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Meet the Brazilian Velvet Ant, a Rare 'Ultra-Black' Wasp That's So Dark It Absorbs Almost All Visible Light

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Thursday, December 19, 2024

The wasp species known as the "velvet ant" has a pattern of white and ultra-black coloration. © shrike2 via iNaturalist under CC BY-NC 4.0 The Caatinga is a stark, dry shrubland in northeastern Brazil. In Tupi, an Indigenous language, its name means “white forest,” describing the arid grasses, thorny trees and pale, stony soil that dominate the landscape. But scurrying across this land of extreme whiteness is, paradoxically, one of the darkest animals on Earth: a species of velvet ant known as Traumatomutilla bifurca. With its furry exterior and distinct black and white markings, the insect “looks like magic,” Vinicius Lopez, an entomologist at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro in Brazil, tells Katrina Miller of the New York Times. As it happens, velvet ants, known colloquially to Brazilians as “sorcerer ants,” are actually a type of wasp, but the females, which are wingless, give the creatures their name. And, according to a study led by Lopez and published earlier this month in the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, velvet ants have another claim to fame: The black parts of females possess a rare coloration known as “ultra-black,” so dark that it absorbs nearly all visible light. “We have never seen this kind of color in the dragonflies or bees or beetles we have analyzed,” Rhainer Guillermo-Ferreira, another entomologist at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro who collaborated with Lopez on the paper, explains to the New York Times. Unlike melanin, which makes animals like crows and black panthers appear dark, the researchers note that ultra-black is not just a matter of pigmentation. Instead, they write in the paper, these colors “are formed in nature by a sophisticated arrangement of microstructures” alongside dark pigments. In the female velvet ant, these microstructures include overlapping stacks of lamellae, or layers of tissue, beneath dense, hair-like setae. Combined with a black pigment, these features in the insect’s exoskeleton “minimize reflectance and enhance light absorption,” the researchers write. Visible and ultraviolet light gets trapped in the layers, and less than 1 percent is able to escape. Dakota McCoy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study, lauds the researchers’ use of multiple electron microscopy techniques “to try to see what the whole story was,” according to the New York Times. The mating display of a male superb bird of paradise shows off its ultra-black feathers. (A) Edwin Scholes / (B) Tim Laman via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 4.0 This type of research is cutting-edge, because ultra-black coloration is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. Traumatomutilla bifurca is the first known ultra-black member of the Hymenoptera order, which includes more than 150,000 species of ants, wasps, sawflies and bees. Along with some butterflies, it is one of the only ultra-black insects. Though this trait is rare, the advantages for animals that do possess it are wide-ranging. For peacock spiders and birds of paradise, the profound darkness may accentuate their vivid other colors and help them stand out to potential mates, according to a 2019 study. For deep-sea fish like the fangtooth, ultra-black serves as an “evolutionary tactic that gives some fishes an invisibility cloak,” Courtney Sexton wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2020. And for vipers, a 2013 study suggests the intense coloration can help the snakes regulate their temperature. In the case of female velvet ants, the little available evidence on their species’ mating preferences suggests the ultra-black hue doesn’t have to do with attracting males. And while it might play a role in protecting the wasps from ultraviolet light, the team couldn’t prove that. Instead, the researchers propose that the wasps’ ultra-black is related to protection from predators. Velvet ants are already known as “indestructible insects” because of their painful stings, venom and hard exoskeletons, according to the paper. Their dark color could serve as a warning to would-be predators. Some researchers see these natural advantages of ultra-black in animals as a blueprint for man-made materials. Ultra-black butterfly wings, for instance, hint at the possibility of extremely lightweight and absorptive material that could be used to harness solar energy, hone precision telescopes to detect the faintest light traveling across space or produce a camouflage coating for military vessels. “The blackest black should be a constantly improving number,” Brian Wardle, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, told Natalie Angier of the New York Times in 2019. What makes ultra-black butterflies so black? Scientists are also on the hunt for the counterpart of ultra-black: ultra-white, a color that reflects up to 97.9 percent of sunlight. As climate change elevates temperatures across the globe, engineered ultra-white paint could help cool airplanes, cars and spacecraft without relying on air conditioning. Still, many questions remain for researchers about how and why these extreme patterns of coloration occur in the wild. For instance, why do male velvet ants not have ultra-black pigmentation and instead reflect light at a much higher rate than females? What environmental pressures are responsible for dividing velvet ant evolution along these lines? But, as Guillermo-Ferreira points out to the New York Times, these waspy denizens of the Caatinga are rich with research potential. “Every time we study velvet ants, they give us some new, interesting result.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

