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Endangered skates saved from extinction by hatching in captivity

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Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Newly hatched Maugean skatesJayson Semmens/University of Tasmania One of the world’s most endangered species of marine fish has been saved from extinction, thanks to researchers who captured wild specimens and helped them reproduce in captivity. The Maugean skate (Zearaja maugeana) is only found in Macquarie harbour on the extremely isolated and rugged south-west coast of Tasmania, Australia. The area is already a naturally low-oxygen environment, making it difficult for fish to thrive, but human impacts, especially salmon farming and river flow changes as a result of hydroelectric dams, have made the situation worse. Jayson Semmens at the University of Tasmania says while no-one knows the exact population of these skates, a collapse between 2014 and 2021 saw it halve. There may now be just over 1000 individuals, he says, and of greatest concern is that they are now predominantly adults, meaning that juveniles aren’t reaching maturity. As a marine heatwave tightened its grip last year in this region, off south-eastern Australia, Semmens and his colleagues decided to undertake a radical intervention to try to safeguard the skates from extinction. In December 2023, the team collected 50 eggs and saw over half of them successfully hatch in captivity. They also collected four adults, two of which died within a fortnight. The two survivors were kept separate, so the team was shocked when the remaining female laid eggs. Semmens says this is because the skates are able to store sperm, to fertilise eggs later. “She’s been laying on average every four days, two eggs every time,” he says. “We have over a hundred eggs from her now and the vast majority of them are looking like they’re going to be viable.” In order to maximise the genetic variability of the captive-reared juveniles, the team is considering capturing other females that have already been inseminated, obtaining eggs and then releasing the females back to the wild. But team member David Moreno, also at the University of Tasmania, says captive breeding isn’t the full solution, so the researchers are also working to reverse environmental issues in Macquarie harbour, including a trial of pumping oxygen into the water. There is no quick fix and even if the captive -reared individuals are able to be released immediately, it would be four to five years before they reached maturity and could start contributing to the population. The stakes are high if the recovery effort fails. “This would be the first extinction of a ray or shark species in modern history,” says Moreno. “So it is a really big line in the sand.”

The Maugean skate (Zearaja maugeana) is only found in one habitat in Australia, which is under threat from human activity. Now the species has been saved from extinction by hatching in captivity

Newly hatched Maugean skates

Jayson Semmens/University of Tasmania

One of the world’s most endangered species of marine fish has been saved from extinction, thanks to researchers who captured wild specimens and helped them reproduce in captivity.

The Maugean skate (Zearaja maugeana) is only found in Macquarie harbour on the extremely isolated and rugged south-west coast of Tasmania, Australia. The area is already a naturally low-oxygen environment, making it difficult for fish to thrive, but human impacts, especially salmon farming and river flow changes as a result of hydroelectric dams, have made the situation worse.

Jayson Semmens at the University of Tasmania says while no-one knows the exact population of these skates, a collapse between 2014 and 2021 saw it halve. There may now be just over 1000 individuals, he says, and of greatest concern is that they are now predominantly adults, meaning that juveniles aren’t reaching maturity.

As a marine heatwave tightened its grip last year in this region, off south-eastern Australia, Semmens and his colleagues decided to undertake a radical intervention to try to safeguard the skates from extinction.

In December 2023, the team collected 50 eggs and saw over half of them successfully hatch in captivity. They also collected four adults, two of which died within a fortnight. The two survivors were kept separate, so the team was shocked when the remaining female laid eggs.

Semmens says this is because the skates are able to store sperm, to fertilise eggs later. “She’s been laying on average every four days, two eggs every time,” he says. “We have over a hundred eggs from her now and the vast majority of them are looking like they’re going to be viable.”

In order to maximise the genetic variability of the captive-reared juveniles, the team is considering capturing other females that have already been inseminated, obtaining eggs and then releasing the females back to the wild.

But team member David Moreno, also at the University of Tasmania, says captive breeding isn’t the full solution, so the researchers are also working to reverse environmental issues in Macquarie harbour, including a trial of pumping oxygen into the water.

There is no quick fix and even if the captive -reared individuals are able to be released immediately, it would be four to five years before they reached maturity and could start contributing to the population.

The stakes are high if the recovery effort fails. “This would be the first extinction of a ray or shark species in modern history,” says Moreno. “So it is a really big line in the sand.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

Europe saved its predators from the brink of extinction. So why is it killing thousands of bears, wolves and lynx?

