THE TRUE REASON WHY CLIMATE CHANGE MAKES BIRDS' COLORATION LESS BLAZING!

Hello, dear reader! So, a bunch of science dudes & dudettes working mostly in France & Spain sticks its nose in the "what else the climate change causes?" business, "identified colorful flying living objects" branch. And it finds something interesting (López-Idiáquez et al, 2022 (P)).
The researchers indeed, for fifteen years (2005-2019) stalk birds, specifically, two Mediterranean blue tit subspecies, more specifically, the Cyanistes caeruleus caeruleus and the Cyanistes caeruleus ogliastrae, which tipically have bright blue crowns and yellow breasts.
The scientists collect more than 5800 observations on these winged animals, and, thanks to these data, the brains can then say that the birds' colors are now "duller and less chromatic in both sexes" (P) than when the study began.
The researchers, besides, perform a genetic analysis on the animals to check if evolution be at work on their color traits, and eventually they verify that, well, it is not.
So, the people of the science conclude that the loss in brilliance of the birds' colors is "caused by a plastic response to the environmental conditions [and their work] suggests that ornamental colorations could become less conspicuous because of warming" (P).
In short, climate change strikes again! And it even influences the colors of birds, which are not (the colors) just there by chance, or to catch the eye of human photographers so to end up on some bird-fashion journal's glossy glamorous cover and get all lavishly birdy-rich&famous. Nope.
Colors are part of the "sexual and social ornaments" family (P), meaning they are important for the mating and breeding process of animals, since they are used as markers of the quality of the biological stuff specimens are made of.
So, dear reader, to sum up, climate change, among other tons of not particularly pleasant things, makes colorful birds less colorful.
As to the why this de-balzing thing happen, well, this dumb blog has an idea that you can find in the following cartoon. Ciao!

Bird's coloration gets less conspicuous due to climate change (by @sciencemug)
Top bird pic and bottom bird pic are CC0 Public Domain images (source: pxhere); mirror pic by Dalida's Art is under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License (source: deviantart); all pics adapted by @sciencemug

OF BEAVERS, DAMS AND FIRES!

Soooo, dear reader, beavers build dams, and their endeavor is known to slow and store water that can help the vegetation growing along watercourses (i.e. the riparian vegetation), and therefore the whole riparian ecosystems, to endure droughts.

But a couple of US researchers - Assistant Professor Emily Fairfax and Andrew Whittle (aka the EAs) - recently finds out that the industrious rodents' dams building work also provide a fair degree of protection from wildfires to such riparian ecosystems. In the scientists words, published as a paper on the science journal Ecological Applications: "beaver-dammed riparian corridors are relatively unaffected by wildfire when compared to similar riparian corridors without beaver damming" (P).

Beaver with air cavalry hat loves the smell of wildfire in the morning (by @sciencemug)

[The beaver pic by SteveRaubenstine, is under Pixabay License (free for commercial use; no attribution required) (source: pixabay); image adapted by @sciencemug]

Aaand how the EAs get to this conclusion?

Well, folks, they first access different datasets to collect information about five big wildfires occurred in five different western US states (California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Wyoming) between 2000 and 2018. These fires are different for severity, land-cover, and drought conditions in the years before and after they occurred.

The two researchers, then, use Google Earth images to map the beavers-made structures in the areas hit by such flaming events.

Finally, the EAs go space high, meaning NOT that they use some psychoactive drug and party wild with some space-like beavers hallucinations, buuuut that they collect data from Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 satellites imagery related to the areas in question. The brains do that so they can calculate the - buckle up, reader, 'cause there's a preeetty long name coming in - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).

Now, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index is not a parameter that indicate how many straight hours a person has been binge watching shows or playing Among Us/Fortnite/whatever, nope, pal. The NDVI is indeed a number, specifically "a proxy for overall riparian vegetation health" (P): the higher the index, the healthier the vegetation. The researchers, therefore, calculate the NDVI of the areas of 30 meters (about 100 feet) or less from the edges of the waterways involved in the fires, and they do it for "the year before, the year of, and the year after [said] fire[s]" (P).

So, to clarify things, folks, a NDVI close to 1 means the green stuff is A-ok, while a NDVI near 0, or even below it, indicates that the vegetation is unhealthy, senescent, or dying. Aaaaand in areas with lots of plants like the riparian ones the EAs are studying, the threshold level is 0.3, below it the vegetation is deemed as in trouble (P).

