Table of contents :

• ecology : the science of organisms as affected by the factors of their environments; study of the environment and life history of organisms.
• human ecology : application of the ecologic approach to the study of human societies.
• ecological system (ecosystem) : the fundamental unit in ecology, comprising the living organisms and the nonliving elements interacting in a certain defined area.
• community : a body of individuals living in a defined area or having a common interest or organization. The greatest community on Earth is the biosphere (that part of the universe in which living organisms are known to exist, comprising the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere).
• autochthonous or native or olygotroph community : always present in every environmental condition
• allochthonous or non-native community : present only in some environmental conditions
• sere : the entire sequence of ecological communities that successively occupy a given area, the transitory communities of which are called seral community or stage, which finally leads to a stable, mature climax community, which is in equilibrium with the environmental conditions and is composed of a definite group of plant and animal species
• biotic community : an assemblage of populations living in a defined area
• biome : the recognizable community unit of a given region, produced by interaction of ...
• climatic factors
• biota : all the living organisms of a particular area
• microbiota : the microscopic living organisms of a region; the combined microflora and microfauna of a region

Web resources : Department of Microbial Ecology (DOME) by O. Univ. Prof. Dr. Michael Wagner at University of Vienna
• fauna : the animal life present in or characteristic of a given region or locality. It may be discernible with the unaided eye (macrofauna), or only with the aid of a microscope (microfauna; Protozoa, nematodes and arthropods generally < 200 mm long).
• flora : the plant life present in or characteristic of a special location; it may be discernible with the unaided eye (macroflora), or only with the aid of a microscope (microflora; Bacteria (including actinomycetes), fungi, algae, and viruses)
• resident flora : flora occurring in or on an organ over a protracted period
• intestinal flora : the bacteria normally residing within the lumen of the intestine.
• benthos [Gr. benthos bottom of the sea] : the flora and fauna of the bottom of oceans.

Web resources : North American Benthological Society (NABS). Benthology is the study of organisms and ecological interactions associated with the bottom (substrate-water interface) or other substrates -- such as plants or fallen snags -- in any type of water body (rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, wetlands, estuaries, oceans).
• substrate :
..., usually designated according to the characteristic adult or climax vegetation, as tundra, coniferous forest or taiga, deciduous forest, grassland, and the like. A major regional ecological community, characterized by distinct life forms and principal plant or animal species.
• ecotone : a transition region where adjacent biomes blend, containing some organisms from each of the adjacent biomes plus some that are characteristic of, and perhaps restricted to, the ecotone; this region tends to have more species and to be more densely populated than either adjacent biome.
equilibrium theory : a theory that the number of breeding species in a biome is a result of the rate of immigration of new species and the rate of extinction.
Web resources : The world's biomes
Global-scale patterns of human population structure may be influenced by the rate of migration among populations that is nearly 8 times higher for females than for males. This difference is attributed mainly to the widespread practice of patrilocality, in which women move into their mates' residences after marriage. Although patrilocality may be important at the local scale, patterns of genetic structure on the continental and global scales are not shaped by the higher rate of migration among females than among males^ref.
• environment : non living component of the ecosystem
• habitat : the living place of a species
• ecological niche : a habitat in which an organism finds its necessary conditions for living, including  function in the food chain, air, thermal control, and breeding.
• character displacement : the adaptive characters that evolve and enable one species to exclude another from its ecological niche
• microhabitat : clusters of microaggregates with associated water within which microbes function. May be composed of several microsites (e.g., aerobic and anaerobic).
• biotope : the smallest geographical unit of the biosphere or of a habitat, characterized by its biota, that can be defined by convenient boundaries.
• fugative species : a species of plant or animal that inhabits or grows in a region for only a short period of time.
• speciation : the evolutionary formation of new species, or the process of such formation
• Drosophila mauritiana gene Odysseus (OdsH) causes male sterility when crossed—co-introgressed—into the closely related species Drosophila simulans. This suggests that OdsH, a member of the transcription factor–encoding homeobox gene family, is somehow involved in reproductive isolation between species. But this OdsH function is a side effect, since there is no reason for a gene to be there to cause such sterility : its true function is weakly affecting spermatogenesis and is largely dispensable for morphology, viability, and fertility, although a subtle fertility effect was observable in OdsH knockouts, with young males moderately defective in sperm production. OdsH could be thought of as an "accidental speciation gene," and this raises the additional question of whether a second type of gene, which may be essential and eventually evolve to take on a different function in different species, could also exist
• interspecific expression differences are not caused by select trans-regulatory changes with widespread effects, but rather by many cis-acting changes spread throughout the genome^ref
• a problem in understanding sympatric speciation is establishing how reproductive isolation can arise when there is disruptive selection on an ecological trait. One of the solutions that has been proposed is that a habitat preference evolves, and that mates are chosen within the preferred habitat. The habitat preference can evolve either by means of a genetic mechanism or by means of learning. Employing an adaptive-dynamical analysis, it has been shown that evolution proceeds either to a single population of specialists with a genetic preference for their optimal habitat, or to a population of generalists without a habitat preference. The generalist population subsequently experiences disruptive selection. Learning promotes speciation because it increases the intensity of disruptive selection. An individual-based version of the model shows that, when loci are completely unlinked and learning confers little cost, the presence of disruptive selection most probably leads to speciation via the simultaneous evolution of a learned habitat preference. For high costs of learning, speciation is most likely to occur via the evolution of a genetic habitat preference. However, the latter only happens when the effect of mutations is large, or when there is linkage between genes coding for the different traits^ref. Learning of environmental features can influence both mating behaviour and the location where young are produced. This may lead to speciation in 3 steps: (i) colonization of a new habitat, (ii) genetic divergence of the two groups by adaptation to the habitats, and (iii) a decrease of genetic mixing between the lineages (similar to reinforcement). In a previous paper we showed that steps (i) and (ii) occur readily for a wide range of fixed mating and habitat preferences. This can ultimately lead to speciation through selective changes in these preferences : for a large class of models there is selection toward producing young more frequently in the natal habitat. Once habitat preference is strong, there is selection toward stronger assortative mating. Even when steps (i) and (ii) initially fail, genetic divergence may succeed at a later evolutionary stage, after which a decrease of genetic mixing completes speciation. Speciation by the learning of habitat features is an extremely effective mechanism^ref
• eurytopic : a term describing an organism which is tolerant of a wide range of habitats.
• stenotopic : a term describing an organism which is tolerant of a narrow range of habit.
• K-strategy : ecological strategy where organisms depend on physiological adaptations to environmental resources. K strategists are usually stable and permanent members of the community.
• r-strategy : ecological strategy where organisms rely on high reproductive rates for continued survival within the community. Populations of r-strategists are subject to extreme fluctuations.
• food chain : movement of nutrients from one life form to another as a result of the different feeding habits and dietary requirements of organisms in an ecosystem.
• primary producer : organisms which are capable of using solar energy to make food by the process of photosynthesis
• primary consumer : organisms which feed directly on the primary producers. These include herbivores, detritus feeders, scavengers and decomposers (animals which feed on dead plant remains).
• secondary production : the assimilation of organic matter by a primary consumer
• secondary consumers : organisms which feed on the herbivores or other primary consumers
• tertiary consumer : organisms which feed on secondary consumers, e.g. man.
• food web : diagram of the interconnections of nutrient flow through a food chain.
• biomass : the entire assemblage of living organisms, both animal and vegetable, of a particular region, considered collectively
• microbial biomass : total mass of microorganism alive in a given volume or mass of soil.
• microbial population : total number of living microorganisms in a given volume or mass of soil.
• microcosm : a community or other unit that is representative of a larger unity.
• microenvironment : immediate physical and chemical surroundings of a microorganism.
• müllerian mimicry : prey species that are unprofitable to attack often share conspicuous colours and patterns with other coexisting defended species. This phenomenon has long been explained as a consequence of selection on defended prey to adopt a common way of advertising their unprofitability. However, studies using 2 unpalatable prey types have not always supported this theory. Using a system of humans hunting for computer-generated prey, predators do not always generate strong selection for mimicry when there are two unprofitable prey types. By contrast, we demonstrate that when predators are faced with a range of different prey species, selection on unprofitable prey to resemble one another can be intense. Here the primary selective force is not one in which predators evaluate the profitabilities of distinct prey types independently, but one in which predators learn better to avoid unprofitable phenotypes that share traits distinguishing them from profitable prey. This need to simplify decision making readily facilitates the spread of imperfect mimetic forms from rarity, and suggests that müllerian mimicry is more likely to arise in multispecies communities^ref.
• eurotrophic : a term describing freshwater bodies which are rich in plant nutrients and therefore highly productive.
• eutrophication : an increase in the concentration of nutrients in an aquatic ecosystem, causing :
• the increased productivity of autotrophic green plants, leading to the blocking out of sunlight
• elevated temperatures within the water body
• depletion of the world’s oxygen resources
• increased agal growth
• reduction in the level of and variety of fish and animal
• taxa–area relationship : a positive power-law relationship between the number of species in an area and the size of that area has been observed repeatedly in bacterial^ref, plant and animal communities
• saprophytism (relation between unliving material and living organisms)
• saprophyte : an organism that lives on dead or decaying plant or animal material; said especially of plants or so-called plantlike organisms, such as certain protozoa and bacteria. Fungi with this characteristic are called saprobes
• autophyte : a plant that does not depend on organized food material, but derives its nourishment directly from inorganic matter.
• saprozoic / saprophytic : having a type of nutrition involving uptake of organic materials in dissolved form obtained from dead or decaying plant or animal matter; said of animals or so-called animal-like organisms (e.g., certain protozoa)
• holozoic / phagotrophic : having a type of nutrition or feeding resembling that of an animal; i.e., ingestion of whole organisms or relatively large particles
• symbiosis (strict and lasting relation between living organisms) may be classified ...
• ... from a qualitative point of view :
• exosymbiosis between a multicellular organism and a uni/multicellular organism
• lichen : any of the many thallophytic plants formed by mutualistic combination of an alga and a fungus, the algal component being a green or blue (Cyanobacterium spp.)-green alga, and the fungal usually an ascomycete
• ectotrophic michorrhiza or ectomycorrhiza (EM) : mycorrhizal type in which the fungal mycelia extend inward, between root cortical cells, to form a network (Hartig net) and outward into the surrounding soil. Usually the fungal hyphae also form a mantle on the surface of the root.
