Putting together the Who’s Who of bats, bears, beaked whales and all of Earth’s other known mammals was a gigantic task ably assisted by a Field Museum scientific team with access to one of the planet’s most extensive and diverse mammal collections.

A team headed by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) is releasing its comprehensive status on the world’s mammals, including assessments of diversity, threat and knowledge of the creatures.  The Oct. 10 issue of Science will feature the results of the study.

A major reason for doing the assessment is to get a picture of how mammals on our planet are doing.  The news isn’t good.  One in four appears to be threatened with extinction and half the known species appear to be losing rather than gaining population.  For land mammals, destruction or degradation of their habitats is the biggest threat, while marine mammals suffer more from accident deaths stemming from fishing practices and pollution.

Field Museum Provides “Gold Standard” for Study

The comprehensive assessment, which covers 5,487 wild mammal species, represents five years of work by more than 1,700 scientists from 130 countries and is the first update on mammals since 1996.

Among those scientists were seven affiliated with Chicago’s Field Museum who helped colleagues from around the world by accessing the museum’s data base of 200,000 records that document the existence and relationships of thousands of species.  Field Museum zoologists have active survey programs and expertise in Asia, Africa, and the Americas; their recent collections inform and authenticate the status report.  Just this summer, Field zoologists Bill Stanley, Steve Goodman, and Julian Kerbis Peterhans returned to Chicago with important new collections from Tanzania, Madagascar, and the Congo Basin.

“The Field Museum provides the gold standard for biodiversity studies,” said Lawrence Heaney, a Field mammal curator and co-author of the study.  “Our records are based on research collections that are permanent and are constantly updated.”

Scientists Discover and Describe New Species

Besides information about mammals gathered over the 115 years that the Field Museum’s collection has existed, scientists have access to specimens that can provide genetic material and anatomic information to help clarify whether animals are members of different species, are part of a subspecies, or fall into some other category.

In the current mammal update from the IUCN, such questions loomed often as scientists raised the number of recognized species by nearly 20 percent over what it had been just 14 years ago.  This included 349 newly described species and 512 others that saw their status elevated to full-fledged species from some lesser category.

An example is the clouded leopard in Southeastern Asia, which was recently split into two separate species, with one living on the Southeast Asian continent and another native to the island of Borneo.

“Scientists are discovering 25 new mammal species a year,” said Bruce Patterson, a Field mammal curator and also a study co-author.  “We’re still describing them.  These aren’t beetles or flies.  They are our fellow vertebrates living on this planet.  And we don’t know them all.”

Storing thousands of samples in its collection, the Field can provide scientists access to specimen that may be difficult to find or even extinct for analysis with the latest technology.  Analysis of DNA is now possible for animals that lived and died before scientists even knew that DNA existed.

“We also can do isotopic analysis and study anatomy using a scanning electron microscope,” said Heaney, again applying techniques that were unknown at the time when the collection samples were taken.

Although many mammal species are endangered, the Field Museum’s Patterson found at least one upbeat message in the assessment project.  “It was possible to marshal this much expertise and information and focus it on critical environmental issues,” he said, “and it was all privately funded.  That is impressive.”

During October and November 2008, some 150 scientists from 40 institutions in eight nations — including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory — will take part in an international field experiment designed to make observations of critical components of the climate system of the southeastern Pacific.  Because elements of this system are poorly understood and poorly represented in global climate models, collecting real-time, complementary data from a variety of areas will go a long way toward improving scientists’ ability to use these models for making accurate predictions about Earth’s climate.

A total of five aircraft — including DOE’s G-1 Gulfstream research aircraft, operated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with instruments developed at both PNNL and Brookhaven — and two research ships will sample the lower atmosphere and upper ocean during the experiment.  Two sampling sites operated by research groups from Chile, Sweden, and the United States with conduct complementary sampling studies in the coastal region of Chile south of Santiago.

“We are motivated to participate in this study because the vast area of clouds in this region will provide an ideal laboratory for testing theories that have been developed at Brookhaven Lab regarding how precipitation forms in clouds and how aerosols affect cloud optical and microphysical properties,” said Brookhaven chemist Peter Daum, chief DOE scientist for the study.

The southeastern Pacific region is dominated by strong coastal upwelling, bringing cold, dense seawater from the deep ocean closer to the surface and resulting in extensive cold sea surface temperatures.  It is also home to the largest subtropical deck of low-lying stratocumulus clouds on Earth.

“These and other chemical and physical factors shape the regional climate and affect the global weather in ways that are poorly understood,” said C. Roberto Mechoso, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, who chairs the research program.  “Our research should produce a better understanding of the Southeast Pacific Ocean system, and improve our global computer climate models —which would lead to more confidence in climate forecasts, including predictions about global warming.”

Mechoso heads the scientific modeling arm of the research program, while Robert Wood, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, will lead the experimental field component.