While the distinctive coloration is thought to be a warning to predators, it also has intriguing implications for designing man-made materials

a velvet ant on the ground
The wasp species known as the "velvet ant" has a pattern of white and ultra-black coloration. © shrike2 via iNaturalist under CC BY-NC 4.0

The Caatinga is a stark, dry shrubland in northeastern Brazil. In Tupi, an Indigenous language, its name means “white forest,” describing the arid grasses, thorny trees and pale, stony soil that dominate the landscape.

But scurrying across this land of extreme whiteness is, paradoxically, one of the darkest animals on Earth: a species of velvet ant known as Traumatomutilla bifurca.

With its furry exterior and distinct black and white markings, the insect “looks like magic,” Vinicius Lopez, an entomologist at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro in Brazil, tells Katrina Miller of the New York Times.

As it happens, velvet ants, known colloquially to Brazilians as “sorcerer ants,” are actually a type of wasp, but the females, which are wingless, give the creatures their name. And, according to a study led by Lopez and published earlier this month in the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, velvet ants have another claim to fame: The black parts of females possess a rare coloration known as “ultra-black,” so dark that it absorbs nearly all visible light.

“We have never seen this kind of color in the dragonflies or bees or beetles we have analyzed,” Rhainer Guillermo-Ferreira, another entomologist at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro who collaborated with Lopez on the paper, explains to the New York Times.

Unlike melanin, which makes animals like crows and black panthers appear dark, the researchers note that ultra-black is not just a matter of pigmentation. Instead, they write in the paper, these colors “are formed in nature by a sophisticated arrangement of microstructures” alongside dark pigments.

In the female velvet ant, these microstructures include overlapping stacks of lamellae, or layers of tissue, beneath dense, hair-like setae. Combined with a black pigment, these features in the insect’s exoskeleton “minimize reflectance and enhance light absorption,” the researchers write. Visible and ultraviolet light gets trapped in the layers, and less than 1 percent is able to escape.

Dakota McCoy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study, lauds the researchers’ use of multiple electron microscopy techniques “to try to see what the whole story was,” according to the New York Times.

side-by-side of a bird with blue feathers at its front and a fan-like display of ultra-black. Its head appears to blend in fully, showing just two bright blue patches that look like eyes
The mating display of a male superb bird of paradise shows off its ultra-black feathers. (A) Edwin Scholes / (B) Tim Laman via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 4.0

This type of research is cutting-edge, because ultra-black coloration is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. Traumatomutilla bifurca is the first known ultra-black member of the Hymenoptera order, which includes more than 150,000 species of ants, wasps, sawflies and bees. Along with some butterflies, it is one of the only ultra-black insects.

Though this trait is rare, the advantages for animals that do possess it are wide-ranging. For peacock spiders and birds of paradise, the profound darkness may accentuate their vivid other colors and help them stand out to potential mates, according to a 2019 study. For deep-sea fish like the fangtooth, ultra-black serves as an “evolutionary tactic that gives some fishes an invisibility cloak,” Courtney Sexton wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2020. And for vipers, a 2013 study suggests the intense coloration can help the snakes regulate their temperature.

In the case of female velvet ants, the little available evidence on their species’ mating preferences suggests the ultra-black hue doesn’t have to do with attracting males. And while it might play a role in protecting the wasps from ultraviolet light, the team couldn’t prove that.

Instead, the researchers propose that the wasps’ ultra-black is related to protection from predators. Velvet ants are already known as “indestructible insects” because of their painful stings, venom and hard exoskeletons, according to the paper. Their dark color could serve as a warning to would-be predators.

Some researchers see these natural advantages of ultra-black in animals as a blueprint for man-made materials. Ultra-black butterfly wings, for instance, hint at the possibility of extremely lightweight and absorptive material that could be used to harness solar energy, hone precision telescopes to detect the faintest light traveling across space or produce a camouflage coating for military vessels.