With Sweden issuing permits to kill a fifth of its bears, and Romanian MPs voting to double its quota, and the debate over hunting season has become a political issueThe forest was unnaturally still when Soňa Chovanová Supeková first picked up the bear’s scent. It was roe deer rutting season in southern Slovakia, and the hills below the Carpathian mountains were busy with tourists biking and foraging for mushrooms. Fellow hunters who had come face to face with bears had told Supeková the fear had been so great they could not lift their rifles. Sitting with her father, a hunter in his 80s who had killed a few bears, she found herself in a similar state of dread – she was out on that trip expecting to kill deer, and did not want to come on a bear unexpectedly.“Fear permeated me … the smell penetrated to the tip of my bones,” says Supeková, the founder of the Club of Slovak Lady Hunters. But the bear never appeared. The next morning, the daughter-and-father hunting duo saw its droppings. “We breathed a sigh of relief only in the car.” Continue reading...

The forest was unnaturally still when Soňa Chovanová Supeková first picked up the bear’s scent. It was roe deer rutting season in southern Slovakia, and the hills below the Carpathian mountains were busy with tourists biking and foraging for mushrooms. Fellow hunters who had come face to face with bears had told Supeková the fear had been so great they could not lift their rifles. Sitting with her father, a hunter in his 80s who had killed a few bears, she found herself in a similar state of dread – she was out on that trip expecting to kill deer, and did not want to come on a bear unexpectedly.“Fear permeated me … the smell penetrated to the tip of my bones,” says Supeková, the founder of the Club of Slovak Lady Hunters. But the bear never appeared. The next morning, the daughter-and-father hunting duo saw its droppings. “We breathed a sigh of relief only in the car.”A 124kg male bear was one of 19 shot during the first day of hunting in Ljusdal, central Sweden, on 21 August 2020. Photograph: Adam Ihse/TT News Agency/AlamyEurope’s brown bears are a protected species. But they – alongside wolves and lynxes – are increasingly crossing paths with farmers, forestry officials and hunters such as Supeková. The appetite for killing big carnivores has shot up as wolf and bear populations have grown, several bear attacks have made headlines, and politicians have taken aim at laws that brought back them back from the brink of extinction.Sweden has issued permits to kill 486 of its brown bears, about 20%, this hunting season, which runs until mid-October. In 2023, the country conducted record-breaking culls of lynxes and wolves. Romania’s MPs voted in July to double its hunting quota from 220 brown bears to 481. In Slovakia, where a bear was recently filmed rampaging through a village, lawmakers voted in June to allow hunting near villages under certain conditions. In July, the European court of justice ruled that recent wolf culls in Austria and Spain were unlawful. Earlier in the year, Switzerland also faced legal challenges for its proposal to kill 70% of its wolf population.The wolf is no longer an animal with two ears, four legs and one tail; it is a political subjectThe debate around shooting protected species has provoked such fury among farmers, hunters and conservationists that it has bubbled up to the highest levels of bureaucrats in Brussels. The European Commission, whose president, Ursula von der Leyen, had a pony killed by a wolf two years ago, is seeking to downgrade the animal’s protection status.“The wolf is no longer an animal with two ears, four legs and one tail; it is a political subject,” says Luigi Boitani, a zoologist at the Sapienza University of Rome and chairman of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, a conservation group. “There’s a lot of polarisation. When you speak about wolves and bears, the world is not a variety of greys, it’s black or white.”Wolves were killed off across much of Europe in the 19th and 20th century, but began to bounce back in the 1970s as people moved from villages to cities, and governments later protected the animals and their habitats. A similar shift happened with brown bears and lynxes, with conservationists resettling them in regions from which they had been wiped out.Wolves shot in a hunt on 1 January 2020, as filmed in the Guardian documentary The Wolf Dividing Norway. Photograph: Kyrre Lien/The GuardianThe continent is now home to six species of large carnivore, and the EU bans killing them, with some exceptions – for example if they pose a danger to the public. Perched at the top of their food chain, the animals help ecosystems thrive by regulating prey populations. There is also some evidence they can limit the spread of disease.But the scale and speed of their return – there are thought to be more than 20,000 wolves and 17,000 bears in Europe – has increasingly led to conflicts with humans. Farmer and hunting lobbies have pushed to reduce the number of hurdles needed to kill them as the animals have expanded their territory and attacked people and livestock.A week after Supeková found the bear’s tracks in the forest, she says: “A farmer’s son met a bear on a forest road when he was mushroom picking in a place only about 2km away. Luckily, the bear ran away.”Footage of a bear barrelling down the streets of a small Slovakian town captured international attention in March, with five injured in the attack. So too did the death of a Belarusian hiker who died when fleeing from a bear the day before. The attacks prompted a change in law to let Slovak security services shoot brown bears that come within half a kilometre of a human settlement. A few months later in Romania, the death of a 19-year-old hiker at the hands of a bear led to the prime minister calling lawmakers back from their summer break for an emergency session in which they voted to cull more bears.A bear ran amok in the Slovakian town of Liptovský Mikuláš in March this year, leading to a change in the law on shooting bears. Photograph: undefined/Courtesy of Trnkova BizubovaPeople from villages and the countryside want to reduce the numbers of bears because attacks are increasing, says Supeková. “What’s very tragic is that one bear in the town of Liptovský Mikuláš injured five people, running across the town where children were outside playing games.”The issue has become fodder for populist parties courting rural votes, with politicians blasting Brussels for putting their children at risk and abandoning villages out of elitist environmental concerns.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionCritics say the deaths are tragic but have been blown out of proportion. In Romania, which is home to the most brown bears in Europe, the animals killed 26 people and injured 276 over 20 years, according to the environment ministry. Data from Eurostat shows that motorised vehicles killed 45,000 people in the country in that time.Cultural associations are a problem for the wolf, which has long been portrayed as the villain of fairytales. Helmut Dammann-Tamke, president of the German hunting association and politician with the centre-right Christian Democrats, says the threat of wolf attacks on sheep is “like something on a serving platter” for the far right because it reaches people on an emotional level. “This issue is an incendiary force in the hands of populists.”A 2022 study of German municipalities found that wolf attacks on livestock predict far-right support. After controlling for factors such as immigration and jobs, the researchers found wolf attacks were associated with far-right gains in municipal elections of between one and two percentage points. “The evidence points to wolf attacks as one potential driver of electoral radicalisation,” the authors wrote.Environmental activists question whether blanket policies to cull animals will do much to avoid conflicts with humans and have called for measures to promote peaceful coexistence that range from fences and guard dogs to awareness campaigns for visitors.Scientists are not yet troubled by the wolf’s population across the continent, but have warned that killing wolves in countries with small populations could prove catastrophic. Large-scale culls could put populations of these predators below local survival levels, they warn. Culls can even increase predation of livestock, as packs are disrupted, sending lone, vulnerable wolves venturing on to farms to hunt. The same “backfire” effect has also been documented with cougars and coyotes.Spanish farmers protest against the protection of wolves and bears in Madrid in 2021, ahead of the country’s ban on wolf hunting later that year. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty ImagesCiprian Gal from the Romanian branch of Greenpeace said the Europe-wide trend of weakening protection for big carnivores was “a step backwards” that echoed times when humans felt a strong sense of competition with wildlife.“European governments, influenced by dominant populist rhetoric and powerful hunting and agricultural lobbies, seem to be choosing solutions based on fear and rapid economic return,” he says. “In a way, this is a backlash against the ambitious green policies of recent years and a valve for those still struggling to cope with the climate reality we’re facing.”

