Categories
Biodiversity Conservation

The Strange & Tragic Case of the Soviet Seed Man (Part 2)

This is the second of several posts wherein I explore the fascinating and tragic story of the world’s first seed bank and its heroic creator. My thanks to reader Michel Leblanc for sharing this story with me.

Wheat diversity in Azerbaijan. From a 2012 paper by lead author A. Aliyeva, DOI: 10.5829/idosi.aejaes.2012.12.10.6680.

Theories on Genetic Diversity

In the course of his expeditions, Vavilov developed several important theories. The first he called “The Law of Homologous Series in Variation”. Appearing at the 3rd Russian congress for plant-breeding in Saratov, Vavilov drew on the work of Mendel and Quetelet to propose that closely related species and genera are characterized by similar homologous series in their genetic variability. For example, if a species of wheat is seen to exhibit branching and spikelets in its seed heads, we can reasonably expect the same kinds of traits to appear in related grain species like rye. The paper he published on this subject in 1922 refined this theory into two parts: : (a) similar morphological traits occur in different groups of plants; and (b) the set of traits constitutes a series that is a signature of a particular variety of plant.

This law is still enormously important for selective breeding of both plants and animals. Knowing that similar genetic and morphological traits can be found in related species means breeders can significantly narrow their search for desired characters and variants.

Maize diversity in Vavilov’s office. Photo by Luigi Guarino, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants

Starting in 1926, Vavilov formalized his observations about plant origins. He proposed that the areas with the most diversity of a plant variety and its wild relatives indicate where humans first cultivated these plants. According to Vavilov, these areas of first cultivation represent the centers of evolutionary origin of some plant varieties. The center of origin of a particular variety of wheat, for example, would be the place where a diversity of genetic relatives–especially undomesticated weedy relatives–of that variety would exist. Unlike previous theories on this subject, Vavilov used traits like the number of chromosomes in the cells of organisms within a species to characterize and categorize genetic diversity within species.

From WAMU 88.5, American University Radio: “A Map Of Where Your Food Originated May Surprise You”.

Initially, Vavilov recognized five centres of origin (southwestern Asia, southeastern Asia, the Mediterranean coast, South America, and Mexico), with several sub-centres. He later modified this to seven primary centres of origin. His theory had little influence until after WWII, which it was translated into English. Since then, it has continued to influence both agricultural scholars and others interested in genetic origins.

One of Vavilov’s most cited works is a posthumous publication, The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants, published in English in 1951. In this work Vavilov argued that diversity of plant varieties was not evenly distributed throughout the world, and that the centers of origin of a species contained the most genetic diversity related to the original variety. This theory is now widely accepted. For example, Bryan Sykes drew heavily on this theory for his bestseller “The Seven Daughters of Eve”, which explores human genetic ancestry.

Downfall

In 1927 Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, a public rival of Vavilov’s, was recognized in the national newspaper for his skills in plant breeding. Vavilov followed Lysenko’s work, but soon realized that Lysenko lacked a formal scientific education and was unaware of modern genetic concepts. Lysenko insisted that if an organism acquired some new trait during its lifetime, this quality could be passed directly to its descendants. While today we have a more nuanced view of epigenetic heritability, Lysenko’s views were not at all nuanced and flew in the face of orthodox Darwinian theory.  He sent billions of “counter-revolutionary” wheat plants to be “re-educated” in Siberia. (Quote from Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, page 433.) Sadly, the wheat plants were resistant to re-education, but not to cold. They mostly died and the Soviet Union was forced to import ever larger quantities of wheat.

Trofim Lysenko, 1938. Wikimedia Commons

(Indeed, a 19th Century German geneticist named August Weismann had definitively proved that acquired traits are not heritable. He cut off the tails of 901 mice and their offspring for five generations. As he predicted, not one of the successive generations of mice was born tailless, or even with shorter tails.)

Despite his scientific hokum, Lysenko’s views found favour at the highest level because they dovetailed so nicely with communist educational principles. A major tenet of Soviet theory was that nurture would always triumph over nature (genetics). Eventually Lysenko used his influence to become the head of Soviet agriculture, at which point he pushed to outlaw genetics research and education in the Soviet Union. He declared that anyone who didn’t renounce the science would be arrested and thrown in jail.

Arrest & Imprisonment

Already under suspicion for his bourgeois background, one day in 1940, while he was collecting seeds in Ukraine, Soviet security agents arrested Vavilov and whisked him off to the Gulag. Not even his wife and children knew exactly where he ended up. The arrest left his colleagues at the Bureau of Applied Botany trembling.

Vavilov’s mugshot. The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Народный комиссариат внутренних дел), abbreviated NKVD (НКВД) – Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (Moscow) (Центральный архив ФСБ РФ (Москва)) Institute of Plant Industry (Всероссийский институт растениеводства имени Н. И. Вавилова) Official photo from the file of the investigation. From Wikipedia.

Gulag interrogators grilled Vavilov mercilessly, often for 12 hours straight. They were determined to make him confess to the “crime” of not conforming his science to their politics. But as one historian commented, “Vavilov, unlike Galileo . . . refused to repudiate his beliefs.”