“The blackest black should be a constantly improving number,” Brian Wardle, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, told Natalie Angier of the New York Times in 2019.

What makes ultra-black butterflies so black?

Scientists are also on the hunt for the counterpart of ultra-black: ultra-white, a color that reflects up to 97.9 percent of sunlight. As climate change elevates temperatures across the globe, engineered ultra-white paint could help cool airplanes, cars and spacecraft without relying on air conditioning.

Still, many questions remain for researchers about how and why these extreme patterns of coloration occur in the wild. For instance, why do male velvet ants not have ultra-black pigmentation and instead reflect light at a much higher rate than females? What environmental pressures are responsible for dividing velvet ant evolution along these lines?

But, as Guillermo-Ferreira points out to the New York Times, these waspy denizens of the Caatinga are rich with research potential. “Every time we study velvet ants, they give us some new, interesting result.”

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Read the full story here.
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Gitmo' in the Mojave: How the Marines are saving endangered desert tortoises

The Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base houses vulnerable young desert tortoises until they're hardy enough to withstand predators and drought. The endangered species' continued existence in the wild may hinge on programs like these.

Reporting from TWENTYNINE PALMS Marine Corps base, Calif. —  The two tiny tortoises emerged from their burrows as soon as they detected Brian Henen’s footsteps, eager for the handfuls of bok choy and snap peas that would soon be tossed their way.It will be a few years before the tortoises, roughly the size of playing cards, have shells tough enough to avoid becoming prey for the ravens soaring above. So for now, they live with roughly 1,000 others of their species in a sheltered habitat ringed by barbed wire and draped in netting.The elaborate setup on the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center is designed to protect the tortoises not only from ravens, coyotes and other predators, but from rumbling tanks, live explosives and anything else that might put them in harm’s way at the 1,189-square-mile Mojave Desert base. The Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site raises vulnerable tortoises on the vast Marine Corps base. “The desert tortoise is considered a keystone species, which means that they have a disproportionate effect on the entire ecosystem,” says Henen, a civilian who heads the conservation branch of the base’s Environmental Affairs Division.The tortoises pockmark the desert floor with burrows that other animals use for shelter, and disperse the seeds of native plants in their waste. “They’re influencing what else can exist on the landscape,” Henen said.With its barbed-wire enclosure, some call this place Tortoise Gitmo, after the U.S. Navy’s Guantanamo Bay base and prison camp in Cuba. Others call it the Tortoise Bordello, although the young tortoises are released before they are mature enough to breed.Officially it’s called the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site, and since it was established in 2005 it has helped scientists learn how to protect a species that’s threatened by human encroachment, disease and climate change. In the first iteration of the program, biologists gathered eggs from wild females and raised the hatchlings until they were hardy enough to stand a chance against predators and drought, in a process known as head-starting.The facility got an influx of new tenants in 2017, when the military relocated tortoises to make way for a controversial expansion of the base’s training grounds. Biologists decided to head-start about 550 young tortoises that were taken from expansion areas.Then, starting a couple of years ago, Henen’s team began gathering, incubating and hatching eggs from the relocated adult tortoises to study whether they were breeding with their new neighbors. Rather than release the hatchlings into the wild, where they were unlikely to survive, they decided to head-start them as well. Brian Henen of the base’s Environmental Affairs Division holds a desert tortoise. Some desert conservationists are critical of the efforts, saying the captive rearing program is essentially a smokescreen that distracts from the pressing need to conserve critical habitat.“What I’d like to see is this kind of effort being done on public lands as a tool to repatriate areas as opposed to minimizing the impacts of the Marine Corps expansion,” said Ed LaRue, a board member of the nonprofit Desert Tortoise Council.