• mycorrhiza : literally "fungus root." The symbiotic association between specific fungi with the fine roots of vascular plants.
• mycorrhizosphere : unique microbial community that forms around a mycorrhiza.
• ericoid mycorrhiza : type of mycorrhiza found on plants in the Ericales. The hyphae in the root are able to penetrate cortical cells (endomycorrhizal habit); however, no arbuscules are formed. Major forms are ericoid, arbutoid, and monotropoid.
• arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) : mycorrhizal type that forms highly branched arbuscules within root cortical cells.
• arbuscule : special "tree-shaped" structure formed within root cortical cells by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.
• endosymbiosis between a uni/multicellular organism and another uni/multicellular organism (if the latter is a plant, the former is called endophyte)
• lichen : a fungus plus a green alga or a Cyanobacterium (green-blue alga)
• symbiontic root nodule : a root of a vascular plant plus a Rhizobacteriumwhich becomes a bacteroid.
• root nodule : specialized structure occurring on roots, especially of leguminous plants, in which bacteria fix N₂ and make it available for the plant.
• rhizobia : Bacteria capable of living symbiotically in roots of leguminous plants, from which they receive energy and often fix molecular dinitrogen. Collective common name for Rhizobium and closely related genera.
• peribacteroid membrane : plant-derived membrane surrounding one to several rhizobia within host cells of legume nodules
• rhizoid : rootlike structure that helps to hold an organism to a substrate.
• rhizoplane : plant root surfaces and usually strongly adhering soil particles.
• rhizosphere : zone of soil immediately adjacent to plant roots in which the kinds, numbers, or activities of microorganisms differ from that of the bulk soil.
• rhizosphere competence : ability of an organism to colonize the rhizosphere.
• endotrophic mycorrhiza / endomycorrhiza : mycorrhizal association with intracellular penetration of the host root cortical cells by the fungus as well as outward extension into the surrounding soil.
• endosymbiotic theory : (e.g. : chloroplasts and mitochondria arise from endocyted Gram -ve Bacteria)
• ... from a functional point of view :
• associative symbiosis : close but relatively casual interaction between 2 dissimilar organisms or biological systems. The association may be mutually beneficial but is not required for accomplishment of a particular function.
• neutralism / tenantism : non interfering co-living
• cross-feeding : (i) specific type of syntrophy where two populations cooperate to metabolize a compound. (ii) One organism consuming products excreted by another organism.
• biotrophic : nutritional relationship between 2 organisms in which one or both must associate with the other to obtain nutrients and grow.
• mutualism / synergism / consortium / syntrophy : 2 or more members of a natural assemblage in which each organism benefits from the other. The group may collectively carryout some process that no single member can accomplish on its own.
• commensalism : one species takes advantage, the other is indifferent (but probably we can't detect existing advantages !)
• although half the known brood parasites—birds that lay their eggs in other bird's nests—set about murdering their nest mates just after hatching, some parasitic species, such as Clamator cuckoos, Vidua finches, and Molothrus ater cowbirds, seem to tolerate the presence of other nestlings^ref. Brown-headed cowbird chicks actually grow fastest when they share the nest : after just 8 days, cowbirds that shared a nest with phoebe chicks were on average 14% heavier than those that did not. Video footage of the parents' behavior showed why: adult phoebes returned to provision shared nests more than twice as frequently, and the cowbird chick took more than half of the food that they brought. As a result, cowbirds in shared nests actually garnered more supplies than their solitary counterparts. About half of the 100 or so brood parasitic bird species tolerate the presence of host young in the nest, using their begging calls to elicit more food from the host parents. European nestling common cuckoos, Cuculus canorus, by contrast, first throw their victim's eggs out of the nest, then manipulate the host parent's behavior using superstimulating begging calls^ref. The black-headed duck Heteronetta atricapilla, a little-known South American species, is the only obligate brood parasite whose chicks require no more parental care than incubation as eggs: within a day of hatching, they leave the host nest and set off for independent life. Despite the apparently minimal costs of parasitism—limited to incubating an extra egg—the 2 coot species that play host to over 80% of the duck's eggs frequently reject them from their nests. In another layer of brood parasitism, operating at the intraspecific level, both coot host species also lay eggs in conspecific's nests
• negative symbiosis
• antagonism or antibiosis or amensalism or allelopathy : one species create an environment adverse to other species by producing antibiotics
• competition : one species is more rapid in using energy sources (and so in multiplicating itself) than another. Usually results in reduced growth of participating organisms.
• parasitism (infections and infestations) : one species profits by another.
• among species in different domains :
• intracellular parasitism => xenoms
• karyozoic parasite : a parasite which lives in cell nuclei.
• obliged intracellular parasitism (e.g. Chlamydia, Rickettsia, viruses, some Plasmodium, ...)
• facultative intracellular parasitism (e.g. Shigella, Neisseria, Mycobacterium, Brucella,...)
• extracellular parasitism (e.g. between  multicellular Eukarya and Bacteria)
• among species in a given domain :
• Bacteria : Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus kills and eats some Gram -ve Bacteria
Parasites : a plant or animal which lives upon or within another living organism at whose expense it obtains some advantage
• semiparasite : an organism having potential pathogenicity, occurring both as a saprophyte and as a parasite
• microparasite : a parasitic microorganism. They multiply in the host
• macroparasite : a parasitic macroorganism. They do not multiply in the host (aggregated populations typically)
• animal parasite / zooparasite : any parasite that is a member of the animal kingdom, such as a protozoan, helminth, annelid, or arthropod
• plant or vegetable parasite : any parasite of the vegetable kingdom, such as a fungus
• hyperparasite : parasite that feeds on another parasite.
• diheteroxenic parasite : a parasite which requires 2 intermediate hosts.
• ectoparasite : a parasite that lives on the outside of the body of the host.
• stenotrophic parasite : an ectoparasite which can feed on one host only.
• eurytrophic parasite : an ectoparasite which can feed on various hosts.
• ectozoic parasite : an animal ectoparasite.
• vermin : an external animal parasite; animal ectoparasites collectively
• ectophytic parasite : a plant ectoparasite.
• endoparasite : a parasite that lives within the body of its host.
• celozoic parasite : a parasite which lives in a body cavity.
• entozoic parasite : a parasite which lives in the lumen of the intestine.
• histozoic parasites : a parasite which lives in tissues
• cytozoic parasite : a parasite which lives in body cells, as a plasmodium.
• hematozoic parasite : a parasite which lives in the blood.
• endophytic parasite : a plant endoparasite.
• obligatory parasite : a parasite which cannot live apart from its host, i.e. one which feeds exclusively by animated matter
• facultative parasite : an organism which may be parasitic upon another but which is capable of independent existence, ie.. may feed themselves even by inanimated matter (e.g. Clostridium, Pseudomonas, ...)
• specific parasite : one normal to its current host
• intermittent or occasional parasite : a parasite which lives in its host only at times, being free living during the interval
• accidental or incidental parasite : an organism parasitizing an animal other than the usual host, as Dirofilaria in humans
• spurious parasite : an organism which is parasitic on hosts other than humans, but which may pass through the human body without causing harm.
• permanent parasite : a parasite which lives in its host from early life until maturity or death of the parasite.
• temporary parasite : a parasite which lives free of its host during part of its life cycle.
• periodic parasite : a parasite that resides in its host for short periods.
• parasitoid : resembling a parasite
Antagonistic coevolution between hosts and parasites in spatially structured populations can result in local adaptation of parasites; that is, the greater infectivity of local parasites than foreign parasites on local hosts. Such parasite specialization on local hosts has implications for human health and agriculture. By contrast with classic single-species population-genetic models, theory indicates that parasite migration between subpopulations might increase parasite local adaptation, as long as migration does not completely homogenize populations. To test this hypothesis we developed a system-specific mathematical model and then coevolved replicate populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens and a parasitic bacteriophage with parasite only, with host only or with no migration. Patterns of local adaptation have considerable temporal and spatial variation and that, in the absence of migration, parasites tend to be locally maladapted. However, in accord with our model, parasite migration results in parasite local adaptation, but host migration alone has no significant effect^ref.
• inheritance :
• horizontal symbiosis : a symbiosis that is acquired anew each host generation
• vertical symbiosis : a symbiosis that is acquired by passage of the microbial partner in, or on, the eggs of the host
• binary symbiosis : an association between one host species and a population of a single microbial species;
• consortial symbiosis : an association between one host species and a community, or communities, of mulitiple microbial species.
E.g. :
• Porifera
• various sponges + Cyanobacteria (bacteriocytes) (Vertical Binary)ref
• Aplysina cavernicola (mesohyl) + bacteria Horizontal Consortial
• Cnidaria
• corals (gastrodermis) + Symbiodinium spp. horizontal/vertical Binary/consortial
• Vestimentifera
• Riftia pachyptila (trophosome) + sulphide-oxidizing bacteria Horizontal Binary
• Mollusca
• Vesicomyid clams (gills) + sulphide-oxidizing bacteria Vertical Binary^ref
• Bathymodiolus spp. (gills) + sulphide-oxidizing bacteria Horizontal Binary/consortial
• Euprymna scolopes (light organ) + Vibrio fischeri Horizontal Binary
• squids (accessory nidamental gland) + bacteria Horizontal Consortial
• Arthropoda
• aphids (bacteriome) + Buchnera spp. Vertical Binary
• insects (reproductive tissues) + Wolbachia spp. Vertical Binary^ref
• termites (hindgut) + bacteria/protist Horizontal Consortial
• Chordata
• Mus musculus (alimentary canal) + bacteria/protist Horizontal Consortial^ref
• Bos spp. (cow rumen) + bacteria/protist Horizontal Consortial^ref
• Homo sapiens (alimentary canal; skin) + bacteria/protist Horizontal Consortial^{ref1, ref2}
• myxobacteria, common bacteria that live in soils world-wide, survive by decomposing and eating organic material, and they have adapted a clever way of swarming together to track down these nutrients and digest them. By lumping together, the microbes stand a better chance of producing enough enzymes to digest their food. And when the food runs out, these colourful collectives may also help the bugs survive. Some speculate that their colour attracts passing animals, allowing the microbes to hitch a ride with curious birds that mistake the lumps for food. The myxobacteria use antenna-like extensions known as pili to gather together. A bacterium will stick the end of its pilus onto the cells in front of it, and then reel itself in to join the gathering crowd. But a tiny proportion of the bacteria are mutants that lack the right proteins to control their pili, leaving them stranded and immobile. Mutants somehow regain the ability to move when placed in close proximity to normal myxobacteria. The mobile bacteria pass on the needed proteins, called Tgl proteins, to their disabled mates. To check, they first designed immobile bacteria that express the Tgl protein but lack pili. They then placed these microbes alongside natural mutant myxobacteria, which had pili but lacked the Tgl proteins. The mutants gained the ability to travel and moved to the outer edge of the dish, allowing the researchers to easily separate out the newly mobile mutants from the original cells without pili. The team then analysed the bacteria for Tgl protein to see what had happened. As expected, the mobile mutants now had Tgl proteins, while the others had lost a significant part of their complement of these proteins. They're really a beautiful example of cooperation. Its unclear why the cells cooperate this way, as the vast majority of cells could gather into a ball and simply leave their disabled colleagues behind. But the team wonders if the cells are exchanging other proteins or information in the same way, which might be advantageous to the colony as a whole^ref
• microbial species comprise about 60% of the Earth's biomass. The diversity of the microbial world is largely unknown, with less than one-half of 1% of the estimated 2-3 billion microbial species unidentified.