Infuriated, Gulag administrators tried to starve Vavilov into submission. Day after day, they gave him nothing but mashed cabbage and moldy flour. The man who had sampled wild apples in Kazakhstan, wild barley in Ethiopia, and wild potatoes in Chile was reduced to eating flavorless mush, and very little of it. His muscles wasted, his cheeks collapsed inward, boils erupted on his skin. He had labored for decades to end famine, and finally succumbed to starvation himself in January 1943. He was 55 years old.

The story continues in our next post. Meantime, please find below a list of references for more reading.

References

  1. Nikolai Vavilov
  2. The Tragedy of the World’s First SeedBank
  3. Nikolai Ivanovic Vavilov (1887-1943)
  4. The tragic tale of Nikolai Vavilov
  5. The Seeds of Life — Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov and the Fight for the Centers of Origins of Plant Diversity and Food Security
  6. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry
  7. Institute of Plant Industry
  8. Federal Research Center, N. I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR), Ministry of science and higher education
  9. The Development of Botany in the Soviet Union by Slavomil Hejný
  10. Russian famine of 1921–1922
  11. The Law of Homologous Series in Variation by Professor N. I. Vavilov, Director of the Bureau of Applied Botany and Plant Breeding, Petrograd, Russia.
  12. Homologous Series, Law of
  13. Revisiting N.I. Vavilov’s “The Law of Homologous Series in Variation” (1922)
  14. Vavilov : Une banque de semences à Lyon pour préserver la biodiversité
  15. Beyond the Gardens: Millennium Seed Bank Partnership
  16. Impact: science et société, UNESCO Bibliothèque Numérique, pages 141 à 149
  17. Pavlovsk Experimental Station
  18. In Situ: The Priceless Plants of the Pavlovsk Experimental Station
  19. Seed banks: saving for the future
  20. Russia’s Vavilov institute, guardian of world’s lost plants
  21. CRBA L’institut Vavilov
  22. Russie : Campagne pour sauver la station expérimentale de Pavlovsk
  23. Une collection de 5000 variétés de petits fruits menacée de disparition en Russie à l’Institut Vavilov !
  24. Une oasis de la biodiversité menacée par les pelles mécaniques
  25. Russia launches inquiry into Pavlovsk seed bank after Twitter campaign
  26. Les végétaux du futur poussent à Charly
  27. In Situ: The Priceless Plants of the Pavlovsk Experimental Station
Categories
Biodiversity Conservation

The Strange & Tragic Case of the Soviet Seed Man (Part 1)

Over the next few posts, I will explore the fascinating and tragic story of the world’s first seed bank and its heroic creator. My thanks to reader Michel Leblanc for sharing this story with me.

Saving the planet’s plant diversity. Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov and his labor of love. From a post by Thor Hatten on Medium.

The name Nikolai Vavilov is virtually unknown in the west today, which is a shame because he started the world’s first seed bank and developed theories about genetic diversity that is still valid today.

Born to a merchant family in Moscow in 1887, Vavilov grew up at a time when famine regularly visited the Russian countryside. A famine in 1891-92 caused an estimated 300,000 deaths and is credited with having given new life to the Russian Marxist movement. The young Vavilov heard stories of privation from his father and determined to dedicate his life to eradicating hunger. He entered the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy (now the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy) in 1906 and became known for carrying a pet lizard in his pocket wherever he went.

There are no known photos of Vavilov’s pet lizard. This image is courtesy of Pravin Gangurde on Unsplash.

Early Years and Influences

Before the outbreak of WWI, he was travelling through Europe and collaborating with British biologist William Bateson, himself a pioneer in genetics, on studies of plant immunity. Following the establishment of the USSR, Vavilov taught agronomy at University of Saratov before being named director of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences at Leningrad, where he served from 1924 until 1935. His extensive international collaborations included work with Canadian phytopathologist Margaret Newton, who was an expert on wheat stem rust. The early years of the Soviet Republic were characterized by food insecurity. Collectivization and drought combined to cause widespread famine. In 1921-1923, about 16 million people may have been affected by famine and up to 5 million died. These circumstances must have reinforced Vavilov’s commitment to eliminating hunger through better agriculture.

Image from Centre for Food Safety “6 Tips for Saving Seeds”

Guiding Principles

Vavilov’s reasoning was elegant in its simplicity and still holds today. He figured that modern agricultural crops lacked resilience due to inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity. So, much like agronomists today, he set out to find the wild antecedents of important food crops, mainly cereals, so he could reintroduce genetic diversity and breed more robust food plants.

Even in the 1920s, Vavilov’s search for wild food plants was a race against time and loss of biodiversity due to human development. He eventually made 115 seed collecting trips to 64 countries on five different continents. The many seeds, grains, fruits, nuts, and tubers he collected all found a home at the Academy in Leningrad, making it one of the world’s first seed banks. By 1931 the Bureau’s seed bank contained more than 10 million varieties of seeds.

As one historian wrote of Vavilov’s collection, “some [seeds were] dull-coated while others glistened like jewels. . . . The tubers, roots, and bulbs came in all sorts of textures, from knobby and gnarled to as smooth and burnished as a clay pot.” Fruits collected “exuded nearly every fragrance imaginable to a perfume chemist—musky, fermented, citric, and floral.”