Extinction
Forests
Mountains

A Record-Breaking 17 California Condor Chicks Hatched at the L.A. Zoo This Year

The successful breeding season offers more hope for the endangered species, which has come back from the brink of extinction due to captive breeding efforts

A California condor chick rests in a clear container lined with paper at the L.A. Zoo. L.A. Zoo via Instagram Weighing 17 to 25 pounds and possessing a wingspan of up to 9.5 feet, California condors are the largest flying birds in North America. But in 1982, only 22 individuals were left in the world. Flash forward to the present, and the Los Angeles Zoo has just reported the hatching of its 17th chick of the year, thanks to a new breeding technique. The zoo announced the happy news, which breaks its 1997 record of 15 condor chicks in one breeding season, in a statement on Friday. “This is a historic moment for the California Condor Recovery Program and the Los Angeles Zoo’s animal care team,” Rose Legato, curator of birds at the L.A. Zoo, says in the statement. “Our condor team has raised the bar once again in the collaborative effort to save America’s largest flying bird from extinction. What we are seeing now are the benefits of new breeding and rearing techniques developed and implemented by our team.” The L.A. Zoo, along with other California Condor Recovery Program (CCRP) facilities in the United States and Mexico, breeds endangered California condors for release into the wild. The breeding birds in L.A. reside in structures the staff calls “condor-miniums,” as zoo spokesperson Carl Myers tells the Los Angeles Times’ Corinne Purtill. Once a pair successfully fertilizes an egg, the animal caretakers put it in an incubator. Then, right before eggs are due to hatch, they place each egg with an adoptive condor parent. In their natural habitats, California condors usually raise one chick at a time—so for a long time, if there were more eggs than condor parents available, the leftover chicks would be raised by humans. Oh, Baby! Meet California Condor Chick LA124! The human surrogate parents tried their best to give the hatchlings a natural experience—even using bird puppets and stuffed animals to prevent them from associating people with food. But in the words of the Verge’s Justine Calma, “condor moms still make much better parents than humans trying to step in.” Young condors raised by condors have a higher chance of survival in the wild. So in 2017, the L.A. Zoo animal care staff tried giving two eggs to a single adoptive condor parent. The technique, which had never been attempted by any other zoo or CCRP partner at that point, was successful. “The result is more condor chicks in the program and ultimately more condors in the wild,” Legato adds in the statement. This year, the zoo team was inspired to try three chicks per single condor. The birds were receptive to this, too, and ultimately the condor surrogate parents raised six chicks in triple broods, eight chicks in double broods and three chicks in single broods. All hatchlings will remain at the zoo for about a year and a half before being evaluated for release into the wild. “Condors are social animals, and we are learning more every year about their social dynamics. So, I’m not surprised that these chick-rearing techniques are paying off,” Jonathan C. Hall, a wildlife ecologist at Eastern Michigan University, tells the Los Angeles Times. “I would expect chicks raised this way to do well in the wild.” Condor keeper Mike Clark gently handles California condor eggs in a green bucket. L.A. Zoo via Instagram California condors used to be a common species across North America, but their numbers began to decline with the arrival of settlers in the 19th century, who killed them and destroyed their nests. In 1967, the federal government declared the California condor an endangered species, but the giant birds’ numbers continued to dwindle because of pesticides like DDT, microtrash, habitat loss and—most crucially—lead poisoning from bullet fragments left in animal carcasses that they scavenge. “California condors are part of nature’s cleanup crew,” Ashleigh Blackford, the California Condor Recovery Program coordinator, tells the Guardian’s Coral Murphy Marcos. “Although it’s not an appealing job, it’s an essential job.” But due to environmental pollutants, this role put the birds at risk. Then, in 1979, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created the CCRP. The program is now a multi-entity mission that collaborates with the L.A. Zoo as well as private and public agencies, NGOs and Indigenous tribes. Recovery efforts have been highly successful—as of the end of 2023, there are 561 living California condors, of which 344 are in the wild. The trouble isn’t over yet, however, as California condors are now facing the risk of avian influenza. In response to this threat, CCRP partners have been vaccinating the birds before releasing them. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Extinction
Animals
Government

Sparrow Spared, Cactus Extinct, and More Links From the Brink

This month’s best and worst environmental stories also include a rebounding lynx, a climate lawsuit boom, and a spa for frogs. The post Sparrow Spared, Cactus Extinct, and More Links From the Brink appeared first on The Revelator.