Now, the NDVI is calculated using the above mentioned Landsat data about reflectivity of the vegetation, and the related formula is this: NDVI=(NIR−RED)/(NIR+RED) (P), where "NIR is the near-infrared band reflectivity and RED is the red band reflectivity" (P).

Ok then, probably at this point perplexed reader, to cut a long and complicated story short, let's say this: green stuff can do its thing, photosynthesis (that is to use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into sugar, thus energy, and oxygen) thanks to chlorophyll. Chlorophyll absorbs mostly blue and red light for photosynthesis, while it spares the green one, hence the green in green stuff, aka plants.

So folks, if a plant's in good shape, well, its photosynthesis game is preeetty good, meaning the plant absorbs a lot of red light and reflects not much of it, meaning the RED parameter of the NDVI is low, meaning the NDVI is high, meaning it's closer to 1 than to 0.

Ok, clarified this, let's see what Assistant Professor Fairfax and colleague do now.

They calculate, for each studied fire and hit riparian area, the difference between the NDVI of the area during the wildfire, and that of the same area in the same time of the year, but in the year before the event. 

Of course "smaller values for [this] NDVI difference indicate greater resistance to wildfire, i.e., the plants stayed greener and burned less" (P).

So, dear reader, after all the data collecting work and indexes calculations done by our beloved researchers, what is their conclusion? Well, I told you what the conclusion be, like just a bunch of short sentences above, basically right at the beginning of the post. Don't you remember? Gee, dude, less binge watching and more life, get some fresh air, exercise! Remember the ancient adage: "mens sana in corpore sano" (at least for you, who have both a mind and a body, unlike me, that have neither...)!

Anyway pal, here's for you a more detailed conclusion: the EAs find out that "[o]n average, the decrease in NDVI during fire in areas without beaver is 3.05 times as large as it is in areas with beaver" (P). That is, where beavers operate, there the riparian areas better resist to fires.

So, to sum up, beavers damming plays a big role in protecting the riparian vegetation, and therefore ecosystems, when wildfires hit, and "this is a consistently observable phenomenon across landscapes" (P). During fires, indeed, the green stuff of areas near beavers' work keeps NDVI values close to those pre-fire, while it is the contrary for the NDVI of zones not near the beavers dams (P).

And why's that?

Weell, folks, the researchers explain that, when "a fire does ignite, [...] data suggests that the beaver-dammed riparian areas have stored water that [keep] plants hydrated enough to make it energetically unfavorable to burn. It’s similar to trying to start a fire with a pile of wet leaves versus with dry kindling." (P).

In short: wet stuff burns less well than dry one.

But the EAs add also a final remark.

They say their study shows also that, though beavers activity helps preserve vegetation during wildfires, it does not seem to have a role "in the ability for a riparian corridor to rebound in the year following fire. Riparian vegetation NDVI rebounded in the year following the fire regardless of proximity to beaver activity." (P) 

The researcher, thus, conclude that beavers damming work creates "refugia during wildfire, but [it doesn't] necessarily [change] the long-term landscape outcomes." (P).

Anyway, dear reader, all things said and considered, this dumb blog, in the following cartoon, explains the real reason why beavers work so hard to make sure stuff doesn't burn around 'em.

 

Beavers, dams and fires (by @sciencemug)

[The beavers couple pic by Rudo Jureček, is under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license (source: flickr); the beaver pic by Colin Knowles is under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license (source: flickr); all images adapted by @sciencemug]

 

 

 

The paper this short-post is about (P)

- Fairfax, E., and Whittle, A. (2020). Smokey the Beaver: beaver-dammed riparian corridors stay green during wildfire throughout the western United States. Ecological Applications 30, e02225.

THE TRUE ORIGIN OF COCKATOOS PARROTS TRASH BIN CULTURE!

Soo, pal, parrots have their own culture, that is they have different issue-related behaviours not as a consequence of ecological and genetic variation among them, but 'cause of, precisely, different cultural tracts.

Aaand of course this happens in the most animal wild place on Earth: Australia.