Vavilov didn’t just collect seeds. He also understood the importance of growing them out. Seeds, tubers and so on were sent out to fields, orchards and paddies around the vast Soviet empire where they were grown by a small army of technicians. The resulting crops were harvested and then sent back to the Institute to replenish its seed supplies. By the end of the 1930s, he had more than 20,000 scientists and technicians working for him on this massive effort.

The story continues in our next post. Meantime, please find below a list of references for more reading.

References

  1. Nikolai Vavilov
  2. The Tragedy of the World’s First SeedBank
  3. Nikolai Ivanovic Vavilov (1887-1943)
  4. The tragic tale of Nikolai Vavilov
  5. The Seeds of Life — Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov and the Fight for the Centers of Origins of Plant Diversity and Food Security
  6. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry
  7. Institute of Plant Industry
  8. Federal Research Center, N. I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR), Ministry of science and higher education
  9. The Development of Botany in the Soviet Union by Slavomil Hejný
  10. Russian famine of 1921–1922
  11. The Law of Homologous Series in Variation by Professor N. I. Vavilov, Director of the Bureau of Applied Botany and Plant Breeding, Petrograd, Russia.
  12. Homologous Series, Law of
  13. Revisiting N.I. Vavilov’s “The Law of Homologous Series in Variation” (1922)
  14. Vavilov : Une banque de semences à Lyon pour préserver la biodiversité
  15. Beyond the Gardens: Millennium Seed Bank Partnership
  16. Impact: science et société, UNESCO Bibliothèque Numérique, pages 141 à 149
  17. Pavlovsk Experimental Station
  18. In Situ: The Priceless Plants of the Pavlovsk Experimental Station
  19. Seed banks: saving for the future
  20. Russia’s Vavilov institute, guardian of world’s lost plants
  21. CRBA L’institut Vavilov
  22. Russie : Campagne pour sauver la station expérimentale de Pavlovsk
  23. Une collection de 5000 variétés de petits fruits menacée de disparition en Russie à l’Institut Vavilov !
  24. Une oasis de la biodiversité menacée par les pelles mécaniques
  25. Russia launches inquiry into Pavlovsk seed bank after Twitter campaign
  26. Les végétaux du futur poussent à Charly
  27. In Situ: The Priceless Plants of the Pavlovsk Experimental Station
Categories
Biodiversity Conservation

When is a species extinct?

It may sound like a silly question but the world is a large and complex place. To this day, there are credible sightings of species thought to have been extinct for decades. So what determines is a species is, in fact, extinct?

From the Extinction entry on Britanica.com.  

How Do Scientists Decide a Species Has Gone Extinct?

Writing in The Scientist, Andy Carstens begins by detailing recent sightings of the near-mythical ivory-billed woodpecker, which was thought to have gone extinct in the 1930s. As a result of credible recent sightings by, among others, Mark A. Michaels of the National Aviary, US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) were convinced this past January to offer the bird a 6-month stay of execution. A ruling of “extinct” would have meant the removal of protections required under the US Endangered Species Act, such as preserving habitat and taking other steps to try to increase population size.

An ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in 1932. Arthur A. Allen and The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The ongoing case highlights some of the challenges researchers face in determining whether a species has actually gone extinct. It’s “difficult to prove the absence of something,” says H. Resit Akçakaya, an ecologist at Stony Brook University, and so a lack of verifiable sightings is not necessarily evidence of extinction. According to guidelines issued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an organization that tracks species’ conservation statuses on the basis of surveys, modeling, and expert opinion, “A taxon is Extinct when there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died.” But researchers typically don’t know when or if that last death has occurred, Akçakaya adds.

The outline of a bird at the center of this photo, taken in Louisiana in 2021, is one of the pieces of evidence for the existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker cited in a preprint coauthored by ornithologist Mark Michaels.

There are perils on both sides of this equation. Continuing to classify an actually extinct species as endangered can lead to underestimating extinction rates, and obscuring the bigger conservation picture, as well as misdirecting financial resources away from protecting vulnerable species to searching for ones that no longer exist. On the other hand, declaring something extinct when it really isn’t can inflict further harm on a struggling species. Additional issues can arise if a species that’s been declared extinct is later found. Discovery of such a “Lazarus species” can cause the public to lose faith in scientists, according to Akçakaya, and may increase poaching demand in some cases.

To aid consequential extinction decisions, IUCN has developed a methodology to help scientists make the best use of available data, says Akçakaya, who also chairs the organization’s Standards and Petitions Committee as a volunteer. One approach uses so-called exhaustive surveys conducted throughout the species’ historic range during times and seasons when it’s expected to be present. The second estimates extinction probability based on the extent and severity of threats that a species faces. The methodology has value, according to Stuart Butchart, an ornithologist at BirdLife International who was one of the first scientists to test it. For the ivory-billed woodpecker, Butchart’s analysis estimated a 75% probability of extinction using the threat-based method, a result primarily due to habitat loss. From surveys and recorded sightings, the odds of its extinction were lower—around 20%.

