australians will “fall back” an hour as daylight saving ends for the season.

Like clockwork, countless opinion pieces will emerge in the media. Many will argue that daylight saving is pointless, outdated or even unhealthy, and we need to get rid of it. Others propose ditching the biannual time change for “permanent” daylight saving, which would extend winter evenings in exchange for darker winter mornings.

In sharp contrast to what many sensationalised reports and opinions might suggest, my research results indicate the vast majority of Australians – 80 per cent – support daylight saving.

A representative survey of more than 1,100 people found majority support, even in Queensland and Western Australia. Furthermore, this is true across occupations, states, income levels, household status, employment status and political affiliation.

That said, there were some differences between those who support daylight saving and those who do not.

So who typically supports daylight saving?

Supporters of daylight saving are on average six years younger that its opponents. Supporters of daylight saving are more likely to be female, higher-income, urban and employed full-time. Those against it are more often male, lower-middle-income, rural, retired or employed casually, and born in Australia.

Support for daylight saving is strongest among Australian Greens and Liberal Party voters.

Supporters of daylight saving also tend to live farther south, where the difference between summertime and wintertime daylight hours is greater.

Occupation was also important. Those who work outdoors – such as labourers, tradespeople and technicians – are often less supportive than their white-collar counterparts, who most often work indoors.

Why do we have daylight saving?

A Kiwi entomologist named George Hudson is widely credited with creating daylight saving. His motivation? So he could collect insects later into the evening.

The basic premise for daylight saving is that afternoon daylight is more useful than early morning daylight, so we “borrow” an hour. In the winter, we return the hour to the morning, so we can wake up closer to dawn.

Before the Industrial Revolution, time and time zones were not universally observed, as agrarian work could be adjusted to sunrise and sunset times.

Tomorrow the rest of Australia’s eastern states switch over to daylight saving time and Queenslanders will once again miss-out on the economic and lifestyle benefits. pic.twitter.com/egiM85bwds

— Adrian Schrinner (@bne_lordmayor) October 1, 2022

Nowadays, clock time is essential to meet the demands of our busy schedules. We need standardised school hours, shop hours and working hours. The implication of this, though, is that a nine-to-five job gives someone in Brisbane, for example, three hours of daylight before work, but only an hour afterwards.

Could we just wake up earlier? Sure, but shops are closed in the mornings and most workers cannot simply knock off at 2pm to enjoy the rest of their afternoon. In fact, golf clubs are some of the biggest proponents of daylight saving.

So, although daylight saving may seem anachronistic, it appears to be the most palatable solution for adjusting to seasonal changes in day length.

Confusing time zones are a problem

Part of the debate stems from the fact that Australia has a unique time-zone structure. Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia and ACT have observed daylight saving since 1971, but it gets much more complicated than this.

In the winter, Australian states and territories observe three time zones. In the summer, this increases to five. When we include territorial dependencies such as Norfolk and Christmas Islands, Australia observes 10 time zones in the summertime, or 11 if you count Eucla’s local time zone.

To put this into perspective, all of China operates on a single time zone.

For many Australians, the status quo works, because it aligns “social noon” with solar noon. My survey results confirm the middle of respondents’ waking day – referred to as “social noon” – was 2.24pm on weekdays and 3.07pm on weekends. That’s more than three hours after solar noon (when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky) without daylight saving.

The following maps show current time zones in summer and winter, and the proposed alternatives discussed below. Use the slider to reveal the alternatives.

How could daylight saving be improved?

There have been various proposals to reconfigure Australia’s time zone regime.

“Permanent daylight saving” is an idea that would realign Australia’s current time zones so as to obviate the need for the biannual change. This would permanently shift Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne an hour or half-hour forward.

Many similar proposals have been floated in both the United States and Europe, most notably the US Sunshine Protection Act.

Another idea is to eliminate time zones entirely. As Johns Hopkins’ Steve Hanke and Dick Henry have proposed, the entire world would run on Greenwich Mean Time – or, more precisely, Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC) – and hours would be locally adjusted. As it stands, there are 38 “UTC offsets” worldwide – a rough proxy for the number of time zones.

Queensland and Western Australia are perhaps the most significant battlegrounds in Australia’s daylight-saving debate. Both states cover vast areas, incorporating tropical and temperate regions. Brisbane, for instance, is closer to Melbourne in Victoria than to Cairns in Far North Queensland.

In both states, there’s a geographic divide, with the majority of daylight-saving supporters in and around the state capitals, Brisbane and Perth, in the south. Though both states have held referendums on the issue, it has been 15 years since Western Australians have had a say and 32 years since Queenslanders have.

If each state held another referendum today, survey responses suggest both would find widespread support. Politicians may need to think carefully, though, about how to address each state’s internal divisions.

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Thomas Sigler, Associate Professor of Human Geography, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Why (most) Aussies love daylight saving appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355604 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/michael-smith-flight-around-australia-blog/ Sat, 06 Apr 2024 00:58:24 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355448 Michael Smith is embarking on a high-flying marathon - recreating the legendary journey that became part of Australia's avaiation history a century ago.

The post Around Australia Air Centenary: Michael Smith’s solo circumnavigation of the country appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 100 years ago, the first circumnavigation of Australia by aeroplane took place. Wing Commander James Goble and Flight Lieutenant McIntyre set off from Port Phillip Bay, Victoria on 6 April 1924. It was a journey that would take them 44 days to complete, and was not without its fair share of strife – including terrible weather and constant engine trouble – but it would see the flight dubbed by media at the time as “the finest in the history of aviation”.

To mark the 100th anniversary of this milestone, 2016 Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year Michael Smith is retracing the path, matching date-for-date the journey of Goble and McIntyre. We’ll be following Mike on his Society-sponsored expedition. You can watch live feeds aboard Michael’s custom-built amphibious two-seater, single-engine Searey aircraft Southern Sun on his YouTube channel whenever he’s in flight, and follow along below on our blog.

Wednesday 24 April

For those in Darwin who are looking to meet Michael, tomorrow afternoon is your chance to catch up with him and check out the Southern Sun! Take a look at his Instagram post below for more details.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daniel Bolton (@thatmallardguy)

Tuesday 23 April 2024

Michael’s moving on today to the Torres Strait’s Elcho Island! Check out some of the shots he captured from the air of this unspoilt spot.

Sunday 21 April 2024

Visiting Vanderlin Island, the Southern Sun makes a splash landing as Michael makes a planned stop to visit family there.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Smith (@southernsunjourney)

Saturday 20 April 2024

Taking some well-earned time out of the sky, Michael sets about exploring the stunning Torres Strait Islands.

Michael has arrived in the Torres Strait Islands, and he’s filed a video diary entry from Horn Island – check it out below.

Wednesday 17 April 2024

Michael has made it onto live TV! Check out his cross into the Today Show on Channel Nine from Cooktown, QLD.

Monday 15 April 2024

The latest video diary entry from Michael – this time, he’s filing from Cooktown in QLD where he’s spending a couple of nights to replicate the original flight around Australia.

Sunday 14 April 2024

An update on Michael’s journey from WIN News in Townsville!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Smith (@southernsunjourney)

Saturday 13 April 2024

Blue skies for Michael on a no-fly day in Townsville! Check out what he got up to on his Facebook post below.

Thursday 11 April 2024

Michael isn’t the only one circumnavigating Australia to mark 100 years since the feat was first accomplished. While above Townsville, the Southern Sun was joined by two RAAF EA-18 Growlers from 6 Squadron!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Smith (@southernsunjourney)

Check out this 360° video of the moment that allows you to move the camera around and watch the action from all angles!

Earlier in the day, tracking up the Queensland coast above Bowen en route to Townsville, Michael talks us through the Southern Sun’s latest leg. Make sure you keep up-to-date on his YouTube channel for live streams!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Smith (@southernsunjourney)

Tuesday 9 April 2024

Michael has filed his first video diary entry – watch now to see how he’s feeling after his first few days in the air (with his fair share of trouble)!

Monday 8 April 2024

The Southern Sun has made the news! Check out this report from 7NEWS Gold Coast as Michael made a brief stopover in Southport today.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Smith (@southernsunjourney)

Sunday 7 April 2024

Michael scored a spectacular bird’s eye view of Sydney Harbour late today as he made up time to get back on schedule – spending a night on the Myall Lake in the Mid North Coast region about 250km north of Sydney.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Smith (@southernsunjourney)

The wet weather affecting the Australian east coast this weekend also wreaks havoc on Michael’s trip – the wind and rain leading to some minor changes to plans as he tracks north, keeping a close eye on his radar.

DAY 2: Airborne (finally) from Bairnsdale, waved to my Mum on Raymond Island, now tracking the 90 mile beach, just…

Posted by Southern Sun on Saturday 6 April 2024

Saturday 6 April 2024

The big day has arrived! Michael was farewelled from RAAF Base Point Cook in Melbourne’s south-west by a small gathering of friends and family as he set out to recreate the first flight around Australia, exactly 100 years to the day from the historical event.

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Michael Smith’s departure from RAAF Base Point Cook. Image Credit: Michael Currie, RAAF

Michael was presented with an RAAF ensign to carry with him for the journey by Wing Commander Robert Gill, Commanding Officer of 21 Squadron.

After his departure from RAAF Base Point Cook, Michael and the Southern Sun make their way along the Victorian coast towards Corner Inlet – watch the journey as it happened in the video below.

The post Around Australia Air Centenary: Michael Smith’s solo circumnavigation of the country appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355448 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/flying-around-australia-to-recreate-flight-100-years-ago/ Fri, 05 Apr 2024 01:13:43 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355445 Award-winning flyer Michael Smith will recreate a significant milestone in Australia’s aviation history with a solo circumnavigation of the continent.

The post Around the nation in 44 days appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Trailblazing aviator Michael Smith won the coveted Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year medallion in 2016 for his round-the-world solo flight in a custom-built seaplane.

Enchanted by the luxury, glamour and romance of the Qantas flying boats of the 1930s, Michael hoped to retrace the original “kangaroo route” between Australia and England as closely as possible. He achieved his goal in Southern Sun, his custom-built amphibious two-seater, single-engine Searey aircraft that can touch down on land or water; its sleek design carrying more than a nod to those elegant flying forebears from the Art Deco era.

Once Michael had arrived safely in England, he resolved to continue onwards and complete a solo circumnavigation of the planet. “I’d made it,” he later wrote in Australian Geographic. “Finally after 60 days in the cramped cockpit, my journey was over. Or so I thought. While I planned ways to send my plane home, I yearned to continue. ‘Why not make it a world circumnavigation’ my wife asked. Suddenly I had a change of plan.”

Related: Flying far: the largely forgotten 1919 England to Australia Air Race

Michael successfully navigated not just the next hemisphere of the planet, but the mountains of paperwork and permissions to be able to transit numerous airspace jurisdictions. He overflew US aircraft carrier USS Intrepid to land on the Hudson River in New York among many exploits along an aerial route that took him north along the full length of the Mississippi River to Alaska including a month trapped by bad weather in the Aleutian Islands.

He crossed to Russia and came south through Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia to arrive home on 14 November 2015. What started out as a two-month solo expedition turned into a seven-month odyssey with 80 stops and 480 flying hours through 25 countries.

Almost a decade later and Michael is re-enacting another historic period in Australian aviation during a new airborne adventure. This year marks the centenary of the first aerial circumnavigation of Australia. It was a tough undertaking back then and remains so today. In 1924, it was the Royal Australian Airforce, established in 1921 and one of the first such forces in the world, which conducted the flight.

Wing Commander James Goble and Flight Lieutenant Ivor McIntyre were at the controls of a primitive and fragile aircraft, the Fairey Mk IIID seaplane, which they navigated through remote, inhospitable terrain and unpredictable weather. They covered a distance of approximately 13,600km in a journey that began at Point Cook in Victoria on 6 April and finished at St Kilda Beach in front of 10,000 spectators 44 days later on 19 May 1924. They were awarded the 1924 Britannia Trophy.

During April and May this year, Michael will retrace this historic journey in his beloved Southern Sun on an Australian Geographic Society-sponsored expedition. The original route and exact dates will be followed as closely as possible to properly honour the anniversary and the achievement. While the technology has come a long way, the unpredictability of the weather and sea conditions remains much the same.

“Like a lot of pilots, I love going on an adventure,” says Michael. “I particularly enjoy historical re-enactment flights as it gives a purpose for my mission, and in reflecting upon how far we’ve come in 100 years, we also learn about the positive, life-changing effects of aviation. No other mechanical advancement has combated the tyranny of distance in Australia so effectively.

“It’s both fun and entertaining, and also a pertinent reminder, when we constantly face pressures on airport infrastructure around the country, we should remember that 100 years ago it was only possible to complete a circumnavigation by seaplane owing to the lack of airports. This landmark flight (in 1924) surveyed locations for landing fields, and soon after regular planes could crisscross the country, opening it up for health, agriculture, business and recreation.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Smith (@southernsunjourney)

Weather permitting, Michael will depart from Point Cook in Victoria on Saturday 6 April and arrive in Sydney’s Rose Bay later that day. When not attempting epic recreations of historic flights, Michael owns and operates a series of heritage cinemas including the historic Sun Theatre, a stunning art deco cinema in Yarraville in Melbourne which he has lovingly restored from a near-shell to its current glory.

You can follow Michael’s progress through the blog on our website and social channels, and also on his own website where you can see a map of the proposed route and perhaps catch up with him along the way.

The post Around the nation in 44 days appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355445 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/who-invented-the-flat-white/ Thu, 04 Apr 2024 05:14:09 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355444 Australia’s coffee culture – a source of great national pride – is usually associated with the wave of Greek and Italian migrants who settled in Melbourne and Sydney following the second world war. But it was very likely in regional Queensland that one of Australia’s favourite brews first took root.

The post Who invented the flat white? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> This is the story of how Italian sugar growers in the Sunshine State are said to have inspired the “invention” of the flat white – a drink that would go on to become a global sensation.

Tracing this history shows a different side to how European tastes were imported to Australia beyond the capital cities. It also reminds us big trends can come from small towns, and that multicultural influence can be easily taken for granted in something as basic as your daily cup of coffee.

The Little Italy of Northern Queensland

Popular conceptions of Italian migrants in Australia are often focused on the wave of migration to the capital cities in the 1950s, overlooking the many migrants who were already settled in regional areas.

In 1891, immigration agent and businessman Chiaffredo Venerano Fraire organised a scheme to recruit cane cutters on behalf of the Queensland government. More than 300 Italians came to the region as a result, prompting chain migration and concerns about their ability to assimilate.

North Queensland became an even more popular destination in the 1920s, after the United States introduced quotas for Italian migrants. By 1925, Italians owned 44 per cent of the sugar farms in the Herbert River area.

These Italian communities expanded further after WWII, as did their cultural influence. The Australian Italian festival, established in 1995 by the Italian community in Ingham and Hinchinbrook shire, celebrates and preserves the legacy of Italian culture in the district.

What’s in a name?

There are many claims regarding the origin of the flat white, from England to New Zealand. But the best case for coining the term comes from Sydney cafe owner Alan Preston, who details his reasoning extensively online. While the origin debate rages on, Preston’s argument has the most solid historical evidence to back it.

The exact phrase “flat white” appeared on the coffee menu in Preston’s cafe, Moors Espresso Bar, in 1985 in Sydney’s Chinatown area. Preston claims he was the first to use the term on a menu, and has documented this use through photographs.

He says he brought this style of espresso-based drink to Sydney from Far North Queensland, where he’s originally from. The drink was supposedly popular in cafes in sugar-producing towns as it catered to the tastes of wealthy Italian growers and their families.

According to Preston, these cafes had the best espresso machines available at the time, imported from Italy. There would be five coffee options on offer. The black options were the short black and long black, and the white options were the cappuccino, Vienna and the “flat”. On his own menu, Preston changed the last one to “flat white” as a more efficient moniker.

After Moors Espresso Bar, Preston opened five more cafes with flat whites on the menu, popularising the name and style. In 2015, global coffee giant Starbucks added the flat white to its menu – a testament to its universality. Google is a fan too, and made the flat white its doodle of the day on March 11 2024.

Why is the flat white so popular?

The flat white’s widespread appeal comes down to its balance of textured (steamed) milk and espresso. The sign of a quality espresso is in its “crema”, the caramel-coloured emulsion of hot water and coffee bean oils.

A flat white blends the natural crema of an espresso shot with a thin layer of microfoam at the cup’s surface. Without the thicker foam of a latte or cappuccino, or the distraction of chocolate sprinkled on top, the flat white delivers a stronger coffee flavour with a unified creamy texture.

Preston says a properly prepared flat white should leave “tide marks” on the sides of the cup, showing the level go down with each sip.

Regional varieties

Perth’s unique “long mac topped up” and the enigmatic Melbourne “magic” are two more examples of how regional influences have given rise to different coffee preferences across Australia.

The West Coast’s long mac topped up has a milk to coffee ratio of 1:4 in a 180ml serving. It’s like a strong flat white where the coffee is no longer just “stained” by the milk (but somehow “double-shot flat white in a smaller cup” doesn’t roll off the tongue).

Similarly, the Melbourne magic is made with a double ristretto (a shorter, more robust espresso shot) and textured milk, and served in a 148ml (5 oz) cup. So it’s an even stronger flat white, in a smaller cup. The name “magic” may not reveal anything about the contents, but the proof is in the drinking.

Déjà brew

The presence of coffee in Australia is as old as the First Fleet, wherein plants imported from Rio de Janeiro were grown on Norfolk Island in 1788. Reflecting on its long and nuanced history reminds us of the contributions multiculturalism has made to the nation, and why new iterations of old things ought to be welcomed.

The story of the flat white, along with its regional variations, reflects a dynamic coffee culture that will continues to evolve to cater to new tastes. For now, we can thank the Italian migrants of sugar country.

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Garritt C. Van Dyk, Lecturer in History, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Who invented the flat white? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355444 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/04/study-redefines-understanding-of-all-birds/ Tue, 02 Apr 2024 04:47:06 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355161 After 10 years of work, the largest-ever study of bird genomes has produced a remarkably clear picture of the bird family tree.

The post Perched in the ‘tree of life’: new study redefines understanding of all birds appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Published in the journal Nature, the study shows that most of the modern groups of birds first appeared within 5 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Birds are a large part of our lives, a sign of nature even in cities. They are popular among the general public and well studied by scientists. But placing all of these birds into a family tree has been frustratingly difficult.

By analysing the genomes of more than 360 bird species, the study has identified the fundamental relationships among the major groups of living birds.

The new family tree overturns some previous ideas about bird relationships, while also revealing some new groupings.

Resolving a messy relationship

Previous studies showed the bird family tree has three major branches. The first branch contains the tinamous and ratites, which include flightless birds such as the emu, kiwi and ostrich.

The second branch holds the landfowl and waterfowl – chickens, ducks and so on. All other birds sit on the third branch, known as the Neoaves, which include 95 per cent of bird species.

The Neoaves branch includes ten groups of birds. Most of these are what biologists have named the “Magnificent Seven”: landbirds, waterbirds, tropicbirds, cuckoos, nightjars, doves and flamingos. The other three groups are known as the “orphans” and include the shorebirds, cranes and hoatzin, a species from South America.

The relationships among these ten groups, especially the orphans, have been incredibly difficult to resolve. The genome study shows a resolution is within reach.

Meet the ‘Elementaves’

Our genome study revealed a new grouping of birds we have named “Elementaves”. With a name inspired by the four ancient elements of earth, air, water and fire, this group includes birds well adapted for success on land, in the sky and in the water. Some of the birds have names relating to the sun, representing the element of fire. The Elementaves group includes hummingbirds, shorebirds, cranes, penguins and pelicans.

Our study also confirms a close relationship between two of the most familiar groups of birds in Australia, the passerines (songbirds and relatives) and parrots. These popular birds dominate the Australian Bird of the Year polls.

Songbirds make up nearly 50 per cent of all bird species and include birds like magpies, finches, honeyeaters and fairywrens. They had their humble beginnings in Australia about 50 million years ago, then spread across the globe to become the most successful group of birds.

Related: Building a future for our birds: what we are doing right, and wrong

When did birds really emerge?

A further goal of our study was to place a timescale on the bird family tree. We did this by modelling the evolution of genomes using a tool known as the “molecular clock”. By drawing on information from nearly 200 fossils, we were able to constrain the ages of some of the branches in the bird family tree.

Our study shows all living birds share an ancestor that lived just over 90 million years ago. But most groups of modern birds emerged about 25 million years later, within a small window of just a few million years after the end of the Cretaceous period around 66 million years ago.

This coincides with the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other organisms caused by an asteroid striking Earth. So it seems birds made the most of the opportunities that became available after these other dominant life forms were wiped out.

One mystery remains

The genome study is the product of nearly a decade of research, conducted as part of the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project. The ultimate goal of this project is to sequence the genomes of all 10,000 living bird species.

The current phase of the project focused on including species from every major group, or family, of birds. The study of these 363 genomes was a truly international effort led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, University of California San Diego and Zhejiang University in China.

Even with such a huge amount of genome data, one branch of the bird family tree remains a mystery. Our analysis could not confidently determine the relationships of one of the orphans, the hoatzin. Found in South America, the hoatzin is a highly distinctive bird and the sole survivor of its lineage.

Our study shows that some relationships in the tree of life can only be determined using huge amounts of genome data. But our study also demonstrates the power of studying genomes and fossils together to understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth.

Related: Am I a bad birder?

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Jacqueline Nguyen, Scientific Officer in Ornithology, Australian Museum, and ARC DECRA Fellow, Flinders University and Simon Ho, Professor of Molecular Evolution, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 355161 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/electric-car-prices-lower-australia/ Fri, 29 Mar 2024 06:45:27 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355065 The main cost of an electric vehicle (EV) is its battery. The high cost of energy-dense batteries has meant EVs have long been more expensive than their fossil fuel equivalents.

The post Electric cars could soon be cheaper as a battery price war begins appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> But this could change faster than we thought. The world’s largest maker of batteries for electric cars, China’s CATL, claims it will slash the cost of its batteries by up to 50 per cent this year, as a price war kicks off with the second largest maker in China, BYD subsidiary FinDreams.

What’s behind this? After the electric vehicle industry experienced a huge surge in 2022, it has hit headwinds. It ramped up faster than demand, triggering efforts to cut costs.

But the promised price cuts are also a sign of progress. Researchers have made great strides in finding new battery chemistries. CATL and BYD now make EV batteries without any cobalt, an expensive, scarce metal linked to child labor and dangerous mining practices in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Economies of scale and new supplies of lithium make it possible to sell batteries more cheaply. And the world’s largest carmaker, Toyota, is pinning its hopes on solid-state batteries in the hope these energy-dense, all but fireproof batteries will make possible EVs with a range of more than 1,200km per charge.

LITHIUM BATTERY PRICE WAR!

CATL and BYD pushing battery costs of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries down further than considered realistic just a short while ago
(ht @mzjacobson)

– Feb 2023 €110/kWh
– Aug €77
– Oct €64
– Feb 2024 €51
– Soon €40!https://t.co/xRresn7jVf

— AukeHoekstra (@AukeHoekstra) February 25, 2024

How are battery makers cutting costs?

The largest market for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles is China. But demand for EVs here has eased off, dropping from a 96 per cent surge in demand in 2022 to a 36 per cent rise in 2023.

As a result, battery giant CATL has seen its profits fall for the first time in almost two years.

One of the best ways to create more demand is to make your products cheaper. That’s what’s behind the cost-cutting promises from CATL and BYD.

You might wonder how that’s possible. One of the key challenges in shifting to battery-electric cars is where to get the raw materials. The electric future rests on viable supply chains for critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements.

Until recently, the main EV battery chemistry has been built on four of these, lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt. These are also known as NMC batteries.

If you can avoid or minimise the use of expensive or controversial minerals, you can cut costs. That’s why Chinese companies such as CATL have all but monopolised the market on another chemistry, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. These batteries are cheaper, as they have no cobalt. They have other benefits too: a longer usable life and less risk of fire than traditional lithium battery chemistries. The downside is they have lower capacity and voltage.

The recent price cuts come from a deliberate decision to use abundant earth materials such as iron and phosphorus wherever possible.

What about lithium? Prices of lithium carbonate, the salt form of the ultra light silvery-white metal, shot up sixfold between 2020 and 2022 in China before falling last year.

Despite this, battery prices have kept falling – just not by as much as they otherwise would have.

The world’s huge demand for lithium has led to strong growth in supply, as miners scramble to find new sources. CATL, for instance, is spending A$2.1 billion on lithium extraction plants in Bolivia.

Growth in lithium supply is projected to outpace demand by 34 per cent both this year and next, which should help stabilise battery prices.

Battery options are multiplying

China’s battery makers have cornered the market in lithium iron phosphate batteries. But they aren’t the only game in town.

Tesla electric cars have long been powered by batteries from Japan’s Panasonic and South Korea LG. These batteries are built on the older but well established NMC and lithium nickel cobalt aluminate oxide (NCA) chemistries. Even so, the American carmaker is now using CATL’s LFP batteries in its more affordable cars.

The world’s largest carmaker, Toyota, has long been sceptical of lithium-ion batteries and has focused on hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles instead.

But this is changing. Toyota is now focused heavily on making solid-state batteries a reality. These do away with liquid electrolytes to transport electricity in favour of a solid battery. In September last year, the company announced a breakthrough which it claims will enable faster recharging times and a range of 1,200km before recharge. If these claims are true, these batteries would effectively double the range of today’s topline EVs.

In response, China’s battery manufacturers and government are working to catch up with Toyota on solid-state batteries.

Which battery chemistry will win out? It’s too early to say for electric vehicles. But as the green transition continues, it’s likely we’ll need not just one but many options.

After all, the energy needs of a prime mover truck will be different to city runabout EVs. And as electric aircraft go from dream to reality, these will need different batteries again. To get battery-electric aircraft off the ground, you need batteries with a huge power density.

Related: Planes, trains, automobiles: Here’s how electrifying all our transport options will help tackle climate change

The good news? These are engineering challenges which can be overcome. Just last year, CATL announced a pioneering “condensed matter” battery for electric aircraft, with up to three times the energy density of an average electric car battery.

All the while, researchers are pushing the envelope even further. A good electric car might have a battery with an energy density of 150–250 watt-hours per kilogram. But the record in the lab is now over 700 watt-hours/kg.

This is to say nothing of the research going into still other battery chemistries, from sodium-ion to iron-air to liquid metal batteries.

We are, in short, still at the beginning of the battery revolution.

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Muhammad Rizwan Azhar, Lecturer, Edith Cowan University; Waqas Uzair, Research associate, Edith Cowan University, and Yasir Arafat, Senior research associate, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Electric cars could soon be cheaper as a battery price war begins appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355065 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/australias-major-satellite-program/ Thu, 28 Mar 2024 04:15:28 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=355029 The federal minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Madeleine King, signed a A$207 million commitment with the United States to support “Landsat Next”.