Specifically, the scientists will focus on gaining a better understanding of:

* the processes that control the properties of stratocumulus clouds – including the influence of tiny aerosol particles emitted from smelters and volcanoes located on the South American continent

* the processes that control the transport of cold freshwater in the ocean

* the chemical and physical interactions between the lower atmosphere and upper ocean

The study is known as the Variability of the American Monsoon Systems’ (VAMOS) Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study Regional Experiment (VOCALS-Rex).  It is a component of a larger international climate study program, VOCALS.  The major goal of the VOCALS program is develop and promote scientific activities leading to improved understanding, model simulation, and predictions of the southeastern Pacific ocean-atmosphere-land climate system on day-to-day and year-to-year timescales.  The other major components of VOCALS are a modeling program ranging from local to global scales and a suite of extended observations from regular research cruises, instrumented moorings, and satellites.

The combination of intensive field measurements, long-term observations, and modeling will provide important insights that could directly benefit climate modeling, the researchers say.

One of the smallest seals – the Caspian has joined a growing list of mammal species in danger of extinction.

Scientists from the University of Leeds together with international partners have documented the disastrous decline of the seal a species found only in the land-locked waters of the Caspian Sea – in a series of surveys which reveal a 90 per cent drop in numbers in the last 100 years.

The research findings have prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to move the Caspian seal from the Vulnerable category to Endangered on its official IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, announced today in Barcelona [06 October 2008].

Dr Simon Goodman of Leeds’ Faculty of Biological Sciences says: “Each female has just one pup a year, so with numbers at such a low levels, every fertile female that dies is a nail in the coffin of the species.  We’re hoping that the seal’s change in Red List status will help raise awareness about their plight, and the many important conservation issues facing the whole Caspian ecosystem.”

Commercial hunting, habitat degradation, disease, pollution and drowning in fishing nets have caused the population of the seal collapse from more than 1 million at the start of the 20th century to around 100,000 today.

Results from surveys conducted in 2005 and 2006, published recently in the scientific journal Ambio, show that in 2006 there were only 17,000 breeding females, barely enough to keep the population viable, given the low survival rate of pups.

Moreover, new results from surveys conducted by the team in 2007 and 2008, show that since 2005 the number of pups being born has plummeted by a catastrophic further 60 per cent to just 6,000-7,000, and the number of adults seen on the breeding grounds of the winter ice-field is down by a third on 2005.

With commercial hunters from Dagestan in the Russian Federation killing more than 8,000 pups in recent years, the team is urging the governments of the Caspian countries to instate a ban on hunting as the first step in avoiding further declines.  “Without a suite of conservation measures there is a very high risk the species will become extinct, and possibly within our lifetime,” says Dr Goodman.

The team is using its latest figures and ongoing research to develop a conservation action plan, which will prioritise a ban on hunting the seal and establish protected areas with the countries bordering the Caspian Sea.  The basic plan has been completed, but the main recommendations are yet to be fully implemented by the countries of the region.

Dr Susan Wilson, a consultant in seal conservation biology and one of the authors of the Ambio paper says: “Although there are no easy fixes to the problems facing Caspian seals, we hope to get some concrete measures in place over the next year, particularly in Kazakhstan where the government has been quick to recognise the need for urgent action.”

From majestic African elephants to tiny and often unappreciated rodents, mammals on Earth are in a state of crisis.  One in four mammal species on Earth is being pushed to extinction, according to the Global Mammal Assessment, the most comprehensive assessment of the world’s mammals.

Writing in the October 10 issue of Science, (”The Status of the World’s Land and Marine Mammals: Diversity, Threat, and Knowledge”) and unveiling a “Red List” of endangered mammal species (at the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain), the researchers who worked on the exhaustive study say that from 25 percent to 36 percent of species may be in danger of extinction.

“It is frightening that after millions and millions of years of evolution that have given rise to the biodiversity of mammals we are perched on a crisis where 25 percent of species are threatened with being lost forever,” said Andrew Smith, an Arizona State University professor who played a key role in the mammalian assessment.  Smith and his research assistant, Charlotte Johnson, are two of the 103 authors of the Science paper.

The Global Mammal Assessment was conducted by more than 1,800 scientists from more than 130 countries working under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  It was made possible by the volunteer help of IUCN Species Survival Commission’s specialist groups and collaborations between top institutions and universities, including Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, University of Virginia, Conservation International, Sapienza Università di Roma and the Zoological Society of London.

The mammal assessment is the first comprehensive look at the health of terrestrial and marine mammals across the globe.  It is a companion assessment to similar documentation of the world’s amphibians, released four years ago by IUCN.

“Mammals are important because they play key roles in ecosystems and provide important benefits to humans,” Smith explained.  “If you lose a mammal, you often are in danger of losing many other species.”

The assessment shows that at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction.  At least 76 mammals have become extinct since 1500.  The real situation could be much worse as 836 mammals are listed as “data deficient.”