Kelsey Neam, a conservationist with the nonprofit Re:wild, has tested IUCN’s framework on amphibians, although she hasn’t yet used it to recommend the extinction status of a species, in part due to the dearth of information. Lack of data is the biggest challenge for extinction declarations. Whatever the level of available data, decisions ultimately come down to the verdict of a jury of experts. As an assessment facilitator for IUCN’s Amphibian Specialist Group, Neam leads working groups of experts from particular regions in reviewing species’ status. “Sometimes it’s unanimous,” she says. “Everyone goes, ‘Of course, this is totally extinct.’ Other times, there’s a lot of debate.” Her job as an expert in using the IUCN criteria is to remain unbiased. “I often do feel like I’m the head juror,” she says. “It’s a lot of pressure.”

Tasmanian tiger extinction dated to late 1990s

Long considered a poster child for 20th Century species’ extinction, it turns out the Tasmanian tiger may have endured almost until the 21st Century!

Photograph is of the last captive Thylacine, taken on 19th December 1933 at the Hobart Zoo by zoologist David Fleay (image courtesy David Fleay trustees).

An international group of researchers led by the University of Tasmania has taken a fresh look into the disappearance, and conceivable reappearance, of the Tasmanian tiger thylacine. The last thylacine confirmed killed in the wild was in 1930, and the last specimen in captivity died at a Tasmanian zoo in 1936. Since then, sightings have regularly persisted across Tasmania, though no captured creatures or images have been offered to prove its survival.

With the possibility that the creature had persisted well past its addition and eventual removal from the endangered species list with an official designation of “extinct,” the researchers wanted to model the most likely last refuges of the iconic predator. In the paper, “Resolving when (and where) the Thylacine went extinct,” researchers modeled 1,237 reported sightings from 1910 to the present day.

For the study, published in Science of The Total Environment, researchers pulled from every available source: records from government archives, published reports, museum collections, newspaper articles, contemporary correspondence, private collections or other miscellaneous citations and testimony. The team even poured over microfilm records to compile their sighting database.

This resulted in median extinction dates of 1999 and 2008, with the most likely (overlapping) termination date by the late 1990s—a highly controversial result unless you are a Tasmanian tiger enthusiast hoping they may still be out there. However, when restricting data to physical specimens, the models indicated extinction by 1941. Looking at the data as a whole, the annual number of reports in the six decades spanning 1940 to1999 was relatively constant but fell substantially from 2000 to the present. This suggests the possibility of a small group of thylacine beating the odds of extinction by retreating to more remote areas, vanishing just a few years before smartphone cameras could have captured conclusive evidence.

Endangered vulture returns after being extinct for 36 years

Cinereous and Griffon Vultures feeding in the wild. Credit: Hristo Peshev, Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna

The Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus)—also known as Black Vulture, Monk Vulture or Eurasian Black Vulture—is the largest bird of prey in Europe. Globally classified as Near Threatened, its populations in southern Europe, once abundant, have been experiencing a dramatic decline since the late 1800s. So dramatic, in fact, that by the mid-1900s, these birds had already been nowhere to be seen throughout most of their distributional range across the Old Continent. In Bulgaria, the species has been considered locally extinct since 1985. Thanks to the re-introduction initiative that was started in 2015 by three Bulgarian non-governmental organizations: the leading and oldest environmental protection NGO in Bulgaria: Green Balkans, the Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna and the Birds of Prey Protection Society, the species is now back in the country.

The re-introduction of the Cinereous Vulture is the latest in a series of conservation projects focused on birds of prey in Bulgaria. An article published in Biodiversity Data Journal details the process.

These animals went extinct in the wild. Scientists brought them back

Writing for CNN back in 2021, Rebecca Cairns details sixteen animals that were extirpated in the wild, then brought back from the brink of extinction in captivity and reintroduced to their former habitat. A rather gorgeous pictorial accompanied the article, and included such iconic species as: the Eurasian lynx, the Tasmanian devil, and the Steppe bison.

Hunted for its meat, hide and horns, the Arabian oryx disappeared from the wild in the 1970s but has since been reintroduced in Israel, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

Personally, I would make a lousy adjudicator for the IUCN. I would always be inclined to believe that a species is still alive. The world becomes so much poorer when we lose even one!

From Getty Images.
Categories
Miscellany

And the winner is…

The edible sea snail will now have its entire genome decoded to benefit science and humanity.

Underdog snail wins Mollusc of the Year

Following my Oddities post last week, I know many of you were dying to know. In the end it was neither beauty, nor gymnastic mating rituals that won the public over. In voting the Chilean abalone to victory in the international “Mollusc of the Year” contest on Thursday, people seem to have voted with their stomachs. The edible underdog—known commonly as the “loco”—pulled in 42% of the global votes, despite being up against some formidable opponents.

Categories
Climate Change Conservation Water

2023 March World Water Day

In honour of World Water Day, which is today, I thought we’d review some recent articles about that most essential element for gardeners.

Major water-related events in 2022. Credit: Global Water Monitor 2022 Summary Report

Global water & climate change

A new report shows alarming changes in the entire global water cycle. Behind the changes expected under climate modelling scenarios, are troubling signs the entire global water cycle is changing. A research team led by Albert Van Dijk from Australian National University, analyses observations from more than 40, merged with data from thousands of weather and water monitoring stations on the ground. Drawing on those many terabytes of data, they paint a full picture of the water cycle over a year for the entire globe, as well as for individual countries. The findings are contained in a recently released report. The key conclusion? Earth’s water cycle is clearly changing. Globally, the air is getting hotter and drier, which means droughts and risky fire conditions are developing faster and more frequently.