The post Out of this world: Australia’s $207 million commitment to space appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Aptly named, this is the next generation of an Earth observation satellite program from which Australia has benefited for over 40 years.

The commitment means we will make a critical contribution to global Earth observation efforts with our cutting-edge data management. In essence, we will be the custodians of data downloaded from new Landsat satellites – a major role.

What is Earth observation?

Earth observation satellites provide the world with more than half of all climate change data – and some of that data can come from nowhere else but space. They also provide over 90 per cent of weather data, which the Bureau of Meteorology uses to give us our daily forecasts.

In Australia, Earth observation data is also critical for supporting agriculture, fisheries, mining, land and water policies, bushfire response, and national security needs. In 2020, the economic benefits of Earth observation data were estimated at over A$2.4 billion.

Furthermore, such data brings immense benefits to First Nations people, particularly in northern Australia. Indigenous rangers use Earth observation data to augment their traditional land and water management practices.

Importantly, Geoscience Australia and CSIRO work closely with the Centre for Appropriate Technology, an Indigenous business in Alice Springs. This business owns a satellite dish that receives data from Landsat and other Earth observation satellites.

Related: GALLERY: Remarkable satellite images of Australia

What is Landsat?

Landsat is a program led by NASA and the US Geological Survey. For more than 50 years it has provided the “longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence”.

This means since 1972 we’ve had continuous data on ice melts, weather and temperature changes, and changes in the planet’s landscapes and freshwater sources.

Australia has been a Landsat beneficiary and partner since the early 1970s. Just earlier this year, emergency services in Queensland facing Cyclone Kirilly depended on Landsat data to help mitigate potential flooding. Geoscience Australia has also used Landsat data gathered over decades to map changes in Australia’s shorelines.

And during the Black Summer megafires of 2019–20, the worst bushfire season New South Wales has ever recorded, Landsat images were critical in predicting where the bushfires would be worst, and assisting in real-time response.

The new agreement places us at the centre of data management for the next generation of Landsat.

What is Landsat Next?

There have been nine Landsat satellites since 1972, of which eight are operational today. Landsat Next will add three more satellites to this, with new capabilities. As a result, we will get more data more often, and at a higher resolution.

Landsat Next will significantly improve image resolution of some of the original satellites. This means, for example, that 40 per cent more detail can be captured for agricultural sowing, irrigation and harvesting needs.

The current Landsat satellites cover 11 spectral bands. These are wavelengths of light captured by satellite sensors, ranging from visible light which we can see with the naked eye to invisible wavelengths like infrared and ultraviolet.

Landsat Next will increase this to up to 26 bands, which makes it possible to track water quality at much greater accuracy. This is helpful, for example, in detecting harmful algal blooms.

Landsat satellites also sense thermal bands. This is a measurement of surface temperatures so we can understand soil health and water levels, and track bushfires.

Landsat Next will improve the resolution of temperature measurements, providing improved climate change data and more accurate information for farmers and sustainable urban planning.

Related: ‘A year of opposites’: Australia’s 2023 environment scorecard details mixed results

Australia is great at satellite data

The new commitment builds on what Australia already does, and is really good at – the ground and data segments of Earth observation satellite systems. In fact, we are a world leader in Earth observation data management.

We have excellent geography for collecting data from the satellites via large satellite dishes in Alice Springs. We also have a longstanding tradition of being the data custodians and stewards for our US and European partners.

The Landsat Next agreement fulfils one aspect of the planned National Space Mission for Earth Observation (NSMEO) which was cancelled last year due to major budget cuts. This was a disappointment to many people in Australia, and to our international partners.

This new commitment to Landsat Next puts in place part of what we were already planning to do through the NSMEO, and will make us a more important partner in global Earth observation infrastructure.

With our unique geography, Australia is a heavy user of Earth observation data, and this agreement means we can be bigger contributors, as well.

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Cassandra Steer, Deputy Director, Institute for Space (InSpace), Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Out of this world: Australia’s $207 million commitment to space appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 355029 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/torres-strait-islanders-predict-eclipses/ Mon, 25 Mar 2024 03:29:20 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354860 It’s eclipse season. The Sun, Earth and Moon are aligned so it’s possible for the Earth and Moon to cast each other into shadow.

The post ‘The ghost has taken the spirit of the Moon’: how Torres Strait Islanders predict eclipses appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> A faint lunar eclipse will occur on March 25, visible at dusk from Australia and eastern Asia, at dawn from western Africa and Europe, and for much of the night from the Americas. Two weeks later, on April 8, a total solar eclipse will sweep across North America.

These events are a good time to think about an infamous incident 520 years ago, in which an eclipse prediction was supposedly used to exploit an Indigenous population. The incident has shaped how we think about astronomy and Indigenous cultures – but the real story is far more complex.

Columbus and the eclipse

In June 1503, on his fourth voyage to the Americas, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and his crew became stranded on Jamaica. They were saved by the Indigenous Taíno people, who gave them food and provisions.

As months passed, tensions grew. Columbus’s crew threatened mutiny, while the Taíno grew frustrated with providing so much for so little in return. By February, the Taíno had reached their breaking point and stopped providing food.

Supposedly, Columbus then consulted an astronomical almanac and discovered a lunar eclipse was forecast for February 29 1504. He took advantage of this knowledge to trick the Taíno, threatening to use his “magic power” to turn the Moon a deep red – “inflamed with wrath” – if they refused to provide supplies.

According to Columbus, this worked and the fearful Taíno continued to supply his crew until relief arrived months later. This incident inspired the idea of the “convenient eclipse”, which has become a familiar trope in works including Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and The Adventures of Tintin (1949).

But is there truth to the trope? How much did Indigenous peoples really know about eclipses?

Merlpal Maru Pathanu

In the Torres Strait, knowledge of the stars is central to culture and identity. Traditionally, special people were chosen for years of intense instruction in the art of star knowledge, which occurred in a secretive place of higher learning called the kwod. They would be initiated as “Zugubau Mabaig”, a western Islander term meaning “star man” – an astronomer.

Mualgal man David Bosun, a talented artist and son of a Zugubau Mabaig, explains that these individuals paid careful attention to all things celestial. They kept constant watch over the stars to inform their Buai (kinship group) when to plant and harvest gardens, hunt and fish, travel and hold ceremonies.

The final stage of Zugubau Mabaig initiation involved a rare celestial event. Initiates were required to prove their bravery as well as their mental skill by taking the head of an enemy, particularly a sorcerer. In this way they would absorb that person’s powerful magic.

Headhunting raids occurred immediately after a total lunar eclipse, signalled by the blood red appearance of the Moon. During the eclipse, communities performed a ceremony in which dancers donned a special dhari (headdress) as they systematically chanted the names of all the surrounding islands.

The island named when the Moon emerged from the eclipse was the home of the sorcerers they planned to attack. Women and children sought shelter while the men prepared for war. The ceremony, named Merlpal Maru Pathanu (“the ghost has taken the spirit of the Moon”), was planned well in advance by the Zugubau Mabaig.

How was this done?

Predicting an eclipse

The Moon does not orbit Earth in the same plane Earth orbits the Sun. It’s off by a few degrees. The position of the Moon appears to zigzag across the sky over a 29.5-day lunar month. When it crosses the plane connecting Earth and the Sun, and the three bodies are in a straight line, we see an eclipse.

We know that ancient cultures including the Chinese and Babylonians possessed the ability to predict eclipses, and it is rather difficult to do. How did the Zugubau Mabaig accomplish it?

There are some things they would know. First, lunar eclipses only occur during a full moon, and solar eclipses during a new moon.

Second are the “eclipse seasons”: times when the planes of Earth, Moon and the Sun can intersect to form an eclipse. This happens twice a year. Each season lasts around 35 days, and repeats six months later.

Third is the Saros cycle: eclipses repeat every 223 lunar months (approximately 18 years and 11.3 days).

The details are highly complex. But it’s clear that predicting an eclipse requires careful, long-term observations and keeping detailed records, skills Torres Strait Islander astronomers have long possessed.

Flipping the narrative

The Zugubau Mabaig eclipse forecasts turn a common understanding of the history of science on its head. Indigenous peoples did, in fact, develop the ability to predict eclipses.

Perhaps the real situation is better captured in a short story called El Eclipse (1972), by Honduran writer Augusto Monterroso.

In the story, a Spanish priest is captured by Maya in Guatemala, who opt to sacrifice him. He tries to exploit his knowledge that a solar eclipse will occur that day to trick his captors, but the Maya look at the priest with a sense of incredulity. Two hours later, he meets his fate on the altar during the totality of the eclipse.

As the Sun goes dark and the priest’s blood is spilled, a Maya astronomer recites the dates of all the upcoming eclipses, solar and lunar. The Maya had already predicted them.

The truth behind this story is found in the Dresden Codex, a thousand-year-old book of Maya records that includes tables of eclipse predictions.

Learn more at www.aboriginalastronomy.com.au

Duane Hamacher, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne and David Bosun, Mualgal man, Moa Island, Torres Strait, Indigenous Knowledge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Related: What is a lunar eclipse?

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]]> 354860 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/baby-platypus-nsw-breeding-success/ Thu, 21 Mar 2024 06:34:16 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354719 Less than a year after ten platypuses were released into Sydney’s Royal National Park, scientists and researchers have discovered a juvenile platypus.

The post ‘Happy news’: platypus baby born after successful translocation to NSW habitat appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]>

The female juvenile platypus was captured during a survey assessing the health of the translocated platypuses.

A health assessment shows the platypus is in excellent condition, weighs 850g and is about six months old. Researchers said her age aligns with the end of the platypus breeding season, meaning she would have only recently emerged from her burrow.

Before returning her to the river, researchers assessed her body condition, took samples and fitted her with a microchip for future identification.

UNSW conservation scientist and lead of the Platypus Reintroduction Project, Dr Gilad Bino, said finding the juvenile platypus is a clear sign the reintroduced platypus population is thriving.

“[They’re] adapting well to their environment and contributing to the genetic diversity and resilience of this iconic species,” he said.

“The success of this reintroduction underscores the vital role that targeted conservation actions, such as translocations, rescues, and reintroductions, play in the preservation of the platypus across its range.”

Now she has been identified, the juvenile platypus will be named by the local Indigenous community.

Related: Platypuses thrive in new habitat within Sydney’s Royal National Park 

The return of platypus to the Royal National Park was the first translocation program for platypus in New South Wales and aims to re-establish a self-sustaining and genetically diverse platypus population.

The platypuses’ first months in the field exceeded ecologists’ expectations, with all 10 surviving – and thriving – in their new home.

Ongoing monitoring and tracking have confirmed that the platypuses remain active, with some recently venturing beyond the detection range.

Researchers have not ruled out the possibility there are more juveniles in the Royal National Park, and are planning further reintroductions over the coming years.

The Platypus Reintroduction Project is a multi-organisation initiative collaboration between UNSW, WWF-Australia, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Taronga Conservation Society.

The post ‘Happy news’: platypus baby born after successful translocation to NSW habitat appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 354719 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2024/03/new-fluffy-longhorn-beetle-discovered-in-gold-coast-rainforest/ Wed, 20 Mar 2024 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354607 Meet the new beetle on the block.

The post ‘White and hairy from the camp’: New fluffy longhorn beetle discovered in Gold Coast rainforest appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> ‘White and hairy from the camp’ – that’s the translation of the scientific name given to a new species of longhorn beetle found in the Gold Coast hinterland.

The name makes perfect sense when you know the backstory.

Excastra albopilosa was discovered by James Tweed – a PhD candidate in The University of Queensland’s School of the Environment – while on a camping trip in Lamington National Park.

“I was walking through the campsite at Binna Burra Lodge one morning and something on a lomandra leaf caught my eye,” recalls James, who goes on to explain he initially mistook the beetle for bird droppings!

“To my amazement, I saw the fluffiest, most extraordinary longhorn beetle I had ever seen. Measuring 9.7mm, it was a striking red and black beauty covered in long white hairs.”

When James returned from the trip, he tried to identify the creature, searching through books, scientific papers and online resources and forums, but he could not find a match. In fact, he says, nothing looked even remotely similar.

The next step was an email to the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC) in Canberra, whose experts confirmed the beetle was a completely new species.

Later, after examining the specimen itself, the ANIC team determined it was not only a new species, but a new genus (family of species) as well.

“So we chose the name Excastra for the genus, which is Latin for ‘from the camp’,” explains James, “and for the species name, we decided on albopilosa which translates to ‘white and hairy’.”

Why so hairy?

“We don’t yet know what these hairs are for, but our primary theory is that they make the insect look like it’s been killed by an insect-killing fungus,” James says. The purpose of this would be to deter birds and other predators from eating it.

“But until someone can find more specimens and study this species further, we won’t be able to say for sure why this beetle is so hairy,” he says.

However, this may not happen anytime soon, because Excastra albopilosa continues to remain very elusive.

“The area has been popular with entomologists for more than 100 years so it’s puzzling that it hasn’t been found until now,” says James. “I’ve been back several times to look for more of them, but haven’t had any luck.”

‘Underappreciated and understudied’

“Best estimates suggest there may be 5.5 million insect species worldwide and only one-fifth of these have been named and described,” James says. “Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet, but they are also the most underappreciated and understudied.”

Chance finds like James’s highlight how many unknown species of insects could be out there. And many of these could be under threat from extinction before even being discovered.

“We’re experiencing rapid declines in biodiversity globally, and it’s difficult to conserve species if we don’t even know they exist,” James says.

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Related: Why we need to start naming as many species as possible

The post ‘White and hairy from the camp’: New fluffy longhorn beetle discovered in Gold Coast rainforest appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 354607 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/australias-2023-environment-scorecard-details-mixed-results/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 22:43:11 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354520 The Australian National University has released its annual Environment Report, assessing the health of the country's land-based ecosystems. So, how did Australia fare in 2023?

The post ‘A year of opposites’: Australia’s 2023 environment scorecard details mixed results appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year and numerous weather disasters occurred as climate change reared its head.

How did Australia’s environment fare against this onslaught? In short, 2023 was a year of opposites.

Related: A dangerous 2023: how the hottest year unfolded

For the past nine years, we have trawled through huge volumes of data collected by satellites, measurement stations and surveys by individuals and agencies. We include data on global change, oceans, people, weather, water, soils, vegetation, fire and biodiversity.

Each year, we analyse those data, summarising them in an annual report that includes an overall Environmental Condition Score and regional scorecards. These scores provide a relative measure of conditions for agriculture and ecosystems. Scores declined across the country, except in the Northern Territory, but were still relatively good.

However, the updated Threatened Species Index shows the abundance of listed bird, mammal and plant species has continued to decline at a rate of about 3% a year since the turn of the century.

Riding a climate rollercoaster in 2023

Worldwide, 77 countries broke temperature records. Australia was not one of them. Our annual average temperature was 0.53°C below the horror year 2019. Temperatures in the seas around us were below the records of 2022.

Even so, 2023 was among Australia’s eight warmest years in both cases. All eight came after 2005.

However, those numbers are averaged over the year. Dig a bit deeper and it becomes clear 2023 was a climate rollercoaster.

Related: Five Australian species at immediate risk of extinction

The year started as wet as the previous year ended, but dry and unseasonably warm weather set in from May to October. Soils and wetlands across much of the country started drying rapidly. In the eastern states, the fire season started as early as August.

Nonetheless, there was generally still enough water to support good vegetation growth throughout the unusually warm and sunny winter months.

Fears of a severe fire season were not realised as El Niño’s influence waned in November and rainfall returned, in part due to the warm oceans. Combined with relatively high temperatures, it made for a hot and humid summer. A tropical cyclone and several severe storms caused flooding in Queensland and Victoria in December.

As always, there were regional differences. Northern Australia experienced the best rainfall and growth conditions in several years. This contributed to more grass fires than average during the dry season. On the other hand, the rain did not return to Western Australia and Tasmania, which ended the year dry.

Related: State of the Environment report shows ‘shocking’ decline of Australia’s wildlife and natural ecosystems

So how did scores change?

Every year we calculate an Environmental Condition Score that combines weather, water and vegetation data.

The national score was 7.5 (out of 10). That was 1.2 points lower than for 2022, but still the second-highest score since 2011.

Scores declined across the country except for the Northern Territory, which chalked up a score of 8.8 thanks to a strong monsoon season. With signs of drought developing in parts of Western Australia, it had the lowest score of 5.5.

Related: Will we at last get the environment laws we need?

The Environmental Condition Score reflects environmental conditions, but does not measure the long-term health of natural ecosystems and biodiversity.

Firstly, it relates only to the land and not our oceans. Marine heatwaves damaged ecosystems along the eastern coast. Surveys in the first half of 2023 suggested the recovery of the Great Barrier Reef plateaued.

However, a cyclone and rising ocean temperatures occurred later in the year. In early 2024, another mass coral bleaching event developed.

Secondly, the score does not capture important processes affecting our many threatened species. Among the greatest dangers are invasive pests and diseases, habitat destruction and damage from severe weather events such as heatwaves and megafires.

Related: Has Australia reached its environmental tipping point?

Threatened species’ declines continued

The Threatened Species Index captures data from long-term threatened species monitoring. The index is updated annually with a three-year lag, largely due to delays in data processing and sharing. This means the 2023 index includes data up to 2020.

The index showed an unrelenting decline of about 3% in the abundance of Australia’s threatened bird, mammal and plant species each year. This amounts to an overall decline of 61% from 2000 to 2020.

The index for birds in 2023 revealed declines were most severe for terrestrial birds (62%), followed by migratory shorebirds (47%) and marine birds (24%).

A record 130 species were added to Australia’s threatened species lists in 2023. That’s many more than the annual average of 29 species over previous years. The 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires had direct impacts on half the newly listed species.

Population boom adds to pressures

Australia’s population passed 27 million in 2023, a stunning increase of 8 million, or 41%, since 2000. Those extra people all needed living space, food, electricity and transport.

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 18% since 2000. Despite small declines in the previous four years, emissions increased again in 2023, mostly due to air travel rebounding after COVID-19.

Our emissions per person are the tenth-highest in the world and more than three times those of the average global citizen. The main reasons are our coal-fired power stations, inefficient road vehicles and large cattle herd.

Related: World population milestone: the impact of 8 billion people explained

Nonetheless, there are reasons to be optimistic. Many other countries have dramatically reduced emissions without compromising economic growth or quality of life. All we have to do is to finally follow their lead.

Our governments have an obvious role to play, but we can do a lot as individuals. We can even save money, by switching to renewable energy and electric vehicles and by eating less beef.

Changing our behaviour will not stop climate change in its tracks, but will slow it down over the next decades and ultimately reverse it. We cannot reverse or even stop all damage to our environment, but we can certainly do much better.

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Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University; Shoshana Rapley, Research Assistant, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University, and Tayla Lawrie, Project Manager, Threatened Species Index, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post ‘A year of opposites’: Australia’s 2023 environment scorecard details mixed results appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 354520 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2024/03/pythons-found-to-be-highly-sustainable-food-source/ Sun, 17 Mar 2024 20:49:13 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354455 Pythons are a low-emission, climate-resilient food source, converting feed to protein better than chickens or cattle, new research has found.

The post Pythons found to be highly-sustainable food source appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Farmed pythons may offer a sustainable and efficient new form of livestock to boost food security, according to new research from Macquarie University.

A study in two South-East Asian commercial python farms led by Honorary Research Fellow Dr Daniel Natusch from the School of Natural Sciences, found pythons convert feed into weight gain remarkably efficiently compared to conventional livestock such as chickens and cattle.

“In terms of food and protein conversion ratios, pythons outperform all mainstream agricultural species studied to date,” Dr Natusch says.

“We found pythons grew rapidly to reach ‘slaughter weight’ within their first year after hatching.”

Snake meat is white and very high in protein, Dr Natusch says.

The multi-institutional research team included scientists from Macquarie University, the UK’s University of Oxford, the University of Adelaide, Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand and the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi.

The researchers compared reticulated pythons (Malayopython reticulatus) and Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) farmed at commercial python farms in Thailand and Vietnam, testing the effects of different food regimes.

Flexible solution for food insecurity

“Climate change, disease and diminishing natural resources are all ramping up pressure on conventional livestock and plant crops, with dire effects on many people in low-income countries already suffering acute protein deficiency,” says Dr Natusch.

Failures in conventional agrifood systems leading to widespread food insecurity is driving interest in alternative food sources, he says.

Snake meat is a sustainable, high protein, low-saturated fat food source already widely consumed across South East Asia and China.

Related: From zesty tree ants to peanut-buttery bogong moths: 4 reasons insects could become a staple

“However, while large-scale python farming is well established in Asia, it has received little attention from mainstream agricultural scientists,” says Dr Natusch.

“Snakes require minimal water and can even live off the dew that settles on their scales in the morning. They need very little food and will eat rodents and other pests attacking food crops. And they were a delicacy, historically, in many places.

“Our study suggests python farming complementing existing livestock systems may offer a flexible and efficient response to global food insecurity.”

Costs and benefits

Co-author Professor Rick Shine, from Macquarie University’s School of Natural Sciences says this is the first study taking an in-depth look at the inputs and outputs, costs and benefits of commercial snake farms.

“There are clear economic and adaptability benefits to farmers who raise pythons rather than raising pigs,” Professor Shine says.

Snake farms are typically large barns surrounded by ‘sun traps’ for basking, which escape most of the complex animal welfare issues surrounding caged mammals and birds.

“Birds and mammals waste about 90 per cent of the energy from the food they eat, simply maintaining a constant body temperature,” says Professor Shine.

“But cold-blooded animals like reptiles just find a spot in the sun to get warm. They are hugely more efficient at turning the food they eat into more flesh and body tissue than any warm-blooded creature ever could.”

A diet of agricultural waste

The research team trialed groups of pythons on different ‘sausages’ of waste protein from meat and fish off-cuts, and found intensive feeding of juveniles prompted fast growth rates with no apparent welfare impacts.

Despite pythons being solely carnivorous in the wild, they could digest soy and other vegetable protein, and some sausages included around ten per cent vegetable protein, hidden among the meat.

“It’s a bit like hiding broccoli in the meatballs to get your kids to eat their veggies,” Dr Natusch says.

“We showed that snake farms can effectively convert a lot of agricultural waste into protein, while producing relatively little waste of their own.”

When processed, around 82 per cent of a python’s live weight yields usable products, including the high protein dressed carcass for meat, the valuable skin for leather, and the fat (snake oil) and gall bladder (snake bile) which both have medicinal uses.

Kilo for kilo, reptiles produce far fewer greenhouse gases than mammals. Their sturdy digestive systems, which can even break down bone, produce almost no water waste and far less solid waste than mammals.

Pythons can fast more than four months without losing much weight, and rapidly resume growth as soon as feed restarts, so consistent production can continue even when food is scarce,” says Dr Natusch.

“We also found some farms outsource baby pythons to local villagers, often retired people who make extra income by feeding them on local rodents and scraps, then selling them back to the farm in a year.”

Professor Shine says this study shows the extraordinary efficiency of reptiles in turning waste into useable products, highlighting big opportunities in countries where there is already a cultural precedent for snake meat.

However, it’s unlikely that Australia or Europe will adopt python farming, he says.

“I think it will be a long time before you see Python burgers served up at your favourite local restaurant here.”

Dr Dan Natusch is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University.

Rick Shine is a Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University.

This article was first published on The Lighthouse, Macquarie University’s multi-media publishing platform. 

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Related: A simple guide to eating insects

The post Pythons found to be highly-sustainable food source appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 354455 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/nature-versus-nurture-the-key-to-magpie-intelligence/ Fri, 15 Mar 2024 06:26:10 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354376 Researchers have found the surprising key to magpie intelligence, and it’s not genetics.

The post Nature versus nurture: the key to magpie intelligence appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> If you’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering Australia’s iconic magpies, you know these birds are intelligent creatures. With their striking black and white plumage, loud warbling voices and complex social behaviours, magpies possess a level of avian brilliance that fascinates birders and scientists alike.

But what enables these clever birds to thrive? Are their sharp cognitive abilities innate – something coded into their genetic makeup? Or are magpie smarts more a product of their environment and social experiences?

In a new study, we shed light on the “nature versus nurture” debate – at least when it comes to avian intelligence.

Bigger social groups, smarter birds

Our study focused on Western Australian magpies, which unlike their eastern counterparts live in large, cooperative social groups all year round. We put young fledglings – and their mothers – through a test of their learning abilities.

We made wooden “puzzle boards” with holes covered by different-coloured lids. For each bird, we hid a tasty food reward under the lid of one particular colour. We also tested each bird alone, so it couldn’t copy the answer from its friends.

Through trial and error, the magpies had to figure out which colour was associated with the food prize. We knew the birds had mastered the puzzle when they picked the rewarded colour in 10 out of 12 consecutive attempts.

We tested fledglings at 100, 200 and 300 days after leaving the nest. While they improved at solving the puzzle as they developed, the cognitive performance of the young magpies showed little connection to the problem-solving prowess of their mothers.

Instead, the key factor influencing how quickly the fledglings learned to pick the correct colour was the size of their social group. Birds raised in larger groups solved the test significantly faster than those growing up in smaller social groups.

Fledglings living in groups of ten or more birds needed only about a dozen tries to consistently pick the rewarded colour. But a youngster growing up in a group of three took more than 30 attempts to learn the link between colour and food.

Related: Magpies with more friends a lot smarter, scientists find

How the social environment shapes cognition

Why would living in a larger social group boost cognitive abilities? We think it probably comes down to the mental demands that social animals face on a daily basis, such as recognising and remembering group members, and keeping track of different relationships within a complex group.

Magpies can learn to recognise and remember humans, too. The bird populations we work with live in the wild, but they recognise us by our appearance and a specific whistle we make.

A young magpie living in a group gets plenty of mental exercise recognising and remembering numerous individuals and relationships. Working to make sense of this stream of social information may boost their ability to learn and solve problems.

Our findings go against the idea that intelligence is something innately “set” within an animal at birth, based solely on genetic inheritance. Instead, we show how cognition can be shaped by the environment, especially in the first year after leaving the nest when young magpies’ minds are still developing.

While we focused specifically on Australian magpies, the implications of our research could extend to other highly social and intelligent species.

Related: Here are 4 things you definitely didn’t know about Aussie magpies

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Lizzie Speechley, Behavioural Ecologist, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 354376 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/creating-refuge-for-our-native-animals-after-fires/ Thu, 14 Mar 2024 06:00:36 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354349 Our native animals are easy prey after a fire. Could artificial refuges save them?

The post Creating refuge for our native animals after fires appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Australia is home to some of the most spectacular and enigmatic wildlife on Earth. Much of it, however, is being eaten by two incredibly damaging invasive predators: the feral cat and the red fox.