• carbon dioxide fixation : conversion of atmospheric CO₂ to organic carbon compounds, as in photosynthesis.
• autotrophic fixation : the cyclic mechanism whereby CO₂ is fixed into organic linkage by autotrophic organisms, e.g., plants and autotrophic bacteria.
• nitrogen fixation : the union of the free atmospheric nitrogen with other elements to form chemical compounds, such as ammonia and nitrates or amino groups. This occurs primarily through the action of soil bacteria of the genus Rhizobium or Bradyrhizobium in symbiosis with leguminous plants. Nonbiological nitrogen fixation processes include electrical methods and chemical catalysis (Haber process)
• biodiversity
• global efforts to conserve species have been strongly influenced by the heterogeneous distribution of species diversity across the Earth. Diversity within species is also distributed unevenly. A disproportionate fraction of the diversity is concentrated in small sub-populations, even when the population is well-mixed. Small groups are of such importance to overall population diversity that even without extrinsic perturbations, there are large fluctuations in diversity owing to extinctions of these small groups. We also show that diversity can be geographically non-uniform—potentially including sharp boundaries between distantly related organisms—without extrinsic causes such as barriers to gene flow or past migration events. Diversity loss owing to severe extinction events is high, and focusing conservation efforts on highly distinctive groups can save much of the diversity^ref.
• when the Panama Canal opened in 1914, it was a tremendous boon to the shipping industry. The Panama canal links the Rio Chagres and Rio Grande rivers, which are on opposite slopes of the Isthmus of Panama. When the waterway opened, the once-isolated fish communities of the two rivers were given the chance to intermingle. The Rio Grande has gained 5 freshwater species that previously lived only in the Rio Chagres, and 3 species have spread in the opposite direction. This indicates that the number of species in the Rio Grande has increased by 28%, and in the Rio Chagres by 11% : no species has gone extinct as a result, within the timescale of 10 to 100 generations that is envisioned by ecologists. This is at odds with many experts' belief that intruders upset the delicate balance of ecosystems. A small number of case studies have taught the scientific community that invasions may have disastrous effects. This is particularly true when the invader is a top predator such as the Nile perch (Lates niloticus), which was introduced to Lake Victoria in Africa in the 1950s. The perch wiped out an estimated 200 native fish species. Although ships continue to chug up and down the Panama Canal, there is unlikely to be any more traffic in fish species, the researchers predict. The reason is the introduction of the predatory peacock cichlid (Cichla ocellaris) to Lake Gatun, an artificial lake halfway along the canal's route, in 1967. With such a dangerous gatekeeper blocking the way, the two rivers are effectively once again separated.
• Iraq's marshlands, ravaged during Saddam Hussein's regime, show signs of bouncing back, say scientists who have surveyed the region's ecosystems. They are hopeful that some 30% of the former marshland, which was reduced to desert during the 1980s and 1990s, can be restored. The marshlands, thought by some to be the scene of the biblical Garden of Eden, once covered some 15,000 km². But they were drained by the Iraqi government, partly to punish local Marsh Arab communities for political uprisings. At the time of Saddam's overthrow in 2003, roughly 10% of the original marshes remained. The significance of the destruction has been likened to that of deforestation in the Amazon basin. Restoring the marshes isn't necessarily straightforward. When the marshes dried up, the soil was left in an extremely salty state. So one hazard of reflooding the land is that, if fresh water is not kept flowing continuously, the water will become too salty for the area's natural species to survive. Some marshland has already been partially flooded by local people, who tore down dams in a bid to get water back on to their land. In 2004, the United Nations Environment Programme pledged US$11 million for such a scheme. The researchers set up monitoring stations in 2 reflooded areas, and compared them with the natural remaining marshland at Al-Hawizeh, on the Iranian border. The restored marshes do show signs of recovery, but the untouched marshland was still considerably healthier. Salt levels in the reflooded marsh at Suq al-Shuyukh were higher than at Al-Hawizeh. However, water quality at the other reflooded site, Abu Zarag, was similar to that in the pristine marsh. Typical plant species, dominated by the reed Phragmites australis, are also returning to the 2 restored marshes. But the colonization by plants and animals has not yet reached the levels at Al-Hawizeh. This site, for example, is still the only home of the otters that once roamed the entire region. Some 30% of the original area can be restored, but it won't be contiguous marshland as before. The process will depend partly on water conflicts with Iraq's neighbours. Iran is planning to build a large dyke, which would prevent the River Tigris from watering Al-Hawizeh. And Turkey's Ataturk Dam is large enough to slow the River Euphrates to a trickle. But if the Garden of Eden can be saved, it could be a huge boost for the region's Shia population, which fell from 350,000 in a 1947 census to around 75,000 today. The 12 major tribes of Marsh Arabs moved away during the 1990s as their homelands dried up. Restoring the marshlands could entice them to return. They don't want to be made museum specimens, they want clean water. If they can have a stable life there they will go back.

Web resources : Iraq Marshlands Restoration Program
• humans have done more damage to the world's stock of biological diversity in the past 50 years than at any other time in history, say the researchers behind the study, titled Ecosystems and Human Well-being: The Biodiversity Synthesis Report. Over the past century, species extinctions have reached about 1,000 times their natural rate, because of human actions. Unless this trend is halted, people will lose vital benefits from the natural world, dubbed 'ecosystem services'. Some 3.5 billion people around the world depend on the oceans for food. But since the advent of commercial fishing, global fish stocks have plunged by up to 90%. Around 70% of the world's population still rely on nature for traditional medicines. The report is the latest in a series arising from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a 4-year project to catalogue data on the world's natural resources that involves > 1,300 scientists. It reveals that 12% of bird species, almost a quarter of mammals and around a third of the world's amphibians are facing extinction. This is largely due to destruction of natural ecosystems such as grasslands and forests. 10-20% of the remaining resources are due to be converted to other land uses, such as agriculture, by 2050. But there have been some successes. In Europe, for example, financial incentives to encourage farmers to set land aside as a refuge for natural plants, birds and insects, have allowed biodiversity in farmland to bounce back. This shows that economics is the key to achieving similar feats across the world. The report's authors have put a price tag on the environment to support their argument. They calculate, for example, that an intact hectare of mangrove forest is worth > US$1,000 to a country such as Thailand, and only $200 when farmed intensively. However, the report has raised fears that efforts to protect biodiversity may be at odds with the UN Millennium Development Goals, first among which is to stamp out world poverty and hunger. Some economic analysts argue that this cannot be achieved without an increase in intensive farming. Another of the Millennium Development Goals calls for environmental sustainability, arguing that, in cases such as fisheries, efforts to preserve biodiversity are not in conflict with the need to ensure a continuing food supply.
Threats to biodiversity :
• animal biodiversity : genetic breeding
• in the regions of Rajasthan the Intensive Cattle Breeding Programme and the Operation Flood (i.e. indiscriminate cross-breeding of domestic cattle with exotic Jersey and Holstein Fresian breeds) lead to extinction of the Tharpakar cattle, a species with a unique genetic endowment that enables it to traverse the massive Thar desert in Western India.
• American farmers are breeding wool-free, parasite-resistant Katahdin sheep with muscled, parasite-prone woolly  Dorper sheep to bring down the cost of meat production. Called hair sheep, the almost-bald animals don't need shearing decreasing cost and labour for the ewe flock : they are covered with straight coarse fibres that shed regularly, on the contrary of fine crimped fibres in the woolly coat of domesticated sheep. Hair sheep may also appeal more to Americans' picky palates as most taste testers say that hair sheep have a more neutral flavour than lamb. But the Dorper came to the United States from South Africa only 7 years ago and it has never been challenged by parasites, and has no resistance to them : naturally resistant breeds save farmers money, keep drug-resistant bugs down, and allow producers to market the meat as organic
• conservationists at the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting won a hollow victory in Ulsan, Korea, on 20-24 June 2005. While pro-whaling initiatives failed to gain support from the member nations, Japan may nevertheless increase its research whaling activities. Japan failed in its bid to overturn the moratorium on commercial whaling. This was widely expected, given that Japan required 75% of the votes from the 62 member countries to do so. But observers had anticipated that Japan might be able to command a simple majority. This would have given it leverage to control the commission's activities and get approval for many of its own whaling initiatives. In the end, however, with a handful of countries not showing, the plenary voted against several Japanese initiatives. A proposal to begin limited coastal whaling along Japanese shores was defeated by 29 to 26; a bid to have the ballots conducted in secret rather than in public failed; and efforts to get rid of a whale sanctuary in the Antarctic also came to nothing. The most controversial item on the agenda - a Japanese proposal to expand its 'research whaling programme' by doubling its take of Minke whales and beginning to take fin and humpback whales - was condemned. But the vote, while politically significant, is not binding. Some Japanese delegates plan to go ahead with the increased take. The Japanese delegation feels frustrated that the science in its proposal was not recognized. The increased whale catch is necessary to meet sample size requirements for research projects. The sample size for its previous whaling programme - about 400 whales per year - was designed to measure parameters such as pregnancy rates, age at sexual maturity and blubber thickness. The programme starting this autumn aims to detect changes in these parameters over a six-year period. To do this, their statistical analyses indicate that they need sample sizes of between 700 and 1,000 whales per year. But these arguments left most delegates unconvinced. Critics claim that Japan's research programme is simply commercial whaling in disguise. Whales killed for research purposes are sold for food after being studied. Japan has long campaigned to educate locals and foreigners about the importance of whale meat. In 2000, when the International Whaling Commission met in Australia, the Japanese Whaling Association ran an advertising campaign in which it said that whale meat is as integral to the Japanese diet as meat pies are to the Australian diet. While much of Japan's population has not eaten whale meat in decades, a hamburger chain in Hokkaido has started selling whale burgers.