“Hundreds of square miles of good tortoise habitat is now being used for military maneuvers,” LaRue said, citing base expansions at Twentynine Palms and at Fort Irwin National Training Center near Barstow. “It enables the military to go ahead and degrade the desert and claim it’s successful because the tortoises have been moved out of the way.” Bases should instead stop expanding into tortoise habitat, he said.Henen says the program has enabled biologists to both augment tortoise populations and track the success of those efforts by committing to decades of monitoring. He also points out that the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center has partnered with a coalition of agencies and nongovernmental organizations to conserve land off base. And inside the boundaries of the massive installation, officials have identified the most valuable tortoise habitat and set aside 43,800 acres of restricted areas that protect the species, as well as other natural and cultural resources, he says. Marines at Twentynine Palms receive specialized training on how to handle tortoises. A glimpse of a single reptile interloper will bring a training exercise to a halt. Troops must radio in to range control and request permission to move the animal. If permission is granted but the tortoise urinates, which can cause them to become dangerously dehydrated, the soldiers must call it in again and wait for a base ecologist to respond. Desert tortoises were once so plentiful that people driving through the Mojave would take them home to keep as backyard pets. But in some patches of California desert, their numbers have dropped by up to 96% since the 1970s, according to study plots monitored by Kristin Berry, supervisory research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Ecological Research Center.Recognizing the dire straits, the California Fish and Game Commission in April voted to uplist desert tortoises from threatened to endangered.The Marines are hardly the only threat to tortoises. Roads and highways have carved up previously wide-open stretches of desert into parcels that are in some cases too small to allow for the breeding and genetic diversity needed to sustain their population health. A warming climate has dried up the precipitation needed to sustain them in some places.Livestock not native to the desert have grazed and trampled the plants tortoises like to eat, spreading unpalatable nonnative grasses in their wake. Power lines have added miles of resting perches for ravens, allowing them to more easily spot young tortoises.Ravens used to be rare in the desert — they could only subsist for a couple of months in the springtime of good rainfall years, said Ken Nagy, professor emeritus at UCLA, who with Henen founded the program at Twentynine Palms. But now, thanks to everything from leaky faucets at gas stations to the irrigation of alfalfa fields, the birds have year-round sources of drinking water that’s caused their population to explode to 30 to 50 times greater than what it once was, he said.“You can go beneath raven nests on power poles and see piles of dead baby tortoises that were opened, killed, carried to the nests by adults and fed to the babies,” he said. “That is what started this whole thing.” The Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site raises vulnerable tortoises on the vast Marine Corps base. In desert tortoise head-starting programs, biologists use radio transmitters to monitor wild females and portable X-ray machines to determine when they’re pregnant. They bring those females inside enclosures to lay their eggs, then release them. The hatchlings are reared in captivity until they reach a certain length — Twentynine Palms uses a threshold of 110 millimeters, or about 4 inches long, which can take between seven and nine years — and then rereleased, typically with radio transmitters to monitor their health and movements.The concept was pioneered in the 1990s at Fort Irwin, followed by a similar program at Edwards Air Force Base near Mojave.The captive rearing site is tucked in an isolated corner of the base, down a sandy road flanked by mesquite dunes and wrinkled mountains; past collections of buildings used for training that resemble crudely built neighborhoods. Fences to keep Marines on the road have spiky pins atop each post to prevent ravens from having yet another place to perch. Brian Henen checks on a desert tortoise at the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site at the Twentynine Palms Marine base. Inside the facility, a clanging noise echoes through the pens. It’s a particularly exuberant tortoise nicknamed Typhoid Mary, who got the nickname because she harbors a contagious bacteria that causes upper respiratory tract disease.She has heard the biologists coming and wants a snack. She bangs her shell against the metal divider to get their attention. Henen hands her some kale, which stains her beak green.Mary is believed to be at least 30 years old. One of the few adults at the facility, she ended up here as a result of the 2017 base expansion during which the military used helicopters to relocate more than 1,000 tortoises to other areas, most of them off base. Scientists are currently monitoring about 125 of those adults and 50 juveniles via radiotelemetry so they can keep tabs on their health and movements.But Mary was placed on the no-fly list after she was found to harbor mycoplasma bacteria. Upper respiratory tract disease has also contributed to tortoise declines, usually in populations that are close to human communities. Scientists believe it may be spread by people releasing sick pet tortoises into the wild, Henen said.Despite the disease, Mary has remained in relatively good health because she’s well-fed and hydrated. Still, she’ll probably be living out her days here to avoid infecting others.The program, and others like it, have won converts over the years. Biologist Tim Shields, who founded a company that develops tortoise conservation technology, was once opposed to head-starting because he thought it was unnatural and the tortoises would be inferior at survival.“But some very intelligent people have spent a lot of time figuring out a formula for essentially mass production of tortoises — and I’m all for it,” he said. “Because the underlying ecosystem is so bunged up that I don’t see an alternative.”