Each year in Australia, cats and foxes kill an estimated 697 million reptiles, 510 million birds, and 1.4 billion mammals, totalling a staggering 2.6 billion animals. Since the predators were introduced more than 150 years ago, they have contributed to the extinction of more than 25 species – and are pushing many more to the brink.

Research suggests cats and foxes can be more active in areas recently burnt by fire. This is a real concern, especially as climate change increases the frequency and severity of fire in south-eastern Australia.

We urgently need new ways to protect wildlife after fires. Our study trialled one such tool: building artificial refuges across burnt landscapes. The results are promising, but researchers need to find out more.

Triple threat: cats, foxes and fire

Many native animals are well-adapted to fire. But the changing frequency and intensity of fire is posing a considerable threat to much of Australia’s wildlife.

Fire removes vegetation such as grass, leaf litter and shrubs. This leaves fewer places for native animals to shelter and hide, making it easier for cats and foxes to catch them.

We conducted our experiment in three Australian ecosystems: the forests of the Otway Ranges (Victoria), the sand dunes of the Simpson Desert (Queensland) and the woodlands of Kangaroo Island (South Australia). Each had recently been burnt by fire.

We built 76 refuges across these study areas. They were 90cm wide and up to 50m long – and backbreaking to install! They were made from wire mesh, mostly covered by shade cloth. Spacing in the mesh of 50mm allowed small animals to enter and exit from any point, while completely excluding cats, foxes and other larger animals. The shade cloth obstructed the vision of predators.

We then placed remote-sensing camera traps both inside and away from each refuge, and monitored them for periods ranging from four months to four years.

The placement of the cameras meant we could compare the effect of the refuges with what occurred outside them.

What we found

Across the three study areas, the artificial refuges were used by 56 species or species groups. This included the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart, the threatened white-footed dunnart and the threatened southern emu-wren.

For around half the species, we detected more individuals inside the refuges than outside. As we predicted, the activity of small birds and reptiles, in particular, was much higher inside the refuges.

But surprisingly, reptile activity was also generally higher inside the refuges, particularly among skinks. We had not predicted that, because the shade cloth likely made conditions inside the refuges cooler than outside, and reptiles require warmth to regulate their body temperature.

Over time, the number of animals detected inside the refuges generally increased. This was also a surprise. We expected detections inside the refuges to decline through time as the vegetation recovered and the risk of being seen by predators fell.

But there were also a few complicating factors. For example, in the Otway Ranges and Simpson Desert, similar numbers of the mammals were detected inside and away from the refuges. This suggests the species didn’t consider the refuges as particularly safe places, which means the structures may not reduce the risk of these animals becoming prey.

So what’s the upshot of all this? Our findings suggest that establishing artificial refuges after fire may help some small vertebrates, especially small birds and skinks, avoid predators across a range of ecosystems. However, more research is required before this strategy is adopted as a widespread management tool.

Important next steps

Almost all evidence for an increase in cat and fox activity after fire comes from Australia, particularly the tropical north. But cats are an invasive species in more than 120 countries and islands.

That means there’s real potential for post-fire damage to wildlife to worsen globally, especially as fire risk increases with climate change.

Our results suggest artificial refuges may be a way to help animals survive after fire. But there are still important questions to answer, such as:

• can artificial refuges improve the overall abundance and survival of individuals and species?
• if so, how many refuges would be required to achieve this?
• in the presence of natural refuges – such as rocks, logs, burrows, and unburnt patches – are artificial refuges needed?
• does their effectiveness vary between low-severity planned burns and high-severity bushfires?

These questions must be answered. Conservation budgets are tight. After fires, funds must be directed towards actions that we know will work. That evidence is not yet there for artificial refuges.

Our team is busy trying to find out more. We urge other ecologists and conservationists to do so as well. We also encourage collaboration with designers and technologists to improve on our refuge design. For example, can such large refuges be made biodegradable and easier to deploy?

Solving these problems is important. It’s almost impossible to rid the entire Australian continent of cats and foxes. So land managers need all the help they can get to stop these predators from decimating Australia’s incredible wildlife.

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Darcy Watchorn, PhD Candidate, Deakin University; Chris Dickman, Professor Emeritus in Terrestrial Ecology, University of Sydney, and Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Creating refuge for our native animals after fires appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 354349 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/southern-ocean-upwelling/ Wed, 13 Mar 2024 05:06:41 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354233 The Southern Ocean upwelling is a mecca for whales and tuna that’s worth celebrating and protecting.

The post Where there’s upwelling, there’s whales appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The Great Southern Australian Coastal Upwelling System is an upward current of water over vast distances along Australia’s southern coast. It brings nutrients from deeper waters to the surface. This nutrient-rich water supports a rich ecosystem that attracts iconic species like the southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) and blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda).

The environmental importance of the upwelling is one reason the federal government this week declared a much-reduced zone for offshore wind turbines in the region. The zone covers one-fifth of the area originally proposed.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of a research publication that revealed the existence of the large seasonal upwelling system along Australia’s southern coastal shelves. Based on over 20 years of scientific study, we can now answer many critical questions.

How does this upwelling work? How can it be identified? Which marine species benefit from the upwelling? Does the changing climate affect the system?

Huge School of Southern Bluefin Tuna off SA's coast, thanks to Great Southern Coastal Upwelling! 🌊🐟 This natural phenomenon enriches waters with deep-sea nutrients, sparking explosion of marine life & sustaining fisheries #GreatSouthernReef 📹: Bazz Hockaday 🎤 Kirsten Rough pic.twitter.com/THPcu0lOHK

— Great Southern Reef Foundation (@GSR_Australia) February 12, 2024

Where do the nutrients come from?

Sunlight does not reach far into the sea. Only the upper 50 metres of the water column receives enough light to support the microscopic phytoplankton – single-celled organisms that depend on photosynthesis. This is the process of using light energy to make a simple sugar, which phytoplankton and plants use as their food.

As well as light, the process requires a suite of nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorus.

Normally, the sunlight zone of the oceans is low in nitrogen. Waters deeper than 100m contain high levels of it. This deep zone of high nutrient levels is due to the presence of bacteria that decompose sinking particles of dead organic matter.

Upwelling returns nutrient-rich water to the sunlight zone where it fuels rapid phytoplankton growth. Phytoplankton production is the foundation of a productive marine food web. The phytoplankton provides food for zooplankton (tiny floating animals), small fish and, in turn, predators including larger fish, marine mammals and seabirds.

The annual migration patterns of species such as tuna and whales match the timing and location of upwelling events.

Migration dynamics of juvenile southern bluefin tuna https://t.co/JudeGJW16p pic.twitter.com/qFqYwVjR3w

— suhana.web.id (@suhana_web_id) August 11, 2019

What causes the upwelling?

In summer, north-easterly coastal winds cause the upwelling. These winds force near-surface water offshore, which draws up deeper, nutrient-enriched water to replace it in the sunlight zone.

The summer winds also produce a swift coastal current, called an upwelling jet. It flows northward along Tasmania’s west coast and then turns westward along Australia’s southern shelves.

Satellites can detect the areas of colder water brought to the sea surface. Changes in the colour of surface water as a result of phytoplankton blooms can also be detected. This change is due to the presence of chlorophyll-a, the green pigment of phytoplankton.

From satellite data, we know the upwelling occurs along the coast of South Australia and western Victoria. It’s strongest along the southern headland of the Eyre Peninsula and shallower waters of the adjacent Lincoln Shelf, the south-west coast of Kangaroo Island, and the Bonney Coast. The Bonney upwelling, now specifically excluded from the new wind farm zone, was first described in the early 1980s.

Coastal upwelling driven by southerly winds also forms occasionally along Tasmania’s west coast.

Coastal wind events favourable for upwelling occur regularly during summer. However, their timing and intensity is highly variable.

On average, most upwelling events along Australia’s southern shelves occur in February and March. In some years strong upwelling can begin as early as November.

Recent research suggests the overall upwelling intensity has not dramatically changed in the past 20 years. The findings indicate global climate changes of the past 20 years had little or no impact on the ecosystem functioning.

What are the links between upwelling, tuna and whales?

The Great Southern Australian Coastal Upwelling System features two keystone species – the ecosystem depends on them. They are the Australian sardine (Sardinops sagax) and the Australian krill (Nyctiphanes australis), a small, shrimp-like creature that’s common in the seas around Tasmania.

Sardines are the key diet of larger fish, including the southern bluefin tuna, and various marine mammals including the Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea). Phytoplankton and krill are the key food source for baleen whales. They include the blue whales that come to Australia’s southern shelves to feed during the upwelling season.

Southern Australia is experiencing bumper upwelling event, enriching surface waters with deep-sea nutrients. This boosts plankton growth, supporting diverse marine life, including blue whales. Dr Pete Gill calls it a 'cracker year'.
Read more https://t.co/yVgbVcPKf2 pic.twitter.com/RDVyp4j9sV

— Great Southern Reef Foundation (@GSR_Australia) February 11, 2024

Unlike phytoplankton and many zooplankton species that live for only weeks to months, krill has a lifespan of several years. It does not reach maturity during a single upwelling season. It’s most likely the coastal upwelling jet transports swarms of mature krill from the waters west of Tasmania north-westward into the upwelling region.

So the whales seem to benefit from two distinct features of the upwelling: its phytoplankton production and the krill load imported by the upwelling jet.

Seasonal phytoplankton blooms along Australia’s southern shelves are much weaker than other large coastal upwelling systems such as the California current. Nonetheless, their timing and location appear to fit perfectly into the annual migration patterns of southern bluefin tuna and blue whales, creating a natural wonder in the southern hemisphere.

Related: Blue whales: scientists need your help spotting the enigmatic whale

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Jochen Kaempf, Associate Professor of Natural Sciences (Oceanography), Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 354233 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/indigenous-fire-management-began-more-than-11000-years-ago-new-research-shows/ Tue, 12 Mar 2024 21:07:18 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354186 Modern scientific techniques have provided unprecedented insights into how an Indigenous fire regime reduced risk and increased resources.

The post Indigenous fire management began more than 11,000 years ago, new research shows appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Wildfire burns between 3.94 million and 5.19 million square kilometres of land every year worldwide. If that area were a single country, it would be the seventh largest in the world.

In Australia, most fire occurs in the vast tropical savannas of the country’s north. In new research published in Nature Geoscience, we show Indigenous management of fire in these regions began at least 11,000 years ago – and possibly as long as 40,000 years ago.

Fire and humans

In most parts of the planet, fire has always affected the carbon cycle, the distribution of plants, how ecosystems function, and biodiversity patterns more generally.

But climate change and other effects of human activity are making wildfires more common and more severe in many regions, often with catastrophic results. In Australia, fires have caused major economic, environmental and personal losses, most recently in the south of the country.

One likely reason for the increase of catastrophic fires in Australia is the end of Indigenous fire management after Europeans arrived. This change has caused a decline in biodiversity and the buildup of burnable material, or “fuel load”.

While southern fires have been particularly damaging in recent years, more than two-thirds of all Australia’s wildfires happen during the dry season in the tropical savannas of the north. These grasslands cover about 2 million square kilometres, or around a quarter of the country.

When Europeans first saw these tropical savannas, they believed they were seeing a “natural” environment. However, we now think these landscapes were maintained by Indigenous fire management (dubbed “firestick farming” in the 1960s).

Indigenous fire management is a complex process that involves strategically burning small areas throughout the dry season. In its absence, savannas have seen the kind of larger, higher-intensity fires occurring late in the dry season that likely existed before people, when lightning was the sole source of ignition.

We know fire was one of the main tools Indigenous people used to manipulate fuel loads, maintain vegetation and enhance biodiversity. We do not know the time frames over which the “natural” fire regime was transformed into one managed by humans.

Related: Recognising Indigenous knowledges is not just culturally sound, it’s good science

A 150,000-year record of fire and climate

To understand this transformation better, we took an 18-metre core sample from sediment at Girraween Lagoon on the outskirts of Darwin. Using this sample, we developed detailed pollen records of vegetation and charcoal, and paired them with geochemical records of climate and fire to reveal how fire patterns have changed over the past 150,000 years.

Now surrounded by suburbs, Girraween Lagoon (the “Place of Flowers”) is a significant site to the Larrakia and Wulna peoples. It is also where the crocodile-attack scene in the movie Crocodile Dundee was filmed.

The lagoon was created after a sinkhole formed, and has contained permanent water ever since. The sediment core we took contains a unique 150,000-year record of environmental change in Australia’s northern savannas.

The core records revealed a dynamic, changing environment. The vegetation around Girraween Lagoon today has a tall and relatively dense tree canopy with a thick grass understory in the wet season.

However, during the last ice age 20,000–30,000 years ago, the site where Darwin sits now was more than 300 km from the coast due to the sea level dropping as the polar ice caps expanded. At that time, the lagoon shrank into its sinkhole and it was surrounded by open, grassy savanna with fewer, shorter trees.

Around 115,000 years ago, and again around 90,000 years ago, Australia was dotted with gigantic inland “megalakes”. At those times, the lagoon expanded into a large, shallow depression surrounded by lush monsoon forest, with almost no grass.

When human fire management began

The Girraween record is one of the few long-term climate records that covers the period before people arrived in Australia some 65,000 years ago, as well as after. This unique coverage provides us with the hard data indicating when the natural fire regime (infrequent, high-intensity fires) switched to a human-managed one (frequent, low-intensity fires).

The data show that by at least 11,000 years ago, as the climate began to resemble the modern climate that established itself after the last ice age, fires became more frequent but less intense.

Frequent, low-intensity fire is the hallmark of Indigenous fire regimes that were observed across northern Australia at European arrival. Our data also showed tantalising indications that this change from a natural to human-dominated fire regime occurred progressively from as early as 40,000 years ago, but it certainly did not occur instantaneously.

Unlocking Girraween’s secrets with modern scientific techniques has provided unprecedented insights into how the tropical savannas of Australia, and their attendant biodiversity, coevolved over millennia under this new Indigenous fire regime that reduced risk and increased resources.

The rapid change to a European fire regime – with large, intense fires occurring late in the dry season – abruptly regressed patterns to the pre-human norm. This ecosystem-scale shock altered a carefully nurtured biodiversity established over tens of thousands of years and simultaneously increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Reversing these dangerous trends in Australia’s tropical savanna requires re-establishing an Indigenous fire regime through projects such as the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement managed by Indigenous land managers. By implication, the reintroduction of Indigenous land management in other parts of the world could help reduce the impacts of catastrophic fires and increase carbon sequestration in the future.

Cassandra Rowe, Research Fellow, James Cook University; Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University, and Michael Bird, JCU Distinguished Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Related: ‘Nice and clean’: Not all blackened landscapes are bad

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]]> 354186 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2024/03/another-summer-another-mass-coral-bleaching-event-hits-gbr/ Tue, 12 Mar 2024 02:57:13 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354141 The fifth mass coral bleaching event in eight years has been confirmed on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).

The post Another summer, another mass coral bleaching event hits GBR appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> “Surveys confirm a widespread, often called mass, coral bleaching event is unfolding across the Great Barrier Reef.” 

This was the announcement made late last week by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), confirming the reef’s fifth mass coral bleaching event in just eight summers.

The conclusion was drawn from aerial surveys encompassing two-thirds of the World Heritage Site, including on more than 300 inshore, midshelf and offshore reefs.

Related: Little lives lost

The GBRMPA stated the surveys – spanning as far north as Cape Melville and as far south as Bundaberg – “revealed prevalent shallow water coral bleaching on most surveyed reefs and results are consistent with patterns of heat stress that has built up over summer.

“While aerial surveys show that this coral bleaching event is widespread, the severity and depth of coral bleaching can only be assessed through in-water surveys. We are continuing to conduct in-water observations with research partners and extended observer network,” the statement said.

Breaking the wrong records 

Huge swathes of the GBR also experienced mass coral bleaching in the summers of 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2022, making this year’s event the fifth in eight summers, with other events occurring in 1998 and 2002.

“Five mass bleaching events in eight years shows that climate change is putting tremendous pressure on the reef,” says WWF-Australia’s Head of Oceans, Richard Leck.

He says the current underwater heatwave is most intense in the reef’s southern regions, raising concerns for unprecedented coral deaths: “Since 2016, this area has largely escaped the severe impacts caused by bleaching as previous events have occurred further north. 

“WWF is very concerned that this bleaching event is unfolding in an area where corals have not been previously exposed to these extreme temperatures. Unless we see a significant drop off in temperatures in the next few weeks, the risk of significant coral mortality is high.”

Related: ‘Heat-proofing’ coral: Aussie discovery throws a lifeline to world’s dying reefs

‘I have never felt the water as warm as this’

Indications that another mass coral bleaching event was looming were recorded late last month by scientists at Queensland’s James Cook University.

The university’s Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research (TropWATER) team observed moderate to severe coral bleaching throughout The Keppels, a group of islands offshore from Yeppoon, during routine surveys.

At the time, TropWATER scientist Dr Maya Srinivasan said the water temperatures at The Keppels were well above the summer average, reaching 29°C during multiple days of surveys.

“I have been working on these reefs for nearly 20 years and I have never felt the water as warm as this,” she said.

The post Another summer, another mass coral bleaching event hits GBR appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 354141 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/could-island-life-save-australias-most-endangered/ Mon, 11 Mar 2024 06:00:55 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354126 Saving wildlife as the world changes means taking calculated risks.

The post Could island life save Australia’s most endangered? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The eastern barred bandicoot was once found in abundance across the basalt plains of western Victoria. But habitat destruction and predation by introduced red foxes drove the species to the brink of extinction on the mainland.

Establishing populations in fenced reserves was critical in providing insurance against extinction. To further increase bandicoot numbers to provide long-term security against extinction, we needed more fox-free land.

A bold plan was hatched: move the species to where the predators weren’t. Introduce them to Victoria’s fox-free Phillip and French islands.

Six years later, the bandicoot made conservation history, as the first species in Australia to be reclassified from extinct in the wild to endangered.

Why don’t we translocate all endangered species to islands? The technique can be effective, but can come with unwanted consequences.

The surprising benefits of translocation

Eastern barred bandicoots are ecosystem engineers. As they dig for their dinner of worms, beetles, bulbs, fungi and other foods, their industrious work improves soil quality, and in turn, the health of vegetation.

So when we translocate threatened species, we can get a double win – a rapid increase in their populations and restoration of lost ecosystem functions.

Australia’s landscapes look very different than they did before European colonisation around 230 years ago.

Industrialised farming, introduced predators and habitat destruction and fragmentation are driving biodiversity decline and extinctions. As species die out, ecosystems lose the vital functions wildlife perform. Without them, ecosystems might not operate as well or even collapse – a little like a poorly serviced car engine.

Related: Eastern barred bandicoot: how the little diggers rebounded

We feel the loss most acutely when we lose keystone species on which many other species depend, such as oysters and bees. Restoring these functions can improve biodiversity and the sustainability of food production. For instance, encouraging owls to return to farmland can cut the use of damaging rodent poisons, as owls eat thousands of mice and rats yearly.

Before colonisation, industrious digging mammals and their soil excavations were extremely widespread. Regrettably, introduced foxes and cats have made short work of many of Australia’s diggers. Six of 29 digging species are now extinct, including the lesser bilby, pig-footed bandicoot and desert rat-kangaroo. Many others are endangered.

Could translocation save more species?

Conservationists have successfully translocated species such as the western swamp tortoise, the Shark Bay mouse, and northern quolls.

New environments don’t necessarily need to be predator-free. The eastern barred bandicoot is thriving on Phillip and French Island, in the presence of feral and domestic cats. The key is there are no foxes.

Many islands are now being thought of as conservation arks, able to provide safe havens for several threatened species at once. Dirk Hartog Island, Western Australia’s largest, is now home to reintroduced western quolls, dibblers, mulgaras and other small mammals, as well as two translocated hare-wallaby species.

Why is translocation not more common?

The technique can work very well – but it can also backfire.

In the 1920s, conservationists undertook the first translocation in Australia by moving koalas to Phillip and French Island – the same Victorian islands now a refuge for bandicoots. While this protected koalas from hunting pressure, koala populations exploded, and the tree-dwelling marsupials ate themselves out of house and home in some areas.

In 2012, conservationists began introducing Tasmanian devils to Maria Island, just off Tasmania’s east coast. They wanted to conserve a healthy population free from the contagious facial tumour which has devastated their populations. On Maria Island, the devils became too successful, wiping out the island’s penguin and shearwater populations.

You can see translocations aren’t a silver bullet. We have to carefully consider the pros and cons of any such conservation intervention. Ecosystems are complex. It’s not easy to predict what will happen to an ecosystem if we introduce a species new to the area.

The decision to translocate a species is a value judgement – it prioritises one species over the broader ecosystem. Opponents of translocation question whether we are doing the right thing in valuing efforts to conserve a single species over the innate value of the existing ecosystem.

Related: ‘Australia’s Most Endangered’: Introducing Australian Geographic Society’s new fundraisers

What’s the best approach in future?

Translocation is not the end goal. Islands cannot support the vast array of threatened species in Australia.

The end goal is to establish and expand threatened species populations on the mainland in fenced reserves before eventually reintroducing them to the wild where they will encounter introduced predators.

Research is being done to explore how we can make this work, such as:

1) Predator-savvy wildlife: some native species may be able to adapt to living alongside introduced predators – with some help. For example, conservationists have exposed semi-captive bilbies to small numbers of feral cats with the aim of increasing their wariness and ultimately boosting their chances of survival. Results have been encouraging.

2) Building ecosystem resilience: we know more intact native ecosystems can reduce the chance of damage from invasive species . That means re-establishing native ecosystems could boost their resilience.

Moving a species from its home is a bold and risky decision. It’s critical local communities and First Nations groups are consulted and able to guide discussions and any eventual actions.

For their part, governments, land managers and conservationists must think more broadly about how we might best conserve species and ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.

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Anthony Rendall, Lecturer in Conservation Biology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Amy Coetsee, Threatened Species Biologist, The University of Melbourne; Aviya Naccarella, PhD Candidate, Deakin University, and Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 354126 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/discovering-a-botanical-pompeii/ Fri, 08 Mar 2024 05:28:53 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=354056 The Australian continent is now geologically stable. But volcanic rocks, lava flows and a contemporary landscape dotted with extinct volcanoes show this wasn’t always the case.

The post Discovering a botanical Pompeii appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Between 40 and 20 million years ago – during the Eocene to Miocene epochs – there was widespread volcano activity across eastern Australia. In places such as western Victoria and the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland, it was even more recent.

Erupting volcanoes can have devastating consequences for human settlements, as we know from Pompeii in Italy, which was buried by ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. But ash falls and lava flows can also entomb entire forests, or at least many of the plants within them.

Related: The world’s 10 most devastating volcanic eruptions

Our studies of these rare and unique plant time capsules are revealing exquisitely preserved fossil floras and new insights into Australia’s botanical history. This new work is published in the journal Gondwana Research.

Remarkable preservation

The most common volcanic rocks are basalts. The rich red soils derived from them are among the most fertile in Australia.

But the rocks in which fossils occur are buried under basalts or other volcanic rock, and are called silcretes – the name indicates their origins are from silica-rich groundwaters. Silica is the major constituent of sand, and familiar to most of us as quartz.

What makes the silcrete plant fossils so fascinating is the superfine preservation of plant material. This includes fine roots and root nodules, uncurling fern fronds and their underground stems, the soft outer bark of wood, feeding traces and frass (powdery droppings) of insects, and even the delicate tissues and anatomy of fruits and seeds.

For this fine preservation to occur, first there needs to be a rapid burial, like that from a volcanic eruption. Then, there has to be an abundant source of silica — a condition met when the volcanic rocks began to weather.

The process where silica infills and preserves plant structures is referred to as “silicification” or “permineralisation”. When plant material is buried, it provides acidic conditions that are ideal for this to happen.

And the process need not take millions of years. Overseas studies of plants in hot springs or undertaken in the laboratory have shown that some types of silica will quickly infiltrate wood and plant tissues.

Why are these plant fossils significant?

Because of their rapid entombment by the volcanoes, we can be sure the plants were in situ (that is, their original location) and were actively growing. This means we can gain detailed information about the make-up of these past plant communities.

In other areas where plant fossils might accumulate – such as river deltas – we can never be sure how far the bits of plants were carried, and whether they were from different types of vegetation.

Silicification not only preserves plants, but also leaf litter on the forest floor and even the underlying soil containing roots and root nodules. The fossil plants that are preserved at different sites varies, indicating the presence of distinct plant communities.

The abundance of seeds and fruits at one site near Capella, in central Queensland, even indicated to us that the local volcanic eruptions are likely to have occurred in summer or early autumn during the fruiting season.

The extraordinary preservation of these fossils allows us to compare them with modern plants. In turn, this means we can accurately identify them.

The ferns include fronds and underground stems (rhizomes) of the familiar bracken fern (Pteridium). We have also found the distinctive seeds and lianas of the grape family (Vitaceae), along with evidence of insect damage in the wood. Two sites also had evidence of palms.

While there have been few previous studies on silcrete plants, we have revealed new insights into the history of the modern Australian flora.

Volcanoes shaped plant communities

Volcanic activity both destroys and modifies existing plant communities. It also provides new substrates for plants to colonise.

Several sites contained ferns – this may be because they are among the first living plants to colonise new volcanic terrains via their tiny wind-borne spores. For instance, it has been documented that bracken ferns were pioneer plants of the barren cone of the famous Krakatoa volcano after its eruption in 1883.

But the diversity of seeds and fruits at another site suggests that an existing forest was buried by volcanic activity.

Researchers have suggested that the key factors responsible for the evolution of the Australian fauna and flora during the Cenozoic period (the last 66 million years) were predominantly climate and environmental change. It happened, in part, due to the movement of the Australian continental plate northwards.

But the broad-scale volcano activity that occurred in eastern Australia during the Cenozoic has rarely been invoked as a key driver of such changes.

So remarkably preserved, the silcrete plant fossils are now providing startling new insights into the history of some groups of Australian plants and the vegetation types in which they grew.

Related: Time capsules: Australia’s remarkable native seeds have an ancient and intriguing legacy

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The author would like to acknowledge co-author Raymond Carpenter from the University of Adelaide who contributed to this article.

Andrew Rozefelds, Adjunct Assoc Professor Central Queensland University and Principal Curator Geosciences Queensland Museum, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Discovering a botanical Pompeii appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 354056 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/help-honey-bees-against-varroa-mites/ Thu, 07 Mar 2024 04:35:09 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=353862 A tiny foe threatens Australian beekeepers’ livelihood, our food supply and the national economy.

The post How you can fight for Australia’s honey bees in the war against Varroa mites appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> First detected in New South Wales in 2022, the Varroa mite (Varroa destructor) is now established in Australia.

The parasitic mite, which feeds on honey bees and transmits bee viruses, has since spread across New South Wales.