Earlier this month I visited some friends at their home on the banks of the Columbia River — a house that could soon be under the Columbia River due to climate change and sea-level rise. That same week we got news about Hurricane Beryl causing destructive floods around the United States, along with devastating floods in Brazil, India, China, and Kenya. Other floods this month caused destruction and fatalities in Liberia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and several other U.S. states. Is it any wonder that the sound of dripping water plunges me into a panic attack? Welcome to Links From the Brink. Best News of the Month: When I last wrote about the Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus) in 2018, the critically endangered bird species had experienced a devastating population crash, leaving fewer than 100 individuals in the wild. As one conservationist told me at the time, “This is going to be North America’s next extinct bird if we do nothing.” Well, we did do something. Some of the last birds were brought into captivity before they could die out, and even since then they’ve been breeding like there’s no tomorrow. As a result, they have a tomorrow. This month the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and partner organizations released their 1,000th captive-bred grasshopper sparrow into the wild. This seems to indicate that these rare birds have been saved from what just a few years ago seemed like an extinction in the making. There’s a lesson in this amazing milestone: “These little birds represent a big beacon of hope that our commitment, partnership and holistic approach can save vulnerable wildlife from the brink of extinction,” as Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida president Andrew Walker told The Guardian. Of course, all the captive breeding in the world can’t save a species if it has nowhere to live. Florida remains one of the most development-hungry places in the United States, and grasshopper sparrows’ habitat still needs protection and restoration. But 1,000 birds in six years is an amazing achievement, and it’s one worthy of celebration and emulation. More Good News That May Have Fallen Through the Cracks: Lynx from the brink: The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus), once critically endangered, has recovered thanks to decades of intense conservation effort. The IUCN last month reassessed the species as merely “vulnerable to extinction.” In 2005 the lynx population had fallen to an estimated 84 mature cats; the most recent count put them at a healthy (but still risky) 648. The small predators benefitted from efforts to increase previously overhunted rabbit populations, which, once restored, finally gave the lynx plenty to eat and thrive. The IUCN warns, though, that another rabbit crash, a disease, or high mortality from roads could quickly undo this conservation victory. Wolves: When wolves returned to Washington state in 2008, many hunters bemoaned that white-tail deer populations would suffer. Well, guess what — it didn’t happen. New research shows that wolves have had a minimal effect on deer in the Evergreen State — far below that of cougars (which also get a bad rap in WA) and habitat loss (i.e., development — the bane of communities throughout the West as people flock to this part of the country). Meanwhile Washington rejected a push to remove state endangered-species status for wolves and lowered its previously lax cougar-hunting quotas to more sustainable levels. Conservationists praised both decisions. We imagine wolves and mountain lions were pretty happy, too. Europe: After two years of debate, the European Union passed its Nature Restoration Law last month — which, according to news site Euractiv, “will set legally binding targets to restore 20% of the EU’s degraded land and sea ecosystems by 2030 and all ecosystems by 2050.” The bill got watered down a bit (farmers get a bit of a pass), but this seems like a good model for other 30×30 goals. (Speaking of which, six years is still a pretty tight deadline … ) Sued: A new report finds that the number of companies facing climate-related lawsuits keeps rising dramatically — and that most of these corporations are losing in court. Most of the recent lawsuits target so-called “climate-washing” — a willful misrepresentation of their progress toward promised climate goals. (The lessons: Lies cost you $$$.) Fined: More losing: Marathon Oil just got socked with a $64.5 million fine for Clean Air Act violations at the Fort Berhold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, in the heart of the Bakken shale oil fields. The company must also pay another $177 million toward reducing its future emissions. General Motors, meanwhile, must pony up $146 million in fines because its vehicles emitted at least 10% more carbon dioxide than their compliance reports claimed. (Either of these items could actually go in the “bad news” category, since the spewing of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants went on so long before either company got caught and punished, but we’ll leave them in with the other wins for now as a warning to other gasbag corporations.) Fined, part 2: French regulators this month