Animals
Climate
Conservation

Your gadgets are actually carbon sinks — for now

New research finds billions of tons of carbon get trapped in the "technosphere".

At any given moment, crude oil is being pumped up from the depths of the planet. Some of that sludge gets sent to a refinery and processed into plastic, then it becomes the phone in your hand, the shades on your window, the ornaments hanging from your Christmas tree. Although scientists know how much carbon dioxide is emitted to make these products (a new iPhone is akin to driving more than 200 miles), there’s little research into how much gets stashed away in them. A study published on Friday in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability estimates that billions of tons of carbon from fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — was stored in gadgets, building materials, and other long-lasting human-made items over a recent 25 year period, tucked away in what the researchers call the “technosphere.”  According to the study by researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, 400 million tons of carbon gets added to the technosphere’s stockpile every year, growing at a slightly faster rate than fossil fuel emissions. But in many cases, the technosphere doesn’t keep that carbon permanently; if objects get thrown away and incinerated, they wind up warming the atmosphere, too. In 2011, 9 percent of all extracted fossil carbon was sunk into items and infrastructure in the technosphere, an amount that would almost equal that year’s emissions from the European Union if it were burned.  “It’s like a ticking time bomb,” said Klaus Hubacek, an ecological economist at the University of Groningen and senior author of the paper. “We draw lots of fossil resources out of the ground and put them in the technosphere and then leave them sitting around. But what happens after an object’s lifetime?”The word “technosphere” got its start in 1960, when a science writer named Wil Lepkowski wrote that “modern man has become a goalless, lonely prisoner of his technosphere,” in an article for the journal Science. Since then, the term, a play on “biosphere,” has been used by ecologists and geologists to grapple with the amount of stuff humankind has smothered the planet in. “The problem is that we have been incredibly wasteful as we’ve been making and building things.” said Jan Zalasiewicz, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the University of Groningen study. In 2016, Zalasiewicz and his colleagues published a paper that estimated the technosphere had grown to approximately 30 trillion tonnes, an amount 100,000 times greater than the mass of all humans piled on top of each other. The paper also found that the number of “technofossils” — unique kinds of manmade objects — outnumbered the number of unique species of life on the planet. In 2020, a separate group of researchers found that the technosphere doubles in volume roughly every 20 years and now likely outweighs all living things.  “The question is, how does the technosphere impinge upon the biosphere?” Zalasiewicz said. Plastic bags and fishing nets, for example, can choke the animals that encounter them. And unlike natural ecosystems, like forests and oceans that can absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, humans are “not very good at recycling,” Zalasiewicz said. Managing the disposal of all this stuff in a more climate-friendly way is precisely the problem that the researchers from University of Groningen want to draw attention to. Their research looked at the 8.4 billion tons of fossil carbon in human-made objects that were in use for at least a year between 1995 and 2019. Nearly 30 percent of this carbon was trapped in rubber and plastic, much of it in household appliances, and another quarter was stashed in bitumen, a byproduct of crude oil used in construction.“Once you discard these things, the question is, how do you treat that carbon?” said Kaan Hidiroglu, one of the study’s authors and an energy and environmental studies PhD student at the University of Groningen. “If you put it into incinerators and burn it, you immediately release more carbon emissions into the atmosphere, which is something we really do not want to do.” Each year, the paper estimates, roughly a third of these fossil-products in the technosphere get incinerated. Another third end up in landfills, which can act as a kind of long-term carbon sink. But unfortunately, the authors acknowledge, these sites often leach chemicals, burp out methane, or shed microplastics into the environment. A little less than a third is recycled — a solution that comes with its own problems — and a small amount is littered.“There’s so many different aspects to the problem and treating it properly,” Hubacek said. Nevertheless, he said, landfills are a good starting point if managed well. According to the study, the bulk of fossil carbon that’s put into landfills decays slowly and stays put over 50 years. Designing products in a way that allows them to be recycled and last a long time can help keep the carbon trapped for longer. Ultimately, Hubacek said, the real solution starts with people questioning if they really need so much stuff. “Reduce consumption and avoid making it in the first place. But once you have it, that’s when we need to think about what to do next.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your gadgets are actually carbon sinks — for now on Dec 20, 2024.