• red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) is a reef fish found off the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. In the United States, it came under strict management in 1996 after its populations had been grossly overexploited. But the restrictions have created an incentive for vendors to substitute less valuable species for the real thing. 75% of fish marketed in the United States as red snapper are mislabelled and belong to other, less well-known species of snappers^ref : the practice creates the impression that red snapper  is much more abundant than it actually is, and distorts the counts for other species. It is unclear whether such mislabelling is deliberate, and whether it is done at the time of catch, on the docks, or down the line by grocers and restaurateurs. In another case of mislabelling, retailers co-opted the name 'Chesapeake Bay-style blue crab' for crab that was actually imported from the Philippines. There are also anecdotal reports of vendors using cookie cutters to stamp meat out of skate wings, creating imitation scallops. And there is the well-known case of the Patagonian toothfish, a slow-growing fish from cold, southern seas that is often sold as 'Chilean sea bass', although it is unrelated to the true sea basses : roughly 80% of Chilean sea bass sold has been fished illegally in one part of the world or another. 75% of fish sold in the United States are imported from overseas, so the consumer has no way of knowing where a fish was caught. And although L. campechanus is the only snapper species that can legally be labelled red snapper in the United States, by the time these animals are reduced to a fillet, who can tell?

Web resources :
• Seafood Choices Alliance
• Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch
• Environmental Defense Pocket Seafood Selector
• Blue Ocean Institute
• plant biodiversity :
• genetic contamination from genetically modified (GM) plants (gene flow), expecially GM crops
• in India the introduction of Bt cotton in March 2002 lead to hybrid species with destabilised genetic make-ups, which can no longer be indicated as "straight variety", an essential requirement for organic cotton production.
• in Canada genetically modified canola engineered to resist a regular herbicide has spread widely over conventional seed through pollen or accidental mixing.
• in the Navarre region of the Basque country (Spain) maize was contaminated by Bt 176 maize (Compa CB variety) commercialised by Syngenta (ex Novartis)
• in Mexico local maize species was largely reduced by engineered crops.
• Agrostis stolonifera (bentgrass) genetically engineered to contain the glyphosate resistance gene CP4 EPSPS has passed its transgene on to a closely related species (A. gigantea) growing 14 km away and to wild-growing plants of the same species 21 km away. There was no evidence that the gene crossed into a grass in a different genus, Polypogon monspeliensis. Bentgrass is an amenity grass usually grown on golf courses and as a forage crop, but it is also listed as a weed in parts of the world, including in some parts of the United States : pollen from the bentgrass can live for about 3 hours
• commercial use of some GM crops could alter the balance of weed species that thrive on British farmland. Such a shift could harm bees and butterflies. Butterfly numbers were cut by up to 66% and bee populations by 50% in fields of transgenic winter oilseed rape (canola), according to the final results of a 3-year UK's Farm Scale Evaluations (FSE) study commissioned by the UK government. Researchers behind the £6-million (US$11-million) study say that the project's weed-control system is to blame. The crops are engineered to resist a particular herbicide, which hits broad-leafed weeds harder than grassy varieties. Bees and butterflies suffer because they prefer the former type of weed. The scientists add that this would have a knock-on effect on animals higher up the food chain. If this crop were commercialized we'd be concerned about the implications for birds such as sparrows and bullfinches. Supporters of transgenic crops stress that most insect species were not affected by the rape's herbicide and say the overall impact on biodiversity is minimal. As with all weed-management systems, some weed and insect species will be positively affected while others may be negatively affected, but the vast majority are unaffected. Bayer CropScience, headquartered in Monheim, Germany, already markets the winter oilseed rape used in the trial in the USA and Canada. Although the crop is grown widely in the 2 countries, Bayer says it has no intention of applying for a licence to sell it in Europe. But Bayer officials point out that the biggest difference in butterfly and bee numbers is seen in July, when the crop is just about to be harvested and there is little green material : there's nothing in the field at that point for bees and butterflies and you wouldn't get very many there anyway. The results will, however, be felt as a further blow to advocates of transgenic crops. In 2003, 2 of the 3 other transgenic varieties covered by the study, spring oilseed rape and beet, were shown to harm biodiversity by reducing overall levels of weeds. Release of the results marks the end of what has been the largest ever study into the ecological impact of transgenic crops. > 150 people worked on the experiment, which involved counting 1 million weeds and 2 million insects at sites across Britain. Although none of the crops tested is likely to be licensed in Europe, the data will inform agricultural policy for years to come. The ecological impacts of previous changes in farming practice, such as increasing herbicide use, were not properly investigated at the start
• nobody can say Patrick Moore doesn't have the courage of his convictions. When he was at Greenpeace, an organization he cofounded, he stood between seal pups and hammer-wielding thugs. Armed with no more than a life preserver, he steered a dingy in front of a harpoon-mounted whaling ship. The self-described radical environmentalist even planted himself on rail tracks to stop trains carrying materials to nuclear power plants. Ironically, he now finds himself standing up to the forces he was instrumental in creating: Greenpeace and the environmental movement. Moore abandoned Greenpeace in 1986 after growing frustrated by what he calls the infiltration into the movement of radicals bent on nothing short of ridding the world of capitalism and biotechnology. He now pursues his environmental agenda under the umbrella of his consultancy, Greenspirit. As an environmental heretic, Moore took to op-eds and the environmentalist-bashing lecture circuit with the zeal of a recovering alcoholic preaching about demon rum. This reversal of allegiances has earned him high praise from the biotech community and the scorn of the environmental community, who see him as a traitor to the cause. In a recent Wired article, Greenpeace director Paul Watson called Moore a "corporate whore...eco-Judas...lowlife bottom-sucking parasite, who has grown rich from sacrificing environmentalist principles for plain old money." Moore's new crusade—one among many in his career—is precisely about giving legitimacy to biotech application vis-à-vis environmental opponents. To do so, he suggests that an audit of the performance of biotech products is sorely needed to prove their strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, he has come to realize that words only get a person so far. Instead, Moore says he will soon start creating public-private research collaborations with the expressed purpose of applying for research grants to analyze the risk-reward of biotech products. He'd like to commission a study on the amount of b-carotene (the precursor to vitamin A) in transgenic 'Golden Rice' necessary to restore sight lost from vitamin A deficiency. Activists say people have to eat 9 kg of golden rice—Moore says 100 g. Existing data are inconclusive. Moore would like to go further and commission a study that would attempt to quantify the average increased yield, and average reduction in pesticide and herbicide use, from genetically modified crops like Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) corn, cotton and soybeans. Activists say both figures are fraudulently inflated by biotech boosters. Moore says he's seen evidence that supports the boosters in his travels to farms throughout Asia and Africa. Again, there is no scientific consensus on this, either. Moore, however, believes that only hard data could prove him right as he feels that science is on his side. But unlike in his Greenpeace days, he now has more passionate supporters in the scientific community ready to lend their support to his cause. One of those supporters is Martina Newell-McGloughlin, a US government consultant on GMO matters, and the well regarded director of the University of California's System-wide Biotechnology Program, which is based at the University of California, Davis. But it won't be easy to get government money to back what might be seen by some as politically motivated research objectives. And research financed by biotech companies won't be easy to sell unbiased. That leaves nonprofit groups like the Rockefeller Foundation that tend to look askance at grant seekers, like Greenspirit, with no track record. Then again, if anybody can find backing for a cause, it is surely Patrick Moore. He did, after all, help create and transform Greenpeace from a handful of staffers working in the basement of a church in Vancouver into a network of field offices in 22 countries with a $110 million budget.
• transgenic oilseed rape in test plots is interbreeding with related wild species, raising fears that herbicide-tolerance could spread among weeds. The government-funded research, carried out at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) in Dorset, UK, suggests that oilseed rape, Brassica napus, may have hybridized with charlock, Sinapis arvensis, a related weed species.  Surprisingly, one of the suspected crosses appears to be a healthy, fertile plant. But, researchers add, concerns that 'superweeds' will take over fields are unfounded. Herbicide-tolerant weeds would mostly be a problem for farmers trying to rid their fields of unwanted plants, comments Les Firbank, a crop researcher at the CEH research station in Lancaster, who led Britain's previous farm-scale evaluations of the effects of transgenic crops on biodiversity. "It's a management problem for farmers, not an environmental problem. In the 3-year study, researchers analysed weed species growing in 28 fields sown half with transgenic oilseed rape and half with non-transgenic crop. They identified two plants that seem to possess characteristics of both oilseed rape and charlock. One fertile plant resembled charlock, but was not killed by the Liberty herbicide that the oilseed rape had been engineered to be resistant against. When the researchers extracted and analysed its DNA, they identified the genetic sequence that confers this tolerance^{ref1, ref2}. Another plant, found in the middle of a non-transgenic plot, seemed to have physical characteristics halfway between those of oilseed rape and charlock, showing that the 2 species can hybridize. This plant was infertile. Some environmental groups are claiming this is evidence that transgenes can escape into the plant community at large. We're seeing the real possibility of superweeds being created, but the plants are not necessarily cause for worry, comments Brian Johnson, an ecological geneticist with English Nature, which advises the government on wildlife issues. Quite frankly, this does not demonstrate the creation of anything resembling a superweed. The herbicide-resistant wild plant identified in the study may not be a true hybrid. The technique used to identify the gene sequence is very sensitive, and could simply have picked up contamination from oilseed-rape pollen, and the herbicide resistance seen in the plant itself could have arisen naturally. Even if it were a true hybrid, the resistance to Liberty herbicide would be unlikely to confer a benefit outside that field, so the plant would not be expected to spread widely. As for the hybrid plant found in the middle of the plot, it's one thing to be a robust plant, but that doesn't mean anything if you're firing blanks. The finds are not entirely unexpected: oilseed rape has previously been found to hybridize with wild turnip. However, this unusual occurrence merits further study. With careful management, 'superweeds' resistant to several herbicides will not arise. One tactic is not to license different crops with engineered resistance to different weedkillers. They should be made resistant to one weedkiller at a time. The discovery may be of interest in the USA, where herbicide-tolerant crops are widely grown. Farmers will have to pay attention to how they manage their crops with herbicide.