The culprits driving this precarious position include habitat loss and over exploitation for terrestrial mammals, and pollution, global warming and over exploitation for marine mammals, Smith said.

“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live,” said Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general in announcing the Red List.  “We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives.”

In the Science article, which includes the contributions of more than 1,700 scientists, the researchers state that 188 mammals are in the highest threat category of “critically endangered,” including the Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus), which has a population of just 84 to 143 adults and has continued to decline due to a shortage of its primary prey, the European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).

China’s Père David’s Deer (Elaphurus davidianus), is listed as “extinct in the wild.”  However, the captive and semi-captive populations have increased in recent years and it is possible that truly wild populations could be re-established soon.  It may be too late, however, to save the additional 29 species that have been flagged as “critically endangered, possibly extinct” including Cuba’s Little Earth Hutia (Mesocapromys sanfelipensis), which has not been seen in nearly 40 years.

Nearly 450 mammals have been listed as “endangered,” including the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), after its global population declined by more than 60 percent in the last 10 years due to a fatal infectious facial cancer.  The Fishing Cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), found in Southeast Asia, was listed as endangered due to habitat loss in wetlands.  Similarly, status of the Caspian Seal (Pusa caspica) was moved to endangered.  Its population has declined by 90 percent in the last 100 years due to unsustainable hunting and habitat degradation.

Habitat loss and degradation affect 40 percent of the world’s mammals.  It is most extreme in Central and South America, west, east and central Africa, Madagascar, and in south and Southeast Asia.  Over harvesting is wiping out larger mammals, especially in Southeast Asia, but also in parts of Africa and South America.

The Grey-faced Sengi or Elephant-shrew (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis) is only known from two forests in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania, both of which are protected but vulnerable to fires.  The species was first described this year and has been placed in the vulnerable category.

In order to improve the current state of these mammals, Smith suggests a few actions that could help immediately.

“Curtail the trade of endangered species,” he said.  “It would do an amazing amount of good for stabilizing the situation in Southeast Asia, which is a biodiversity hot spot.  There also is so much needless habitat loss.  Trees from too many lush tropical forests end up as coffee tables or in high-end furniture.”

Conservation’s role

“Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide,” the authors of the Science article state.  “Yet, more than simply reporting on the depressing status of the world’s mammals, these Red List data can and should be used to inform strategies for addressing this crisis, for example, to identify priority species and areas for conservation.

“Further, these data can be used to indicate trends in conservation status over time,” they added.  “Despite the general deterioration in the status of mammals, our data also show that species recoveries are possible through targeted conservation efforts.”

For example, the Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes) moved from extinct in the wild to endangered after a successful reintroduction by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service into eight western states and Mexico from 1991-2008.  Similarly, the Wild Horse (Equus ferus) moved from extinct in the wild in 1996 to critically endangered this year after successful reintroductions started in Mongolia in the early 1990s.

The African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) moved from vulnerable to near threatened, although its status varies considerably across its range.  The move reflects the recent and ongoing population increases in major populations in southern and eastern Africa.  These increases are big enough to outweigh any decreases that may be taking place elsewhere.

“This work sets a benchmark for us to understand what is happening with biodiversity of mammals worldwide and provides a platform from which all future conservation efforts can be measured,” said Smith, who initiated the database that was used to inventory the world’s mammals.  “This effort hopefully will spur greater attention on the conservation of mammals and the habitats they occupy, for the benefit of all biodiversity.”

Just as a credit crunch is reshaping the global economic landscape, an often-unheralded shortage of clean water is confronting business and industry with a range of profound new challenges and opportunities, according to an article scheduled for the October 6 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly news magazine.

The cover story, written by C&EN Senior Business Editor Melody Voith, points out that big industrial companies, such as Dow Chemical, General Electric, Nalco, and Ashland, must manage day-to-day operations in ways that conserve and reuse water.  Once regarded as a cheap and inexhaustible resource, clean water increasingly is in short supply around the world, Voith explains, noting that lack of clean water is “a growing risk” to industry.

“There is just no replacement for good, clean water — and it is getting harder to come by,” Voith states.  At the same time, companies that supply water purification and conservation technology are taking advantage of new opportunities.  The articles explain how companies are investing in new technologies to meet the evolving demand for water treatment chemicals, services, and equipment.

Researchers in Iran are publishing what they describe as the first study on a fungus that can remove sulfur — a major source of air pollution — from crude oil more effectively than conventional refining methods.  The finding could help reduce air pollution and acid rain caused by the release of sulfur components in gasoline and may help oil companies meet tougher emission standards for fuel, the scientists say.  Their study is scheduled for the Oct. 1 issue of ACS’ Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, a bi-weekly journal.