Animals
Chemicals
Climate

Squirrels Are Displaying 'Widespread Carnivorous Behavior' for the First Time in a California Park, New Study Finds

The familiar rodents, known for eating nuts and seeds, have been spotted hunting and decapitating voles in a gruesome dietary adaptation. Scientists say it might signal resiliency in face of future environmental pressures

A California ground squirrel carries a vole in its mouth after hunting the rodent. Sonja Wild, UC Davis In the rolling green hills of California’s Briones Regional Park, not far from the urban bustle of Oakland and Berkeley, the squirrels are not what they seem. Instead of simply stuffing their cheeks with fruits, nuts or seeds, the California ground squirrels there are now known to hunt, kill, decapitate and consume voles, a fellow rodent species, according to research published Wednesday in the Journal of Ethology. “This was shocking,” study lead author Jennifer E. Smith, a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, says in a statement. “We had never seen this behavior before.” Most people are very familiar with squirrels, accustomed to seeing the animals on their streets or in their yards. And Smith is even more so—since 2013, she has led the Long-term Behavioral Ecology of California Ground Squirrels Project, which monitors squirrel genetics, social behavior and physiological stress responses in the San Francisco Bay area. But even with her intimate knowledge of the rodents, it was only this year that her research team observed ground squirrels actively pursuing and eating meat. The initial discovery was made by undergraduate researchers, who returned from the field site in Briones Regional Park earlier this year with videos of the squirrels’ behavior to show their incredulous supervisors. “At first, we questioned what was going on,” Smith tells Suzie Dundas of SFGATE. “But seeing the videos was astounding and shifted my perspective on a species that I have spent the last 12 years of my life studying.” Vole hunting: Novel predatory and carnivorous behavior by California ground squirrels Smith and her team documented 74 interactions between ground squirrels and voles between June and July. In 42 percent of the interactions, the squirrels were hunting the smaller rodents. “From then, we saw that behavior almost every day,” Sonja Wild, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, who co-leads the project with Smith, says in the statement. “Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.” Though they’re largely vegetarians, squirrels have long been known to occasionally consume insects, small bird eggs or meat left out by humans, but “direct study of hunting behavior by squirrels remains rare,” according to the study. This “widespread carnivorous behavior,” Smith tells SFGATE, was therefore groundbreaking. In most recorded cases included in the paper, a single squirrel would pursue a single vole across the open landscape, rather than lying in wait or hunting in a group. Sometimes with a stalking motion and a pounce, it would tackle the vole, restrain it with its forepaws, bite the vole’s neck and remove its head. Then, the squirrel would either strip the fur from the vole to expose cartilage, meat and organs, or tear the meat directly out from the torso. The authors of the study suggest this change in diet is a response to a booming vole population. Using reports from citizen scientists on iNaturalist, an app that allows users to submit photos of plants and animal sightings, the researchers found vole abundance in the state was seven times greater this year than over a ten-year average, and sightings were particularly high in Briones Regional Park. “What is most striking and incredible is the speed at which they shifted their behavior to this local surge in vole abundance,” Smith tells CNN’s Julianna Bragg. “It’s a wonderful way for them to capitalize on a very abundant resource … to provide enough sustenance for many [squirrels] to use,” John Koprowski, a wildlife biologist at the University of Wyoming who was not involved in the study, tells CNN. Tia Ravara from UW-Eau Claire, left, and Ryann Su of UC Davis, both members of the research group called "Team Squirrel," watch a California ground squirrel during the 2023 field season. Sonja Wild, UC Davis Squirrels of all ages and sexes took part in the vole hunt, an indication that this dietary flexibility is widespread across the species and may serve as a crucial survival mechanism in response to fluctuating environmental conditions, especially in areas with high human populations. “In the face of human insults such as climate change and drought, these animals are resilient and have the potential to adapt to live in a changing world,” Smith adds. If acorn or seeds fall into low supply, for instance, squirrels appear primed to find other sources of protein and nutrients. The less stubborn an animal is about its diet, the better suited it is for survival. Although in this case, the squirrels don’t seem to be motivated by a scarcity of any other food source, per SFGATE, rather, the high population of voles appears to be the reason for their hunting. But because the study was focused on one regional park, it is unclear if the squirrels’ behavior will—or already has—spread across the state. It is also unknown if the taste for fellow rodents (and the hunting techniques used to capture them) will be passed onto future generations of squirrels once this vole surge abates. What the opportunistic squirrels do—or eat—next remains to be seen. “Digital technology can inform the science,” Smith says in the statement, “but there’s no replacement for going out there and witnessing the behavior, because what animals are doing always surprises us.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Animals
Climate
Food