Prevention :
• non-GM corn planted at least 20 m from GM corn was not contaminated above the EU-allowed limit of 0.9%. According to EU regulations, corn with a GM level above 0.9% cannot be labeled as non-GM. Many German corn processors and millers will not accept corn with GM contamination above 0.2% to 0.4%. Plant breeding companies Pioneer Hi-Bred Northern Europe, Monsanto Agar Deutschland GmbH, and KWS SAAT AG provided seeds and co-funding for corollary scientific work. Additional support in communications or financing came from Bayer CropScience, BASF Plant Science, Syngenta, and Deutsche Industrievereinigung Biotechnologie (DIB, German Association of Biotechnology Industries).

Web resources :
• InnoPlanta
• Federal Association of German Plant Breeders
• when foreign genes are introduced into the nuclear genome, they end up in pollen, posing the risk of transfer to other species. And sometimes, expression levels are low. Chloroplast genetic engineering offers 2 benefits : first, like mitochondria, chloroplast genes are maternal and therefore not passed through pollen, and because each cell has 10,000 copies of the chloroplast genome, expression levels are generally high. The gene to be inserted is put under the control of chloroplast regulatory signals so that errant transgenes won't express in the nucleus : those that do hit their mark in the chloroplasts integrate via homologous recombination into a non-coding spacer region minimizing disruption of the chloroplast genome

Web resources : Chlorogen
• the world's banana crop is facing extinction within a decade due to threats from insects and disease. A fruit fungus called Fusarium Wilt has infested commercial banana crops in Asia and producers fear major losses if it creeps into Central and South America, where most of the bananas shipped to Europe and North America are produced. The FAO says the problem is largely the result of producers relying on one type of banana - the Cavendish - for export. The Cavendish's predecessor, the Gros Michel, suffered a similar fate when it was attacked by a fungal disease. The FAO says the Cavendish accounts for only 10% of bananas consumed worldwide, but the world's biggest plantations grow it almost exclusively. There are more than 500 varieties of bananas and the FAO says small-scale farmers grow a wide range of bananas that are not threatened.
• the extinction of some Ontario apple varieties has already occurred
• Brazil's savannah (also called the cerrado), the world's largest continuous area of land suitable for agriculture, is vanishing by 20,000 square kilometres (1.5% of the region's 1.3 million square kilometres) per year, faster than its rainforests, to make room for crops such as soy, wheat and cotton : without drastic cuts in the amount of land cleared for agriculture, the report's authors say, the grasslands will be entirely wiped out by 2030. Around 5% of the world's animal and plant species are thought to live there. Part of the problem may be that conservation efforts have traditionally focused on Brazil's endangered tropical rainforests. The savannah, which consists of grasslands dotted with sparse trees and small forests, does not strike the casual observer as a valuable resource : it's not aesthetically beautiful, so people don't care as much. With this clearing comes the development of towns and hydroelectric dams, which threaten to cause problems of their own. The creation of reservoirs can cause local rivers to clog with silt. Today there are over 1300 national and regional germplasm collection centres opened in countries around the globe.
• forest-dwelling non-native feral honeybees (Apis mellifera) and 10 species of native "stingless" bees (of the family Apidae Meliponinae) cross-pollinate nearby bushes, raising coffee (Coffea arabica) yields by up to 20% (coffee can anyway self-pollinate) and farm incomes by up to 7% (extra US$60,000 from 35 hectares ). Plants in the 1 km range also had 27% fewer peaberries, which are the small, deformed seeds that result from poor pollination and produce inferior coffee. Areas of forest are often cut down to make room for coffee plantations, so the researchers hope the find will help persuade coffee farmers to conserve tropical forest close to their crops. Costa Rica's innovative Payments for Environmental Services Payments scheme pays landowners around US$42 a year for each hectare of forest they conserve, but this is only a fraction of the natural benefits provided by such nearby forest. Around 66% of the crops we eat are partially dependent on animals for pollination. So it is likely that other agricultural plants, such as watermelons and sunflowers, will also benefit from nearby patches of biodiversity
• spike in wildfires has a number of causes, including
• global warming
• the logging of old, fire-hardy trees
• the growing urban sprawl, which increases the risk of people inadvertently sparking a fire
Some also blamed the long-standing policy of stamping out forest fires when they flare up, because it allows the survival of fire-prone trees that can exacerbate later blazes. In the USA fires in 2000 consumed around 8.4 million hectares of forest, the largest area in several decades, and record-breaking fires have swept the western United States over the past 4 years. Prevention money and efforts would be focused first on high-risk areas where people live, and would include measures such as using fire-resistant building materials. In neighbouring zones, the group recommends restricting animal grazing, closing roads and carefully thinning out young, flammable trees. They propose leaving back-country forest intact, either allowing fires to burn out or deliberately torching certain areas. 'Salvage logging' of burned trees should be stopped, the researchers warn, because it damages soils and the ecosystem. An area's temperature and rainfall have always been thought of as key to which plants grow there, to whether it becomes grassland, savanna or forest. But fire may have the biggest influence on the global distribution of vegetation : in a fire-free world, forest cover would double at the expense of grasslands and savannas^ref. The team used a computer model to predict how plant patterns shift over time with changing climates. For example, a type of grassland consisting of warmth-loving plants appeared in the tropics between 6 million and 8 million years ago, and quickly spread around the globe. This study suggests that the grassland's spread was primarily influenced by fire, although it is not known why there were more fires at that time. Without fire, forests would leap from forming 26% of the world's vegetation to 56%. Tropical grasslands and savannas, such as those in South America and Africa would shrink to half their current extent; temperate grassland and Mediterranean shrubland would be reduced by nearly two-thirds. Fire is grossly under-evaluated in terms of its global impact on ecosystems. Anybody who looks at the global picture will be very surprised. For years, US policy was to extinguish every fire on public lands. But in August 2000, government agencies developed the National Fire Plan, which recognizes that wildfires play an important role in maintaining certain ecosystems. Fire control in the United States is fraught with controversy, however, because communities are still being built on fire-prone lands. Spectacular and destructive wildfires are a regular feature of the American summer. In 2004, for example, Alaska experienced its worst fire season on record: more than 6 million acres of land burned in 700 fires across the state. But if we try and switch fire off, we would be losing ecosystems that have been around for millions of years. These natural ecosystems are dependent on burning, and have to be actively managed.
Web resources : USDA Forest Service
Bibliography : Nature Insight Biodiversity in Nature Vol.405 11 May 2000
• industrial melanism : the gradual darkening of populations of organisms living in soot-darkened habitats due to the selective pressure of predators, the darker individuals tending to survive as the conspicuous individuals are eaten, thus favoring the genotype that darkens their color. The peppered moth, Biston betularia, has undergone this change.
• trophy hunting can affect animal evolution :
• a study of one sheep population in Canada shows that hunting can harm the gene pool of a species over just a few years : the horns of some bighorn sheep are getting smaller, because hunters are picking off the most impressive rams before they reach their breeding peak and hunting is also influencing mating behaviour, with fewer rams butting heads to fight for partners^ref.
• elephant poaching is thought to have led to an increase in the number of tuskless animals in Africa
• in Canada, the hunting of moose seems to have resulted in animals with smaller antlers.
• invasive tracking
• attaching permanent identification aluminium or stainless-steel bands to flippers (as bands are the wrong shape for bands) of thousands of penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) each year seems to adversely affect their swimming and fishing. Subcutaneous electronic tags should be used in place of bands : the devices weigh just 0.8 g and emit a signal that is picked up by receivers along the penguins' migration route. Others argue that bands made out of alternative materials are the way forward : metal bands tend to rub feathers away, creating a small bald patch that leaks body heat^ref. Whether or not they have difficulty swimming, penguins losing energy in this way would take longer to make an Antarctic migration because they would need to collect more food. A synthetic rubber band will replace metal ones once ensured it is as hardy as their metal counterparts. Bands are desirable because they allow researchers thousands of kilometres apart to observe the same birds without expensive electrical equipment^ref. Ecologists are realizing that we can't take the effects of our manipulations for granted—we're studying living organisms in natural systems, not a beaker in a lab : in 2001, it was found that by handling the plants in his experiments, he changed the amount that herbivores ate them^ref.

Web resources :
• International Penguin Conservation
• Penguin Science
• Adopt a King Penguin
• Australian Antarctic Division: King Penguins
• tagging water voles with radio-transmitter collars causes a shift in the sex ratio of new births, researchers have discovered. This is a sure sign that the animals are under stress and the finding suggests that the technique might harm other species too. Numbers of water voles (Arvicola terrestris) are declining in  Britain, mainly because of habitat loss and increased abundance of their main predator, the American mink (Mustela vison). Further, over the 3-year course of a project in which selected individuals were tagged with radio collars to study the migration patterns and mating behavious in Norolk, the proportion of female offspring compared with males dropped by 48%. The collars, which consist of a small radio transmitter and a battery, must have stressed the animals. Voles are known to raise more males in hard times, for example when there is little food around. That is thought to be because males are less territorial and more likely to leave the area where they were born, which increases the survival chances of those left behind. Radio-collar stress seems to cause sex-ratio adjustments similar to those caused by food scarcity. Radio tracking is a common method for studying the behaviour of wild mammals, including polar bears, rhinos and wolves. But it has been unclear whether and how the collars might affect behaviour, reproduction and survival in these animals. Researchers studying panda populations in China, for example, are not allowed to use radio collars, in case they harm the sensitive animals. The Norfolk study provides evidence that such negative effects exist in mammals too. A footprint identification method has been developed for counting and monitoring black rhino (Diceros bicornis), but there are currently no effective alternatives for marking smaller mammals and birds. More research is needed to prove that the collaring is definitely causing the sex-ratio shift seen in the voles. In the meantime, there are many ecological questions that can be solved without radio tracking.