It is expected to kill virtually all unmanaged honey bees living in the bush (also known as “feral” honey bees), which provide ecosystem-wide pollination. Honey bees managed by beekeepers will survive only with constant and costly use of pesticides.

As the last holdout against Varroa, Australia has a key advantage – we can still take action that was impossible elsewhere. We know Varroa-resistant bees would be the silver bullet.

Despite decades of research, no fully resistant strains exist, largely because the genetics of Varroa resistance are complex and remain poorly understood.

A recently released national management plan places a heavy focus on beekeeper education, aiming to transition the industry to self-management in two years. This leaves research gaps that need to be urgently filled – and we can all work together to help tackle these.

Related: Australia gives up on eradicating varroa mites

Unlocking the genetic key to resistance

Without human intervention, Varroa kills around 95 per cent of the honey bees it infects, but the survivors can evolve resistance. However, losing almost all bees would decimate Australia’s agriculture.

Our feral honey bees will have no choice but to evolve resistance, as they have in other countries. However, feral honey bees are not suited for beekeeping as they are too aggressive, don’t stay with the hive and don’t produce enough honey.

In principle, we could breed for a combination of feral resistance and domestic docility. But figuring out the genetics of how feral bees resist Varroa has been a challenge. As most bees exposed to the parasite will die, the survivors will be genetically different.

Some of these differences will be due to natural selection, but most will be due to chance. Identifying the genes responsible for resistance in this scenario is difficult. The best way to find them is to measure genetic changes before and after Varroa infestation. But to do that, we need bee populations largely unaffected by Varroa.

This is where our unique Australian opportunity comes in. We have a small and vanishing window to collect bees before the inevitable rapid spread of the mites, and the mass die-offs, occur.

We are collecting information… and bees

My lab at the Australian National University’s Research School of Biology has started collecting data on feral bee populations around New South Wales to identify pre-Varroa genetic diversity.

We will also monitor changes in bee population size and the spread of viruses and mites.

The most efficient way to collect bees is to go to a local clearing, such as a sports oval surrounded by forest. Unbeknownst to the cricket players, honey bee males (that is, drones) congregate at these sites by the thousands on sunny afternoons looking for mates.

You can lure them with some queen pheromone suspended from a balloon, and sweep them up with a butterfly net. Bee drones have no stinger and only come out for a couple of hours when the weather is fantastic, making collecting them literally a walk in the park, suitable for nature enthusiasts of all ages.

Anyone can help

You can help this effort by collecting some drones in your local area – this would save us time and carbon emissions from driving all over the country. We will provide pheromone lures, instructions, and materials for sending the bees back via mail. By sacrificing a few drones for the research now, we might save millions of bees in the future.

If you can spare just a couple of summer afternoons, this would give two timepoints at your location, and we can monitor any changes as the Varroa infestation progresses. More information can be found on our website.

Apart from our project, there are also other urgent research questions. For example, how will native forests respond to the loss of their dominant pollinators? Will honey bee viruses spread into other insects?

Work on these and other projects also requires pre-Varroa data. Unfortunately, Varroa falls through our research infrastructure net. Most of Australia’s agricultural funding is industry-led, however, the beekeeping industry is small and lacks the resources to tackle Varroa research while also reeling from its impacts.

Other industries that rely on honey bees for pollination, including most fruit, nut and berry growers, have diverse research needs and are one step removed from the actual problem.

Together, we can take action to save Australia’s honey bees and assure security for our key pollinators.

Alexander Mikheyev, Professor, ANU Bee lab, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Related: 200 years since the honey bee came to our shores, it’s hard to imagine an Australia without it

The post How you can fight for Australia’s honey bees in the war against Varroa mites appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 353862 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/02/were-going-to-see-some-haunting-images-bird-flu-has-reached-antarctica/ Wed, 28 Feb 2024 01:50:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=353687 It’s the news conservationists have been expecting, but dreading. The avian influenza H5N1 virus has reached mainland Antarctica.

The post ‘We’re going to see some haunting images’: Bird flu has reached Antarctica appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The highly contagious and deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza has not only killed millions of birds around the world, but has jumped to mammals. Thousands of deaths have been recorded globally, including a mass mortality event of elephant and fur seals during the disease’s recent spread across South America.

Scientists tracked its path as it moved down the west coast of South America, reaching Antarctica’s subantarctic islands in October last year.

Now, it has officially reached mainland Antarctica. The disease has been confirmed in two brown skuas (Stercorarius antarcticus) – also known as Antarctic skuas – on the western tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Argentinian researchers found and collected the two deceased birds in early February, before handing them over to scientists at Spain’s Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) for testing.

This week the Spanish government released a statement, announcing that, indeed, the two skuas were infected with the disease.

“The presence of the virus, confirmed on February 24, has been found in samples of two dead skuas, which were found by Argentine scientists near the Primavera Antarctic base,” the statement reads.

“Analysis has conclusively shown that the birds were infected with the H5 subtype of avian influenza, and that at least one of the dead birds contained the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus. These analyses consisted of specific PCRs for the influenza virus and the H5 subtype, followed by sequencing of the protease cutting region, which defines with 100 per cent certainty the presence of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza virus.

“The virus has recently been described in the subantarctic islands, but to date, although significant deaths of some birds had been reported in the Antarctic territory, no country had demonstrated the presence of said virus in Antarctic territory.”

‘Absolutely terrifying’

The confirmation is a realisation of the Antarctic scientific community’s worst fears, many of whom relayed these concerns to AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC late last year.

“Bird flu is absolutely terrifying because it’s so deadly and it doesn’t just affect birds,” said
Professor Dana Bergstrom, the former lead of Biodiversity Conservation with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD).

AAD seabird ecologist Dr Louise Emmerson echoed this, adding the seabird research community was anticipating a massive loss of life among Antarctica’s wildlife when the disease inevitably reached mainland colonies.

“[We are all] feeling like an existential crisis is bearing down on us and our study ecosystems,” said Louise. “We’re all incredibly attached to our study species, and it feels horrendous that there’s very little we can do, apart from monitor the impacts, avoid spreading it [bird flu] further, and maintain the resilience of the wildlife through other management actions.”

Emily Grilly, WWF-Australia’s Antarctic conservation manager, predicted, “I think we’re going to see some haunting images… And it’s the last thing that Antarctic wildlife needs right now, when it’s trying to adapt to this changing climate.”

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Related: Antarctica: a continent in crisis

The post ‘We’re going to see some haunting images’: Bird flu has reached Antarctica appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 353687 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/02/wa-museum-now-home-to-worlds-best-night-parrot-specimen/ Wed, 21 Feb 2024 01:28:05 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=353011 The best specimen ever recovered of the extremely rare night parrot is now on public display at Western Australian Museum – and it’s already led to a scientific breakthrough that can help save the species.

The post World’s best night parrot specimen leads to first genome sequence of the elusive species appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Once thought to be extinct (for 100 years!) – and currently listed as Critically Endangered – the night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) is one of modern Australia’s most elusive creatures.

Sightings of the bird are rare, for a number of reasons: there are so few of them; they are nocturnal; they inhabit some of the harshest climates in the country; and, they are well-camouflaged – their yellow and green markings allow them to hide in their spinifex habitat.

First discovered by Europeans in 1845, night parrots were once widespread throughout arid Australia, but numbers soon plummeted with the introduction of predators such as cats and foxes.

The species is now known to only inhabit very localised parts of south-western Queensland and Western Australia, explains Dr Leo Joseph, Director of CSIRO’s Australian National Wildlife Collection.

“A couple of dozen scientific specimens were collected during the 19th century, and one more in 1912. Then a specimen was found in 1990, in south-western Queensland.

“Live birds were reported from the same area in 2013, and a live parrot was finally caught and tagged in 2015,” he says.

Related: New footage of the night parrot

But despite these, and a string of other recent sightings, the estimated number of night parrots in the wild remains a staggeringly low 40-500 individuals, says Dr Kenny Travouillon, Western Australia Museum’s Acting Curator of Ornithology.

“Even though there is a [confirmed] population in Queensland, and one in WA, the number of individuals sighted is relatively low. So those estimates are still standing today, and it is hard to be able to challenge these estimates until further populations are found in other parts of Australia,” he says.

So, with the chances of ever finding a night parrot in the wild so incredibly rare, the best chance of seeing one up close is to view a specimen.

And now, WA Museum Boola Bardip, opened in 2020, is home to the best-preserved whole specimen on display anywhere in the world. It’s also only the fourth complete specimen ever collected in WA, with the other three all in overseas museums.

“This is very exciting for us,” says Dr Travouillon.

The specimen was found last year by Traditional Owners in the east Pilbara. The bird was found alive, but it was caught on a fence. Unfortunately, although retrieved, the parrot died from its injuries. The Traditional Owners then notified the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, who soon confirmed that it was indeed a night parrot.

“We are so grateful for the assistance given from Traditional Owners in delivering it to us and giving us permission to put it on display,” says Dr Travouillon.

“Having a specimen of this quality, and its preservation, is incredibly important for research and education. We still know little about this elusive bird’s habitat and biology.”

Incredibly, the specimen has already led to a scientific breakthrough that will help conservation efforts of the species.

Researchers at CSIRO have sequenced the first genome of the night parrot, using tissue taken from the specimen and donated by WA Museum.

Dr Joseph says this genetic blueprint will enable him, and fellow researchers, to explore the genetic basis of why night parrots are nocturnal, a very unusual feature in parrots.

“We’ll also investigate faculties like navigation, smell, beak shape and its less-than-optimal night vision,” he says.

“Statistical analyses can also be run on the genome of this individual to estimate past population sizes of night parrots in Australia …we have the capability to compare this annotated genome with other, closely related parrots, shedding light on the reasons behind its scarcity and limited distribution compared to many of its relatives.”

Senior research scientist Dr Gunjan Pandey, who led the genomics project, adds that the genetic data can be used to ensure that conservation programs maximise diversity, so the species is resilient and has the best chance of long-term survival.

“The night parrot genome will open up numerous opportunities for further research to help conserve this species,” says Dr Pandey. “This will empower scientists to develop a plan for saving the night parrot, which is the ultimate goal of sequencing the genome and making it publicly available.”

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Related: Night parrot’s wonky skull could be its superpower

The post World’s best night parrot specimen leads to first genome sequence of the elusive species appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 353011 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/02/soft-plastic-recycling-has-returned-on-a-small-scale-will-it-work-this-time/ Mon, 19 Feb 2024 21:00:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=353206 After the memorable collapse of Australia’s largest soft plastic recycling program REDcycle in late 2022, a new scheme is emerging. It’s remarkably similar, albeit on a much smaller scale.

The post Soft plastic recycling has returned on a small scale: will it work this time? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The trial underway in 12 Melbourne supermarkets intends, once again, to provide customers with an in-store option for recycling “scrunchable” food packaging.

It’s estimated Australia uses more than 70 billion pieces of soft plastic a year. Most of it still ends up in landfill or blows into streets and waterways, polluting our rivers and oceans. So 12 stores won’t cut it in the long term.

But starting small is a good idea. REDcycle collapsed under its own weight, stockpiling recyclable material with nowhere to go. The new scheme will feed new, purpose-built waste processing facilities so it has much better prospects.

Soft Plastics Recycling Trial launches in 12 Melbourne suburbs.https://t.co/RQNIhE5Lxx

— Waste Management Review (@WasteMR) February 11, 2024

What do we know about the new scheme?

Australia’s Soft Plastics Taskforce is behind the new trial. The taskforce is a coalition of the three major supermarkets: Woolworths, Coles and Aldi. It was established in the wake of REDcycle’s demise and is chaired by the federal government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

The taskforce assumed responsibility for roughly 11,000 tonnes of soft plastic, formerly managed by REDcycle, across 44 locations across Australia.

Addressing the lack of soft plastics recycling infrastructure in Australia is a top priority. This is the main reason REDcycle was unable to process the mountains of soft plastics it had stored around the country.

Much like the original REDcycle scheme, the new small-scale trial in Victoria has identified several potential end markets for used soft plastic. After treatment, it could become an additive for asphalt roads, a replacement for aggregate in concrete, or a material for making shopping trolleys and baskets.

To be a successful and lasting solution, the scheme must be cost-effective and suitably located, with established markets for the recycled products.

Celebrating the launch of @ClosetheLoopAUS new recycling plant in Melbourne, a milestone in Australia's soft plastic recycling capacity. It will process post-consumer soft plastics to make TonerPlas, which improves the performance of asphalt roads while lowering carbon footprint. pic.twitter.com/LBTI8WJaaK

— Planet Ark (@PlanetArk) February 2, 2024

Why are soft plastics so difficult to recycle?

Recycling soft plastic packaging is particularly challenging, for several reasons.

Plastic packaging is typically made from the petrochemicals polyethylene or polypropylene, and often contains a mix of materials, including various types of plastics and additives for flexibility and durability. This blend of materials makes it difficult to separate and recycle effectively.

To make matters worse, soft plastics readily absorb residues from food, grease and other substances. This causes contamination, reducing the quality of the recycled material.

There’s also less demand for recycled soft plastics, compared to other plastics. Many manufacturers prefer using brand new or “virgin” plastics or recycled rigid plastics instead, such as recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), leaving limited avenues for recycled soft plastics to find new uses.

Soft plastics can get tangled or stuck in machinery at recycling or waste-processing facilities, causing inefficiencies and disruptions in the process.

Related: Pulling the plug on plastic

Finding local solutions

We need to make it economically viable to recycle low-value plastics such as soft plastic packaging. Placing recycling facilities closer to communities and transport can save money and reduce emissions. So local, decentralised, small-scale recycling or reprocessing infrastructure is the way to go.

Fit-for-purpose facilities can develop the specialised processing and manufacturing techniques needed to handle soft plastics. This takes care of the contamination problem and creates new options for developing recycled products.

Local recycling initiatives also foster community engagement and awareness. We need to encourage individuals to participate actively in recycling efforts, and foster local businesses focused on resource recovery. To this end, we are currently exploring innovative enterprise-based recycling solutions in remote First Nations communities in Queensland.

There are no #recycling options that operate on a large enough scale to deal with our soft plastic waste – we will not be able to recycle our way out of the #plastic pollution crisis. https://t.co/eUTkEdhQun

— Australian Marine Conservation Society (@AustMarConsSoc) January 30, 2024

The high cost of cheap packaging

Soft plastics are lightweight, flexible and inexpensive to produce. This has made them popular choices for packaging. But this ignores the problems of disposal, including harm to nature and people. There has to be a better way.

Recycling soft plastic packaging does face numerous obstacles. These stem from complex composition, contamination risks, sorting and processing challenges, scarce recycling infrastructure and limited demand for the end product.

Tackling these challenges requires collaborative efforts from industry players, policymakers, consumers and researchers. We need to develop innovative local solutions and reduce consumption of single-use plastic.

Holding producers accountable for the end-of-life management of their products is paramount. In the meantime, local, decentralised recycling infrastructure offers a promising solution to improve the efficiency and sustainability of soft plastic recycling, while empowering communities to contribute to a circular economy.

The trial in Victoria raises hopes of a working solution for post-consumer soft plastic. This time they are starting on a small scale. That should make it easier to manage the volume of material available for recycling and avoid secret stockpiles. Ultimately this approach could see “micro-factories” cropping up across the country, turning what was once waste into viable, useful products.

Related: Deepest ever sea dive discovers plastic rubbish

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Anya Phelan, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 353206 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/02/what-would-you-do-save-a-single-human-or-an-entire-animal-species/ Fri, 16 Feb 2024 04:01:40 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=353094 Australia is in the grip of an escalating extinction crisis. Since colonisation, 100 native plant and animal species have become formally listed as extinct due to human activities. The actual number is undoubtedly far higher.

The post What would you do: save a single human or an entire animal species? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Surveys suggest Australians want to prevent extinctions, regardless of the financial cost. But when it comes to the crunch, how much do we really care?

In emergency situations, there is a long-held convention that official responders such as firefighters first attempt to save human life, then property and infrastructure, then natural assets.

Our research investigated whether this convention reflects community values. We found the people we surveyed valued one human life more than the extinction of an entire non-human species – a result both fascinating and troubling.

What are we willing to lose?

Catastrophic events force us to make hard choices about what to save and what to abandon. In such emergencies, our choices reveal in stark detail the values we ascribe to different types of “assets”, including plant and animal species.

Our priorities will become even more crucial under climate change, which is bringing worse bushfires and other environmental catastrophes. If nature is always saved last, we can expect recurring biodiversity losses, including extinctions.

Related: OPINION: Recalling the inferno

The unprecedented loss of biodiversity in the Black Summer fires was a taste of what’s to come. The fires burnt the entire known range of more than 500 plant and animal species and at least half the range of more than 100 threatened species. The catastrophe led to at least one extinction – of a mealybug species in Western Australia.

The losses prompted reflection on our priorities. The final report of a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into the bushfires, for example, questioned if this hierarchy of protection should always apply.

Our new research investigated community values on this issue. The findings were illuminating.

Making the hard choices

The survey involved 2,139 Australians. Respondents ranked the assets they would save in a hypothetical bushfire, choosing from the following options:

• a person not warned to evacuate
• a person who had ignored advice to evacuate (and so implicitly taken responsibility for their own safety)
• a population of 50 koalas (of which many other populations exist elsewhere)
• one of only two populations of a wallaby species
• the only population of a native snail species (which would become extinct if burnt)
• the only population of a native shrub species (which would become extinct if burnt)
• a flock of 50 sheep
• a house, shed and tractor
• two items of Indigenous cultural significance (a rock art gallery and a tree carving).

Survey respondents overwhelmingly gave the highest ranking to the two options involving saving a human life – even if that person had been repeatedly told to evacuate and even if, as a consequence, a snail or shrub species became extinct.

Saving a person who had not received evacuation warnings was rated highest, ahead of saving a person who ignored evacuation advice. Saving the koala population was next preferred, followed by saving the wallaby population.

The remaining options had negative scores, meaning that respondents were more likely to choose them as least important than most important.

Amongst the biodiversity assets, decisions based on conservation consequences would have meant the top priority was preventing the extinction of the snail and shrub populations. Next in line would have been the wallaby population, then a relatively less consequential loss of koalas.

But the results were the opposite: people prioritised the koalas over the wallabies, with less concern for the shrub and the snail. Ranked even lower were the items of Indigenous cultural significance. Saving the house and shed had lowest rankings.

The results are revealing

We take several key messages from the survey results.

First, the conventional hierarchy of protection during fire – prioritising human life, then infrastructure, then biodiversity – does not always reflect societal values. Sometimes, protecting natural assets is more important than protecting at least some infrastructure. In the Black Summer fires, the attempts to save crucial populations of the imperilled Wollemi Pine showed such protection of biodiversity assets is possible.

Second, our society values one human life more than the millions of years of evolution that can be eclipsed almost instantaneously in the extinction of another species.

Third, our regard for nature is far from egalitarian. In this case, the preference for saving koalas is consistent with previous studies that show we care far more for iconic cute mammals than other species.

Related: Our koalas: post-bushfire recovery and future challenges

Fourth, animal welfare issues may trump consideration for conservation consequences. We suspect that the haunting imagery of koalas suffering in the Black Summer wildfires may have contributed to them being prioritised ahead of more imperilled species.

And finally, our results were troubling for the conservation of poorly known species, the extinctions of which are increasing around the world. These losses have been largely disregarded or unmourned by society.

It suggests the case for saving such species needs to be better made. Australia’s invertebrate fauna is highly distinctive, fascinating and vital for the health of our ecosystems. To prevent mass losses of invertebrate species, we must take action now.

Rethinking our priorities?

The world is becoming more perilous. There’s a high risk of losing much of the nature that surrounds us, supports us and helps define us as Australians.

We must think carefully about what future we bequeath to our children and to future generations. This may require reconsidering our priorities – and in some cases, making different choices.

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John Woinarski, Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University; Kerstin Zander, Professor of Environmental Economics, Charles Darwin University, and Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post What would you do: save a single human or an entire animal species? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 353094 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/02/from-the-sky-to-the-sea-using-satellites-to-map-the-worlds-unidentified-reefs/ Thu, 15 Feb 2024 04:29:46 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=353077 Detailed satellite mapping of the world's reefs has revealed there is more coral reef area across the globe than previously thought - information that's aiding conservation efforts of these environments.

The post From the sky to the sea: using satellites to map the world’s unidentified reefs appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Scientists have identified 348,000sq.km of shallow coral reefs up to 20-30m deep thanks to new technology.

“The total area of coral reef ecosystems is more extensive than previously thought,” said Dr Mitchell Lyons from the University of Queensland’s School of the Environment, working as part of the Allen Coral Atlas project.

“We can now confidently say there are almost 350,000 square kilometres of coral reef, which is about 50,000-100,000 kilometres more than previous estimations.”

Dr Mitchell said researchers also found that about 80,000sq.km of reefs have a hard bottom, where coral tends to grow, as opposed to soft bottoms like sand, rubble or seagrass.

“This specialised data on area and composition will allow scientists, conservationists and policymakers to better understand and manage reef systems,” he said.

Making the map

The map, known as the Allen Coral Atlas, was developed by the late Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. and is managed by Arizona State University and the University of Queensland along with partners Planet and Coral Reef Alliance.

Using fine-scale, high-resolution pictures from Planet Dove cubesat satellites and scientific-grade information from the Sentinel-2 satellite, scientists processed 100 trillion pixels to produce a global map of coral reefs.

The satellite images were then put through a machine-learning algorithm along with more than 1.5 million training samples curated from data collected by over 480 contributors identifying types of reefs, and the system then predicted any unmapped information to fill in data gaps.

Conserving coral

According to Dr Mitchell, although coral reefs account for only a small proportion of the ocean, they provide tremendous biodiversity that humans rely on for culture, commerce, scientific output and medicine.

“Coral reefs possess a quarter of all marine life and contribute to the wellbeing and livelihoods of a billion people worldwide,” Dr Mitchell said.

“Maps of ecosystems underpin many science and conservation activities, but until recently, there were no consistent high-resolution maps of the world’s coral reefs.

“Hundreds of thousands of people have already accessed the maps, and they are already being used directly around the world for marine spatial planning, marine protected areas, environmental accounting and assessments, restoration, and education.”

In 2022, more than 80,000 people accessed the Allen Coral Atlas, including conservation groups using the technology to advance their initiatives.

Related: World first: trials begin to seed the threatened Great Barrier Reef with thousands of healthy baby corals

Groups include the Coral Reef Rescue Initiative, a global programme of scientists, NGOs and partners working in collaboration with governments and communities to safeguard reefs, food security and livelihoods against climate change; and the Philippine Reef and Rainforest Conservation Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on environmental conservation on Danjugan Island.

The Coral Triangle Initiative, a multilateral partnership between Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste working to sustain marine and coastal resources by addressing food security, climate change and marine biodiversity, is also accessing the Allen Coral Atlas.

The information provided by the map will also have broader uses for Australian researchers and conservationists.

“We tend to be really interested in coral bleaching, so the map can help target locations where we know the reefs have hard substrate for coral to grow,” Dr Mitchell said.

“The Allen Coral Atlas also has a tool that allows pinpointing of areas affected by coral bleaching to help alert to the potentially growing issue.

“It’s more than just maps,” he said. “It’s a tool for positive change for coral reefs, and coastal and marine environments at large.”

The post From the sky to the sea: using satellites to map the world’s unidentified reefs appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 353077 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/02/bushfires-in-victoria-how-to-protect-yourself-if-the-air-is-smoky-where-you-live/ Thu, 15 Feb 2024 02:34:01 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=353050 Bushfires broke out yesterday in western Victoria during a day of extreme weather conditions across the state. Although authorities have reported the situation is easing, emergency services continue to fight blazes in the Grampians National Park around the towns of Bellfield and Pomonal.

The post Bushfires in Victoria: how to protect yourself if the air is smoky where you live appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> While the air quality in Australia is generally good, events such as bushfires can have a significant effect. Smoke can travel long distances and reduce air quality throughout a city or region.

The combustion of vegetation produces a range of gases, including carbon monoxide, as well as fine particles, often described as PM2.5 (particles of 2.5 micrometres in diameter or less). These particles can remain suspended in the air for extended periods and, owing to their tiny size, can penetrate deep into the lungs when inhaled.

Exposure to PM2.5 in bushfire smoke can result in a range of symptoms including coughing, throat irritation, as well as irritation to the eyes and nose. It can make existing conditions such as asthma worse and increase hospital presentations.

The longer-term health effects of PM2.5 exposure are well established, with research by the World Health Organization and the US Environmental Protection Agency linking PM2.5 exposure to respiratory and heart disease.

Ultimately, poor air quality can affect all of us, with even healthy people experiencing symptoms when exposed to high concentrations of bushfire smoke.
There are, however, things we can do to protect ourselves.

Monitor the air quality

Air quality indexes are based on measurements of PM2.5 and other pollutants. On air quality indexes lower numbers indicate higher air quality, and vice versa. A number of websites provide air quality index information, for example IQAir for locations around Australia, or World’s Air Pollution for locations globally.

There are also apps such as AirRater which can provide useful information in addition to air quality values, such as pollen levels.

Although a number is much more informative from a research point of view, these sorts of services also provide air quality ratings such as “poor, “fair” or “good”, which can be helpful for people who may be unfamiliar with what the numbers mean.

Notably, these sources indicate the air quality around Victoria remains good at present.

When looking at air quality index values or PM2.5 concentrations, it’s important to note these do not identify the sources of the particles, so not everything counted as PM2.5 on even a smoky day is necessarily bushfire smoke. But PM2.5 values are a good indicator of overall air quality.

A growing number of air quality monitors are available to buy for home use, which measure single pollutants or a number of pollutants.

However, these instruments are not the same as those used in statutory air quality monitoring stations (which provide data for websites like those mentioned above). Statutory stations are set up by regulators or government agencies and use instruments that must meet national or international standards.

In many cases the accuracy of low-cost devices may not be well established. And effective calibration – where the measurements are verified using an alternative method, as would happen in a statutory monitoring station – might not be possible, particularly by end users.

Stay inside

When the air is noticeably smoky, or the air quality index is high, it’s best to remain indoors with doors and windows closed if you can.

The threshold at which you make this decision may depend on your personal circumstances. For example, healthy people can generally continue outdoor activities when the air quality is “fair”. However, someone with a respiratory condition might need to decrease or stop outdoor activities at this point. If the air quality is “very poor”, everyone should stay indoors.

If you have a particularly leaky home – say if you notice a draft, or odours from outside when the doors and windows are shut – then smoke ingress may be an issue. In this case, you may like to go elsewhere (for example, a friend’s house, or a public building with filtered air), provided it’s safe to do so.

A high-powered air cleaner or purifier with a HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter may also offer some benefit, especially for people with respiratory conditions.