fined conservative broadcaster CNews €20,000 (about $22,000) for allowing a pundit to spread climate skepticism (aka disinformation) without editorial follow-up or rebuttal. I’ll admit, as an advocate of free speech and the free press, I have doubts about this approach to forcing balance from news outlets. For one thing, it seems the right wing could have weaponized this approach to water down good climate reporting if they’d come to power in France in this month’s narrowly won elections. Still, I’m intrigued and wonder if this could help stem the tide of further disinformation or if it will just cause pundits to double down on their lies. (Probably the latter, alas.) Spa day: “Frog saunas” could help an endangered Australian species, the green and golden bell frog (Ranoidea aurea), recover from the deadly chytrid fungus, which has caused dozens of amphibian extinctions over the past few years. (This technique hasn’t proven helpful for other species, unfortunately.) Frogs enjoy their day in the sun. Photo courtesy Macquarie University Vroom vroom: Another new report finds that rural families are saving thousands of dollars a year with electric vehicles. (Yes, these are the same rural families who many people assumed would resist transitioning away from gas-powered cars, trucks, and farm equipment. Shows what the “experts” know.) Renewables: China is building twice as much renewable energy (specifically wind and solar) as every other country combined. (How do you say “This should light a fire under everyone else’s ass” in a carbon-neutral manner?) (Seriously though, I don’t want to blindly praise China for this; its environmental record is terrible. But so is ours, so c’mon folks, catch up.) And finally, a peak: Even fossil-fuel companies predict the world will hit peak oil demand next year. They see the writing on the wall (and the lawsuits in the wings?). Worst News of the Month: Getting back to that theme of flooding, the United States just lost its first species due to sea-level rise: the Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii). Despite its geographically based monicker, this rare cactus grows on a handful of scattered islands in the Caribbean. But it’s no longer found in its namesake Key Largo — storm surges inundated the limestone outcrop where it once grew, increasing salt levels beyond what the plants could tolerate. The storms also washed away a lot of soil, which is kind of a basic need for plants. It wasn’t just the salt water that caused problems. These cacti stored fresh water in their bodies, which then became a source of hydration for thirsty animals when the coasts became inundated with undrinkable sea water. The cactus declined quickly amidst this one-two-three punch. In 2021 the Key Largo population — previously described as “thriving” — had deteriorated to just six stands. This month scientists announced that even those last individuals had disappeared. But the species still exists on other islands, and scientists harvested the last Key Largo plants’ flowers and fruits in 2021 to cultivate them in a greenhouse setting. So far they’re doing fine, but the chance of replanting them in their native habitat appears slim. This isn’t a full-on species extinction, but it is a local extinction caused by sea-level rise, the first of its kind identified to date in the United States. And it could be a portent of things to come, as botanist Jennifer Possley said in a press release: “Unfortunately, the Key Largo tree cactus may be a bellwether for how other low-lying coastal plants will respond to climate change.” That said, I’m going to nudge this back into the “kinda-good” category, because at least scientists recognized the problem in time, saved what they could, and took the opportunity to warn us about future threats. That’s the type of proactive conservation that we should all aspire to and celebrate, even if it’s a part of the ongoing extinction crisis. Bad News Quick Hits: (Sorry. Let’s not dwell, but let’s not look away, either.) Chevron The Supreme Court in general Fiberglass in oysters and mussels 10.3 billion people by 2084? Protestors jailed Bitcoin = crashed power grids? The last ‘akikiki? (This breaks my heart.) Coal consumption could go up next year? Quote of the Month: “Inside your trash can is the possibility to change the world if you apply some creativity and some love. All trash is treasure.” — Troll artist Thomas Dambo, in The Washington Post   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Thomas Dambo (@thomasdambo) That’s it for this edition of Links From the Brink. We’ll be back in a month or two with another roundup of under-the-radar news stories. Until then, keep an eye on the 2024 election, watch out for heat waves and wildfire smoke (not to mention floods), and check in on your neighbors in need (both human and wild). Meanwhile, mark your calendars for International Owl Awareness Day on Aug. 4, World Krill Day on Aug. 11, Panamanian Golden Frog Day on Aug. 14, and (my favorite) International Orangutan Day on Aug. 19. What will you be watching in the months ahead? Scroll down to find our “Republish” button The post Sparrow Spared, Cactus Extinct, and More Links From the Brink appeared first on The Revelator.