A satellite image of Siberia Lena delta that flows in the Arctic Ocean. Credit: NASA

Why rivers matter for the global carbon cycle


Writing from École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Rebecca Mosimann notes that, until recently, our understanding of the global carbon cycle was largely limited to the world’s oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. Tom Battin, who heads EPFL’s River Ecosystems Laboratory (RIVER), has now shed new light on the key role that river networks play in our changing world. These findings are outlined in a review article commissioned by and published in Nature. Writing with a dozen experts and using the most recent data, this work demonstrates the critical importance of river ecosystems for global carbon fluxes—integrating land, atmosphere and the oceans.

Image courtesy of Farooq Khan on Pexels.

Pollution & Water Treatment

When I was running the Canadian Environment Industry Association* in the late 1990s, one persistent problem with water treatment was removing pharmaceutical residues from drinking water. This has remained an issue for some classes of drugs but he last couple of decades have seen impressive advances. Prof. Dr. Juergen Kolb, an expert in environmental technologies at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP), explains the current state of research. “We combine classical physical processes for wastewater purification with new technologies such as ultrasound, pulsed electric fields and plasma technology. This allows us to break down chemical compounds such as drug residues but also other man-made contaminants and convert them into harmless substances.” These methods have already proven their potential in various INP research projects. Currently, the approaches are being transferred to practice-relevant environments. “Our approach is currently mobile plants that can be used in hospitals, for example, where water contamination with pharmaceutical residues is particularly high. Particularly in view of the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms, we see an acute need for action here,” Kolb adds. The technologies are also suitable for municipal sewage treatment plants as a fourth purification stage. The full article is titled: Innovative technologies to remove pharmaceutical residues from wastewater.

(CEIA no longer exists, but its Ontario provincial counterpart does. See Ontario Environment Industry Association.)

Image of a stormwater pond from the website of Kanata-South councillor Allan Hubley.

Living alongside the Ottawa River, stormwater management is a neighbourhood issue. Following flooding events in 2017 and 2019, the National Capital Commission has been busy rebuilding the retaining wall between us and the river. Sadly “green infrastructure” is not part of their engineering solution, which started instead with clear-cutting almost every tree along the river side of the wall.

Trees felled by NCC for “flood control” along the Ottawa River. Photo courtesy of Andrew Scott.

Green stormwater infrastructure

Writing in Phys.Org, Leslie Lee of Texas A&M University discusses green stormwater solutions to the stormwater runoff issues caused by growing populations, more hard surfaces from expanding cities, and climate change-driven extreme weather events. To help cities grow their stormwater management strategy portfolios, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and AgriLife Extension staff at the center in Dallas are working on many stormwater-related projects. The idea behind green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is to take downstream effects of water management into consideration and to promote more rainwater to infiltrate the soil and replenish aquifers, rather than simply running off into the nearest body of surface water.

Although many U.S. cities have been slow to adopt, a research review published in WIREs Water proposes strategies for municipalities and decision-makers to overcome barriers and use green stormwater infrastructure for long-term benefits.

Image from New Phytologist, Volume: 238, Issue: 1, Pages: 33-54, First published: 23 January 2023, DOI: (10.1111/nph.18762).

How plants are inspiring new ways to extract value from wastewater

Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) are drawing inspiration from plants to develop new techniques to separate and extract valuable minerals, metals and nutrients from resource-rich wastewater. The ANU researchers are adapting plant ‘membrane separation mechanisms’ so they can be embedded in new wastewater recycling technologies. This approach offers a sustainable solution to help manage the resources required for the world’s food, energy and water security by providing a way to harvest, recycle and reuse valuable metal, mineral and nutrient resources from liquid wastes. The research is published in New Phytologist.

Rain barrel at the side of Rebecca’s home. Photo by Jon Last.

Potential Contaminants in Residential Rain Barrel Water

In a new paper on ResearchGate, Linda Chalker Scott notes residential gardeners often use rain barrels to collect rainwater from roofs as a supplement to summer irrigation. Rainwater is a natural and unchlorinated water source for aquatic plants and animals. However, rooftop runoff can be contaminated by chemical and biological pollutants from atmospheric deposition, bird droppings, and the roofing material itself. This publication examines the state of knowledge on residential rain barrel water safety in North America over the last 20 years. Among the simple, research-based practices gardeners can use to take advantage of collected rainwater, while also reducing the risks of contamination exposure are:

  • Knowing your local pollution issues
  • Avoid collecting rainwater: when air quality is low (smoggy, temperature inversions, low wind speeds); if you have recently used a moss removal product on the roof; or if pesticides have been recently applied nearby.
  • Use good garden hygiene, including: keeping your barrels well sealed, and using mosquito netting on the top of them; not drinking rainwater or touching your wet hands to your mouth or eyes; washing your hands after handling rainwater; and cleaning the barrels regularly.
  • Wash garden produce before eating it.
  • Install a diverter for the first flush of rain to capture the worst of the contaminants.