Web resources : Rhinowatch
• The effect of large genomes on extinction threat was first noted in plants^ref. According to some scientists, this relationship fits the so-called selfish DNA hypothesis in which DNA continues to propagate despite serving no purpose other than its own "survival". Within taxa, families or orders of reptiles and birds at least - the bigger an animal's genome, the greater its risk of extinction. Genome size in amphibians and fish has effect at the taxa level, but not at either the family or order level. In mammals, no significant effect was seen at either the higher or lower taxonomic levels. For some animals, the cost of accumulating non-coding DNA in their genomes is probably balanced by other benefits. These may include having a low metabolic rate in ecosystems where energy is in short supply.
• extinction endangered species :
• Brazil, the world's fifth largest country, is thought to have the greatest biodiversity on Earth, but some 338 plants are facing extinction : environmental pressures - such as deforestation - are blamed for this threat, which is most acute in the south-eastern Atlantic forests. A DNA bank created in May 2004 is one way of saving as many rare plants as possible from extinction.
• mammalians
• primates
• infectious disease (e.g. Bacillus anthracis for 8 wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) who died suddenly in the Taï National Park, Ivory Coast between October 2001 and June 2002) has joined habitat loss and hunting as threats to the survival of the remaining wild populations of great apes^ref
• western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) can grow to 6 feet tall when standing, and can weigh up to 450 pounds. They have a broad chest, a muscular neck, and strong hands and feet. Short, thin, grey-black to brown-black hair covers their entire body, except the face. Many bear a distinctive ginger-colored crown. In comparison to mountain gorillas, western lowland gorillas have wider and larger skulls. They are characterized as quiet and peaceful animals that almost never attack unless provoked. The relatively intact forests of Western Equatorial Africa are regarded as the last strongholds of African apes. Gabon and the Republic of Congo hold 80% of the world's gorillas and most of the Central African chimpanzees. The population of apes in the Congo declined by more than half between 1983 and 2000.
• bonobo (Pan paniscus) : preliminary results from a survey of bonobos in around a third of the 36,000-square-kilometre Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation and the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society suggest that their numbers are far lower than conservationists had thought. The discovery raises fears that one of our closest relatives may be teetering on the verge of extinction. They did not see a single bonobo in the flesh, and evidence from nests and dung suggests that the apes have become very scarce. If the survey results represent a more general trend, there may be as few as 10,000 bonobos, also called pygmy chimpanzees, left in the wild. Experts had previously thought that there might be around 50,000 remaining. Although it is illegal to kill bonobos, park officers have struggled to enforce the law during the long-running Congolese civil war, and armed militia groups still hide out in the wilderness of the Salonga park. If the picture looks bleak for Salonga's bonobos, things may be even worse for those living elsewhere in the Congo Basin, which contains the world's entire population of the apes. The news from Salonga comes 75 years after P. paniscus was officially recognized as a distinct species from the more widespread common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). In 2005 the WWF hopes to appoint a park adviser to ensure that the apes are protected as much as possible: law enforcement in such a huge wilderness is very difficult


• a new species of monkey named Macaca munzala or the Arunachal macaque (after the Arunachal Pradesh area in which it was sighted) has been found in India at a time when many monkey species are in decline. As a well populated country of > 1 billion people, India seems an unlikely place to discover a new primate species. The last time that researchers spotted a new macaque was in the Mentawai islands of Indonesia in 1903. The new species was found by scientists on a research expedition to unexplored high-altitude areas of northeastern India. They came across an unusual looking macaque with a distinctive crown of dark hairs surrounded by a prominent pale-yellow patch. The animal's uncommon appearance hinted at its uniqueness. It combined morphological traits of 2 species, and was therefore not a subspecies of an already known macaque species. After detailed investigation, he and his fellow researchers concluded that their new monkey was not a hybrid, because the two potential parent species did not occur together in the area. Also, it was not an isolated find. The expedition discovered a number of M. munzala troops over 1,200 km², all closely resembling one another. The newly identified species has grabbed the attention of ecologists as it is one of the highest-dwelling primates in the world. The discovery of a high-altitude macaque species has tremendous significance for our understanding of macaque biology, referring to the monkeys' ability to adapt to a wide range of habitats. It is not uncommon for scientists to pick out new monkey species, but that they usually only differ subtly from known species. Sometimes people suddenly realize with genetic studies that one species is actually 2. Finding a new species by direct observation, as the team in India did, remains far less common


Web resources :
• International Primatological Society (IPS)
• Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP)
• WWF African great apes programme
• Macaque from Encyclopedia.com
• elephants :
• since the ivory trade was banned in 1989, elephant poaching in Africa has moved from the open savannahs into the dense rainforests, to avoid detection from aeroplanes overhead. The CITES now uses ground patrols to track poachers and search for elephant carcasses. But patrolling the forests is slow and difficult, and killings can go unnoticed for years. The new DNA tool would immediately locate regions where elephants are at risk. Forest elephants live in communities that are very isolated from other elephant populations, so their DNA is unique : there is more gene flow between east and south African elephant populations, but the test can still identify the location of these populations 80% of the time. This gene map can be used to help Interpol trace the origin of seized ivory, by comparing DNA from the tusks with the DNA found at different locations on the map. Most poaching occurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where civil unrest has displaced refugees into protected wildlife areas, leading starving people to hunt elephants for food. If ivory is a by-product of a food trade, then we need to deal with the hunger first
• in Sri Lanka, deforestation is eating away at the elephants' natural habitat. Most of the country's 4,000 elephants now dwell within protected areas, but they sometimes wander into cultivated areas in search of food. When this happens, they are often shot. About 3 elephants die per week in this way. In 2004 a rare albino elephant named Sue (after the Sinhalese word for 'white') has been spotted roaming Sri Lanka's Ruhunu National Park, the first recorded sighting in the country : there were rumours of sightings of an albino elephant in the same area in 1997. The pale-skinned pachyderm, thought to be around 11 years old, lives with a 17-strong herd of adult females and youngsters.
• the wild elephants of Myanmar are disappearing at an alarming rate, but it's not due to habitat destruction or illness: the animals are being abducted by loggers and put to work dragging trees from the forest. About a decade ago, conservationists estimated that there were up to 10,000 wild elephants roaming the forests of the country formerly known as Burma. But when they reassessed the situation recently, they found so few dung samples they couldn't make a valid estimate of the population. It seemed the elephants had simply vanished. So the conservationists called a council of local authorities, forest rangers, elephant veterinarians, private elephant owners, and those studying the animals. It emerged that the missing animals had joined the herds of captive elephants in logging camps.  The result was presented by Peter Leimgruber, from the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington DC, at the Society for Conservation Biology meeting in Brasília, Brazil, in July 2005. Elephants have been used as working animals in Myanmar for generations. Before the Second World War, up to 10,000 elephants worked in the country. When thousands were killed during the war, more elephants were captured to revitalize the logging industry. Although the capture of wild elephants was banned in 1995, it is thought that people continue to round up animals that raid crops or otherwise bother humans. The group presenting in Brazil guesses that at present there are about 6,000 animals in human hands. Leimgruber notes that the working animals are dissuaded from breeding in order to keep productivity levels up. So continual capture of wild animals is necessary to keep the work force stocked. The group hopes to do a thorough survey to see how many elephants are left in Myanmar. It is likely that fewer than 2,000 now roam the forests. Releasing the captive elephants would not be a good idea. Once they have lost their fear of people, they are likely to raid human habitations for food. This would only encourage people to take the elephants back into captivity. It may be that the elephants' usefulness in the logging camps is the best way to encourage locals to save the species. The animals do a good job, he adds, and cause relatively little pollution. I'd rather have the forest logged by an elephant than by heavy machinery
• scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah)
• northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii)
• the most endangered feline species in the world is the Iberian or Spanish lynx (Lynx pardinus), of which remain only as few as 120  left in the wild in just 2 small populations in southern Spain's Andalusia region. The lynx is in deeper trouble than other endangered cats such as the Siberian tiger. Once common throughout Spain, Portugal and southern France, the lynx has been hounded close to extinction by hunting, agriculture and transport. The effects have been compounded by a decline in rabbits, the cat’s favourite food. The real problem is that lynx conservation is not a priority for local politicians; forestry, farming and road-building are all at odds with the species’ interests. One of the remaining populations, at Doñana, numbers just 35 to 40 cats and is some 200 kilometres from the larger group at Andujar. The Doñana lynx may be too inbred and too isolated to recover. Outbreeding, rather than inbreeding, is causing problems for another of Europe's large felines, the Scottish wild cat (Felis silvestris) : the wild cat, which is closely related to the domestic version, has bred so extensively with its household counterpart that only around 400 true wild cats now remain. Genuine wild cats are protected by law, but if it is difficult to tell them apart from the hybrids that also roam the highlands then protection may not be enforced : the failure of a 1990 court case in which the defendant was acquitted of shooting three wild cats because an expert witness was unable to confirm that the cats were truly wild threatens to thwart legal protection of wild cats. Several strategies have been suggested to reduce interbreeding, such as neutering domestic cats and restricting them from certain areas. But until we know how and where hybridization is occurring, these methods will be of limited use. Genetic tests may resolve the question of where the real wild cats live, and where inbreeding is rife, but measures taken will depend on locations. We need to know what we're protecting; then we can start working.
• tiger :
• a genetic analysis of > 130 tigers has turned up a new subspecies of the endangered big cat. Sadly, however, this does not mean that there are actually more tigers. The new subspecies, named Panthera tigris jacksoni, comes from dividing an existing subspecies into 2 distinct genetic groups. Most estimates put the total number of tigers left in the wild at < 7,000. Having once roamed much of Asia, they have been hunted to the brink of oblivion, a process fuelled by the illegal trade in tiger parts. Conservationists think that, of the 8 traditional subspecies, 3 have completely died out since the 1940s; these are the Bali, Caspian and Java tigers. This has left 5 small bands of tigers: in Siberia, southern China, Sumatra, the Indian subcontinent and Indochina. Indochinese tigers should properly be thought of as 2 separate subspecies : those that live on the Malay Peninsula and those that live in more northerly parts of Indochina are 2 distinct groups.The researchers collected tiger DNA from all over Asia to see whether the traditional subspecies groupings, based on geographical location, size and stripe patterns, are reflected in genetic diversity. The only discrepancy they found is that the Malaysian tigers, previously lumped in with P. tigris corbetti, deserve their own name, P. tigris jacksoni. The researchers chose the name to honour the work of tiger conservationist Peter Jackson. And the study's publication closes the book on a debate that has simmered since the work was first presented at the South-East Asia Zoo Association's conference in Hong Kong in September. Malaysian conservationists had argued that the subspecies should be christened P. tigris malayensis. While the name jacksoni will stay, the tiger should be known commonly as the Malayan tiger, in keeping with the regional monikers of other tiger subspecies such as the Bengal and Sumatran. Although tiger subspecies can interbreed, it may be better to breed like with like, to preserve features such as body size that may help the various groups to survive in their different habitats. Genetic techniques could also help investigators to trace the origins of any tiger parts confiscated from black-market dealers^ref
• the South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) is listed as one of the ten most endangered animals by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Now it is coming under a new threat of gene deterioration. At present, the 73 captive tigers in China's zoos descend from a tiny gene pool established through only six wild tigers. Some of them are the 6th or 7th generation descendants of 5 tigers held in Guizhou, plus a Fujian tigress. Such low animal numbers have led to serious inbreeding problems and an increasing number of hereditary diseases.