Jalal Shayegan and colleagues point out that existing processes for refining so-called “heavy,” or high-sulfur, crude oil convert sulfur to hydrogen sulfide gas at high temperatures and pressures.  However, they leave behind some kinds of sulfur-based compounds, which wind up in gasoline and other fuels.  Scientists long have known that certain microbes can remove sulfur from oil.  But nobody had tried using these microbes in so-called biodesulfurization of heavy crude oil until now, they indicate.

In the new study, the scientists describe isolation and testing of the first fungus capable of removing sulfur from heavy crude oil.  The fungus, called Stachybotrys, removed 65-76 percent of the sulfur present in certain heavy crude oil from two different oil fields.  The process does not need high temperatures and high-energy consumption because it occurs slightly above room temperature, they scientists note.

Researchers in Greece report design of a new material that almost meets the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 2010 goals for hydrogen storage and could help eliminate a key roadblock to practical hydrogen-powered vehicles.  Their study on a way of safely storing hydrogen, an explosive gas, is scheduled for the Oct. 8 issue of ACS’ Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

Georgios K. Dimitrakakis, Emmanuel Tylianakis, and George E. Froudakis note that researchers long have sought ways of using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to store hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles.  CNTs are minute cylinders of carbon about 50,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair.  Scientists hope to use CNTs as miniature storage tanks for hydrogen in the coming generation of fuel cell vehicles.

In the new study, the researchers used computer modeling to design a unique hydrogen-storage structure consisting of parallel graphene sheets — layers of carbon just one atom thick —stabilized by vertical columns of CNTs.  They also added lithium ions to the material’s design to enhance its storage capacity.  The scientists’ calculations showed that their so-called “pillared graphene” could theoretically store up to 41 grams of hydrogen per liter, almost matching the DOE’s target (45 grams of hydrogen per liter) for transportation applications.  “Experimentalists are challenged to fabricate this material and validate its storage capacity,” the researchers note.

In recent years, public discussion of climate change has included concerns that increased levels of carbon dioxide will contribute to global warming, which in turn may change the circulation in the earth’s oceans, with potentially disastrous consequences.

In a paper published today in the journal Science, researchers presented new data from their analysis of ice core samples and ocean deposits dating as far back as 90,000 years ago and suggest that warming, carbon dioxide levels and ocean currents are tightly inter-related.  These findings provide scientists with more data and insights into how these phenomena were connected in the past and may lead to a better understanding of future climate trends.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Jinho Ahn and Edward Brook, both geoscientists at Oregon State University, analyzed 390 ice core samples taken from Antarctic ice at Byrd Station.  The samples offered a snap shot of the Earth’s atmosphere and climate dating back between 20,000 and 90,000 years.  Sections of the samples were carefully crushed, releasing gases from bubbles that were frozen within the ice through the millennia.  These ancient gas samples were then analyzed to measure the levels of carbon dioxide contained in each one.

Ahn and Brook then compared the carbon dioxide levels from the ice samples with climate data from Greenland and Antarctica that reflected the approximate temperatures when the gases were trapped and with ocean sediments in Chile and the Iberian Peninsula.  Data from the sediments provided the scientists with an understanding of how fast or slow the ocean currents were in the North Atlantic and how well the Southern Ocean was stratified during these same time periods.

The researchers discovered that elevations in carbon dioxide levels were related to subsequent increases in the Earth’s temperature as well as reduced circulation of ocean currents in the North Atlantic.  The data also suggests that carbon dioxide levels increased along with the weakening of mixing of waters in the Southern Ocean.  This, the researchers say, may point to potential future scenario where global warming causes changes in ocean currents which in turn causes more carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere, adding more greenhouse gas to an already warming climate.

Ahn and Brook state that a variety of factors may be at work in the future that alter the relationship between climate change and ocean currents.  One potential factor is that the levels of carbon dioxide in today’s atmosphere are much higher than they were during the period Ahn and Brook studied.  The researchers hope that future studies of the ancient gas from a newly drilled ice core may allow a higher resolution analysis and yield more details about the timing between CO2 levels and the temperature at the earth’s poles.

While cellulosic biofuels derived from grasses, crop residues and inedible plant parts have real potential to be more efficient and environmentally friendly than grain-based biofuels like corn ethanol, more research and science-based policies are needed to reap these benefits, says an international group of experts.

In an article published Friday (Oct.  3) in the journal Science, Purdue University agricultural economist Otto Doering and a team of 22 other scientists write that there is an urgent need for more comprehensive and collaborative research.  This will help next-generation fuels avoid the pitfalls of grain-based biofuels, which include increased nutrient runoff and clearing of new land to recoup lost food production, Doering said.

“It’s important that we begin thinking about how to deal with the unintended consequences of cellulosic biofuels as early as possible in order to ensure that they can be produced sustainably,” Doering said.

The Renewable Fuel Standard within last year’s energy bill guarantees cellulosic biofuels a relatively bright future, mandating that American companies purchase 21 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol by 2022.  But many questions remain unanswered, like how to comprehensively measure the impact of biofuels.  To date, measures often reflect a single dimension rather than considering the system as a whole.