Closer to Home

Photo from Ontario Parks website.

Ontario wetlands under threat

Angelica Marie Sanchez from University of Waterloo, quotes Dr. Rebecca Rooney, a wetland ecologist and professor in the Department of Biology. “Wetlands are a portfolio of ecosystem services: including flood prevention, breaking down pesticides, storing large amounts of carbon, and provide habitat for more than 32% of Ontario species at risk who rely on these wetlands to mitigate climate change.” Canada is home to 25% of the world’s wetlands. But according to Rooney, Canada has lost more than 60% of its wetlands over the years. In agricultural areas, wetlands have been drained to make space for farming. While in urban and suburban areas, Canada has lost the majority of its wetlands due to them being drained for housing development. Stormwater ponds are engineered solutions created to effectively replace wetlands across Ontario. However, these ponds only address some of the problems including flood prevention, but they need to provide the full portfolio of ecosystem services that wetlands provide.

While the More Homes Built Faster Act, formerly known as Bill 23, aims to address the housing crisis in Ontario, it will be devastating for the province’s wetlands. The proposals posted to the Environmental Registry of Ontario included changes to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System, which is the instrument the provinces uses to determine whether a wetland gets classified as provincially significant. “… Unfortunately, the changes that are being proposed to the Ontario wetland evaluation system will dramatically undermine its efficacy and endanger wetlands across Ontario,” says Rooney. “There is a huge amount of scientific evidence that connects these pockets of wetlands into a whole integrated network,” says Rooney. “If you start chipping away at the wetlands and you destroy one piece of it, the whole network is going to suffer under the current proposals.”

Rooney encourages people to act by learning more about the act and its impact on Canada’s wetlands.

Aerial view of the Dezadeash River, Yukon, meandering through vegetated permafrost. (Photo credit: Alessandro Ielpi). Image from Stanford Earth Matters magazine.

Arctic river channels changing

A team of international researchers monitoring the impact of climate change on large rivers in Arctic Canada and Alaska determined that, as the region is sharply warming up, its rivers are not moving as scientists have expected. Dr. Alessandro Ielpi, an Assistant Professor with UBC Okanagan’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, is a landscape scientist and lead author of a paper published in Nature Climate Change. Dr. Ielpi says the assumption of faster river channel migration owing to climate change has dominated the scientific community for decades. “But the assumption had never been verified against field observations,” he adds. To test this assumption, Dr. Ielpi and his team analyzed a collection of time-lapsed satellite images—stretching back more than 50 years. They compared more than a thousand kilometers of riverbanks from 10 Arctic rivers. “We found that large sinuous rivers with various degrees of permafrost distribution in their floodplains and catchments, display instead a peculiar range in migration rates,” says Dr. Ielpi. “Surprisingly, these rivers migrate at slower rates under warming temperatures.” One reason why is that warmer temperatures mean more vegetation, which helps to stabilize river banks.

Good News Stories

In 2004, frontyard lawns were prohibited for new subdivisions in the Las Vegas area. Above, the suburban community of Mountain’s Edge. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

How Las Vegas declared war on thirsty grass

Writing in the LA Times, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Ian James report on how Las Vegas has emerged as a leader in water conservation, and some of its initiatives have spread to other cities and states that rely on the shrinking river. Its drive to get rid of grass in particular could reshape the look of landscapes in public and private spaces throughout the Southwest. In 2002, as the reservoir level dropped, the Southern Nevada Water Authority used more than its allocation of Colorado River water. At that point, the agency’s leaders decided to pivot quickly toward conservation. Cash rebates to encouraged residents to rip out lawns and put in landscaping with desert plants. In 2003, the Las Vegas area’s consumption of Colorado River water shrank more than 16%. Those conservation gains continued as the area’s water suppliers strengthened their rules, targeting grass. As the article details, not everyone is happy with the restrictions, but they are helping to conserve valuable water resources.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.

Drought detection on the cheap

Meanwhile researchers at University of Barcelona recently published a study in the journal Trends in Plant Science that presents a set of techniques that enable researchers to detect and monitor drought stress in plants in a cheap, easy and quick way. The study responds to the need to establish effective and low-cost protocols to easily detect and study how droughts affect plants. Specifically, the authors present a battery of very accessible techniques that can be applied with basic laboratory equipment: precision balance, microscope, centrifuge, spectrophotometer, oven, camera and computer.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In other good news Everglades restoration moves closer to reality with a crucial groundbreaking. Elsewhere Albania’s ‘wild river’ now a national park.

Categories
Miscellany Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates

Oddities

To complete the roundup of eye-candy, oddities and miscellany for this month, let’s look at the oddities. A lot of the weirdest stories I’ve seen recently are about animals. It turns out that, as populations of wild animals plummet, more and more humans have taken to adopting exotic pets, and that’s not a good thing.

Miss Mango the Magnificent (not an oddity) is the “exotic animal” who lives in our house. Illustration by Carol English.