Extinction
Climate
CO2

Jurassic fossils show modern mammals grow faster than ancient ones

The 166-million-year-old fossils of an adult and a juvenile of the same extinct mammal species reveal that they had longer "childhoods" and lifespans than similar species today

Krusatodon kirtlingtonensis, a small mammal that lived during the Jurassic PeriodMaija Karala In the middle of the Jurassic Period, small mammals had much longer lives than their modern counterparts, and spent years instead of weeks being cared for by their parents. This suggests that at some point, small mammals underwent a significant shift in how quickly they grow – but it is unclear precisely what caused it. The finding is based on two fossilised skeletons of an extinct mouse-sized creature called Krusatodon kirtlingtonensis, which lived on the Isle of Skye in Scotland around 166 million years ago. The fossils were unearthed decades apart: the first in the 1970s, and the second in 2016. Together, they are a rare find – two fossils from the same species, one an adult, one a juvenile. The research team could compare the specimens to see how the animals grew and developed. “It meant that we could start asking questions we couldn’t have dreamt of with just one specimen,” says Elsa Panciroli at the National Museum of Scotland. First, the scientists used X-ray imaging to count the annual growth rings in the specimens’ teeth, which, similar to rings in a tree trunk, can be used to estimate age. They found that the adult specimen was around 7 years old and the juvenile was between 7 months and 2 years old. Because the youngster still had its baby teeth, Panciroli says she expected the juvenile fossil to be much younger. “That was quite surprising because this animal is about the size of a squirrel or shrew,” says Panciroli. “We would expect it to be replacing its teeth much earlier – within weeks or months. So we knew immediately that it must have grown very differently [than modern species].” The finding suggests K. kirtlingtonensis took up to two years to wean from its mother, a notable leap from the handful of weeks it takes most modern small mammals. Analysis of the fossils’ bone lengths and size revealed that the animals “were also growing throughout their whole lives”, says Panciroli. Today, small mammals like mice grow rapidly when young, but stall once they reach adulthood. VIDEO Exactly when and why small mammals underwent this developmental shift isn’t clear. Panciroli says it could have been linked to environmental changes, or be the result of mammals developing warmer blood and faster metabolisms. Panciroli’s team returns to the Isle of Skye each year, and she is optimistic that they will be able to more fully understand this change. “Hopefully, in years to come, we’ll find more fossils or new methods of asking those questions,” she says.