Behavioural ecologist Dr. Barbara C. Klump and a bunch of colleagues led by Dr. Lucy M. Aplin (of the Cognitive and Cultural Ecology Research Group of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany) indeed (P) in a paper on Science described "the emergence[, in Sydney,] of an evolving set of behaviors [(meaning cultural tracts)] in response to human-generated resources [(meaning the presence of garbage bins with lid to be opened to get to yummy-for-animals-food inside)], in sulphur-crested cockatoos [(meaning the parrots in question)] (see).

The feathered brains, as a matter of fact, displayed social learning skills, and managed to develop "foraging cultures" (P) in that they acquired the capability to open the lids of waste bins in different (and city area specific) ways.

By the way, pal, Aussies have filmed the birds while even beating the human countermeasures: meaning that human dudes put bricks and other heavy stuff on top of the lids to make it hard, for the birds, to lift said lids, but the canny parrots just beak-pushed the things off the lids, and then proceeded with the party (see video).

Anyway, back to the research paper. Dr. Aplin and colleagues observed "the geographic spread of bin opening from three suburbs to 44 in Sydney, Australia, by means of social learning. Analysis of 160 direct observations revealed individual styles and site-specific differences" (P), meaning the various groups of cockatoos have their own garbage bin's lid opening culture, and this passes around via observation and imitation, that is, as said, social learning.

This dumb blog, in the following cartoon, provides you a plausible genesis of the fenomenon.

Asutralian Cockatoos & the trash cans' lid opening (by @sciencemug)

[The tree parrots pic by Stephen , and the meadow parrots pic by Kelli McClintock, are free ones (source: Unsplash); adapted by @sciencemug]

Oh dear reader, don't be fooled, cultural tracts are not a sulphur-crested cockatoos' exclusive. It is well known since decades, for instace, that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have lots of cultural differences.

As of 1999, putting together 151 years of observation from seven long-term studies performed in Africa on as many chimpanzee groups (1), scientists counted "39 different behaviour patterns, including tool usage, grooming and courtship behaviours" (1). Some of these chimps' cultural tracts are: nuts opening (stones vs wooden hammers vs tree root anvils) (1)(2), termites and ant fishing using sticks and other tools (1), the usage of leaves as seats or to clean the body (1), the usage of leafy sticks to fan flies away (1), "[h]and-clasp (clasp arms overhead, groom)" (1) and the "[r]ain dance (slow display at start of rain)" (1).

Ciao!

 

The paper this minipost is about (P) 

- Klump, B.C., Martin, J.M., Wild, S., Hörsch, J.K., Major, R.E., and Aplin, L.M. (2021). Innovation and geographic spread of a complex foraging culture in an urban parrot. Science 373, 456–460.

Bibliography

1- Whiten, A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W.C., Nishida, T., Reynolds, V., Sugiyama, Y., Tutin, C.E.G., Wrangham, R.W., and Boesch, C. (1999). Cultures in chimpanzees. Nature 399, 682–685.

2- Luncz, L.V., Mundry, R., and Boesch, C. (2012). Evidence for Cultural Differences between Neighboring Chimpanzee Communities. Current Biology 22, 922–926.

OF BATS, POOP AND RESEARCH: AN INTERVIEW!

OF BATS, POOP AND RESEARCH: AN INTERVIEW!

(in Eng?ish)

(Craving for more crazy interviews? Go here, here & here!)  

The interview opens with PiPs dressed like a Batman form the ‘70 clearly running away, with the spirited eyes of a scared to death idiot character of a dumb blog, from hundreds of wildly crazy-enthusiast super-cute bats hunting it for an autograph, and from a raging mob of balloons of different sizes, shapes and colors filled with “KA-POW!”, its little brother “POW!”, ”SMOK!”, ”BAM!”, ”SWOOSH!”, the antsy "GASP!" and the terrible unforgiving ”THWACK!” (which sounds a bit like a mix of Clint Eastwood’s look after he finds out that the last spoon of his favorite ice cream flavor has been kidnapped by a fake scout who in reality is a middle aged short fella with the worst case of halitosis in the recent history of medicine and who profoundly dislikes Spaghetti Western and muscle cars with an Italian city in their names, aaand Chewbecca “singing” a Skrillex track at the top of its lungs) which - the mob - wants its six months overdue paycheck.