Exotic Animals in Strange Places

Writing in the New Yorker, Rachel Monroe explores the recent rash of exotic animal thefts from the Dallas Zoo, linking it to wildlife trafficking and perhaps also to the enduring frontier mentality of the state. Texas’s laws governing exotic-animal ownership are notably permissive. The state is home to enough privately owned (and poorly secured) big cats that Texas Monthly once ran a column with the title “A Brief History of Tigers on the Loose in Texas, 2021 Edition,” which detailed numerous cases of escaped, seized, and rescued pet tigers in the first five months of that year alone. Recently, there’s been a spate of escaped pet kangaroos. In the past few decades, as drought and rising temperatures have made cattle ranching less feasible, thousands of landowners have stocked their ranches with antelope, sheep, and goat species native to Africa and Asia. While hunting native animals is restricted to certain months, no law limits when you can shoot, say, an impala or a Cape buffalo. So, hunting operations can run year-round.

According to the Texas-based Exotic Wildlife Association, this industry contributes a billion dollars to the state’s economy, and Texas’s exotic-hunting ranches have increasingly positioned themselves as conservationists who are also capitalists. WildLife Partners, an exotic-species breeder and broker, touts the animals as an investment whose growth “continues to out produce many traditional investment vehicles such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds.” And because hunters will pay a premium to bag a rare species—tens of thousands of dollars, in some cases—ranchers are incentivized to cultivate animals that are, in their native habitats, endangered by poaching and habitat loss. Certain species, such as the addax and the mountain bongo, both critically endangered, are more plentiful in Texas than in Africa.

A fennec fox. Right: A wallaby. Photo by Michael Elliott | Dreamstime, Ondřej Novotný | Dreamstime. From Sofia Misenheimer’ s article “9 Exotic Animals You Can Legally Own In Canada (But Good Luck With That Upkeep)” on MTLBlog.

After reading Ms. Monroe’s article, I was curious about the Canadian situation. Back in January, Parks Canada issued a plea or people to stop abandoning their pets and exotic animals after a three-fold increase at Rouge National Urban Park in recent years. Sofia Misenheimer’ s article “9 Exotic Animals You Can Legally Own In Canada (But Good Luck With That Upkeep)” on MTLBlog provides details of the care challenges of some of the exotic animals it is legal to own in Canada. Back in 2016, writing in The Toronto Star, Liam Casey noted that owning exotics is a growing trend in Canada thanks to outdated and inconsistent laws and bylaws. Owning exotics — wild animals taken from their natural habitat or bred in captivity and not native to the country — is a growing trend in Canada, according to animal welfare activists, who blame a patchwork of outdated and inconsistent laws and bylaws. Rob Laidlaw of Zoocheck, a wildlife protection charity based in Toronto, has been fighting for animals’ rights for decades. Reliable data on the number of exotic animals in Canada is difficult to come by, he says. Based on his research, Laidlaw believes there are hundreds of thousands of exotic animals in the country, the vast majority being reptiles. Among the patchwork of provincial and municipal laws and regulations, “Ontario is probably the worst jurisdiction in the country for exotic animal laws and has been for quite a long time,” Laidlaw says. Ontario leaves this regulation up to municipalities.

Part of the problem is laws based on “negative lists,” he says, which must be constantly updated. Instead, he says, Canada should adopt a “positive list” approach used in several European countries that allows ownership of only listed animals.

Problems with exotic pet ownership include:

  • Wild capture and illegal trading,
  • Poor welfare for the animals, and
  • Potential harm to humans, such as the tragic death of two young brothers who were killed by an escaped African rock python in Campbellton, N.B.
Illustration by John P. Dessereau from the New York Times.

Cocaine Bear, Meet Cannabis Raccoon and McFlurry Skunk

Writing in the New York Times last month, Emily Anthes details the strange but true origins that inspired the new movie “Cocaine Bear”. She also addresses a few other weird stories about animals getting into human things they shouldn’t. Some of their stories are amusing, even relatable. “I received a call of a skunk out behind a hotel, running around in the parking lot with a McFlurry cup on its head,” said Jeff Hull, an environmental conservation officer for New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. But animals’ taste for human goods — licit and illicit — can also bring trouble for them and for us.

Anyone who has gone wilderness camping in Canada will identify with the need to keep food out of the reach of bears. Bears are notorious for getting into human provisions, especially as winter approaches and they need to pack on the pounds. “Essentially, they’re an eating machine,” said Dave Wattles, a black-bear and fur-bearer biologist for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Sometimes, they even break into homes. In the Berkshire Mountains, one bear burglar routinely sought out frozen treats.

The article goes on to details other animal misadventures with food and drugs, but not all of these are human’s fault. Many gardeners who own fruit trees, for example, have probably seen squirrels, racoons or birds get drunk on late-season fermented fruit.

Researchers of the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University have been investigating dogs’ reactions to wolf howls. Credit: Gáti Oszkár Dániel

Wolves of the wilderness are calling. Will your dog answer?

Are there dogs that are more prone to reply with howling? Are these dogs genetically closer to wolves? To answer these questions, the effects of the dogs’ breed, age and sex on their behavior were tested in this study. Results of this extraordinary research were published in Communications Biology.

Geoffroy’s horseshoe bats hanging from cables in an abandoned bunker. Photo by Dr. Eran Levin.