• The endangered snow leopard (Uncia uncia) has returned to the valleys around Mount Everest. And how do they know it's back? Because the leopards' traditional prey are terrified. Tracking top predators by spotting the fear they instil in their prey could offer a new way to monitor the conservation status of rare animals, says Som Ale of the University of Illinois-Chicago, who came up with the idea. We can get clues about their whereabouts from the behaviour of their main prey species. The elusive snow leopard was tracked by observing the behaviour of its usual prey, the Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus), a relative of wild goats. The leopards, of which there are only around 6,000 left in the wild, had vanished completely from the foothills of Everest after the region was opened up to tourists in the years following the first conquest of the mountain in 1953. The tahr have had a relatively easy ride since 1976, when Everest and the surrounding area were declared a national park. But since 2000, their population has stopped growing and the number of mothers with young has dwindled, leading some conservationists to suspect that the snow leopard was back. The problem lay in proving it — spotting the leopards is immensely difficult. For many conservationists it's a once-in-a-lifetime event. But the tahr are much better at spotting leopards; after all, their lives can depend on it. The researchers therefore sought to spot the hallmarks of fear among the previously complacent tahr. Signs include ears standing on end, eyes focused into the distance, and a whistling cry used to communicate danger to other tahr. The tahr were most vigilant on cliffs and in open forests. And when they checked these habitats, they found droppings and paw-prints from the leopards. What's more, observation of the tahr led to 6 direct sightings of the leopards. Simply watching the tahr will not allow a census of the leopard population. But if it leads to direct leopard visuals it may be valuable in estimating how many leopards are living in the area. Of course, the plan would not have worked at all but for the fact that the tahr have no other natural predators, meaning that they only get scared of leopards. Not even the local people are a threat. The people who live there are Sherpas, who are Buddhists. That meant that the researchers could get within some 20 metres of the tahr without causing them to flee — which was useful for monitoring their behaviour. And it meant we got really good photos of them
• sperm whales get the bends, suggests a study of their skeletons. And environmentalists fear that this could put them at risk if their diving patterns are disrupted by sonar testing. Zoologists had previously assumed that these mammals do not suffer from this disease, which can cripple human deep-sea divers. But Michael Moore and Greg Early of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts have discovered progressive bone damage in whale carcasses retrieved from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The wear and tear seems to be a hallmark of osteonecrosis, a chronic disease that can be caused in long-term scuba-divers by the N₂bubbles that form in the body when surfacing too rapidly. The whales' pitted, eroded bones show that they may suffer from osteonecrosis over the course of their lives. Moore and Early studied 16 whale skeletons spanning a period of 111 years and found cavities up to 2 cm across in a range of bones^ref. The larger skeletons (belonging to older whales) showed the worst damage. The most likely cause is the repeated change in pressure caused by diving to catch prey and then returning to the surface for air. The only stressor known to cause this kind of bone damage is the bends. This implies that the whales stave off the effects of the bends not through some in-built physiological mechanism, but rather by carefully managing their diving patterns much as scuba-divers do. Surface too fast, and they could risk more severe damage. Disrupted diving seems to be what caused a group of beaked whales to wash up on the Canary Islands in 2002 after a military sonar test in the area. The prevailing theory is that they surfaced too fast after being scared or disoriented by the cacophony of noise. Noise is one example of something that could disturb whales' behaviour^ref. Some of the carcasses studied by Moore and Early date from before the advent of military sonar, showing that the damage they suffered is likely to be natural. But if whales do routinely suffer the bends, the potential for them to be disturbed by military exercises could be even greater than environmentalists had feared. Sperm whales are among the deepest divers, and one question that needs to be answered is whether other whales and dolphins suffer from similar problems. Meanwhile, the military is still left with the issue of whale strandings apparently caused by sonar. In April 2004, military experts and scientists attended a workshop in Baltimore specifically to discuss the issue of beaked whales. Potential solutions are not easy to find, but could include staying away from known whale migration routes or habitats. The wandering ways of a juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) who moved into a different ocean have bolstered the idea that humpbacks are not locked into one learned migratory route for their whole lives.

Humpbacks make huge migrations, sometimes swimming > 8,000 km twice a year. They spend their summers feasting in the polar regions, and their winters breeding in the tropics. Infant whales are thought to learn their route from their mother and tend to stick with it for life. This means that groups of whales with different routes have different gene pools and, often, different trademark songs. But previous studies of whale genetics have indicated that there must be some mixing between such groups. One whale that contributed to this mixing, by wintering in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar in 2000 and then turning up on the other side of Africa in the Atlantic near Gabon in the winter of 2002, was identified. It is lucky that we were there for both events. The darts were modified to take a little sample of skin about the size of a fingertip. This doesn't hurt the whales : it is probably like a mosquito bite for a human. The skin samples were used to gather DNA, which was then used to compare whales by looking at eleven highly variable sections called microsatellites. They worked with 1,202 skin samples, collected over six years from the two wintering grounds, and found just one match where all eleven microsatellites were identical in samples from different oceans. When they pulled up snapshots of the dorsal fins that went with each sample, they found they were the same. The finding might make it more difficult for managers aiming to set hunting quotas for the whales in the future^ref. Traditionally, a number of expendable whales is determined for each group separately. But if some whales are hopping from area to area between years, they could be counted twice in group census studies, overestimating the populations. The big mystery is why the whale switched oceans. Was he looking for new mating opportunities, or was he just lost? It could be both. If you're on a highway heading to a singles bar and you take a wrong turn, but find a different hangout, then you may as well hit on whoever's there anyway.
Web resources : American Cetacean Society fact sheet on humpbacks
• in January 2005, the total quota for hunters in Nunavut region, Canada, was raised from 403 polar bears to 518 (by almost 30%), but conservationists fear that the move is not backed by adequate scientific assessment. Permission to kill more bears was granted following both requests from indigenous Inuit hunters, who said that they had observed more bears in the region this year, and advice from local wildlife organizations. Polar bears, besides seals and walrus, are a major source of meat, fat and skin for Eskimos, who live in small enclaves in coastal areas of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and northeastern Siberia. Numerous polar bears are also killed for sport by hunters, mainly from the USA, who pay up to US$28,000 for a hunting permit. But scientists say that the decision violates the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears. This was signed by Canada, Denmark, Norway, the United States and the Soviet Union, as it then was, to protect polar-bear populations and their habitats from excessive hunting. The agreement aims to ensure sustainable, science-based management of the mammals, and requires consultation between signatory parties before quotas can be changed. The observed increase in local density alone does not justify a higher quota. The amount of harvest could be much higher than the populations in the Baffin Bay can actually take. Canadian officials dismiss this view : scientific studies were certainly considered before increasing the quota, and officials in Nunavut claim that traditional Inuit knowledge about population size deserves more trust than it has had in the past. Of the Arctic region's estimated 25,000 polar bears, around half live in northern Canada. Worldwide, roughly 1,000 animals are killed each year by hunters. The species is not yet classified as endangered, but scientists are concerned that environmental changes may pose an increasing threat to the mammals. Norwegian researchers revealed in 2003 that bears that roam large distances accumulate relatively high levels of industrial pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), in their bodies^ref. Moreover, there is growing concern about habitat losses associated with global warming. The rise in the world's temperatures is particularly pronounced at high latitudes, and the resulting ice melt threatens to leave many bears homeless. To survive, animals are forced into smaller areas, and increasingly stay on land during summer. This is the most likely explanation for the observed concentration of bears in the Nunavut region
• lions are killing people in Tanzania 3 times as often as they did 15 years ago. Farmers should clear their land of bush pigs (Potamochoerus larvatus), the most common nocturnal crop pest and an attractive prey to lions, to reduce the number of clashes between lions and local people. Since 1990 to 2005, lions have killed more than 563 Tanzanians and injured at least 308, with fatal attacks increasing markedly over time. The problem seems to be the rising human population. In the past, lions have typically hunted wildebeast rather than bush pigs. But as Tanzanian communities have grown, the number of usual prey has diminished. Villagers have a tendency to sleep in their fields to guard their crops against nocturnal pests such as bush pigs. These farmers cannot afford to buy fences. So the pigs get in to the crops, the lions follow the pigs into the farms, and then the villagers fall prey to the lions. Both farmers and their families are killed: 18% of victims in the study period were younger than 10 years old. The intensified attacks have also taken a toll on the lions, thanks to people hunting the killers in retaliation. Experts fear lion populations are now shrinking rapidly. They want to kill the problem animals, but it's difficult to know who the problem animals are, so sometimes the response is indiscriminate. The number of lions being killed by people has probably increased by 10 fold over the past decade. There are roughly 100,000 lions in Africa, and at least a quarter of these live in Tanzania. The conflict has concerned wildlife biologists. It is problem number one when it comes to lion conservation. There's no close second. Outsiders often have an impression that lions are killed for trophy hunting, but this isn't the main issue. People outside of Africa seem to have forgotten how threatening these animals are. The new survey provides the first concrete evidence that lion attacks are worst in areas with bush-pig infestations. Digging trenches around fields to keep these animals away from crops would reduce the number of lions that follow them into areas with humans. There has long been a sense of helplessness in these areas : researchers are trying to provide fresh ideas
• the introduction of 8 female Texan panthers to an isolated population in Florida may have saved the animals from extinction and improved their genetic health, scientists say. The success of the controversial breeding effort has added weight to the theory that mixing up animal populations is good for the species' survival.  State and federal authorities decided to introduce the Texan panthers in 1995, as it seemed the only way to rescue Florida's subspecies of big cats (Puma concolor coryi). The Florida population was down to an estimated 30 animals at the time, with so much inbreeding that most of the panthers were related to each other. This had resulted in genetic problems such as low sperm counts and testicles that hadn't properly developed, which in turn led to low reproductive success. The introduction of the Texas subspecies (P. concolor stanleyana) has greatly improved that situation. 5 of the Texas panthers had offspring with the Florida panthers, and these hybrid kittens were > 3 times as likely to survive into adulthood than the pure Florida panthers. They also had fewer genetic abnormalities and were more often seen south of the panthers' usual stomping ground. The population is now up to a healthy 87 individuals. This is going to become the poster child for the importance of genetic interference in species management. The introduction of the Texas panthers was controversial, in part because researchers thought it would result in the loss of the 'pure' Florida population. Since 1995, however, researchers have realized that the two populations are actually more genetically similar than originally thought. A recent study identified the 2 as belonging to the same subspecies. There was also concern that the import of new genes could result in reproductive problems for the hybrid offspring. Previous studies have shown that this can happen when plant or insect subspecies are mixed, for example. There are only a handful of success stories showing that genetic rescue of populations can work, he says, and none of them were with mammals. The improved survival of the hybrids is down to the introduction of new genes. But others think the better survival rate of the hybrid animals could still be due to geographical, not genetic, reasons. Most of the hybrids are found further south than the pure breeds, he notes, where the conditions could be different. Whatever the case, the panther population will probably be stable for a while, but it may be necessary to introduce new genes a few decades from now to ensure that the animals don't become too inbred again. This kind of genetic rescue should be a valuable tool for many large mammals facing risk of extinction. In a sense, that's what this study is about : it's about lions and tigers and bears and the other big things that are now living in much smaller populations than they once used to be.