Extinction
Animals

Historic Loss: Rising Seas Completely Eradicated a U.S. Species for the First Time

The United States has witnessed the local extinction of the Key Largo tree cactus due to sea level rise, a first in the country. The...

The Key Largo tree cactus was initially found growing in the United States in 1992 at a single site. That population has since been lost to a combination of rising sea levels and increasingly intense storms. Credit: Photo courtesy of Susan KoltermanThe United States has witnessed the local extinction of the Key Largo tree cactus due to sea level rise, a first in the country. The cactus, already under pressure from salt water intrusion, hurricanes, and animal grazing, has seen its last remaining stems salvaged for cultivation to prevent total extinction.The United States has witnessed the complete loss of its sole population of the large Key Largo tree cactus, a development that researchers attribute to the first local extinction of a species in the country due to sea level rise.The Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii) still grows on a few scattered islands in the Caribbean, including northern Cuba and parts of the Bahamas. In the United States, it was restricted to a single population in the Florida Keys, first discovered in 1992 and monitored intermittently since.  Saltwater intrusion from rising seas, soil depletion from hurricanes and high tides, and herbivory by mammals had put significant pressure on the population. By 2021, what had been a thriving stand of about 150 stems was reduced to six ailing fragments, which researchers salvaged for off-site cultivation to ensure their survival.“Unfortunately, the Key Largo tree cactus may be a bellwether for how other low-lying coastal plants will respond to climate change,” said Jennifer Possley, director of regional conservation at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and lead author on a study published Tuesday, July 9 that documents the population’s decline.Two closely related cacti negatively affected by environmental changeComparatively little is known about Florida’s rare cacti. Researchers initially stumbled upon the Key Largo tree cactus in an isolated mangrove forest, and for several years afterward, its identity remained uncertain. Most considered it to be a unique population of the similarly named Key tree cactus (Pilosocereus robinii), a federally endangered species that is present elsewhere in the Florida Keys.The two cacti have a similar appearance. The stems of both shoot up perpendicular to the ground and can grow to be more than 20 feet tall. Both have cream-colored flowers that smell like garlic and reflect moonlight, attracting bat pollinators, while their bright red and purple fruit catch the eye of birds and mammals.The Key Largo tree cactus can grow to impressive heights. Credit: Photo courtesy of Susan KoltermanBut there are key differences as well, which made Alan Franck, currently the herbarium collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History, suspect they were dealing with something unique on Key Largo.“The most striking difference is the tuft of long, woolly hairs at the base of the flowers and fruits,” Franck said. The hair is so thick, it can look as though the cactus is covered in drifts of snow. Spines of the Key Largo cactus are also twice as long as they are on the Key tree cactus.In 2019, Franck confirmed that the Key Largo population was the first and only known instance of Pilosocereus millspaughii in the U.S.By then, it was succumbing to some of the same environmental pressures that had plagued its relative, the Key tree cactus, over the last century. The latter was once common throughout the Florida Keys, but its numbers dipped dangerously low as more people moved to the area.Writing in 1917, botanist John Small noted that the Key tree cactus “was for a long time very abundant [on Key West]…In recent years, with the destruction of the hammock for securing firewood and for developing building sites, this interesting cactus has become scarce, until at present it is on the verge of extermination in its natural habitat.”The Key tree cactus was listed as federally endangered in 1984, but its numbers continued to wane. Between 1994 and 2007, it decreased by 84%.Researchers at Fairchild began monitoring all of the tree cactus populations annually in 2007, working in tandem with local land managers. One Fairchild-led study showed that salt levels were higher in soil beneath dead vs. living cacti in the years following a storm surge event in the Lower Keys, drawing a clear connection between mortality and increased salinity.Researchers also initiated a robust conservation collection for these species. Potted cacti are grown at a facility in Coral Gables, Florida, and seeds from both wild and cultivated plants are carefully banked for long-term conservation.Researchers study and rescue the remnants of a dwindling stockThe Key Largo tree cactus grew on a low limestone outcrop surrounded by mangroves near the shore. The site originally had a distinct layer of soil and organic matter that allowed the cactus and other plants to grow, but storm