If you get one of these, remember placement is important. Portable units may work for a single room, but not a whole house. Consider the best location for these devices (probably the room where you spend the most time).

Ultimately only the air which passes through the filter will be treated, so the size of the unit must be appropriate for the space. The Victorian government offers some advice on how to ascertain what sort of unit will be suitable for your space.

When staying indoors it’s safe to use air conditioners, provided they recirculate the air already in the house (and the windows and doors are closed). Reverse-cycle air conditioners are a good option if you have them. Any system which draws in outside air without treatment should be avoided.

Wear a mask if going outside

If you need to go out when the air quality is poor, a P2 (or N95) mask provides protection from smoke particles in the air (but not gases such as carbon monoxide). For effective protection, the mask should be fitted properly and worn for the duration of your time outdoors.

Respirator masks may not be a good option for those with existing health conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, so in these cases people should seek medical advice.

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Ryan Mead-Hunter, Senior lecturer, School of Population Health, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 353050 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/02/declining-devils-force-quoll-evolution/ Mon, 12 Feb 2024 03:06:42 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=352859 Falling populations of Tassie devils – the Apple Isle’s apex predator – are affecting the evolution of spotted-tailed quolls, according to a new study.

The post Declining devils force quoll evolution appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) has reduced the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) population by about 80 per cent in the past three decades, increasing the activity of mesopredators – mid-range predators – such as spotted-tailed quolls (Dasyurus maculatus).

The two carnivorous marsupials share similar diets, although quolls tend to avoid devils, which are much larger and more aggressive. But in areas with high prevalence of DFTD (and small devil populations), quolls have access to more food resources, and, according to a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in January 2024, are now travelling shorter distances to scavenge and breed. This is decreasing genetic exchange between individuals. 

Related: Decline in Tassie devil populations disrupting food chain

Analysis of the genome of 345 individual quolls across 15 generations showed that quolls living in areas with low densities of Tasmanian devils had less genetic diversity compared with quolls living in areas with larger devil populations. Those quolls must travel further distances to find food and breeding partners.

The study also revealed gene variants associated with muscle development and movement in the less-mobile quolls living with smaller devil populations.

Related: A guide to all six species of quoll

The post Declining devils force quoll evolution appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 352859 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/01/megalodon-more-slender-than-previously-thought/ Tue, 30 Jan 2024 23:08:10 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=352401 Scientists have challenged the previous interpretations of the megalodon’s body shape.

The post Megalodon more ‘slender’ than previously thought appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The Otodus megalodon has been extinct for roughly 3.5 million years, but now prowls the silver screen in Hollywood blockbusters. Palaeoart and popular culture typically portray the megalodon as a 15m version of a great white shark – despite no complete skeletons ever having been discovered.

But new fossil analysis offers fresh insight into what this prehistoric predator might have looked like. Palaeontologists measured a fossilised megalodon vertebral column taken from an individual shark from the Miocene epoch (23.03–5.333mya). The vertebral column had a smaller diameter than expected, suggesting megalodon had a proportionally slimmer build and longer body than that of a great white shark.

“The species had an unusually slender vertebral column, which is at odds with previous reconstructions depicting megalodon as a girthy shark,” said Dr Mikael Siversson, Head of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Western Australian Museum. 

Mikael was part of an international team of scientists that challenged the previous interpretations of the megalodon’s body shape, in a new scientific paper in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica. Similar to modern-day sharks, the megalodon had a cartilaginous body that doesn’t fossilise (apart from a few, exceptionally rare cases). Instead, the prehistoric predator left behind a robust fossil record of teeth and vertebrae – leaving the palaeontologists to fill in the blanks. Palaeontologists studying megalodon have looked to great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) as an approximate blueprint for what this prehistoric shark might have once looked like. But now, Mikael is urging for a “more strictly evidence-based view” on this extinct shark’s anatomy.

“Although we have a very good idea about the size of the mouth from associated dentitions seemingly including all tooth positions, other anatomical features, such as the shape of the fins and tail, are unknown,” he said. “Going forward, any meaningful discussion on the anatomy of this shark other than the size and robustness of the jaws would require the discovery of more-or-less complete skeletons.”

The megalodon was the largest predatory shark to have ever existed. It lived approximately 16–3.5 million years ago, from the mid-Miocene through to the Pliocene.

RELATED STORY: Megalodon: fact from fiction

RELATED STORY: Megalodon could swallow a great white shark whole, research shows

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]]> 352401 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/travel/2024/01/trade-in-the-office-hours-for-the-outdoors-with-a-midweek-escape-to-the-goldcoast-hinterland/ Mon, 29 Jan 2024 06:28:54 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=352200 Escape the work-day grind with a mid-week break into the natural wonders of the Gold Coast Hinterland.

The post Trade in the office hours for the outdoors with a mid-week escape to the Gold Coast hinterland appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> This article is brought to you by Destination Gold Coast.

We all know the feeling. Come Monday, we drag ourselves to work with a tired mind, body and soul and no amount of oat milk cappuccino can help. By lunchtime, our minds are wandering into the outdoors with all that fresh air and greenery and maybe even waterfalls that we can pose in front of, stand under or just admire. The lightbulb moment slides into your personal DMs – otherwise known as your brain – by late afternoon. Flights are booked, accommodation arranged, your partner or partners in crime are onboard. And the mid-week getaway AKA the ‘Sneeky Mid-Weeky’, has the green light. 

Take a cue from that inspiration and immerse yourself in the lush beauty of the Gold Coast Hinterland. There’s a never-ending variety of possibilities to explore, venture out and unearth tranquil hiking paths and breathtaking waterfalls that promise to rejuvenate your spirit. Disconnect from the digital world by activating your out-of-office early and embrace the serenity of Tranquil Tuesday, granting yourself the precious opportunity to recharge. The unique adventures awaiting you in the Hinterland empower you to tailor your midweek escape to your preferences, ensuring a getaway that resonates with your individuality and gives you the gift of being truly present. Amid the midweek majesty, you can fully reconnect with yourself, free from the looming pressures of daily life, allowing nature’s serenity to slow your pace and nourish your soul.

Twin Falls, Springbrook. Image credit: Destination Gold Coast

Green behind the Gold

For this rejuvenating, soul-stirring getaway far away from mouse clicks and spreadsheets and meetings and deadlines, exploring in nature is the best boost imaginable. And being mid-week, you could find yourself enjoying nature’s delights virtually crowd-free.

The Gold Coast Hinterland is a lush oasis, with subtropical rainforests, misty waterfalls, charming villages and fertile farming grounds. Go for a hike, hang out in the tree tops, breathe in all that fresh air and balance that out with stops at cool cafes, and maybe even a winery visit. The choices are endless.

Play on the Tamborine

Instead of walking to the office printer or photocopier, hike through tangles of trees in ancient forests. Make the most of your short escape by getting up early for a sunrise stroll up Tamborine Mountain. There are a number of trails to explore, and several waterfalls to spice up your socials. Check out the watery wonders at Witches Falls, Curtis or Cameron Falls.

Curtis Falls, Tamborine Mountain. Image credit: Destination Gold Coast

Reach for the sky under a blanket of green at the Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk, an elevated bridge that takes you through ethereal rainforest on what is the longest canopy walk in Southeast Queensland. If you want to stay high, tackle The Treetop Challenge at Thunderbird Park. Unleash your inner Tarzan and take on some of the 85 challenges, from flying foxes to high ropes courses. 

The legendary O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat can also elevate your stay with its Tree Top Walk featuring nine suspension bridges and two observation decks to show off this wild canopy with its orchids, ferns and trees and the birdlife flitting around this avian playground.  A visit to Morans Falls at sunset is another must. While in this part of the world you can stay at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat, and even treat yourself to a massage at the Lost World Spa. 

Waterfall view at sunset at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat. Image credit: Destination Gold Coast

Golden glow

World Heritage-listed Springbrook National Park is another natural wonder, a jewel accessed through the verdant Numinbah Valley. Spreadsheets and Word documents will be a distant memory as you go for a walk through the ancient Gondwana rainforest with Antarctic beech trees dating back over 3000 years. Make your way to the spectacular Natural Bridge, an ethereal hideaway with its waterfall. Sign up for a guided walk to the Natural Bridge at night, to marvel at the magical glow worms that light up this spiritual place. 

Springbrook National Park. Image credits: Destination Gold Coast

Stretch your legs and blow out the work cobwebs on one or more of the 160 kilometres of bushwalking trails in Woonoongoora – Lamington National Park. Go easy, or go hard, as you discover caves, creeks, rainforests and soak up the serenity that will make the mundane work week goings on feel like they are a world away. 

Stay, play and dine

It’s not just what you do on your ‘sneeky mid-weeky’, it is where you stay, where you dine and where you caffeinate. After all, a good coffee is just as important in the scenic Gold Coast Hinterland as it is in the city. 

For accommodation, take your pick of romantic retreats, lodges, chalets, bed and breakfasts and plenty of holiday homes. On Tamborine Mountain, check out Cedar Creek Lodges – a great base for bushwalkers, and fine dining to boot at the Miner’s Lantern Restaurant. Binna Burra is also a wonderful option for adventure seekers, with its hilltop location ensuring striking views. Stay in one of the brand new Tiny Wild Houses atop the idyllic Bellbird clifftop. They are brilliantly decked out and even have fully-equipped kitchenettes. The floor-to-ceiling glass wall brings the outside in so you can make the most of your country stay. If you don’t feel like cooking, treat yourself to dinner at the Binna Burra Tea House, and have your favourite cocktail at The Groom’s Cottage Bushwalker’s Bar.

A fine drop

Toast to your adventurous pursuits and to your cleverness at breaking your work routine, by visiting one of the many wineries on the Gold Coast Hinterland. Consider Cedar Creek Estate with its idyllic setting and tranquil lake views, or have a fine drop at Witches Falls Winery, where you can admire the beautiful gardens, listen to the bird song and taste their small estate wines. Add a grazing platter featuring locally-produced cheeses, patés, relishes, and other nibbles to make the most of the gorgeous location and quiet mid-week setting. Mount Tamborine Vineyard & Winery will please Chardonnay drinkers, while Albert River Wines is a boutique winery in a historic homestead.

Wine tasting at Witches Falls Winery. Image credit: Tourism Australia

Wine not your thing? Never fear, beer lovers are catered for as well. Fortitude Brewing Company crafts session beers from premium ingredients, while The Tamborine Mountain Distillery is a charming distillery nestled within a beautiful English Tudor-style estate, producing a range of fine liqueurs, schnapps and vodkas that have scooped up over 400 awards.

As we all say, YOLO. We only live once so take a break from the routine, get away from the city and let nature be the antidote to your work woes. Being immersed in nature can help improve symptoms of anxiety and stress, and enhance your sense of well-being.

What are you waiting for? Check your calendar, break those chains, and book your ‘Sneeky Mid-Weeky’ escape in the Gold Coast.

This article is brought to you by Destination Gold Coast.

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]]> 352200 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/01/platypuses-thrive-in-new-sydney-habitat/ Tue, 23 Jan 2024 00:31:08 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=352024 More than six months on, ten platypuses released into the wild continue to thrive.

The post Platypuses thrive in new habitat within Sydney’s Royal National Park  appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> We recently brought you the story of a collaboration between field biologists and zoo vets who, together in May 2023, reintroduced a population of platypuses into Sydney’s Royal National Park.

The latest monitoring of the reintroduced platypuses has now revealed nine out of 10 of the animals have remained inside the Hacking River – with one itinerant female venturing beyond the scientists’ tracking capabilities. But according to Dr Gilad Bino, platypus ecologist from UNSW’s Centre for Ecosystem Science and lead researcher of the platypus translocation program, this isn’t cause for concern, as the same platypus has wandered out of range before, when she explored the small creeks surround Hacking River.

“We are closely monitoring the one platypus which has ventured beyond our monitoring capacity, but she will no doubt reconnect soon,” Gilad said. 

The 10 platypuses – six females and four males – were released into the national park as part of the Platypus Reintroduction Project, to help revive the park’s platypus population. All 10 platypuses were taken from the wild, with most translocated from the Monaro region of the Snowy Mountains, with a pit-stop at Taronga Zoo’s Platypus Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, where they received health checks and were implanted with acoustic tags for tracking. 

The platypuses’ first three months in the field exceeded the ecologists’ expectations, with all 10 surviving – and thriving – in their new home.

The successful translocation of the platypuses has sparked interest in running similar initiatives across Australia. 

“Recent water quality and macro-invertebrate surveys show the system is in generally good condition, offering suitable resources for the platypuses,” said Dr Tahneal Hawke, from UNSW’S Centre of Ecosystem Science. “As they enter their breeding season, we are optimistic they will breed.”

The Platypus Reintroduction Project is a multi-organisation initiative collaboration between UNSW, WWF-Australia, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Taronga Conservation Society.  

RELATED STORY: How to rebuild a platypus population

The post Platypuses thrive in new habitat within Sydney’s Royal National Park  appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 352024 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2024/01/how-rising-sea-levels-will-affect-our-coastal-cities-and-towns/ Tue, 23 Jan 2024 00:28:14 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=352055 Sea-level rise – along with increasing temperatures – is one of the clearest signals of man-made global warming. Yet exactly how rising water levels affect the coast is often misunderstood.

The post How rising sea levels will affect our coastal cities and towns appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> A new coastal hazard assessment for Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay has again thrown the spotlight on the impact of sea-level rise on coastal communities in Australia. Should we be worried? Or is the reality more nuanced?

While there are still many uncertainties, even a small change in sea level can have big impacts. We should be doing all we can to limit sea-level rise to protect our coastal cities and towns. And because sea levels will continue to rise for centuries after we cut emissions to net zero, planning decisions for coastal areas must factor this in.

RELATED ARTICLE: Australian scientist urges world to “slam the brakes” as report reveals climate change tipping point now closer

Why are sea levels rising?

Global sea levels are rising for two main reasons: the oceans are getting warmer, and land-based ice sheets and glaciers are melting.

As ocean water warms, it expands. Because the ocean basins are finite (like a bathtub), this results in a rise in water levels.

Since the 1970s, thermal expansion of the oceans has accounted for roughly half of measured global sea-level rise. The other half is due to land-based ice melt from ice sheets and glaciers. Together, these make up what is known as “eustatic” sea level.

The Port Phillip Bay coastal hazard assessment, released on Thursday, found that Docklands and Southbank in the Melbourne city council area could face inundation in the scenario of a 1.1-metre sea level rise, during a one-in-100-chance storm-tide event.https://t.co/6YvDR7O4wA

— Gary Buckley™ (@myrddenbuckley) January 11, 2024

The rate of sea-level rise experienced at the coast also depends on whether the land is moving up or down. “Relative” or “isostatic” sea level is the sum of “eustatic” sea level plus local vertical land movement.

Australia is rising by about 0.3-0.4 millimetres a year due to glacial isostatic adjustment. This is the result of the land continuing to move upward following the loss of ice on land during previous glaciations. The land subsided under the weight of this ice and is now rebounding as the ice is gone. This slow rebound of the land provides a small offset to eustatic sea levels around Australia.

Sea-level rise is accelerating

From 1900 to 2018, global sea levels rose by about 20cm (a long-term average of 1.7mm/yr), but almost everywhere the rate of rise is increasing. Measurements since 1993, when global satellite data became available, show the rate of global mean sea-level rise over the past decade has more than doubled to more than 4mm/yr.

Around Australia, sea levels are rising at or above this global average. Tide gauges indicate the rate of rise in northern Australia since the early 1990s is around 4–6mm/yr. Along the south-east coast of Australia, it’s about 2–4mm/yr. Rates of sea-level rise are not uniform around Australia because of local effects like ocean circulation and tidal processes.

Even if greenhouse gas emissions reached zero tomorrow, sea levels will continue to rise for several centuries because of the slow response of the ocean to warming. It’s a long-term trend that we must live with.

This is why is it important to factor in sea-level rise when we make planning decisions along the coast. Unfortunately, the rate of sea-level rise over the coming century remains highly uncertain, making it difficult to include in coastal planning.

The “likely” range of the most recent projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a rise of between 0.4 metres and 0.8m by 2100. However, a rise of nearly 2m by 2100 and 5m by 2150 cannot be ruled out. This is due to deep uncertainty about ice-sheet processes – so much so, that in 2021 the IPCC introduced a new high-end risk scenario to describe this.

What is glacial isostatic adjustment? #iceontheland @TeachitGeog @AntarcticGlacie http://t.co/mfTX0N2Rib pic.twitter.com/Lw95Mu0ZWR

— Prof Jamie Woodward (@Jamie_Woodward_) March 24, 2015

Small rises have big impacts

The impact of sea-level rise at the coast is not just a gradual increase in water lapping at the shore. An increase in tide heights (both higher high tides and higher low tides) increases the probability of coastal flooding and erosion when storms come along.

As a rule of thumb, every 10cm of sea-level rise triples the frequency of a given coastal flood. Another rule of thumb, known as the Bruun Rule, suggests a 1cm rise in sea level leads to a 1m retreat of the coastline.

While these back-of-the-envelope estimates are often significantly reduced when local conditions are accounted for, it explains why a small shift in the mean sea level can have big impacts at the coast.

Shoreline #erosion on a #Qld beach. Beaches are dynamic and they often gain and lose sand. Erosion will outpace deposition with #sealevelrise (Bruun Rule: 100m erosion for every 1 m SLR). Protecting or restoring dune plants is important for beaches and nearby infrastructure. #NbS pic.twitter.com/pkBAyrumao

— Megan Saunders (@saunders_meg) September 12, 2022

Storms aren’t always bad for the beach

Most of the impacts of sea-level rise around Australia’s coast will be felt in combination with storm events, such as east coast lows or tropical cyclones. A high water level plus a storm surge on top leads to a storm or “king” tide. In combination with storm waves, it can cause significant coastal erosion and flooding.

However, storms also bring sand from deeper water towards the beach. Over the long term, this process can help beaches keep pace with sea-level rise. Fortunately for eastern Australia, we have a lot of sand sitting offshore which is slowly making its way back to our beaches. Other naturally regressive coastlines, such as many in Northern Europe, are not so lucky.

All eyes on Antarctica

Sea-level rise is here to stay and gathering pace, but the rate of future increase remains uncertain. It largely depends on what happens in Antarctica over the coming decades.

This in turn depends on land and sea temperatures around the southern continent, which are directly linked to our efforts to limiting global warming to 1.5°C in line with the Paris Agreement.

RELATED ARTICLE: Antarctica: a continent in crisis

A heatwave in Antarctica totally blew the minds of scientists.

They set out to decipher it, and @DanaMBergstrom (@UOW) discusses the results.https://t.co/RsntSKksbL

— The Conversation – Australia + New Zealand (@ConversationEDU) January 10, 2024

With over 250 million people now living on land less than 2m above sea level, most in Asia, it is imperative we do everything we can to limit future sea-level rise.

Thomas Mortlock, Adjunct Fellow, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post How rising sea levels will affect our coastal cities and towns appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 352055 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/01/laundry-is-a-top-source-of-microplastic-pollution/ Wed, 17 Jan 2024 01:36:48 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=351854 Microplastics are turning up everywhere, from remote mountain tops to deep ocean trenches. They also are in many animals, including humans.

The post Laundry is a top source of microplastic pollution – here’s how to clean your clothes more sustainably appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The most common microplastics in the environment are microfibers – plastic fragments shaped like tiny threads or filaments. Microfibers come from many sources, including cigarette butts, fishing nets and ropes, but the biggest source is synthetic fabrics, which constantly shed them.

Textiles shed microfibers while they are manufactured, worn and disposed of, but especially when they are washed. A single wash load can release several million microfibers. Many factors affect how many fibers are released, including fabric type, mechanical action, detergents, temperature and the duration of the wash cycle.

My research focuses on coastal ecology and water pollution, including work in New York and New Jersey marshes and estuaries that are heavily affected by human activities. Here are some things to know about reducing microplastic pollution from your washing machine.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pulling the plug on plastic

From fabric to water and soil

Once garments release microfibers in washing machines, the fibers enter the wastewater stream, which generally goes to a wastewater treatment plant. Advanced treatment plants can remove up to 99 per cent of microfibers from water. But since a single laundry load can produce millions of fibers, treated water discharged from the plant still contains a huge number of them.

Microfibers that are removed during treatment end up in sewage sludge – a mix of solid materials that is processed to remove pathogens. In many cases, treated sewage sludge is applied to soil as a fertilizer. This allows microfibers to enter air and soil, and to be transferred to soil organisms and up the terrestrial food web or taken up by crops.

Microplastics that wash into rivers, lakes and bays can have many harmful effects. They may be consumed by fish and other aquatic animals, affecting their biochemistry, physiology, reproduction, development or behavior. These microplastics contain chemical additives, including substances like phthalates and bisphenol A that can leach out and may have health effects in humans and animals, including effects on the endocrine system.

Textile microfibers also contain additional chemicals that have been shown to be toxic, such as fabric dyes, anti-wrinkle agents and flame retardants. In addition, contaminants that are present in the water, such as metals and pesticides, can stick to microplastic particles, turning them into a veritable cocktail of contaminants that may be transferred into animals that eat them.

Washing more sustainably

Not all fabrics shed microfibers at the same rate. A loosely woven fabric that feels fluffy or fuzzy, such as fleece, sheds more than a tightly woven one. While garments made of natural fibers, such as cotton and wool, would appear to be a solution, unfortunately they also shed microfibers that can pick up pollutants in the environment.

Some textile scientists and manufacturers are developing fabrics that shed less than existing ones, thanks to features such as longer fibers and coatings to reduce shedding. Meanwhile, here are some ways to reduce microfiber shedding from your laundry:

• Do laundry less often. Washing full loads instead of partial loads reduces release of microfibers because garments are exposed to less friction during the wash cycle.
• Use cold water, which releases fewer microfibers than hot water.
• Use less detergent, which increases microfiber release.
• Use a front-loading washing machine, whose tumbling action produces less microfiber release.
• Dry laundry on a clothesline. Running clothes in dryers releases additional microfibers into the air from the dryer vent.

Several types of products collect microfibers in the washer before they are released with wastewater. Some are laundry bags made of woven monofilament, a single-polyamide filament that does not disintegrate into fibers. Laundry is washed while enclosed in the bag, which traps microfibers that the garments release. A study of one such product, Guppyfriend, found that it collected about one-third of released microfibers.

Another device, the Cora Ball, is a plastic ball with spines topped with soft plastic discs that capture microfibers. It reduces microfibers by about 25 to 30 per cent, but may not be suitable for loose knits because it can snag on threads and damage clothing.

RELATED ARTICLE: A short guide to green cleaning

Filter your washwater

Several brands of external filters are available that can be retrofitted onto existing washing machines. External filters can remove up to 90 per cent of microfibers from rinse water. Their average cost is about AU$225. Owners need to clean the filters periodically and dispose of the collected microfibers with other solid waste, not down the drain, which would put them back into the wastewater stream.

In a 2021 study, researchers installed washing machine filters in 97 homes in a town in Ontario, Canada, which represented about 10 per cent of the households in the community. They found that this significantly reduced microfibers in treated water from the local treatment plant.

Some companies are now manufacturing washers with built-in microfiber filters. France has enacted a requirement for all new washing machines to be equipped with filters by 2025, and Australia has announced that filters will be required in commercial and residential washers by 2030.

In the U.S., a similar requirement was passed by the California legislature in 2023, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, saying he was concerned about the cost to consumers. An economic study commissioned by Ocean Conservancy found that filters would increase the price of washing machines by only $14 to $20 per machine. Several states are considering regulations that would require filters in washers.

In my view, requiring manufacturers to add filters that can trap microfibers to washing machines is a reasonable and affordable step that could rapidly reduce the enormous quantities of microfibers in wastewater. The eventual solution will be reengineered textiles, which won’t shed, but it will take some time to develop them and move them into clothing supply chains. In the meantime, filters are the most effective way to tackle the problem.

Judith Weis, Professor Emerita of Biological Sciences, Rutgers University – Newark

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Laundry is a top source of microplastic pollution – here’s how to clean your clothes more sustainably appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 351854 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/01/new-scorpion-species/ Mon, 15 Jan 2024 23:46:27 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=351829 Less than 10 per cent of Australian scorpions are known to science; two new species have just been added to the list.

The post Two new Australian scorpion species named as scientists hunt for missing 90 per cent appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Scorpions are among the most ancient of land animals. Fossils indicate they were roaming the Earth more than 400 million years ago. For perspective, the non-bird dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago.

Scorpions trivialise the 100-million-year reign of the dinosaurs — they saw them come and go and are still here today. In fact, the external anatomy of scorpions has changed little, based on what we’ve seen from 400 million-year-old fossils.

While formally describing a new scorpion species from the Pilbara region of Western Australia, we discovered another species with identical external morphology (shape and structure). The only way to tell the two species apart was by looking at the morphology of the male reproductive organs.

You’d think that is a very small difference, but it’s not uncommon for telling apart species in other groups, like spiders and millipedes. But these are the first scorpion species distinguished solely by male reproductive anatomy.

Our find, published in the Australian Journal of Zoology, hints significantly more scorpion species await discovery in Australia than previously suspected.

A male of one of the new species, recently collected from Toweranna in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, within the known area of occurrence of Urodacus lunatus. Image credit: Huon L Clark

A widespread and popular group

Most Australians think of scorpions as exotic desert animals. But they are fairly widespread, ranging from salt lakes in central Australia to ancient rain forests in Tasmania.

Surprisingly, our estimates (based largely on unpublished DNA sequence data we have access to), indicate that less than 10% of Australia’s scorpion species have been scientifically described or named. Describing them means scientifically documenting and applying a unique scientific name to a new species while following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

The scorpion genus Urodacus is endemic to mainland Australia and represents one of the largest radiations (increases in diversity) of scorpion species on the continent. Most Urodacus species live in deep spiralling burrows, enabling them to survive in arid ecosystems. In some habitats, these scorpions are a significant part of the ecosystem and comprise much of its biomass.

Despite their reclusive habits, Urodacus are popular exotic “pets” and are among the most popular invertebrates offered by online stores in Australia. There’s also a large community of scorpion enthusiasts.

Trading of scorpions is dependent on an unknown level of harvesting from natural populations. Some Urodacus species are known to live for 15–20 years, but in captivity, their longevity is usually less than a year.

With minimal knowledge about the diversity and distributions of Australian scorpions, the potential for serious impacts to their conservation is high. Traded scorpion species are often unnamed, and some may also live in very small areas.

For example, the two new species we described, Urodacus uncinus and Urodacus lunatus, are restricted to creeks and drainage lines, with a known area of as little as 50 square kilometres. Such small distributions make species particularly vulnerable to habitat loss, which is a growing threat in Australia.

Surprisingly, there is no regulation for scorpion ownership in most Australian states, although you need a permit to keep them as pets in the Northern Territory and Queensland. Collecting them from the wild is only regulated in conservation areas.