“There are a broad array of concerns,” Doering said.  “We need to consider biofuel’s likely impact on water use and availability along with water quality, especially nutrient runoff.  Greenhouse gas emissions must also be considered, as well as effects on soils and the landscape.”

Rising demand for corn grain ethanol has gone hand-in-hand with increased water use and, oftentimes, increased nutrient runoff, Doering said.  There also is mixed evidence that corn grain ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions.  The intensive corn cultivation encouraged by high ethanol demand can degrade soil and water quality, he said.

Doering, recently appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, said more work is needed to develop and successfully apply “best management practices” to minimize nutrient, chemical and water use while limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s important to remember, Doering said, that existing best management practices can help soften the impact of increased corn production and intensified agriculture.  Such practices include no-till farming methods, planting of cover crops, diversity-oriented crop rotation and inclusion of uncultivated fallow land into the landscape.  All these practices help retain soil nutrients and offer benefits like wildlife habitat and natural pest suppression.

Cellulose, a complex carbohydrate present in all plant tissues, is more abundant in plants than starch.  Humans also are unable to digest cellulose.  This means cellulosic feedstocks are less likely to displace acreage devoted to food crops.

“The paper is really a plea to think carefully before jumping into cellulosics,” Doering said.  “We want to avoid making mistakes we’re likely to later regret.”

Michigan State University researcher G. Philip Robertson was lead author of the Science article.  Authors hail from universities and institutions from two countries and 16 states.

After reaching the second-lowest extent ever recorded last month, sea ice in the Arctic has begun to refreeze in the face of autumn temperatures, closing both the Northern Sea Route and the direct route through the Northwest Passage.

This year marked the first time since satellite measurements began in the 1970s that the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast Passage, and the Northwest Passage were both open at the same time for a few weeks.

“NIC analysis of ESA’s Envisat and other satellite datasets indicated that the Northern Sea Route opened when a path through the Vilkitski Strait finally cleared by 5 September,” NIC Chief Scientist Dr Pablo Clemente-Colón said via email from aboard the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy in the Arctic, where he is conducting joint mapping operations with the Canadian Coast Guard.

“This is the first time in our charting records that both historic passages opened up in the same year,” Clemente-Colón said.  “Both of the routes appeared as closed by 22 September.”

Northwest Passage The Northwest Passage’s most direct route, a long-sought shortcut from Europe to Asia through the Canadian Arctic that has been historically impassable, opened up for the second consecutive time this year.

“As early as 18 August 2008 the Northwest Passage began appearing navigable in the US National Ice Center (NIC) analysis of Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data although we were cautious in announcing it as a significant amount of ice was still prevalent,” Clemente-Colón said.

The indirect, more southerly route – called the Amundsen Northwest Passage – opened up in July 2008, and according to ASAR images is about to close in the coming days.

The Northern Sea Route extends from the Norwegian Sea, along the Arctic coast of Asia and through the Bering Sea to the Pacific Ocean, while the Northwest Passage runs along the north coast of the North American continent.

Each year, the Arctic Ocean experiences the formation and then melting of vast amounts of ice that floats on the sea surface, but the rate of overall loss has accelerated.

During the last 30 years, satellites that have been observing the Arctic have witnessed reductions in the minimum ice extent at the end of summer from around 8 million km² in the early 1980s to the historic minimum of less than 4.24 million km² in 2007, as observed by Envisat.

The fact that this year’s minimum extent, which was well below the long-term average, did not break last year’s record does not signify a recovery.

“Although last year’s summer sea ice minimum extent record was not broken, a record amount of the thickest multiyear sea ice was actually lost this season impacting the thickness of the sea ice presently found around the North Pole region and setting the stage for more minimum or near-minimum records in upcoming years,” Clemente-Colón said.

Dr Clemente-Colón aboard the icebreaker Healy The Arctic is one of the most inaccessible regions on Earth and is prone to long periods of bad weather and extended darkness, so obtaining measurements of sea ice was difficult before the advent of satellites.

Radar instruments aboard Earth observation satellites, such as Envisat’s ASAR sensor, are particularly suited for monitoring Polar Regions because they are able to acquire images through clouds and darkness.

ESA has been providing satellite data on the cryosphere for more than 20 years.  The agency is currently contributing to the International Polar Year 2007-2008, one of the most ambitious coordinated science programmes ever undertaken in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Further exploitation of data collected over the Arctic since 1991 is part of an ESA Initiative on Climate Change that will be proposed to the ESA Member States at its Ministerial Conference in November 2008.  The proposal aims to ensure delivery of appropriate information on climate variables derived from satellites.

In 2009, ESA will make another significant contribution research into the cryosphere with the launch of CryoSat-2.  The observations made over the three-year lifetime of the mission will provide conclusive evidence on the rates at which ice thickness and cover is diminishing.