surge from hurricanes and exceptionally high tides eroded away this material until there wasn’t much left.Salt-tolerant plants that had been previously restricted to brackish soils beneath the mangroves slowly began creeping up the outcrop, an indication that salt levels were increasing.Given enough time, these changing conditions would likely have killed the cactus. But other incidents occurred that hastened the pace.Staff from Fairchild and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection removed all remaining green material in 2021 after it became clear the population was not going to survive. Credit: Photo courtesy of Jennifer Possley“We noticed the first big problem in 2015,” said study co-author James Lange, a research botanist at Fairchild. When he and his colleagues arrived to evaluate the plants that year, half of the cacti had died, apparently as a result of an alarming amount of herbivory. Cacti store reserves of water in their succulent stems, which allows them to survive for long periods of time without rain. This makes them enticing to animals when other sources of water are scarce.“In 2011, we started seeing saltwater flooding from king tides in the area,” Lange said, referring to particularly high ocean tides. “That limits the amount of freshwater available to small mammals and might be related to why the herbivores targeted this cactus, but we can’t say for sure. We’d never seen cactus herbivory like this anywhere in the Lower Keys, where flooding has tended to be less extensive.”The team set out cameras in hopes of finding the culprit, but whatever it was did not return, and there was no evidence of significant herbivory thereafter. Yet, when the team came back the following year, roughly another 50% of the population had died. In response, staff from Fairchild and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection took a few cuttings of what remained to grow in greenhouses.In 2017, category 5 Hurricane Irma swept across South Florida, creating a 5-foot storm surge. The highest point on Key Largo is only 15 feet above sea level, and large portions of the island remained flooded for days afterward. Once the storm had passed, the Fairchild team conducted triage with several cactus populations throughout the Keys, removing branches that had fallen on cacti and salvaging other ill-fated material. Conditions were so extreme that biologists had to put out kiddie pools of freshwater to keep local wildlife alive.Exacerbating the already degrading Key Largo tree cactus habitat, king tides in 2019 left large portions of the island, including the extremely low-lying outcrop, flooded for over three months.By 2021, there were only six Key Largo tree cactus stems left. As it was clear the population wasn’t going to survive, the team allowed the plants to flower and fruit for the remainder of the year, then salvaged all remaining green material and replanted it in greenhouses or controlled settings outdoors. At present, researchers know of no naturally growing Key Largo cacti in the United States.“We have tentative plans with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to replant some in the wild,” Possley said. Similar efforts are responsible, in large part, for the continued existence of the related Key tree cactus in Florida. “The amount of reintroduced material of this species is already more than the amount of wild material that’s left,” Possley said.But, she added, this may end up being more of a stopgap than a solution. Environments suitable for tree cacti are disappearing along with the plants they support. “It’s generally a fringe between the mangroves and upland hammocks called thorn scrub, and there just aren’t many places like that left where we can put reintroduced populations.”The decline of the Key Largo tree cactus and the necessity of its removal has given researchers an idea of what to expect in the future as species contend with a rapidly warming world. Instead of a smooth, predictable rise in sea or salt levels, the reality of climate change is messier and manifests itself in a complex series of related events that put additional pressure on species that are already stressed.“We are on the front lines of biodiversity loss,” said study co-author George Gann, executive director for the Institute for Regional Conservation. “Our research in South Florida over the past 25 years shows that more than one in four native plant species are critically threatened with regional extinction or are already extirpated due to habitat loss, over-collecting, invasive species, and other drivers of degradation. More than 50 are already gone, including four global extinctions.”Reference: “First U.S. vascular plant extirpation linked to sea level rise? Pilosocereus millspaughii (Cactaceae) in the Florida Keys, U.S.A.” by Jennifer Possley, James J. Lange, Alan R. Franck, George D. Gann, Trudy Wilson, Susan Kolterman, Janice Duquesnel and Joseph O’Brien, 9 July 2024, Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.DOI: 10.17348/jbrit.v18.i1.1350The study was funded by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. 

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