An example of the type of habitat where the newly described species were collected. Image credit: Huon L Clark

We don’t know enough about our scorpions

The two new species we just described are large (more than 7cm long) yellow scorpions. Males of both species have a striking enlargement in the tip of their “tails”, with a swollen venom gland and a sting that is more strongly curved than in any other known species of the genus.

The task to fully document and understand the diversity of Australian scorpions is colossal. Approximately 3,000 scorpion species are known worldwide, but in Australia only 47 species are currently described and named. Based on our estimates, we think there could be at least 500 scorpion species here.

Only 13 new Australian scorpion species have been described in the last 45 years. At this rate, many are likely to become extinct before they are even named.

Further research on Australian scorpions will also reveal more of these animals’ incredible biology. One example is their curious reproduction. Scorpion mating rituals include a dance during which males of some species even sting the females as part of the courtship.

Sperm transfer occurs via what could be described as a “detachable penis”, placed on the ground by the male. During mating, part of this organ breaks off in the female reproductive tract and functions as a “mating plug” that prevents the female from remating until the babies from the last mating are born.

Burrowing scorpions give birth to live young that are gestated for up to 18 months within an organ somewhat like a uterus. After birth, mother scorpions carry their babies on their back until they disperse to live a largely solitary life.

Undiscovered secrets

These fascinating behaviours are only a small portion of scorpion natural history discovered to date and they are likely to harbour many more as yet undiscovered secrets.

Next to nothing is known about Australian scorpions, which is surprising given their diversity and ecological importance. More research on Australia’s scorpions is urgently needed to help recognise and protect threatened species and their habitats.

Expanding our knowledge about native scorpions would also help with the regulation of wild collections and allow captive breeding to further develop more responsible pet ownership as a force for conservation, rather than a risk.

Bruno Alves Buzatto, Lecturer, Flinders University and Erich S. Volschenk, Senior Research Associate, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Two new Australian scorpion species named as scientists hunt for missing 90 per cent appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 351829 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/01/too-hot-to-handle/ Fri, 12 Jan 2024 01:38:07 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=351716 New research using thermal imaging has found numbats can’t handle the heat, even during short bouts of activity in the sun, which researchers say may influence conservation efforts of the endangered species.

The post Too hot to handle: rising temperatures proving too much for endangered numbats appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Numbats are becoming prone to overheating – reaching a body temperature greater than 40°C within as little as ten minutes of activity in the sun, despite using techniques such as raising or flattening their fur to regulate body temperature.

This new information came to light following research at Dryandra Woodland National Park in Western Australia that saw environmental physiologist Dr Christine Cooper and her team use thermal imaging and heat balance modelling to examine the thermal ecology of numbats.

The numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus) is one of very few strictly diurnal – day active – native Australian mammals. Most are either nocturnal – night active – or crepuscular – venturing out at dawn or dusk.

“Active only during the day and with an exclusive diet of termites, numbats are often exposed to high temperatures and gain heat from direct sunlight,” explained Christine, who currently works with Curtin University’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences. “Even in the shade, they gain heat from radiation from the ground, rocks and trees.”

RELATED ARTICLE: The plight of the numbat

Numbats have a unique coat structure that uses the sun to heat up more productively than other mammals, helping to cope with a low-nutrient diet and small size, which would typically make it difficult to maintain body heat without metabolic heat production.

“Numbats have a very sparse outer coat and a really dense inner coat, an arrangement that lets the heat in and then retains it close to the skin,” Christine said.

“That’s good if you want to save energy because it means that rather than producing your own metabolic heat, you can very efficiently exploit solar heat as an avenue for keeping warm.”

However, with temperatures increasing due to climate change, this special method of keeping warm may become detrimental.

“Our heat balance model indicates that high environmental heat loads limit foraging in open areas to as little as 10 minutes and that climate change may extend periods of inactivity, with implications for future conservation and management,” Christine said.

Now restricted to two remaining natural populations in Western Australia’s south – Dryandra Woodland, near Narrogin, and Perup Nature Reserve, near Manjimup – and in some additional re-introduced populations in South Australia, the species used to be found across arid and semi-arid woodland habitat in southern Australia and in natural populations in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory.

“With an estimated population of only about 2000, numbats are already under threat from habitat loss and introduced predators like foxes and feral cats,” Christine said.

“Regarding habitat requirements, our findings show the importance of considering temperature and shade availability when planning translocations to conserve this endangered species, particularly given our warming climate.”

RELATED ARTICLE: Captive numbats turned wild

Even when shade is available, higher overall temperatures are reducing how long numbats can spend outside during the day, impacting how much time they can forage for their required 20,000 daily termites.

“The challenge of high environmental heat gain, especially for numbats in the more arid parts of their range, will be exacerbated by global warming, which not only impacts mean ambient temperature and average annual rainfall but also results in increased frequency, intensity and duration of extreme weather events such as heatwaves,” Christine said.

According to Christine, it is essential to develop a further understanding of the ecological consequences of climate change so scientists and conservationists know how best to protect this incredible species in the future.

RELATED ARTICLE: Numbats thrive in feral-free reserves

The post Too hot to handle: rising temperatures proving too much for endangered numbats appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 351716 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/01/desert-voyager-modern-day-explorer-denis-bartell-oam-remembered/ Thu, 11 Jan 2024 01:01:36 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=351699 No matter how technologically interconnected we become or how many dusty old Aussie stock routes are sealed under bitumen, there are still places where you can truly leave the world behind and disappear for months on end. Few countries can boast as many such remote expanses as Australia, and few people know how to survive in them, but the late Denis Bartell OAM was one of them.

The post Desert voyager: modern-day explorer Denis Bartell OAM remembered appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]>

Denis passed away at the age of 90 on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on 2 January 2024. He was one of Australia’s greatest modern explorers, but perhaps rather a forgotten one today.

His epic Gulf to Gulf Odyssey on foot from north to south of the Australian continent was the subject of a feature story in the second issue of Australian Geographic back in April 1987. He’d set off from Burketown on the Gulf of Carpentaria on 7 May 1985 to raise funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. He arrived at Glenelg Jetty in Adelaide on 15 September having trekked 2500km alone across the girth of the continent. A quarter of that journey was spent traversing the rugged, unforgiving Simpson Desert and its unique parallel dune system. He knew the Simpson well by then, having crossed it more than 30 times already in 4WD vehicles.

A year earlier he had walked west to east across its red heart, hoping to discover something of the spirit that drove early explorers, like John McDouall Stuart and the ill-fated Burke and Wills, whose expeditions opened up the continent’s interior to European settlement during the mid-19th century. Denis had studied the logbooks of another adventurer, David Lindsay, who crossed the Simpson by tracking a series of Indigenous-made wells in the 1880s. Denis rediscovered these same wells during his various traverses and made good use of one during the Gulf to Gulf walk when he became lost for a while.

By 1989, Denis was attempting another type of epic journey; one that can only take place when certain rare weather conditions occur. By now he was 55 years old, but still driven by that same restless spirit of curiosity and discovery that had caught the imagination, and support, of Dick Smith AC, founder of Australian Geographic.

Roughly once a decade, floodwaters – usually the result of tropical cyclones in the far north – swell the Thomson and Barcoo rivers in central Queensland and start to move slowly south. These two rivers join near Windorah to become Cooper Creek and waters flowing into the Cooper can eventually make it all the way to Kati-Thanda/Lake Eyre in South Australia if conditions are right. As the creek moves through Australia’s driest region, it splits into myriad braided channels that weave their way across a vast floodplain. The arid landscape springs to life in its replenishing wake, and the waters can take up to five months to enter Lake Eyre.

It was Denis’ dream to paddle his way down on the slow-moving, nutrient-rich floodwaters of Cooper Creek. His journey would take him from the famous Burke and Wills Dig Tree in Queensland, through the Tirari and Strzelecki deserts, to stunning Lake Eyre 615km away.

With little canoeing experience, Denis set off in a 4.5m fibreglass canoe fitted with a small motor, a motorcycle battery-powered radio and enough dried food for 84 days. That year Australian Geographic was conducting one of its regular scientific expeditions on the Cooper system when Denis passed through. “In October 1989, we were flying up Cooper Creek from Lake Eyre towards Lake Hope, when we saw a small canoe on one of the ponds,” says Dick Smith. “The Cooper Creek was flooding all the way through to Lake Eyre – a very rare situation. I landed the helicopter, and it was Denis. He had a small dingo pup with him and was making his way down the Cooper as far as Lake Eyre, where he eventually managed to get to.”

It would be another year before Denis would actually reach his goal. It became apparent to him that the flow was ebbing out when he reached its frontal surge with 275km still to go. He reluctantly abandoned the attempt to reach Lake Eyre, but the following year the floodwaters were once again on the march, and he resumed his voyage once he’d heard the floodwaters had arrived at the great lake. He finally reached the eastern shoreline of Kati-Thanda/Lake Eyre on 7 October 1990.

“This was more than an adventure,” wrote Denis in Australian Geographic, “Rather, I was part of a great happening, the birth of life in a place where it is harder to live than almost anywhere else on earth.”

He received the 1995 Australian Geographic Society Adventurer of the Year gold medallion for his many achievements, including paddling the length of Cooper Creek.

According to Dick Smith, “Denis was one of Australia’s greatest modern-day adventurers and an inspiration to young people.”

A snapshot of Denis’s adventures

• The first solo cross-country vehicle crossing of the Australian continent between its widest points – both ways

• First solo cross-country vehicle crossing of the Simpson Desert, the largest parallel sand dune desert in the world, from east to west

• Boated solo 2350km down the Murray River

• Boated solo 3500km down the Darling-Murray River system

• 3-week solo walk from west to east across the Simpson Desert 390km – no backup vehicles.

• Gulf to Gulf Odyssey; a five-and-a-half-month solo walk across Australia north to south, again passing through the centre of the Simpson Desert. To give some idea of the isolation on this journey, one section involved 560km cross-country (no road, no tracks, compass only) and the greatest distance between towns was 1450km.

• First solar-powered vehicle 3200km crossing of the continent from north to south. Setting a solo world driving record for distance travelled using only the sun’s rays for propulsion

• Two-month solo canoe journey down flooded Cooper Creek towards Kati-Thanda/Lake Eyre

• Reenacted by camel the journey of the first non-Indigenous man to completely cross the Simpson Desert aged 62

• Canoed solo 880km down the Murrumbidgee River aged 64

The post Desert voyager: modern-day explorer Denis Bartell OAM remembered appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 351699 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/a-dangerous-2023-how-the-hottest-year-unfolded/ Mon, 25 Dec 2023 21:00:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=351044 The only way to avoid 2023 being the hottest year ever is for December to be coldest ever. That’s not going to happen.

The post A dangerous 2023: how the hottest year unfolded appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]>  

December would have to break all sorts of cold weather records for 2023 to avoid being the hottest year ever, 360info analysis of European data has found.

The first 11 months of the year have been so hot that 2023 breaking global records is essentially unavoidable.

This December would need to be nearly 0.25°C colder than any recorded in the last 80 years for 2023’s average temperature to avoid breaking the current record from 2016.

That’s unlikely and the scientists at Copernicus have already made the call: 2023 is the hottest year on record.

The declaration follows the World Meteorological Organization which made the same call just days earlier, saying 2023 “shattered climate records, accompanied by extreme weather which has left a trail of devastation and despair”.

The signs that 2023 would be a record-breaker were there from the start. Wind back 11 months to when Europe had its warmest January on record, the eastern United States’ winter was among its warmest ever and the sea ice at each pole was at record lows for the start of the year.

Things really began to heat up in May and June, which was the warmest June on record since scientists began keeping track in the 19th century.

By July, in the midst of the northern hemisphere summer, heat records were falling around the world. August was the hottest on record and so was September.

Heat is the silent killer of thousands each year and is only going to get worse.

Research has demonstrated that a ‘wet-bulb’ temperature of 35 degrees Celsius or higher would make it impossible for humans to exhaust metabolic heat, due to our fixed core body temperature.

One story that dominated climate headlines in 2023 was El Nino. Would there be one or would there not?

After three consecutive La Ninas and, as the northern hemisphere sweltered for the second year in record temperatures, in early July the World Meteorological Organization declared an El Niño was underway, increasing the likelihood of hotter temperatures in many parts of the world.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology followed suit in September.

>

El Niño and La Niña events are likely to get stronger over the next few decades before possibly weakening towards the end of the century, new research predicts.

It was not only on land that things heated up. The ocean has too.

Marine heatwaves have become more prevalent and widespread over the past two decades and in 2023 records were broken in oceans around the world, which could have devastating consequences for marine life.

The effects of marine heatwaves can be significant, impacting marine ecosystems and coastal communities that rely on the oceans for sustenance and livelihoods.

Apart from resulting in the loss and/or the degradation of ecosystem services, the most significant repercussions of marine heatwaves are  in marine organisms.

These include unprecedented mass deaths of marine species, seabirds, kelp forests, seagrass and other coastal vegetation.

With heat record being broken, solutions are urgent.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2022 report, Mitigation of Climate Change, makes it clear that no one technology can reduce humanity’s carbon emissions enough to get to net zero.

But action is needed. And quickly.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Originally published 360info.org.

Related: Antarctica: a continent in crisis

The post A dangerous 2023: how the hottest year unfolded appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 351044 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/bushfires-have-changed-the-way-we-holiday/ Fri, 22 Dec 2023 21:00:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=351052 Summer holidays in Australia are not what they used to be due to climate change and the increasing threat of bushfires.

The post Bushfires have changed the way we holiday appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> This time four years ago, before the heartbreak of lockdowns and forced separations, my husband and I were preparing to go on holiday.

Maybe you were too.

We were heading to our favourite coastal destination in eastern Australia, our final break before becoming parents. We’d packed board games and bathers and books, and were looking forward to relaxing and forgetting the worries of the world.

Maybe you were too.

We were in for a rude shock. We would instead welcome 2020 by fleeing the place we love, as it was engulfed by smoke and flames.

Maybe you did too.

The fires, smoke haze and trauma from 2019-2020 Black Summer affected 80 percent of the Australian population. The inferno that brought in the new decade caused unimaginable damage to property and ecosystems, not to mention the human lives lost and forever changed.

So as we head into another potentially dry summer, you might be asking the same question as us — are we ready to do it again?

The set-up this summer

After the catastrophe of Black Summer, the world was not only plunged into COVID but into a rare triple-dip La Niña.

The warm ocean temperatures in the western Pacific Ocean during 2020–2022 primed Australia’s atmosphere for increased rainfall, and floods became our main concern rather than fires.

But this year, things have turned dry once more. August to October 2023 was Australia’s driest three-month period at any time of year since at least 1900.

Although three years of good rain means plenty of moisture in the soil, it also means a lot of plant growth, so lots of fuel to burn. Fires have already destroyed more than 60 homes in Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia in recent weeks.

The major drivers behind this return to dry are La Niña’s brother, El Niño, and relatively cooler than normal ocean temperatures off the coast of Indonesia, also referred to as a positive Indian Ocean Dipole.

Both ocean patterns have their greatest impact on Australia’s rainfall during spring, but are generally associated with more severe bushfire seasons and drier summers for much of the country.

Late November rain across the country has eased the risk a little, but drought continues in much of eastern New South Wales and into southern Queensland.

If you overlay a map of the current drought-affected areas with a map of regions burnt during Black Summer, there are some depressing similarities.

AFAC, the national council for fire and emergency services, says in its summer outlook that there is still an increased fire risk for large areas of Queensland, NSW and the NT, as well as popular holiday locations in Tasmania, Victoria, SA and WA.

The Bureau of Meteorology is also forecasting a drier-than-average summer for much of Western Australia and Queensland.

The recent rains won’t undo the record-breaking dry conditions of early spring, and high summer temperatures could quickly crispen the abundant plant growth of the past three years, increasing fuel loads.

While the outlooks aren’t as dire as 2019–20, this summer has the greatest bushfire risk since that terrifying start to the year. As AFAC boss Rob Webb said, “We really must treat summer with respect”.

The unavoidable role of climate change

Although a relationship between a warmer world and more fire seems obvious, it is tricky to untangle the precise influence of human-induced climate change on bushfires, because there are so many ingredients required.

Climate change is certainly making things hotter, which means more evaporation and drier fuel, hotter and more frequent heatwaves, and more volatile bushfire weather.

Studies looking at the past 40 years already show a clear increase in metrics used to quantify bushfire risk, such as the length of the season, and the Forest Fire Danger Index, which combines details about how dry the landscape is and the weather conditions likely to produce a blaze.

Explorations of future climate using computer simulations also point to an increase in fire weather as things continue to get hotter and drier.

But how a hotter planet affects swings between wet and dry — the biggest deciding factor in Australia’s year-to-year bushfire risk — is still unclear.

A recent study of past climate using tree rings, coral skeletons and ice cores suggests the set-up that led to Black Summer has been more common in recent decades compared to the past 400 years. However, more work is needed to understand why this might be, and what the future may hold.

The impact of climate change on crucial weather systems is also a big area of research: how does a hotter planet influence the storms that light the fires with dry lightning and the fronts that fan the flames once they are lit?

These wicked research problems are scientifically fascinating, but don’t really calm us as we move into a warmer world.

Christmas Day in the sunshine

Four years on, our holiday packing list looks pretty different. Bluey now instead of board games, floaties to accompany bathers, but still, plenty of books.

Among the pile of children’s books is a new release about all the things that make an Australian Christmas. One page features a car driving along the highway, green trees in the foreground but smoke billowing at the back. “Check on bushfires we can’t see on the local ABC”, the rhyme advises, “so we know we’ll get there safely”.

Seeing our harrowing 2019 experience in a kids’ book hits home like no scientific article can. Summer in Australia doesn’t mean what it used to. The summers our children are having aren’t the same as the ones we had.

There’s still family and friends, fun and love. But there is also an increased need to plan, and prepare, for more extreme summers. To holiday differently, as our precious places are no longer places where we can afford to forget about the worries of the world. The worries are coming to us.

So, we’re also packing our updated bushfire plan this summer. And preparing to have some uncomfortable conversations with family members about why action on climate change is so, so important.

Maybe you are too.

Dr Linden Ashcroft is a Lecturer in Climate Science and Science Communication at The University of Melbourne.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Originally published 360info.org.

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]]> 351052 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2023/12/australian-fossil-findings-result-in-deep-dive-of-whale-evolution/ Wed, 20 Dec 2023 02:54:43 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=351028 A 19-million-year-old whale fossil recovered from a cliff face on the banks of the Murray River in South Australia has scientists rethinking how and when the world's largest animals first developed their colossal size.

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]]> New research into the fossil, which has been cared for in the Museums Victoria collection since its discovery in 1921 by palaeontologist Francis Cudmore, reveals it to be far older than previously believed and from an animal that would have been 9m long.

Scientists previously believed baleen whales (Mysticeti), such as the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), evolved to an enormous size about 3 million years ago at the beginning of the Ice Age in the Northern Hemisphere.

The new findings from the Museums Victoria Research Institute reveal that this evolutionary leap in size happened as early as 20 million years ago – and in the Southern Hemisphere.

Palaeontologists Dr James Rule of Monash University and Natural History Museum London and Dr Erich Fitzgerald of Museums Victoria Research Institute co-authored the paper ‘Giant baleen whales emerged from a cold southern cradle’, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The fossil – the front end of the lower jaw of an unusually large and ancient whale aged between 21 and 16 million years old – went unrecognised in the museum’s collection until about a decade ago when Dr Fitzgerald realised its significance as the largest baleen whale known to be alive during the Early Miocene period (between 23.3 and 16.3 million years ago).

Related: 22 years and counting – the two whale sharks calling Ningaloo home

According to Dr Fitzgerald, the new findings underscore the importance of Southern Hemisphere fossil records for understanding whale evolution, with previous ruling hypotheses being based on fossils primarily found in the Northern Hemisphere.

“A lot of what we know about the evolution of animals is based on fossils from the Northern Hemisphere, and what we are finding is that if you include just one fossil from the Southern Hemisphere, it completely ruins some of the long-held theories and stories,” he said.

“The Southern Hemisphere, and Australia in particular, have always been over-looked frontiers for fossil whale discovery. Fossil whale finds in the South, like the Murray River whale, are shaking up the evolution of whales into a more accurate, truly global picture of what was going on in the oceans long ago.

“This fossil from Australia, as well as some fossils from Peru and other parts of South America, show us that whenever you get a large whale on the fossil record, it was always in the Southern Hemisphere, and it wasn’t until later in the evolution that whales became big in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Through their research, Dr Rule and Dr Fitzgerald discovered that the tip of the baleen whale’s jaw is scalable with its body size, which is how they estimated the length of their fossil baleen whale to be about nine metres.

“The largest whales alive today, such as the blue whale, reach the length of a basketball court,” Dr Rule said. “Around 19 million years ago, the Murray River whale, at nine metres long, was already a third of this length. So, baleen whales were well on their way to evolving into ocean giants.”

Dr Rule said the next step is understanding why baleen whales evolved to their colossal size in the Southern Hemisphere.

“Our results don’t directly reveal the answers to that, but we can make some educated speculations,” he said. “We know that the Southern Ocean is the most productive part of the world’s oceans and is therefore home to the greatest biomass of what we call ‘marine megafauna’.”

According to Dr Rule, this productivity is driven by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which creates a supercooled and salty environment, allowing an upwelling of nutrients and, therefore, the emergence of potential prey such as krill.

“Whales have perhaps evolved to be huge to enable them to get to those hugely productive patches of plankton and then evolve larger and larger in size to consume vast quantities of krill and other zooplankton efficiently,” he explained.

Related: 10 of the best Australian wildlife experiences

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]]> 351028 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/north-queenslands-torrential-rains-result-in-record-breaking-floods-in-the-wake-of-tropical-cyclone-jasper/ Mon, 18 Dec 2023 05:04:44 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=350895 Tropical Cyclone Jasper has caused extreme rainfall in far north Queensland of more than 2m, leading to severe flooding across the region, forcing evacuations and leaving residents stranded.

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]]> Unprecedented rain brought by Tropical Cyclone Jasper has triggered widespread flooding in far north Queensland, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. Cairns airport is closed, roads are extensively damaged and residents in the city’s northern beaches are cut off by floodwaters.

Some rain gauges in the Barron and Daintree River catchments recorded more than 2m of rain over recent days, and more rain is expected. Water levels in the lower Barron River have smashed the previous record set by devastating floods in March 1977. On Monday morning, the Daintree River was more than 2m higher than the previous 118-year-old flood level, recorded in 2019.

The full impacts of the flood are not yet clear. But there’s likely to be significant damage to properties and public infrastructure, and negative effects on industries such as tourism and agriculture. Recovery is likely to take many months.

So let’s take a closer look at what caused this emergency – and what to expect as climate change worsens.

A ‘sweet spot’ for torrential rain

Tropical Cyclone Jasper crossed the coast north of Cairns on Wednesday last week, tracking over the remote Indigenous community of Wujal Wujal. Damage from wind and storm surge was minimal, but Jasper still produced more than 800mm of rain across the Daintree and Mossman River catchments.

Late Wednesday, the cyclone was downgraded to a tropical low. It crossed southern Cape York Peninsula and headed towards the Gulf of Carpentaria. By Friday, local tourism agencies and operators announced they were back in business, inviting visitors back to the region.

Hard to capture the volume of water on video but walking in I could feel the ground shaking amidst a deafening roar. An unprecedented 6ft of rain fell on the catchment over the past few days. #cairnsflood pic.twitter.com/xrR56HaAwm

— Paul Webster (@Cassowary_Man) December 17, 2023

However, by Saturday morning, a significant rainfall and flood emergency was unfolding across a 360-kilometre swathe from Cooktown to Ingham. So what happened?

The ex-cyclone stalled just inland from the southeast Gulf of Carpentaria, creating a sweet spot for torrential rain known as a “stationary convergence zone”. Incredibly moist tropical winds collided over a narrow zone between Port Douglas and Innisfail. This effect converged with northerly winds from the Gulf of Carpentaria and southeast trade winds from the Coral Sea. Local mountain ranges created extra uplift. All this led to non-stop torrential rain for 48 hours.

As a result, an emergency situation rapidly grew across Cairns and the Barron River delta to its immediate north.

This is Cairns today. The Cairns community is dealing with significant flooding after Tropical Cyclone Jasper made landfall. Our government is working closely with the Qld government to ensure assistance is available to those who need it. pic.twitter.com/wwV6CcLtDc

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) December 17, 2023

Townsville floods: similar but different

This extreme flood event bears some similarity to that which caused significant damage to Townsville in February 2019. Both were associated with a stationary convergence zone caused by a stalled tropical low located to their northwest. In the case of Townsville, the tropical low did not budge for more than ten days. In that time, Townsville received the equivalent of a year’s average rainfall.

Otherwise, the two events are very different.

Firstly, the Townsville floods occurred during a neutral year – that is, in the absence of the climate drivers La Niña and El Niño. But the current flood event has occurred during an El Niño, when tropical cyclones are much less likely to occur in the Australian region, especially in early December.

@9newsqueensland Experts have managed to save a 2.8m saltwater crocodile floating through a local swimming spot at Palm Creek in Ingham. 🐊 #9News #Qld #cyclonejasper #flooding #farnorthqueensland #crocodile #weather ♬ original sound – 9News Queensland

Secondly, the deep tropical low that caused the 2019 Townsville floods was embedded in an active monsoon trough, which sucked in very moist equatorial air from Indonesia. But unusually, Cyclone Jasper did not form in such conditions. The monsoon trough is still to appear and form over northern Australia.

What’s climate change got to do with it?

As 2023 closes as the warmest year on record, there is growing global concern about the rise of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heatwaves.

The atmosphere and oceans are warming due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, largely caused by burning fossil fuels. This has led to a greater risk of extreme rainfall and flooding, such as the events we’re seeing now in far north Queensland.

For every 1°C rise in average global temperature, the atmosphere can hold an extra 7% water vapour. When the right atmospheric “triggers” are in place, this extra water vapour is released as intense rainfall.

It’s too soon to attribute the current extreme rain and flooding to climate change. But as the world continues to warm, such events will become more frequent and severe.

Already, extreme flood events globally are becoming more regular and their magnitude is breaking many long-term rainfall and river flood records.

Looking ahead

Once the immediate crisis in North Queensland has subsided, local and state authorities will need to grapple with how to deal with the “new normal” of extreme weather events. The big question is: are they prepared?

Since the big Barron River flood in March 1977, considerable residential and commercial development has been permitted across the river’s floodplain. In many cases, these earlier developments were approved without full consideration of future floods. Many were also approved before local government planning started taking sea level rise into consideration.

The wider Cairns community will recover from this extreme event and will hopefully take on board any problems identified in the emergency responses. In future, emergency planning must take the effects of climate change more seriously. This includes increases in sea level, and more intense tropical cyclones, storm surges, rainfall and flooding.