• pandas : archeologists have found that pandas were preyed upon and eaten by primitive people about 600,000 years ago, after studying about 30 sites with panda fossils in southwest China's Guizhou Province. Archeologists discovered panda fossils in about 30 places in Guizhou, including 7 sites inhabited by primitive people. The pandas were never domesticated and their appearance with the primitive people might prove they were preyed upon and eaten. The pandas moved relatively more slowly than other wild animals, though more agile than modern caged ones, so they were more likely to be caught by human beings and other animals. Since the 1960s, archeologists have discovered panda fossils, including 4 well-reserved ones, at various sites in Guizhou, including Qianxi and Hepan counties the cities of Bijie and Xingyi. Having been in existence for about 3 million years, pandas areacclaimed as living fossils in the world and have been among the best recognized and rarest animals in the world. Statistics from the State Forestry Administration show China has about 1,590 wild pandas, most living in mountainous areas in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. About 160 pandas live in captivity, and 70% of them were artificially bred. Pandas are threatened by loss of habitat, poaching and a low reproduction rate. Females in the wild usually have a cub once every 2-3 years. The number of giant pandas in a crucial wildlife reserve in western China seems to have doubled since 1998. The discovery raises hopes that this iconic species is on the road to recovery. There are many more pandas in the wild than we thought. A beloved symbol of the conservation movement, the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) once called China and most of Southeast Asia home. But pressure from human development has meant that these much-loved bears are now only found in mountainous regions of China's west. Tracking and counting the bears is difficult, as they are reclusive and live at a range of altitudes. Three previous surveys have been carried out in the 300-km² Wanglang reserve, as part of the Chinese government's efforts to quantify the entire panda population. In 1968, conservationists counted 196 pandas, whereas surveys in 1985 and 1998 yielded tallies of just 19 and 27, respectively. Large-scale bamboo die-offs in the 1980s may have caused the panda population to plummet since the first national survey was carried out. However, other factors, such as their habit of wide roaming and the incomplete coverage of the park's previous surveys may also have contributed to the low count. Giant pandas are traditionally surveyed by examining their faeces. These samples are easier to obtain than a real-life sighting, as pandas defecate as much as 40 times a day. Previous estimates of population size were obtained by studying the different bite sizes of bamboo segments in the excrement, giving a tally of how many bears are present. But these measurements cannot determine accurately the gender or age of the animal. They extracted DNA from mucus in the faecal samples, and counted the number of unique sequences. They identified 66 different bears, 35 males and 31 females^ref. That's more than double the number of bears found in the 1998 survey, the researchers point out. Bruford's team also discovered no evidence of inbreeding in the population, giving hope that the group will continue to grow. In total, there might be 3,000 giant pandas in the wild. According to the 1998 survey, the total number of bears in China was just 1,596. Bruford argues that his genetic method should now be applied to other parks to produce a more definitive census. There are many reasons why pandas are starting to rebound. These include an increase in the number of nature reserves, improved conservation management and recent foresting policies such as logging bans. As to whether the panda is making a full comeback, conservationists are uncertain. People always ask how many pandas is enough. It's hard to answer that question. Although the numbers are encouraging, careful monitoring of the panda population is necessary because their habitat is still threatened. We're not saying that the panda is out of the woods
• birds
• Socorro dove (Zenaida graysoni)
• the small, stocky, brown Po'o-uli (Malamprosops phaeosoma) was first discovered in 1973, in Maui's Ko'olau Forest Reserve. Even then it was desperately endangered, with an estimated population < 200 individuals. Since then, its decline has been steep. In 1995, < 7 birds were known and by 1997 that number had dropped to just 3 individuals. However, none of these 3 remaining Po'o-uli seemed keen to breed, and each maintained a distinct home range in Hanawi Natural Area Reserve and the immediately adjacent Haleakala National Park. In 2002, 1 of the 3 individuals was caught and placed in the range of another, in an attempt to get them to mate. But the plan failed and the introduced bird soon left the area. The following year conservationists decided to take drastic action and capture all 3 birds to begin a captive breeding programme. But this proved difficult, and only 1 bird was caught in September 2004, which is the individual that has just died. On Tuesday a hunt began for the 2 remaining birds - believed to be a male and a female - but they have not been seen for nearly a year and hopes for their survival are slim. The Po'o-uli, which was suffering from subclinical avian malaria, belonged to one of the world's most threatened bird families - the Hawaiian honeycreepers. The postmortem findings suggest that old age and the stress of captivity, but not the Plasmodium infection, were the major contributing factors. 13 other honeycreeper species have already died out, in what some are calling Hawaii's extinction crisis. Many species are in decline due to habitat loss and introduced predators. Tissue samples from the dead bird were saved for possible cloning in the future; it could be the species' only hope. As well as habitat loss, Hawaii's massive bird losses are blamed on introduced mosquitoes, which carry diseases like avian malaria. On top of the Po'o-uli, a further 7 species of Hawaiian honeycreeper are classified as Critically Endangered, with another endemic land bird, the Hawaiian Crow, now considered to be Extinct in the Wild.
• with a global population of just under 5,000 birds, the yellow-eyed penguin (Megadyptes antipodes) is classified by BirdLife as endangered and is considered to be the world's rarest penguin species. A a strain of cornynebacterium is striking penguins on Otago Peninsula and North Otago, with other outbreaks on Stewart Island and the Catlins coast, New Zealand. The main threats to yellow-eyed penguins include introduced predators such as domestic cats and loss of habitat. BirdLife classifies 3 of the world's 17 penguin species as endangered -- meaning they are threatened with extinction -- and 7 of them as vulnerable.
• a global survey of birds has revealed how hard it can be to identify 'hotspots' of species diversity that need to be protected. The mapped distribution of 9,500 bird species shows that there are major differences between hotspots based on three different types of biodiversity; it all depends on whether you refer to areas rich in species diversity in general, threatened species specifically, or endemic species, which have a limited habitat. The new finding suggests that targeting hotspots for conservation using just one measure of biodiversity risks missing many species that deserve protection^ref. Many previous studies have suggested that there is an overlap between, for example, threatened and endemic species, which makes intuitive sense. You might expect species to be endangered because of their limited range.


Hotspots of species richness (top), threatened species (middle), and endemic species (bottom). All 3 only overlap by 2.5%.
But Orme and colleagues found this not to be true, at least for birds. If you pick areas to conserve on the basis of where there are lots of endemic birds then this doesn't capture other types of diversity as well. In fact, it captures it surprisingly badly. With many different definitions of 'hotspots' abounding, the team defined them as the top 2.5% of world locations sporting the highest diversity by each of their 3 criteria. They then report that, for birds, threatened- and endemic-species hotspots share just 6.8% of their combined area. All three hotspot types share just 2.5% of their total area - and all of this overlap occurs in one area of the world: the Andes. This will make it more difficult to define areas for conservation : it is still possible, but it's not going to be easy. Different factors affect different types of diversity, notes Orme. Mountain ranges such as the Andes tend to harbour the most species, because they contain many different climate zones. Islands harbour the most endemic species because they are isolated. And threatened species are most likely to be found close to areas where many humans live, such as on the Malaysian peninsula. Some conservation groups argue that the new study won't necessarily affect their decision-making process about which areas to protect. For example, most threatened and endemic hotspots identified in the new study are already included in Conservation International's list of places that need protecting. Conservation International is a non profit organization that bases its strategy on a different hotspot principle. The best approach may be to look at all definitions of hotspots. "The different versions need not be viewed as competitive," says Norman Myers of Oxford University who invented the hotspot principle in 1988^ref. Rather, they should be considered to be mutually supportive. Others say that instead of arguing over the definition of a hotspot, conservationists should simply use computer simulations to check which strategies best avoid species loss. "I think the way ahead is to 'road test' different approaches, not to continue demonstrating whether there is overlap between hotspots based on different measures of biodiversity. In the meantime, Orme plans to do similar hotspot-mapping studies for other animal groups, such as mammals and amphibians. We chose birds to start with because they are comparatively well understood.
Web resources : Conservation International's Biodiversity hotspots page
Web resources :
• American Bird Conservancy
• The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
• BirdLife International
• amphibia
• the dramatic worldwide decline in populations of the leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) is largely due to the high mortality associated with their interaction with fisheries. The discovery of narrow migration corridors used by the leatherbacks in the Pacific Ocean raised the possibility of protecting the turtles by restricting fishing in these key areas : otherwise conservation efforts should be focused on 'hot spots' where leatherbacks meet fisheries^ref. Although turtles dive very deeply on occasion (one descended to a maximum depth of 1,230 metres, which represents the deepest dive ever recorded for a reptile), they generally restrict their diving to less than 250 metres, which increases the chance that they will encounter longline hooks