Endangered Bats Find Refuge in Abandoned Army Bunkers

Thanks to reader Desre Kramer for alerting me to this story by Abigail Klein Leichman. In 2006, Eran Levin entered an abandoned bunker on the Israel-Jordan border and saw a colony of bats hanging from cables and from metal shelves full of old cigarette packs. Levin had found his missing link. Then a PhD student, he was studying bats in the Judean Desert. He knew that after mating in April, greater mouse-tailed bats begin migrating north to the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley. But where did they stop on the way? He and Aviam Atar from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) decided to look for roosts in the Jordan Rift Valley.

Bats hanging from structures added to the metal ceilings for them to grasp. Photo by Dr. Eran Levin.

Abandoned after Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, these underground army bunkers have become a haven for thousands of diverse bats in a model of peaceful coexistence. After gaining permission from IDF, Levin and colleagues were able to transform the bunkers into more bat-friendly habitat. The bat population in the bunkers has been rising steadily. The first counting in 2014 totaled 2,311. By 2021, the bats numbered 7,380. Levin goes on to note: “A whole ecological system has developed around them. Snakes feed on the bats and many invertebrates feed on the bat feces.”

This Polystoechotes punctata or giant lacewing was collected in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2012 by Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab. Credit: Michael Skvarla / Penn State.

Rare insect found at Walmart sets record

A giant insect plucked from the façade of an Arkansas Walmart has set historic records. The Polystoechotes punctata (giant lacewing) is the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over 50 years—and the first record of the species ever in the state. The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s. This discovery suggests there may be relic populations of this large, Jurassic-Era insect yet to be discovered, explained Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab. Skvarla found the specimen in 2012, but misidentified it and only discovered its true identity after teaching an online course based on his personal insect collection in 2020. He recently co-authored a paper about the discovery in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.

(See also: A Jurassic-Era Insect Rediscovered and Rare insect found at Arkansas Walmart sets historic record, points to deeper ecological questions)

This tiny sharpshooter insect urinates and forms a droplet of pee on its anal stylus (aka ‘butt flicker’), before flicking it off. (Image credit: Georgia Institute of Technology)

Butt catapults on glassy-winged sharpshooters

Writing in LiveScience Charles Q. Choi shares recent research about the amazing speed with which some tiny insects can dispose of their waste. Relatives of cicadas known as sharpshooter insects can catapult pee droplets at superfast speeds, revealing the first known example of “superpropulsion” in nature, a new study finds.This newly discovered effect helps the bugs save energy during peeing and may inspire better self-cleaning devices and soft robotic engines, scientists noted.

In the new study, researchers examined relatives of cicadas known as glassy-winged sharpshooters (Homalodisca vitripennis). These insects, which are about half an inch (1.2 centimeters) long, feed on sap from xylem, the woody part of a plant that brings water and dissolved nutrients up from the roots, as opposed to the phloem, which brings sugar down from the leaves. The sharpshooter’s diet is 95% water, and poor in nutrients. So the bugs constantly drink xylem sap to get enough to eat, and pee up to 300 times their body weight per day. (For comparison, humans pee about one-fortieth of their body weight per day.) The scientists detailed their findings online in the journal Nature Communications.

Micromelo undatus, colloquially known as the Wavy Bubble Snail, eats bristly ringworms.

Their time to slime

The annual Mollusc of the Year competition is underway. Will you choose beauty? The carnivorous Wavy Bubble Snail, perhaps, with its billowing skirts shimmering under UV light. Or will it be age? Like the venerable 500-year-old Methuselah oyster. Or will you be seduced by the leopard slug with its gymnastic mating ritual? The list of finalists for Mollusc of the Year has something for everyone. In a public vote ending Sunday, five species of soft-bodied invertebrates are vying to follow in the illustrious trail of previous winners, dubbed the “world’s most beautiful snail” and “weirdest octopus”. The grand prize? The triumphant species will have its genome decoded to better understand its evolution and potential benefits to humanity. The International Mollusc of the Year competition, which kicked off this month, is run by the LOEWE Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics, based in Germany.

The real Keanu Reeves from IMBD.

Keanu Reeves, the molecule: New active ingredient from bacteria could protect plants

Ok, so the actor is a hottie, but the bacteria named in his honor has some pretty nifty properties too. Bacteria of the genus Pseudomonas produce a strong antimicrobial natural product, as researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) have discovered. They proved that the substance is effective against both plant fungal diseases and human-pathogenic fungi. The study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and highlighted in an editorial in Nature.

Carlos Magdalena, scientific and botanical research horticulturist, and Lucy Smith, botanical illustrator, holding the Guinness World Records title for Victoria boliviana, the world’s largest species of giant waterlily, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens in West London. Credit: Adam Millward, Guinness World Records.

It’s official: World’s largest giant waterlily recognized by Guinness World Records

At an event hosted at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in West London, an official from Guinness World Records has presented Mr. Juan Carlos Crespo Montalvo, the Bolivian Charge d’Affaires to the UK, with an official Guinness World Records title for the world’s largest giant waterlily, the recently-named Victoria boliviana. The species, which was named new to science in July 2022, has been described as one of the ‘botanical wonders’ of the world following years of investigation that culminated in the publication of a paper in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.