As of this month, a climate emergency had been declared in 2,351 jurisdictions and local government areas around the world. As a result, many jurisdictions have developed response plans. In Australia, local governments should recognise climate change threats and risks by formally declaring a climate emergency.

Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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]]> 350895 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/world-first-trials-begin-to-seed-the-threatened-great-barrier-reef-with-thousands-of-healthy-new-baby-corals/ Sun, 17 Dec 2023 22:51:53 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=350791 In a ground-breaking research project, Australian reef scientists have released thousands of baby corals that could help restore damaged sections of the Great Barrier Reef into the future.

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]]> In what’s believed to be the world’s largest coral restoration research trial, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and collaborators are releasing 100,000 new baby corals on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to develop new tools to help coral reefs recover after disturbances such as coral bleaching.  

The healthy baby corals, which are about 1mm in diameter, were reared in large aquaculture tanks at AIMS’ National Sea Simulator (SeaSim).  

The corals were settled onto small concrete tiles and then attached to 10,000 ceramic “coral seeding” devices, which are being deployed in the central region of the Great Barrier Reef during two field trips.

Reef help, but no silver bullet

Dr Line Bay, AIMS research program director and sub-program leader of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP), stressed that coral seeding is yet another tool in reef conservation but is not a “silver bullet” solution. 

“The intent is not to replace every coral on our reefs,” she said. “That’s just madness – there’s no way that could be done.

“What we’re doing at the moment is research and development for restoration and adaptation tools, to be available and ready for when managers and decision-makers think it is the time to implement them.  

“But it should only be done so with strong emission reductions and the conventional management that’s already working very well.”

In 2021, RRAP successfully trialled 300 coral seeding devices in the Keppel Islands, off the Central Queensland coast, followed by 2,000 devices in 2022.

Related: “You easily feel helpless and overwhelmed”: What it’s like being a young person studying the Great Barrier Reef

“Over the last four years, we’ve increased our knowledge and coral methods enormously, where we are now able to seed up to 10,000 of these devices onto the reef in a single season, or single spawning event,” Line explained.  

“This is not the end for us; we’re aiming much higher and we’re looking at further enhancing these tools in the coming years to be able to deliver millions of corals.”

Massive goal

Delivering millions of corals onto a reef might sound like an ambitious goal, but it’s certainly feasible. 

Each October to December, during the GBR’s annual mass coral spawning, millions of coral larvae are produced inside AIMS’ SeaSim aquaculture tanks.

This process is being fine-tuned by new technology such as the AutoSpawner, which can produce up to seven million larvae in a single night.

As well as increasing the number of coral larvae produced for the trials, it’s also made the fertilisation process less labour-intensive for scientists.

“[When] corals spawn they have buoyant gametes – bundles of egg and sperm – that float to the surface,” Line explained.  

“The AutoSpawner skims these into a receiving tank, where the bundles break. 

“Then we add some more water to make sure the sperm concentration is about right, within the range where we know we get optimal fertilisation. 

“This system is pretty much automated, so in a single night, the [AutoSpawner] can produce millions of coral larvae, with really only one or two people managing that system.”

Related: ‘Time to stop hitting the snooze button, Australia!’ 

High mortality rate

After fertilisation, the coral larvae settle onto prepared surfaces and develop into young corals, or polyps.  

Most, however, won’t survive to adulthood.  

Line explained that corals have a huge reproductive output but enormous mortality in the first 1-2 years of life, due to predation, competition with algae, and other factors.

To improve a coral’s chance of survival, RRAP scientists have engineered different types of seeding devices, tweaking designs for different marine environments, reefs and coral species.  

The devices help the corals survive their first year and include defensive protrusions that protect corals from grazing fishes, and “slippery surfaces” that act like antifoulants to deter algal growth.

• 

• 

“There’s a whole range of different features we’ve trialled and tested over the past few years,” Line said.  

“On average, we can increase the survival, at the device level, after one year to about 50 per cent.

“That is like a huge change over what might naturally occur on a reef, where much, much less than one per cent would often survive.”

Once the corals are deployed to the reef, their progress will be monitored every three months.

Related: ‘Heat-proofing’ coral: Aussie discovery throws a lifeline to world’s dying reefs

Spawning activities in SeaSim are conducted in collaboration with Taronga Conservation Society, The University of Queensland, Southern Cross University, James Cook University, Griffith University, and Queensland University of Technology. RRAP is funded by the partnership between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation

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]]> 350791 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/climate-change-summit-ends-with-deal-to-move-away-from-fossil-fuels/ Thu, 14 Dec 2023 04:44:40 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=350706 The end of the COP28 climate summit has seen representatives from nearly 200 countries agree to start reducing global consumption of fossil fuels to avert the worst of climate change, signalling the eventual end of the oil age.

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]]> Related: Australian scientist urges world to “slam the brakes” as report reveals climate change tipping point now closer

A deal has been struck in Dubai after two weeks of negotiations and uncertainty over whether fossil fuels would be mentioned in the final agreement.

The deal to “transition away from fossil fuels” represents the first time oil, coal and gas have been mentioned in COP agreements since the annual summits began almost three decades ago, with COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber saying the agreement represented “a paradigm shift that has the potential to redefine our economies.”

More than 100 countries lobbied for strong language in the COP28 agreement to “phase out” oil, gas and coal use but came up against strong opposition from the Saudi Arabia-led oil producer group, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which said the world could cut emissions without shunning specific fuels.

Small climate-vulnerable island states were among the most vocal supporters of language to phase out fossil fuels. They had the backing of major oil and gas producers such as the United States, Canada and Norway, as well as the European Union and other governments.

That battle pushed the summit a full day into overtime on Wednesday and had some observers worried the negotiations would end at an impasse.

Related: “You easily feel helpless and overwhelmed”: What it’s like being a young person studying the Great Barrier Reef

To some extent, the language to “transition away” describes what has already begun to happen, with some governments enacting policies in recent years to transition to a greener economy.

The deal calls on governments to accelerate their transition to a green economy by tripling renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, increasing efforts to reduce coal use, and accelerating technologies such as carbon capture and storage to clean up hard-to-decarbonise industries.

Now the deal is formalised, countries are responsible for delivering these objectives through national policies and investments.

“Understandably, most of the critical commentary on the final COP28 decision has focused on the compromise text on fossil fuels,” said Professor Robyn Barry, a Distinguished Professor in Political Science at the University of Melbourne.

“The last-minute amendments provided a modest improvement but remain disappointing and predictable given the strong opposition to a fossil fuel phase down by the petrostates.”

“What is more interesting, and potentially productive, are the surprises. The first is that ‘just transition’ was mentioned no less than eight times in the text. For example, the parties acknowledged that just transition strategies ‘support more robust and equitable mitigation outcomes’. The parties are also urged to communicate or revise, by the next COP, their long-term mitigation strategies ‘towards just transitions to net zero emissions,'” Professor Robyn said.

“The second is that climate minister Chris Bowen demonstrated solidarity with Australia’s Pacific neighbours in calling for a fossil fuel phase-out. Bowen’s support for the Pacific will certainly help the Labor government in its bid to host COP31 in 2026. However, it also means that domestic climate and energy politics are set to become more interesting, given Australia’s status as a major fossil fuel exporter.”

Amanda McKenzie, CEO and co-founder of the Climate Council, Australia’s leading climate science communications organisation, said the agreement was “significant”.

“This is a huge moment,” she said. “For the first time, nations have collectively agreed to tackle pollution – from burning coal, oil and gas – that is overheating our planet and harming people all over the world.

“This is the death knell for fossil fuels. This agreement sets us on a clear path to embrace clean energy technology like wind, solar and batteries, and move beyond fossil fuels.”

Related: Antarctica: a continent in crisis

Greens leader Adam Bandt said the statement from the summit did not go far enough but said the message for the federal government was clear.

“The weak word salad from the global climate summit proves one thing – Australia can’t wait for other countries before stopping new coal and gas mines,” he said on social media platform X.

The weak word salad from the global climate summit proves one thing: Australia can’t wait for other countries before stopping new coal and gas mines.

Limiting global heating to 1.5C means no new coal & gas at a minimum, yet Labor still wants more & the other petrostates do too.

— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) December 13, 2023

The Australian Government states in its climate change strategy that it is currently working to reduce emissions by upgrading the electricity grid to support more renewable power, reducing the price of electric vehicles, encouraging businesses and consumers to reduce emissions through government-backed incentives, and reporting on greenhouse gas emissions to increase accountability.

It also states that it is partnering with its Indo-Pacific neighbours to reduce emissions, helping negotiate and meet Australia’s obligations under the Paris Agreement and reducing baselines under the Safeguard Mechanism.

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]]> 350706 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/study-finds-urban-backyard-home-to-more-than-1000-species/ Wed, 13 Dec 2023 23:16:32 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=350715 A group of biodiversity researchers thought they’d find 200 species living in their inner-city house and yard. They were very wrong.

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]]> We are biodiversity researchers – an ecologist, a mathematician and a taxonomist – who were locked down together during the COVID pandemic. Being restricted to the house, it didn’t take long before we began to wonder how many species of plants and animals we were sharing the space with. So we set to work counting them all.

We guessed we would find around 200–300, and many of our colleagues guessed the same.

There was nothing extraordinary about our 400 square metre block of land in Annerley, a suburb of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. Roughly half the block was occupied by a three-bedroom house.

What was extraordinary was the number of species we discovered there. As revealed in our just-published study, starting on the first day of lockdown and continuing over the course of a year, we catalogued 1,150 species on our inner-city property.

Familiar faces and rare recluses

Many of the species were what any east coast suburban Australian would expect: ibises, brush turkeys, kookaburras, possums and flying foxes. But, surprisingly, others had rarely been recorded.

In fact, three of the 1,150 species had never been documented in Australia’s leading biodiversity database at that point. This included a rare mosquito, a sandfly and an invasive flatworm that can cause populations of native snails to decline.

We found common foes, but also many friends. That rare mosquito was just one of 13 mosquito species we found. The cupboards accommodated pantry moths and grain weevils, but also spiders to prey on them (we recorded 56 species).

Our lack of assiduous garden-tending meant weeds were prolific; of the 103 plant species we documented on the property, 100 were non-native.

Apart from weeds, however, the vast majority of species were actually native. Our two massive lilly-pilly trees provided shade, shelter and food, magnets for numerous pollinators and other species.

Bees and butterflies

The yard was filled with pollinators. For example, there were hoverflies which, at a quick glance, you’d think were wasps. We had ten species of those, a fraction of the more than 109 species of flies we found.

Native blue-banded bees and fluffy teddybear bees roosted in the hedges under our windows at night. They were just two of more than 70 bee and wasp species we observed.

We also counted a mindblowing 436 species of butterflies and moths. A few were as large as a human hand, but most were tiny and barely noticeable. Some were brightly coloured, while others – like the vampire moth Calyptra minuticornis – seemed boring until we began to study their behaviour.

The moth Scatochresis innumera is another interesting one: as a caterpillar, it lives inside a single possum poop before emerging as an adult.

The caterpillars of Parilyrgis concolor, yet another moth, live in spiderwebs, surviving on the spider’s food waste, while the adults can be found hanging bat-like from the spiderwebs. It is not known how they avoid getting eaten by the spiders.

Wasps and beetles

We recorded ten species of lycaenid “blue” butterflies, many of which use ants to protect their caterpillars from predators, including certain wasp species which would lay eggs in them if they got a chance.

These wasps are called parasitoids – meaning their young develop in other organisms, eventually killing them. Some of these wasps even parasitise other parasitoid wasps. Our urban homes are clearly complex ecosystems.

We were surprised to only find just under 100 beetle species (the fourth most common group of organisms in our study). Beetles are widely believed to be the most diverse order of insects on the planet.

Our finding may be a sign of declining beetle populations, which has been observed around the world. On the other hand, it may just have been a bad year for beetles in our neighbourhood.

An urban environment teeming with life

Overall, we found far more species than we expected, and we showed that even urban environments can be teeming with wildlife.

A big reason for that was surely the vegetation: the shrubs, trees and weeds in the yard. The monotony of perfectly tended lawn and heavily sprayed and manicured flowerbeds may be nice to look at and for the kids to play on but, as habitat for urban wildlife, it is lacking.

Our own laziness meant we did little work in the garden. However, by giving the mower and pesticides a break, and by sacrificing some lawn for native trees, shrubs and flowering weeds, we ended up with something much more valuable.

But no matter what you do to maintain your home, definitely check your porch or balcony light tonight, and keep your eye out for urban wildlife around your home. You too can experience some pretty amazing nature, no matter how urban the environment you live in.

Matthew H. Holden, Lecturer, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland; Andrew Rogers, PhD student, The University of Queensland, and Russell Q-Y Yong, PhD candidate, Marine Parasitology, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Landlocked: Kangaroos trapped by urban sprawl have nowhere left to go

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]]> 350715 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/report-reveals-climate-change-tipping-point-now-closer/ Fri, 08 Dec 2023 01:43:04 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=350466 The world isn’t doing enough to tackle climate change which could increase catastrophic weather conditions, experts warn following this year’s annual insight into how fossil fuel use is tracking globally.

The post Australian scientist urges world to “slam the brakes” as report reveals climate change tipping point now closer appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> A record 36.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are projected to be released into the atmosphere this year, as outlined in the 2023 Global Carbon Budget presented at the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP28) held in Dubai.

The annual report calculates how much greenhouse gas can be produced through human activity to keep below specified global warming trajectories, set in the Paris Agreement that was adopted in 2015.

The report states that while many countries are reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions – 26 over the past year – progress is not on a fast enough downward trajectory to reach global net zero. It says there is a 50 per cent chance the world’s average temperature will rise by 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2031 – a year earlier than 2022’s projections.

On the rise

“We are on a slippery slope, and we want to slam the brakes as hard as possible so we can come to a stop as soon as possible,” said Dr Pep Canadell, Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project and a Chief Research Scientist at CSIRO.

“We are currently sliding quite fast. We want to slam as hard as we can so we can prevent as much climate change as we can, but right now the slope goes for at least the next 30 years.”

Even with goals to decrease global CO₂ output, emissions from all fossil sources – including coal, oil and gas – are projected to increase in coming years. The highest growth is expected from oil at a projected rise of 1.5 per cent. Coal emissions, which represent 41 per cent of global emissions, are projected to increase 1.1 per cent. Furthermore, emissions from permanent forest loss due to deforestation currently remain too high to be offset by reforestation or afforestation.

The mean global temperature remains 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels.

“We are going to cross 1.5°C,” Pep said. “We will overshoot beyond 1.5°C by early next decade – how much we overshoot depends on what we do globally.

“Many countries around the world that agreed to net zero emissions by 2050 are realising that a lot of the emissions will not be that easy to get rid of. We will have to have negative emissions just to offset the emissions that we cannot completely get rid of – that means sucking in more emissions than we are putting out.

“Faster, larger, and sustained efforts are needed to avoid significant negative impacts of climate change on human health, the economy, and the environment.”

Related: Australia’s emissions policies savaged by experts ahead of COP28 climate summit

How Australia compares

Australia currently contributes one per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions globally, which makes it one of the top 10 highest contributors worldwide. Comparing Australia’s emissions output with a population of about 26 million to India’s seven per cent output with a population of more than 1.4 billion demonstrates just how high the country’s contribution to global warming is.

Wild weather warning

The current impacts of global warming are clear: heatwaves, droughts, flooding and extreme weather events. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology says records reveal every decade since 1950 has been warmer than preceding decades.

“This is all happening at a 1.2°C mean state change – we have seen dramatic changes in both this country and globally,” Pep said. “Imagine what will occur when we reach 3°C or 4°C mean change?

“Heatwaves will be hotter and longer; marine heatwaves will be hotter and longer; droughts will be worse because more moisture will be getting sucked up; we will be getting worse flooding simply because the atmosphere will contain more water than before; and these super El Niño storms will have more water coming down per hour with each occurrence.”

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]]> 350466 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/12/endangered-bird-returns-to-kangaroo-island-after-bushfires/ Thu, 07 Dec 2023 03:13:12 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=350399 The elusive Kangaroo Island western whipbird has been seen on the island's western habitat for the first time in four years, says the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

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]]> Once found throughout Kangaroo Island’s western Mallee Woodlands and Heathlands, populations of the Kangaroo Island western whipbird – a subspecies of South Australia’s western whipbird – were decimated by the Black Summer bushfires of 2019–20.

Following the fires, the sub-species did persist in fire scars within the Flinders Chase National Park and in the large unburnt North West Conservation Alliance, according to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC). However, the group says that with so much competition in the western woodlands’ minimal remaining habitat, and despite supplementary feeding from local ecologists, the birds slowly moved away from the western side of KI and eventually disappeared. The last time any individuals were seen in this habitat was just a few months after the fires. Their national conservation status was uplisted to endangered shortly after.

The core range of the KI western whipbird (Psophodes nigrogularis lashmari) has now been incorporated into the Western River Refuge – a 369ha feral predator-free refuge established in response to the devastating fires by the AWC, Terrain Ecology, and Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife with support from local landholders Jamie Lib and Andy Doube.

Related: Kangaroo Island wildlife bouncing back two years after bushfires

Camera trap breakthrough

A team led by Pat Hodgens, Terrain Ecology’s principal ecologist, deployed 28 camera traps to monitor the status of threatened and endangered animals in the area, specifically to monitor the KI dunnart (Sminthopsis aitkeni) and southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus).

It was one of these camera traps that captured footage of the elusive whipbird.

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 “We were flicking through a few thousand camera trap images, and by chance, there was a pair of whipbirds in two of the images,” Pat said. “It was like finding a needle in a haystack – a chance encounter.”

Recovery of vegetation in the area now means there is enough habitat for the whipbird to thrive, Pat explained, and the added safety of the refuge fencing means the species, which forages among leaves on the ground, is protected from predation by feral cats.

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Refuge protection

“This pair is currently living in Western River Refuge, the only cat-free area on Kangaroo Island,” Pat said. “We’re hoping they will stay and breed up within the safety of the haven.

“It has been a waiting game to see how long it will take for the species to recolonise the fire zone at this site, and although it has taken a little longer than expected, it looks like they are slowly making their way back.”

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Related: ‘We’ll come back from this’: spirit of Kangaroo Island residents unbroken

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]]> 350399 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/11/fire-ants-jump-queensland-border-into-nsw/ Sun, 26 Nov 2023 22:08:21 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=349826 Fire ants have crossed the Queensland–NSW border for the first time since the infestation of the invasive species began, with the potential to devastate Australia's natural environment and agriculture industry.

The post Fire ants jump Queensland border into NSW appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]>

Three red imported fire ant nests were found in South Murwillumbah, 13km from the Queensland border in the state’s northeast on Saturday, the NSW Department of Primary Industries confirmed.

“This is the first fire ant detection in northern NSW and presumed to be the most southern report of fire ants from the Queensland infestation,” the department said in a statement.

Crews are on site working to chemically eradicate the infestation across a radius of 200 metres from the nests.

An emergency biosecurity control order dictates all businesses and residents within a 5km radius of the South Murwillumbah site must restrict the movement of mulch, woodchips, compost, sand, gravel, soil, hay and other baled products.

Related: True damage of feral species revealed in landmark report. What can we do to stop the decimation?

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said the Queensland and NSW governments were working to eradicate the detection and monitor surrounding areas.

“This is the first fire ant detection in northern NSW but not the first detection outside southeast Queensland, with isolated detections having previously been eradicated in Gladstone, the Port of Botany and the Port of Fremantle,” he said in a statement.

NSW Department of Primary Industries officers and detection dogs were working to determine the extent and origin of the infestation.

Fines for breaches of the biosecurity order can reach up to $1.1 million for an individual and up to $2.2 million for a corporation.

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The NSW Farmers Association said the latest incursion posed a threat to agricultural production and the natural environment and called on authorities to act quickly to stem the spread.

“The ants can damage agricultural equipment, sting livestock and damage the natural environment,” the association said.

NSW Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said the government was prepared for the discovery of fire ants in northern NSW and had immediately implemented the response plan, part of an almost $600 million national eradication program.

She said the government had committed $95 million towards the National Fire Ant Eradication Program.

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But Conservation Officer for the Invasive Species Council Reece Pianta said the $592 million allocated until 2027 would not be enough.

“Fire ants are one of the world’s worst super pests and, if they are allowed to spread across the continent, their impact will be greater than cane toads, rabbits, feral cats and foxes combined,” he said.

“They will devastate Australia’s environment and agriculture, cost our economy billions annually and we could see over 140,000 extra medical visits every year.”

Mr Pianta said the spread into NSW should be a wakeup call for the Victorian, Western Australian and South Australian governments yet to commit to their share of funding for eradication.

NSW Nationals leader Dugald Saunders said it was a case of too little too late.

“What we’ve seen from the state and federal governments so far is a complete lack of urgency, and it’s taken the detection of these ants in NSW to trigger an eradication response,” he said.

A recent review of the National Red Imported Fire Ant Eradication program warned all hopes would be “lost forever” if the ant moved across the Queensland border into NSW.

Related: Australia’s least wanted – 8 alien species and diseases we must keep out of our island home

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]]> 349826 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/11/australias-emissions-policies-savaged-by-experts-ahead-of-cop28-climate-summit/ Fri, 24 Nov 2023 07:11:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=349858 Experts have savaged Australia's efforts to rein in domestic emissions, pointing to a litany of failures and calling for a radical reset.

The post Australia’s emissions policies savaged by experts ahead of COP28 climate summit appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Nations will convene in Dubai next week in the full knowledge efforts to limit climate change are failing dismally.

The latest United Nations report on the emissions gap warns the world is hurtling towards 2.5 to 2.9C of warming.

That’s far beyond the Paris climate pact’s targets of 1.5 to 2C – targets meant to shield humanity from the worst effects of a warming world.

Experts say the honeymoon is over after Labor’s election win 18 months ago, and the Australian government can expect serious scrutiny at the COP28 climate summit when it begins on Thursday.

University of Queensland economics professor John Quiggin suggests not much has changed since the ousting of the Morrison government, with Labor promising only marginal improvements and ongoing approvals for new coal and gas.

“Australia’s position in my view, is almost entirely untenable … Australia really needs radical changes in terms of its domestic emissions,” he said.

He savaged attempts to cut emissions by 43 per cent this decade “largely through offsets which are almost entirely spurious”.

“While we are attempting – at least notionally – to comply with our domestic emissions targets, we’re also expanding coal production with an explicit government statement that we expect coal exports to continue beyond 2050,” he said.

“We are licensing mines whose economic viability really depends on that.”

He said there’d been no real action on transport sector emissions, and it was time to abandon the idea that the preservation of the national electricity market should take priority over achieving climate goals. 

“I think it’s clear that the national electricity market has been a comprehensive failure.”

Related: World’s leading climate body paints a picture of a planet in turmoil

Melbourne University’s Jackie Peel, an expert in environmental and climate change law, says there was relief at last year’s COP that Australia had a new government with improved climate ambitions.

“But that aura of wonderfulness is fading,” Professor Peel said.

She says other nations will be looking for much more from Australia, given its ambitions to co-host the COP31 UN climate conference with Pacific island nations in 2026.

Pacific nations have made their feelings on that very clear.

Pacific elders including former national leaders recently ran an ad campaign saying support for the bid should be withheld until Australia stops expanding fossil fuels.

The two professors also rounded on carbon capture and storage as a purported solution for carbon emissions at the point of production.

Prof Quiggin called it a dead duck, with all attempts at retrofitting infrastructure failing.

Australian National University’s Mark Howden, who has co-authored major UN reports on climate change, agrees.

And he’s also questioned the economic rationale of trying to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it up in various ways, including in the landscape, the sea and in geological formations.

“Generally speaking, most of these are either limited in scope, or they have significant negative consequences, or they’re very expensive or some combination of those,” Prof Howden said.

He says a price on carbon would be more effective and cheaper.

“Economically, it doesn’t make much sense. But politically, having a way out, such as carbon capture and storage or carbon dioxide removal, sometimes looks quite attractive because you can have your cake and eat it too.”

Related: ‘It can be done. It must be done’: IPCC delivers definitive climate change report

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]]> 349858 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/11/pollution-and-climate-change-are-making-it-harder-to-be-male-if-youre-a-sea-turtle/ Tue, 21 Nov 2023 01:03:41 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=349561 Green sea turtle populations are already becoming increasingly female due to a warming climate. Now pollution may also be contributing to unbalanced sex ratios in the species.

The post Pollution and climate change are making it harder to be male . . . if you’re a sea turtle appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The new findings, published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Marine Science, could mean the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) is at a higher risk of extinction than previously thought.

The research, supported by WWF-Australia funding, investigated the effects of pollution on the development of green sea turtles at Heron Island, QLD.

“We discovered that the presence of contaminants tended to be associated with producing females,” explained lead researcher Dr Arthur Barraza, a marine ecotoxicologist from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute.

Turtles already at risk

Sand temperature usually determines a sea turtle’s sex.

More females hatch from eggs laid in warmer sand: cooler sand produces more males.

With temperatures increasing under climate change, parts of the species range – which is worldwide in tropical waters – are already experiencing higher than usual ratios of female hatchlings due to an increase in ambient sand temperature.

In the northern Great Barrier Reef, hundreds of females are born for every male, lead researcher Dr Barraza explained to Australian Geographic.

“As temperatures keep rising under climate change, there will be more and more females and fewer males,” he said. “With such high competition to find a male mate, sea turtles are at risk of decline if this problem isn’t addressed or studied further.”

Accumulating woes

Now green sea turtle populations face the added possibility that pollutants may also contribute to more eggs producing female hatchlings.

Contamination builds up in food chains, and Dr Barraza said pollutants accumulate in turtles over time as they eat contaminated plants and invertebrates.

“Specific pollutants, including heavy metals like cadmium and antimony, can then mimic oestrogen, the female sex hormone, or bind to receptors on the oestrogen molecules,” he said.

Dr Barraza said the contaminants send a false signal throughout the unhatched turtle’s body, which may shift it towards becoming female.

Sea turtles face a range of other threats, including poaching, collisions with boats, habitat destruction and accidental capture in fishing gear. All seven species of sea turtle are listed as endangered or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Solutions for turtles

Sea turtles collect contaminants from many places, not just at the beaches where they return to nest.

Dr Barraza explained that much of the heavy metal pollution in the ocean comes from human activity, including industry, mining, agricultural runoff and general urban waste.

“The best way to support turtles is to develop more comprehensive policies. We need to ensure that we reduce pollution in the ocean,” he said.

Dr Barraza said the subtle effects of contaminants on the environment can be more profound than we realise, and it was critical to understand these further.

“This study has shown that contaminants may affect the sex of green sea turtles and now we need to explore this in more detail.”