It moves as quickly in sand as a fish moves through water, which is why this lizard, a species of skink (Scincus scincus) that grows to about 15 cm long and lives in the deserts of North Africa and the Near East, is commonly known by the name “sandfish.”Although it looks fairly unremarkable, this desert animal has a thing or two to teach materials-handling and process-technology specialists,as it spends most of its time below the surface of the sand and moves through its element extremely efficiently,and scientists hope to apply the insights they gain from nature to improve industrial technologies for the handling of granular materials.Whether it’s gravel, sand or flour, optimising the technology for handling such materials could significantly reduce energy and maintenance costs for businesses such as quarries and industrial bakeries in the future.

In a new article published in the journal PloS ONE, Prof.  Werner Baumgartner and colleagues from the Department of Cellular Neurobionics at RWTH Aachen used an MRI scanner to observe the sandfish as it “swims” through the sand.

“We took a round container that would fit snugly into the MRI and filled it with sand,” says Prof.  BaumgartnerBaumgartner.The project, which was carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of Würzburg and Museum König in Bonn, has provided a visual record of the animal’s movements in the sand as viewed from above and from the side.

The scientists found the results highly surprising:until now, it was thought that the sandfish pulled its legs in against its body, but the experiments revealed that it actually moves its legs back and forth in a fixed pattern.”This seems illogical at first, because sand provides resistance,” says Baumgartner.”But we found out that its leg movements are very well coordinated with the wriggling of its body.”

It turns out that the sandfish moves in a way very similar to the crawl stroke in swimming.When the animal moves its head or upper body to the left, for example, it leaves a gap and thus an area of looser, less dense sand to its rightthat allows the animal to move its front right leg forward with little effort.Conversely, when the sandfish moves its upper body to the right a moment later, the sand on that side is compressed; this compact sand provides a stable basis from which to push off its front right leg.The time displaced-movements of the lizard’s legs according to this principle add up to a very efficient and extremely rapid form of locomotion.

Interestingly, the biologists discovered that the sandfish always moves through sand at the same frequency.”The lizard’s winding movements produce vibrations in the sand,” explains Baumgartner.”Our experiments showed that these vibrations have a consistent frequency of 3 hertz (three motions per second).”

The scientists hypothesized that this frequency allows the animal to move forward with the least amount of energy,and subsequent tests confirmed their assumption.They did so by building an aluminium model of a sandfish with a motor and having it move back and forth through the sand at different frequencies.They found that the force required to move the aluminium sandfish forward was lowest at exactly 3 Hz, as that was when the sand surrounding its body was loosest.

“The sandfish adapted to moving efficiently through granular material over millions of years,” says the Aachen-based neurobionics expert.Scientists are increasingly applying insights gained from nature to a wide range of innovative technological uses.”For example, we can use mathematical and computer-based models to calculate the ideal frequency for transporting all different kinds of granular materials,” says Baumgartner.

Thus materials-handling and process-technology engineers are not the only ones who can learn from the sandfish;structural engineers stand to benefit, as well.For instance, by using the optimal frequency for the job, they will now be able to sink ground anchors into granular soil layers more efficiently, which will save both energy and money.

It’s one of the hallmarks of spring: a swarm of bees on the move.  But how a swarm locates a new nest site when less than 5% of the community know the way remains a mystery.  Curious to find out how swarms cooperate and are guided to their new homes, Tom Seeley, a neurobiologist from Cornell University, and engineers Kevin Schultz and Kevin Passino from The Ohio State University teamed up to find out how swarms are guided to their new home and publish their findings on October 3rd 2008 in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

According to Schultz there are two theories on how swarms find the way.  In the ’subtle guide’ theory, a small number of scout bees, which had been involved in selecting the new nest site, guide the swarm by flying unobtrusively in its midst; near neighbours adjust their flight path to avoid colliding with the guides while more distant insects align themselves to the guides’ general direction.  In the ’streaker bee’ hypothesis, bees follow a few conspicuous guides that fly through the top half of the swarm at high speed.

Schultz explains that Seeley already had still photographs of the streaks left by high-speed bees flying through a swarm’s upper layers, but what Seeley needed was movie footage of a swarm on the move to see if the swarm was following high-velocity streakers or being unobtrusively directed by guides.  Passino and Seeley decided to film swarming bees with high-definition movie cameras to find out how they were directed to their final destination.

But filming diffuse swarms spread along a 12·m length with each individual on her own apparently random course is easier said than done.  For a start you have to locate your camera somewhere along the swarm’s flight path, which is impossible to predict in most environments.  The team overcame this problem by relocating to Appledore Island, which has virtually no high vegetation for swarms to settle on.  By transporting large colonies of bees, complete with queen, to the island, the team could get the insects to swarm from a stake to the only available nesting site; a comfortable nesting box.  Situating the camera on the most direct route between the two sites, the team successfully filmed several swarms’ chaotic progress at high resolution.