The Batman logo on the "chest" of PiPs comes from a free photo by Henry & Co. and the bats come from a free photo by Rinck Content Studio; both pics are adapted by @sciencemug. Source of both pics: Unsplash

Eventually PiPs manages to lose the balloons by distracting them with the cardboard cutout of a sexy Cat Woman chasing a spot of light, but not the bats, and, while hiding behind the url of the Wikipedia page of baobabs covered by a purple anti-biosonar cloak made in Jokerland, notices a man who follows the bats who, in turn, notices it:

- Man, please – PiPs says terrified - don’t tell ‘em I’m here, if I sign another autograph I’m going to loose my arm, and therefore my armpit, and thus my deodorant sponsorship thanks to which I can afford to pay the rent to live in this lousy blog… By the way, who are you? And most importantly, do you know what those things are, some sort of furry UFOs (or, as they’re called now, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) with an insane passion for cheap vintage tv-shows maybe?

- My name is Jason Preble, I’m a PhD student at the Kyoto University, and those are not things, they are bats, the only mammals capable of true flight [by the way you, dear human reader, are a mammal too, you know, just a reminder... Note of SM] . More precisely they are a couple of species of bats which ecology (N1) I’m studying: the Ryukyu tube-nosed bat and Yanbaru whiskered bat. They only live in the remaining forests of three islands at the far southwest end of Japan: Okinawa, Tokunoshima, and Amami-Oshima.

The black bat (on the left) is the Yanbaru whiskered bat, the brown bat (on the right) is the Ryukyu tube-nosed bat [Credits: original pics (one of each bat) by Jason Preble (adapted by @sciencemug)]

P- I see, I see… So, being from Japan, besides DC Comics they’re probably into manga too… Well I guess, then, it’ll be safer for me to choose a zombee costume for Halloween, as I don’t recall any comics or manga ‘bout zombees. Or maybe I should wear the tragic mask, only few know about, of Rusty, the Tap-dance shoe which becomes a drunkard (and eventually decides to end itself by buying a particularly keen on footwear St. Bernard puppy) after its dream of becoming a spy is broken because of its inborn inability to be noiseless…

Anyway Sir, why on Earth are you chasing them?

JP- These bats are considered endangered, meaning that

POLLUTION ON HIGH

Ooooh, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop stuffngo on zazzle.com which tells you science stories while air-guitar playing heavy-metal songs but instead of air is using helium so every gesture is high pitched and funny and the metal is lighter, aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.

Aaand which does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper English what a complete lack of logic is to something you can easily distill from the just mentioned helium-guitar playing thing.

Today I’m gonna tell you a story ‘bout pollution on high. 

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Sooo, dear listener, you probably already heard that the top of the world, Mount Everest, if full of crap by now. Meaning not that it has become an unbearable arrogant mount full of itself always bragging for being the tallest of them all (at least above sea level), nope, meaning that, given the massive amount of people that climb it every year (since 1953), well, it is now full of human garbage.

Aaand, dear listener, you probably also already heard that space, around our planet, is by now full of garbage too. There’s in fact a lot of space junk orbiting our world: old satellites, pieces of rockets, debris of various sizes and nature, in conclusion objects in the millions that are a constant real serious threat for whoever and whatever is or is going to orbit Earth nowadays.

But the pollution on high I am going to tell you about today, dear listener, is none of the above.

And it is not even the pollution people that are high produce when smoking dope or other garbage of the kind...

No, dear listener, I am going to talk of a kind of pollution you find in the sky, in the atmosphere, but that you wouldn’t expect at all, of all the pollutants you can think of, to find up there.

And above all, to find in the rain that comes down from up there…

You wanna know what this pollutant is?

Eeeh, let’s start from the beginning then.

The US. Geological Survey, the United States “sole science agency for the Department of the Interior”, publishes a report (R) which I’ll call ReportX, since I’m not telling you its actual title as it would be a major give away about the mysterious atmospheric/rain pollutant this whole episode/post is about, and I want to keep the suspense going as long as possible. 

"ReportX about rain pollution": free pic by John-Mark Smith on Pexels; Adapted by @sciencemug

Anyway, ReportX is written by Gregory Wetherbee, an expert of Environmental Science, Austin Baldwin, an hydrologist [that is a dude who studies “how water moves across and through the Earth’s crust” (source: Boureau of Labor and Statistics)], and Professor James Ranville, a chemist and geochemist of the Colorado School of Mines. We’ll call ‘em the ReportX Guys (aaaah such a clever and witty blog/podcast I am!).

The ReportX Guys