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Related: Alarming green turtle baby boom an all-female affair

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]]> 349561 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/video/wildlife-video/2023/11/how-to-rebuild-a-platypus-population/ Wed, 01 Nov 2023 22:29:35 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=348775 An innovative collaboration between field biologists and zoo vets could be the saviour of one of Australia’s most recognisable mammals.

The post How to rebuild a platypus population appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> A pair of platypuses known as Norris and Kombucha are on track to make global conservation history; likely to become the first success story in a complex, multi-organisational operation to rebuild an extinct population of the species. They’re among a group of 10 animals released in May into the Royal National Park, south of Sydney, New South Wales, as part of an ambitious platypus reintroduction program. 

It now seems Norris, a male, and Kombucha, a female, may have been sharing a territory during the spring-summer breeding season. That means scientists are hopeful that, when they return to the field in March to check on the animals’ progress, they’ll find newly emerged juveniles. Drs Gilad Bino and Tahneal Hawke, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) platypus ecologists spearheading the project, are ecstatic about the prospect.

“It would be amazing!” Gilad says, explaining that the project has already produced results that have exceeded expectations. “At the three-month milestone, all the animals were still around – an unprecedented result. So we’re already way beyond what we were expecting. Because translocation of any animal is a stressful period, we were prepared for some animals to potentially expire. We’re really happy, of course, that none have.” 

Similar wild releases of mammals rarely have a survival rate at three months of more than 60 per cent.

The venture, which has been partly funded by WWF-Australia and supported by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, began more than two years ago when Gilad and Tahneal started investigating the capacity of the Royal, Australia’s oldest national park, to support platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus). Although it’s on the doorstep of Australia’s largest city and has one of the highest visitation rates of any park in the country, the Royal has surprisingly high biodiversity, with historic records indicating platypuses were once present there.

There had been no confirmed sightings since the 1970s, suggesting the local population had gone extinct. “We went through a rigorous process to make sure all the boxes were ticked for the Royal to be repopulated with platypus, in terms of food availability, habitat quality, and the resilience of the system to withstand prolonged drying periods,” Gilad says.

Once the team identified that the park was still able to support platypus, the next hurdle was finding enough animals to relocate there. Platypuses are difficult to sustain in captivity, largely because they only eat live food, needing the movement of prey to stimulate electroreceptors in their bills to provoke a feeding response. As a result, there was no pool of captive animals large enough for the NSW program to draw on, so the only option was to take animals from the wild for relocation. 

That meant first finding wild populations stable enough to provide ample healthy candidates for the transfer. An arduous program of repeated field surveys followed, allowing the UNSW researchers to identify areas with platypus populations robust enough to provide animals. Ultimately those areas considered ideal in NSW for the project proved to be mainly in the Monaro region of the Snowy Mountains, from where most of the monotremes were taken. One animal among the 10 was taken from the Kangaroo Valley area, to the north. 

“We’d been familiarising ourselves with platypuses in the Snowy region since 2017,” Gilad says. “For this project, we returned and figured out there was quite a thriving population there, which was largely a credit to the Snowy River rehabilitation program.” That program began in the early 2000s to restore river habitat that had been destroyed during the mid-20th-century construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme.

With the animal supply sources finally identified to begin repopulating the Royal, Gilad and Tahneal set about smoothing the logistics of transferring animals from one locale to another, hundreds of kilometres and many hours away. No matter what precautions are taken for handling wild mammals, stress is, notoriously, a potential issue. And, although platypuses are certainly more resilient than a lot of other mammal species, the UNSW team, wanting to minimise any potential dangers, began looking for a halfway holding location for the animals involved. 

Enter Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. 

In 2019, wildlife authorities were inundated with calls about stranded platypuses in drying riverbeds across NSW, with an ensuing scramble at the state level to mount a response. But there was limited capacity anywhere to hold and rehabilitate the animals. The situation became even more dire during the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires. 

It was seen as a sign of yet more problems to come for platypuses. Following that turbulent period, Taronga Zoo embarked on a project, with the help of funds donated by the RSPCA and WIRES, to construct a purpose-built facility to hold and rehabilitate rescued platypuses for their return to the wild. So, when Gilad and Tahneal began looking for help with the Royal repopulation program, Taronga seemed the ideal partner to bring on board. Wildlife conservation officer Dr Phoebe Meagher, who manages platypus conservation recovery at the zoo, headed up the design and operation of the Taronga facility.

This has capacity for 10 animals, which is usually not enough in terms of genetic diversity for a long-term mammal population, Gilad explains. “But as a founding population, it was a good start for the Royal. There were enough animals to be able to breed, and for us to gauge the success of this project and whether we wanted to continue with it,” he adds. “We wanted to do a pit-stop with the animals at the zoo first, to implant them with trackers and to make sure they were looking healthy, well-fed and as ready as possible for the transition.”

Having the opportunity to safely hold animals for a period also meant they could be returned to the wild in stages, with the six females released a week before the four males. Males can breed with multiple females, so slightly more females than males were chosen for the Royal’s founding new population, and they were released first to allow them the chance to settle before the males were introduced. “We decided to release the females first because it meant they could establish their territories, and then males could sense the females in the area as soon as they arrived,” Phoebe says. 

Taronga is now modelling a larger facility at Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, in western NSW, based on the smaller Sydney one. “We’ve taken what we’ve learnt and multiplied it by five, to be able to hold up to 68 platypuses,” Phoebe says. “Part of the new facility is not only about rescuing animals in times of drought and fire but also building a research operation that will be fully decked out with thermal cameras, CCTV and environmental data loggers. We want to use the opportunity of having these animals in the zoo to learn as much about them as we can.”

The platypus isn’t recognised as an endangered species on major national and international conservation listings. But that’s thought to be largely because there’s been a lack of robust scientific data available to show that it’s in as much trouble as the koala or greater glider. Both of those iconic Australian species are now listed as endangered, according to criteria in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation ACT 1999, a kind of trigger point that activates conservation alarm responses.

Platypuses are notoriously hard to study in the wild, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence across the country that the species’ numbers have fallen significantly over the past 200 years, and even during the past 50 years. A large part of Tahneal’s PhD project involved investigating historic records of platypuses. Her work suggests there’s been what’s known as a ‘shifting baseline’ when it comes to platypus populations in Australian waterways. 

“Essentially, people will go to their local river and might see two or three platypuses and think ‘That’s fantastic!’, and assume that’s a really high number in that river,” Tahneal says. “But without any context of what the historical records are for that area, it makes it really hard to make that inference.”

Her research, for example, found historic records of people shooting 18 platypuses in a day to harvest them for their skins, demonstrating that it is possible seeing two or three in an area is just a fraction of what was there in the past. “There are records from the Yarra River in Melbourne’s CBD [where the animals are now rarely seen] of sightings of up to 22 platypuses a day,” Tahneal says. “We are definitely seeing areas with localised decline and even extinction, resulting from numerous impacts like river regulation, land clearing, droughts, flooding and fires and increased sedimentation smothering waterways. Foxes are definitely an issue. There’s evidence of fox predation, particularly during dry periods when platypuses will travel overland to find new water sources for refuge.”

These mounting threats have scientists and conservationists worried about the future of the platypus. “I do think they are under threat, but I also think they are very resilient. We find them in a range of habitats,” Tahneal says. “So, I’m quite hopeful that if we can mitigate some of those threats, there will be a positive future for the species. In the meantime, I think translocations and interventions are, unfortunately, going to be a huge part of conserving platypuses for the future.”

The early success of the Royal relocation project has the UNSW now looking at securing funding to release another 10 animals to the park. It has also sparked interest in the potential for similar projects to be run Australia-wide. “Since we publicised this project, I’ve been talking to a lot of councils and community groups that are really keen to see platypuses returned to their waterways,” Gilad says. “It’s really motivating and inspiring a lot of people to start thinking about what is needed to restore those waterways, so we can think about bringing back platypuses to their areas.” 

Already the team has been working closely with Brisbane City Council on restoring waterways in that local government area, from where platypuses have disappeared but might be able to be returned. “And they want to bring platypuses back to the [River] Torrens in Adelaide!” Gilad adds, explaining that this project has been useful in igniting concerns about the plight of the platypus. “I mean, it’s not doing well generally as a species. We’ve seen declines across the species’ range and local extinctions. But for landholders to have platypuses in their creek is such as special thing that, in places where platypuses have disappeared, the loss is seen as personal for many locals.”

Field biologists don’t usually assign names to the wild fauna they work with. Instead, they use labels like A24, G5 or 23F, describing individual animals only by lists of metrics, such as length, weight, sex, and breeding condition. And for wild mammals, which are notoriously easy to stress, taking these measurements must be done speedily after animals are captured, shielding them from overstimulation in a soft cloth bag before they are released back to the wild. 

As a result – and admittedly, it’s largely by deliberate design – field biologists rarely form connections with individual animals. Assigning names to individual animals is usually anathema to this kind of science.

Gilad began working with platypuses in 2014 and has definitely become attached to the species, but neither he nor Tahneal expected the emotional response the Royal project has elicited in them. “It definitely struck me because, normally, the interaction is, we’re surveying, we’re catching, we’re releasing. It’s a very temporary, transient experience, and you don’t know when the next time will be when you’ll see them,” Gilad says. “But this project came with a brewing sense of responsibility.” 

Keeping in touch with Phoebe and her staff at the zoo about the animals’ progress gave Gilad and Tahneal a sense of personal investment they’d previously not experienced in their work. Having collected, and personally selected, the animals most suitable for relocation brought with it a level of expectation. 

“We started naming them,” Gilad says. “And we developed a sense of personal responsibility for them, so there was a growing feeling of anticipation and expectation for these animals. Finally seeing them released was definitely an emotional experience for me, which was very much a surprise.

“I did get a tear in my eye.” 

The post How to rebuild a platypus population appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 348775 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/10/braying-for-love/ Mon, 30 Oct 2023 09:20:48 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=347503 Come and chase the ghosts of ‘gun packers’ across the rugged hinterland west of Cairns, on Australia’s only commercial donkey trek.

The post Braying for love appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Donkeys sweat. Snow’s coat is in a lather after the 7.5km walk through bush from Kalunga in far north Queensland to our campsite beside Cassowary Creek, off the unsealed Silver Valley Road. I stroke his muscular neck and tether him to a tree with a bowline knot I’ve only just learned to tie, and hope it holds. It’s sunset on day one of the week-long Packers’ Ghost Trek through rugged hinterland 75km south-west of Cairns. With us are eight other donkeys, and Tim Daniel, our guide, who served in the army for 42 years and for three of those ran a survival school. He’s in a work shirt, canvas trousers, and a fly-fishing vest labelled with everything he might need at a moment’s notice, from batteries to crepe bandages. 

From his home in heritage-listed Herberton, Tim designed the trek to trace the footsteps of the packers and drivers of the thousands of horses and mules that traversed this region between 1872 and the turn of the 20th century. Transporting metals from the area’s emerging mines, along with settlers’ provisions and other goods, the packers and their beasts showed a determination as tough as the terrain. “This is how Australia travelled before the motor car,” Tim says.

Our route will take in some long-abandoned ghost towns, which once played a huge role in the state’s wealth creation. “This area was extremely rich, and probably provided much of the financial requirements for Queensland’s development at the turn of the century,” Tim says. En route we’ll pitch our tents at some stunning campsites only accessible on foot. 

After a three-course meal cooked over a fire, I slouch back to my tent. Tim has the donkeys on nightlines, allowing them to graze. By my head torch’s light, Snow glows like an apparition. I slip into my sleeping bag, as another donkey, Duffy, fusses. “Just wait,” Tim tells the restless animal. “I’ll bring you a peppermint in a minute.” It’s the last thing I hear until morning.

Next day, we eat breakfast by the creek, sipping billy tea that tastes of campfire smoke. Duffy paws the ground, eager to get going. Donkeys can carry 22 per cent of their body weight, but loading their pack saddles takes time. Each side must balance to within half a kilo. “And if you don’t put [the pack] on right, it will fall off during the day,” Tim says. 

Today’s 12km route is through tin-mining territory. Gold strikes at the Palmer River and Hodgkinson Goldfields, further north, attracted fossickers seeking their fortunes. But as deposits dwindled, or failed to live up to expectations, hopes turned to tin, lead and copper. The 1879 discovery of the Great Northern tin lode at Herberton was the first of several to bring settlers to the once-thriving towns we’ll visit – including Watsonville, Rocky Bluffs and Irvinebank. We cut through Cardwell Gap, the lowest point on this stretch of the Great Dividing Range, and onto Gorge Creek, where the grass is littered with paper daisies. 

Two miners were speared here by the area’s original inhabitants in 1881. Both survived. Not so fortunate was “German Harry” (Hans Martens) whose body, minus a leg, was found 12 days after he disappeared from camp. His grave lies near here, but its precise location has been lost.

We’re treading a narrow pathway beside the creek when, suddenly, there’s a shout. The 240kg Snow takes off up the path, saddlebags shuddering. Next, there’s thundering hooves as three other donkeys, also loose, tear up the hill on the other side of the creek. More shouts. Some cursing. More running. As Tim scrambles to head them off, the trekkers catch and secure the others and piece together what’s just happened. Something spooked Milo, panic spread, and the donkeys knocked four trekkers off their feet. One woman hit her head; another has hurt an ankle. The latter falls a few more times, even after the group reassembles to continue the slower journey onward. It’s the first time anything like this has happened in the 20 years Tim has been leading treks.

I wonder how packers managed larger, more powerful mules – offspring of donkey stallions and female horses. Glenville Pike wrote in his 1976 historic tome Pioneers’ Country that these “bronzed, bearded men”, who were “tough as an ironbark tree”, would load and unload up to 50 mules each day. At the next rest stop, Snow nuzzles me when I share some freeze-dried banana. I ask Tim what it means when a donkey rubs its face on you. “It means it has an itch,” he replies, deadpan.

We arrive late afternoon at Watsonville, pitching our tents by a circle of gums as the donkeys roll in the dust. A mango tree planted here on Anzac Day in 1917 recalls townsfolk who went to war. A long-dead bouquet lies beneath its limbs, dried petals surrounded by drifts of leaves and mango seeds picked clean by birds.

Next morning, after the two injured trekkers are taken to Cairns Hospital, we load the donkeys and set out on today’s 10km leg. Two people down, I’m in charge of Snow and Milo. Milo is lashed behind the more sensible donkey, who will hopefully prove to be a steadying influence.

Our first stop is a windmill on Watsonville’s main street, saved from demolition in 1999 by residents who banded together to fund much-needed repairs. It bears a plaque with the haunting verse A Town That Used To Be, by Watsonville-born bush poet Claude Morris. Further on, we reach the Watsonville Pioneer Cemetery, where the original miners lie, surrounded by grevillea, eucalypts and barren hills. Many died from miners’ phthisis (dust on the lungs). Accidents and suicides claimed others. Conditions were tough, too, on miners’ families: of the 96 historic burials here, 36 are children under 12, with diphtheria and pneumonia among the cited causes of death.

We later pass a lake, and soon, in contrast to the gravel and sand we’ve travelled on so far, we’re squelching through ankle-deep mud. Tim has warned that donkeys dislike such conditions. As if to prove the point, Milo races up the rear to overtake Snow, agitating for the lead. In a heartbeat, I’m tangled in the rope joining the pair and dragged, shouting, through the mud for what’s probably seconds, but feels much longer. The convoy halts. I regain my footing. Tim is beside me, checking I’m okay. “I’m not hurt,” I say, testing my wrists and ankles. It was, at least, a soft landing. “You can’t take some people anywhere,” Tim quips.

We trudge on. Everything aches as we reach our next campsite, near Natural Bridge on the Walsh River, a vast expanse of granite rock formations sculpted by wind and water. By the campfire, Tim gives a lesson in celestial navigation using the Southern Cross. I’m exhausted but can still appreciate that I’ve never seen stars like this before. Scattered across a cloudless sky, the Milky Way is impossibly vast and bright.

We wake next day to the sound of rushing water and braying donkeys. Duffy and Murphy are stamping, raising dust. Snow irritably shoves me with his head. They’re out of sorts because they know what’s coming. Today we must cross the Walsh River. “It’s a big thing for the animals – they don’t like it because they’re naturally hydrophobic,” Tim says. “And if things go wrong, they go wrong in a big way.”

One by one, we edge across a shallow, slippery rock flat, getting little more than our feet wet. But this route is too risky for the donkeys. They must tread the sandy riverbed, which means wading through water that comes up as high as their
pack saddles. With a dispatching team on one side of the river, and a catching team on the other, Tim escorts the donkeys across, one by one. When they’re safely on the other side, he produces a packet of mints and coos: “One for you, Jack, because you went first. One for you, Milo, you were so brave…” 

Donkey treks are popular in Europe, but Tim is the only person offering them in Australia. “It’s not your everyday holiday, but it’s a chance to work with big draught animals,” he says. He’s utterly at ease leading them – and us – through territory where, more than 100 years ago, gun packers like Manny Borghero earned good money going where horse-drawn wheeled vehicles couldn’t.

Donkeys didn’t carry enough to be commercially viable long-term for the packers, but Tim prefers them. “They’re easy to train, they’re docile, they’re small. And they like people, whereas mules don’t necessarily like people,” he says. We follow a bush track uphill and over exposed rock to a spot dubbed Little Hells Gate. Located at an altitude of more than 800m, it yields the first phone reception in two days. Through this, we learn one trekker sustained two fractured ankles; the other was released after the all-clear from a CT scan.

Breathless and sweating, we follow Tim along tracks peppered with so much loose rock that the downhill descents become tests of balance “It’s rugged country,” he says, reading our minds. “It makes Victoria look like a frigging mattress.”

At our final rest stop, someone tells Tim there’s something crawling on his hat. He removes the well-worn Akubra, observes a small green caterpillar inching around the rim, and gently positions it so it can climb off onto the branch of a cypress pine.

“It’s a steep descent to our campsite from here,” he says. When Tim says something’s steep, you’d better believe it. Our reward, though, is Rocky Bluffs. The wild beauty of this isolated, windswept stretch of sand and granite on the Walsh River, 10km downstream from where we were last night, takes my breath away. 

During dinner, Tim breaks the news that last year’s wet season has washed away the sand bank the donkeys need to cross the Walsh River tomorrow. “The only alternative is deep water, over boulders and rocks, and the risk of a donkey breaking a leg is just too great,” he says. Come first light, Tim plans to scout around for another route, but this development means we may not be able to reach Stannary Hills, where our next rations are waiting.

“So, what’s Plan B?” someone asks. 

“I’m still working on it,” Tim says. “But all those leftovers might become very essential shortly.”

During breakfast, Tim confirms there’s no safe way the donkeys can cross the Walsh River. That means Stannary Hills is off the itinerary. Instead, we’ll go back the way we came. Tim’s friends will then drive us back to Watsonville.

Before setting off, we tour the heritage-listed remains of Rocky Bluff Battery, a processing plant for the Stannary Hills Tin Mining Company, which operated for barely 20 years from 1903. We tread single file along an overgrown path strewn with fallen Burdekin plums. This was the main thoroughfare, aptly named Ruffashell Street – pronounced ‘rough as hell’. It was so unnavigable that the only thing to ever pass over it was a wheelbarrow. 

The rest of the day is spent tackling the previous day’s journey in reverse. Eventually, we arrive at a property owned by a pig farmer who’s agreed to agist the donkeys until Tim can collect them the following week. Taking the donkeys’ lead ropes for the last time, we usher them into a 2ha paddock. 

Milo peers at me through the fence palings, but otherwise there are no lingering farewells. As we climb into 4WDs for the journey to Watsonville, I feel bereft. 

Next morning, we’re conveyed by car to Irvinebank, a time-capsule town 13km away. Behind the wheel is Diane Delaney, who delivers a running commentary on the miners’ cottages and other heritage buildings we pass on the way to our campsite beside McDonald Creek. “We try to look after our little town because the history here is astounding,” she says.

As caretaker Peter Shimmin takes us through Loudoun House Museum, built in 1884 as the family home of founder John Moffat, the wooden floorboards creak and sigh. “This was the offices for his empire, which [included] Mount Garnet, Chillagoe, Mount Molloy, Mount Carbine, Stannary Hills, and 20 odd towns that don’t exist at all today,” Peter says. 

Moffat was known for his benevolence. “The school children went home at night and said their prayers, and at the end of their prayers they’d say, ‘And God bless John Moffat,’ because he provided work for their fathers,” Peter says.

We also visit Brian’s Shed where former miner Brian Perkes maintains an impressive assortment of historic machinery and memorabilia, but he doesn’t consider himself a collector. “I just don’t throw anything away,” he says.

As the sun slides beneath the hills, Tim points out whispery mare’s tails in the sky. “That means there’s cold weather on the way,” he says.

The smell of pancakes cooking over the fire takes the edge off the morning’s chill. It’s time to return to Cairns – to flushing toilets, running water, refrigeration, wi-fi, and food that can be summoned with a phone call. I feel a tug of resistance. Gruelling though it has been at times, chasing the ghosts of the packers and early pioneers has opened my eyes to the lesser-known history of my home state and has enlarged my view of what I’m capable of doing. 

“There’s this legend that [Australians are] of the bush,” Tim says. “Everybody wants to be The Man from Snowy River, but  it’s all superficial. People have forgotten how to live with the bush and not be scared of it.”

Back in my Cairns hotel, I take a hot shower, order room service and sink into a cloud-soft bed. But it’s all too easy, too ordered, too quiet. I miss the donkeys, shifting and stamping and braying in the dark. There’s a video clip on my phone from the first night in Watsonville, when they were all loudly impatient for dinner. 

I find it, put it on loop, and finally fall asleep.

Denise Cullen was a guest of Wilderness Expeditions, Getaway Trekking and Tourism Tropical North Queensland.

The post Braying for love appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 347503 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2023/10/aussie-fairy-wrens-learn-while-still-inside-their-eggs/ Tue, 24 Oct 2023 21:18:12 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=347378 An Adelaide-led study has cracked the mystery of how and when some bird species start learning to sing.

The post Aussie fairy-wrens learn while still inside their eggs appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> Research has found that female fairy-wrens sing distinctive lullabies to communicate with, and teach, their unborn chicks. 

The discovery of the remarkable vocalisation and embryonic learning abilities of fairy-wrens comes after more than a decade of research by a global team of ecologists, led by animal behaviouralist Professor Sonia Kleindorfer of Adelaide’s Flinders University.

Between 2007 and 2020, Sonia’s team recorded more than 600 in-nest vocalisations of 125 females from eight species of Australasian wrens, including the superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) and splendid fairy-wren (Malurus splendens). 

The recordings were captured by placing microphones 30cm under nests and activating them for a minimum of two hours in the early morning. 

Learning while still inside the egg

In all the studied species, incubating females produced a range of call types inside the nest. More than 90 percent of these in-nest vocalisations featured one particular call type, known as a ‘B element’, which unborn chicks appeared to learn and later use to receive food.  

“This B element is also the nestling begging call produced shortly after hatching,” explains Sonia, who founded the Flinders University BirdLab 20 years ago.

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Earlier research had demonstrated this phenomenon among superb fairy-wrens. But this new study soon to be published in The American Naturalist shows that embryonic learning is much more ubiquitous than previously thought.  

“Earlier we wondered if we were just lucky and had found the only species where mothers teach embryos and embryos learn,” says Dr Diane Colombelli-Négrel, who was also part of the research team. “But now we know that this occurs in a lot of species.” 

Related: Sixteen-year-long study reveals secret lives of purple-crowned fairy-wrens

The success of embryonic learning, which may help protect against brood parasitic cuckoos, varied considerably both within and among species. The speed of a mother’s B element vocalisation was found to be a critical factor in how accurately nestlings copied it.

“Nestlings produce calls with greater vocal copy similarity between their mother’s signature call and their begging call when mothers called slowly to the embryo,” Sonia says.

The explanation for this shouldn’t come as a surprise to us, according to Dianne. “Like for humans, if you talk to a baby, you will usually slow the speed of your speech to help them understand and learn,” she explains. “It’s essentially the same for these birds.”

To investigate the responsiveness of embryos to other in-nest vocalisations, the team also conducted a prenatal playback experiment using superb fairy-wrens. 

When they played the B element call of the mother, the heartrate of the embryo slowed, as shown by a digital egg monitor. But when they played the mother’s alternative in-nest call – the A element – there was no response. 

“That was interesting,” Sonia says. “It left the question of why females are producing other kinds of vocalisations.” 

Subsequent studies, she adds, have helped answer this. “If females were to only produce a B element vocalisation, there is the risk that the embryo becomes habituated and stops paying attention to it,” she says.

Sonia and her team plan to explore how early-life learning guided by the mother wren (or foster mother) changes the brain and behaviour of developing chicks, and the role of acoustic soundscapes in influencing animal movement. 

“There’s a whole world of implications of this vocal production learning that we’re just beginning to tap into,” she says. “Clearly, it starts in the egg and mothers play a key role. As a female researcher, I’m especially glad to give a voice to females who have been overlooked in this story.”

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Related: Endangered fairy-wrens survive Kimberley floods

The post Aussie fairy-wrens learn while still inside their eggs appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> 347378 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2023/10/snake-cannibalism-caught-on-camera/ Mon, 23 Oct 2023 21:13:00 +0000 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/?p=347364 In an example of nature at its absolute wildest, a python has been recorded eating a fellow python alive.

The post Snake cannibalism caught on camera appeared first on Australian Geographic.

]]> The gruesome scene – involving two black-headed pythons (Aspidites melanocephalus) played out in Far North Queensland at Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s (AWC) Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary.

“Fortunately for me – but not so fortunately for the python being consumed, it took around 15 minutes from when I first witnessed the initial constriction to the python finishing its meal and returning to its burrow which was only about 10 feet away,” says the Sanctuary’s manager, Nick Stock. “This gave me plenty of time to get a camera and document the event.”  

“It was a surprise at first, but I feel really fortunate to witness such an event,” he adds.

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This wasn’t the first time Nick has had a front-row seat to such grisly events.

“I have previously witnessed black-headed pythons eating an eastern brown snake and a yellow-spotted monitor, however, this was the first time I witnessed a black-headed python eating another black-headed python.”

How common is python cannibalism?

Black-headed pythons have been known to eat one another occasionally in captivity, but witnessing and documenting a cannibalism event in the wild is rare, says AWC Wildlife Ecologist Dr Helena Stokes.

“Getting images or footage of such an event in the wild is quite unusual and lucky,” explains Helena.

“Black-headed pythons prefer to eat reptiles over mammals, and are known to eat larger reptiles, including goannas – and even venomous snakes – so I’m not surprised that they would consume another python if the opportunity arose,” she adds.

“And by consuming other individuals, they are also reducing competition for resources in the area.”

The post Snake cannibalism caught on camera appeared first on Australian Geographic.

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