Back in Passino’s Ohio lab, Schultz began the painstaking task of analysing over 3500 frames from a swarm fly-by to build up a picture of the insects’ flight directions and vertical position.  After months of bee-clicking, Schultz was able to find patterns in the insects’ progress.  For example, bees in the top of the swarm tended to fly faster and generally aimed towards the nest, with bees concentrated in the middle third of the top layer showing the strongest preference to head towards the nest.  Schultz also admits that he was surprised at how random the bees’ trajectories were in the bottom half of the swarm, ‘they were going in every direction,’ he says, but the bees that were flying towards the new nest generally flew faster than bees that were heading in other directions; they appeared to latch onto the high-speed streakers.  All of which suggests that the swarm was following high-speed streaker bees to their new location.

Sea otters are known as a keystone species, filling such an important niche in ocean communities that without them, entire ecosystems can collapse.  Scientists are finding, however, that sea otters can have even farther-reaching effects that extend to terrestrial communities and alter the behavior of another top predator: the bald eagle.

In nearshore marine communities, towering kelp can reach heights of 250 feet and function much like trees in a forest, providing food, homes and protection for fish and invertebrates.  The most important enemies of these giant algae are tiny sea urchins, only inches in diameter, which live on the kelp’s holdfasts and eat its tissue.  When urchin populations become too large, they can defoliate entire kelp forests, leaving only barren remains.

Enter the sea otter.  Otters can eat the spiky urchins whole, making them the major urchin predator.  The otters’ presence keeps urchin populations in check and maintains the balance of the ecosystem.

Scientists have known about these kelp forest community interactions since the 1970s.  But in the October issue of the journal Ecology, Robert Anthony and colleagues report that the presence or absence of otters can also affect the diet of bald eagles, a neighboring terrestrial predator.  Anthony is an ecologist with the Oregon Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit of the U.S. Geological Survey and Oregon State University.

Bald eagles live in high densities along the Aleutian archipelago off the coast of Alaska and place their nests on islets, coastal cliffs and shoreline sea stacks.  Historically, more than 90 percent of the eagles’ food comes from the ocean.  Sea otters once also occupied a large range of coastal marine environments near these islands, but in recent years, otter populations have declined in response to their own main predator.

“All of the available data point to increased numbers of killer whales as the direct cause of the sea otter decline in southwest Alaska,” says coauthor Jim Estes of the U.S.G.S. and the University of California at Santa Cruz.  “The otter decline has caused a phase shift in the coastal ecosystem from a kelp dominated phase state to a deforested phase state.”

This shift means many fewer kelp forest fish for the eagles to eat.  In response, the eagles have adjusted their foraging tactics.  Anthony and his colleagues surveyed remains of bald eagle prey in their nests during 1993 and 1994, when otters were abundant and the kelp forests were healthy, and in 2000, 2001 and 2002, when otters were scarce and the kelp forests had collapsed.  They found that when otters were abundant, eagle prey consisted of predominantly kelp-forest fish and sea otter pups.  When the otters were rare, however, the proportion of marine birds in the eagles’ diet was much higher.

Anthony explains that because the eagles defend territories in dense patches along the coastline and there are few terrestrial animals to eat, they must be flexible in what they hunt.

“These bald eagles are opportunistic foragers as a consequence of their evolutionary history,” he says.  “They’ve developed foraging territories they defend against members of the same species along these coastlines, and the terrestrial environment provides very little for them.  So they forage over the open water.”

Anthony and his colleagues also found that the eagles had more young on average during 2000-2002, a fact that Anthony believes might be a result of a high caloric content in the eagles’ increasingly seabird-dominated diet.

“Across the range of this species, their diet can be quite varied, but here it appears as though the change in diet had either a neutral or positive effect,” he says.  The propensity of the eagles to adapt quickly to a changing environment may have allowed them to flourish, but Anthony also cautions that adapting to this scenario might be difficult for more specialized predators.

The results are the first to show that the presence or absence of otters influences a terrestrial animal, and that the complex food web linkages can reach as far as five different food chain levels: from sea otters to sea urchins, kelp, marine fish and finally bald eagles.

“Top-down linkages can be very distant from their origin,” says Anthony.  “The effects of top predators can ripple throughout the ecosystem in ways we’re just beginning to understand.”

As the southern pine beetle moves through the forest boring tunnels inside the bark of trees, it brings with it both a helper and a competitor.  The helper is a fungus that the insect plants inside the tunnels as food for its young.  But also riding along is a tiny, hitchhiking mite, which likewise carries a fungus for feeding its own larvae.

Now the picture of this peculiar, millennia-old arrangement has grown even more curious.  Writing in the Oct. 3 issue of Science, a team of researchers reports that the pine beetle harnesses a second microorganism – a bacterium known as an actinomycete – to protect its fungus from the mite’s competing one.  What’s more, the bacterium does so by wielding an antibiotic that is brand new to science.

The isolation of the novel antifungal compound – dubbed mycangimycin for the specialized compartments, or mycangia, in which the beetles carry both their fungi and bacteria – raises the intriguing possibility that other such discoveries could follow.

“There are perhaps 10 million species of insects on the planet,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison evolutionary biologist and symbiosis expert, Cameron Currie, who led the study with Harvard University chemist Jon Clardy.  “So, if insects associate with actinomycetes like this more generally, then there’s potentially a huge number of new places to explore.”

The realization couldn’t come at a better time.  Historically, the greatest source of antibiotics in the world has been the actinomycetes, especially members of the genus Streptomyces.  But in recent years, the number of new compounds successfully isolated from these organisms – and indeed from all microbes – has dwindled, even as resistance to existing antibiotics has spread.

Whether symbiotic associations end up being a treasure trove of new antimicrobials and other useful agents remains to be seen.  But it’s promising to see insects pairing up with actinomycetes.

“Actinomycetes are likely very attractive in these situations because of their potent antibiotic-producing abilities,” says UW-Madison graduate student, Jarrod Scott, who works with Currie.  “In much the same way that we recognize the power of these microorganisms, I think other organisms, in an evolutionary sense, have also recognized their power.”

Currie also has good reason to suspect these interactions are widespread.  In the 1990s, he was the first to discover that a fungus-farming ant, the leaf-cutter, used an actinomycete to protect its fungal crop from a parasitic mold.  That got him thinking about the importance of parasites and disease in the evolution of all organisms, and how these pressures may have led many insects to team up with beneficial microbes as a defense.

Beyond the leaf-cutting ants and pine beetles, one other example of this type of relationship is now established.  “But it hasn’t been systematically examined,” says Currie.  “If we actually start to look, we may find these associations to be very common.”

That one of the pine’s most devastating enemies in the southern United States and Mexico relies so heavily on a bacterium seems incredible, but that’s precisely the case for the southern pine beetle.  If the beetle’s fungus, Entomocorticium, is outgrown by the mite’s fungal partner, Ophiostoma, the beetle larvae will starve.  Holding Ophiostoma in check has therefore become the job of the actinomycete.

What’s interesting about the small molecule antibiotic it produces, though, is that it doesn’t seem to target Ophiostoma specifically.  The researchers instead suspect Entomocorticium has developed some resistance over time, says Scott, allowing it to survive the same low doses of antibiotic that wipe out its competitor.

This suggests the antibiotic could have broad-spectrum activity against other fungi and parasites, a possibility the team is now investigating.  And the discovery of a novel antifungal compound is especially exciting because many of these agents can serve double-duty as anticancer drugs, says Currie.

But for him and Scott, the greatest outcome would be wider recognition of the crucial role microbes play in the lives of all plants and animals, not just as parasites, but frequently as partners.

“Organisms like the pine beetle wouldn’t be able to do what they do without microbes,” says Scott.  “So, we’re interested in microorganisms as the basis of their success.

The United States lacks the standards to ensure that producing biofuels from cellulose won’t cause environmental harm, says a distinguished group of international scientists.  But because the industry is so young, policymakers have an exceptional opportunity to develop incentive programs to ensure the industry doesn’t harm the environment.

“Environmental standards are needed now, before the industry moves out of its research and development phase,” said Phil Robertson, Michigan State University professor of crop and soil sciences and lead author of the paper “Sustainable Biofuels Redux” published in the Oct. 3 issue of the journal Science.  “With production standards and incentive programs, cellulosic biofuel cropping systems could provide significant environmental benefits.”

Currently, all the commercial ethanol produced in the United States is made from grain, primarily corn.  Robertson said that science has shown that almost all intensive grain-based cropping systems, as currently managed, cause environmental harm.  As director of the MSU Long-Term Ecological Research program at the Kellogg Biological Station, part of Robertson’s research focuses on management practices that can reduce these negative effects.

“We can soften the environmental impacts by using strategies such as no-till farming to minimize erosion and planting cover crops to sequester carbon and reduce nitrogen and phosphorus run-off,” he said.  “But few farmers use all of the best available practices because there are limited incentives –and many disincentives – for them to do so.  As the technology to make biofuels from cellulose is refined and commercialized, we believe it’s crucial that the industry and legislators adopt policies that reward environmentally sustainable production practices for cellulosic biofuels.  It’s equally important for grain-based systems.”

This is one of the first times such a large and diverse group of internationally recognized scientists have spoken with one voice on the issue.  The 23 authors are some of the world’s top ecologists, agronomists, conservation biologists and economists.  The paper is the result of discussions that took place at a spring workshop on the environmental sustainability of biofuels sponsored by the Ecological Society of America.

“This was truly a collaborative effort,” Robertson said.  “There are strong and divergent scientific opinions on the sustainability of biofuel cropping systems.  That this group, with its diverse backgrounds and professional experiences, can come to consensus is remarkable.  Decision-makers should take notice.”