Environmental Groups Sue Over California Support for Polluting Biofuels

Several environmental groups are suing California air regulators over their continuing support for biofuels

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Several environmental groups are suing California air regulators over their recent update of a contentious climate program, saying they failed to address the pollution impacts of biofuels.The lawsuits target the low-carbon fuel standard, which requires California to reduce the environmental impact of transportation fuels by incentivizing producers to cut emissions. The California Air Resources Board voted last month to increase the state’s emission reduction targets, fund charging infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles, and phase out incentives for capturing methane emissions from dairy farms to turn into fuel.California, which often leads the nation on climate policy, plans to achieve so-called carbon neutrality by 2045, meaning the state will remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. The state has passed policies in recent years to phase out the sale of new fossil-fuel powered cars, trucks, trains and lawn mowers.One of the lawsuits filed this week, by the nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment, accuses the board of failing to thoroughly analyze the climate impacts of burning biofuels derived from plants and animal waste. Another, filed by Food and Water Watch, Central Valley Defenders of Clean Air and Water, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, focuses on the impact of pollution often impacting low-income and Latino communities from the capture of methane from cow manure to turn into fuel. “People who live near refineries in California are harmed by the spiraling expansion of polluting biofuels,” but CARB failed to analyze the resulting harm to these communities, said a statement by Katherine Ramos, a program director at Communities for a Better Environment.Environmentalists say the LCFS program has stimulated the production of polluting biofuels, competing with food production and contributing to deforestation. They want California to focus more on expanding the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.The agency declined to comment on the lawsuits but said the program plays an important role in combating climate change and improving air quality.“The amendments channel global, national and local private sector investment towards increasing cleaner fuel and transportation options for consumers, accelerating the deployment of zero-emission infrastructure, and keeping the state on track to meet legislatively mandated air quality and climate targets,” Dave Clegern, a spokesperson for the board, said in an email.Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @ sophieadannaCopyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Animals
Climate
Food

Feds Propose Protection for Giant Salamanders Devastated by Hurricane Helene

A giant salamander that evolved on the supercontinent Pangaea and outlived the dinosaurs has been proposed for federal protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

You never forget your first time seeing a giant salamander, according to Andy Hill. He was a teenager, standing thigh-high in the Watauga River outside Boone, North Carolina, casting a line on an early fall day when he saw his first eastern hellbender. The salamander stretched 2 feet long and was camouflaged among rocks beneath the clear water.“You never lose your sense of wonder and otherworldliness when you see one,” said Hill, who now works as the Watauga Riverkeeper for MountainTrue, a nonprofit protecting natural ecosystems in western North Carolina, home to part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.The ancient species, which evolved on the supercontinent Pangaea and outlived the dinosaurs, was submitted for federal protection Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the proposal is adopted after a period of public comment, the creatures will be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Their population in the U.S. has rapidly declined in recent decades; dams, industry and even flooding worsened by climate change have threatened their habitat and ability to reproduce and find food. Today, just 12% of eastern hellbenders are successfully reproducing.Hellbenders in the Blue Ridge Mountains had been considered the healthiest population of the eastern subspecies but were devastated this fall by Hurricane Helene. Thousands were displaced or found dead amid rubble. Others were found in flooded church basements and returned to the river. But some rivers are so polluted, there’s still a “do not touch” advisory for people.Tierra Curry burst into tears when she learned of the proposed protection. “I just think it's a moral failure that we're pushing them to the brink of extinction,” said Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.The slimy, brown creature with a broad, flat head may never win a beauty contest, but it is famous as the largest amphibian in North America. The hellbender breathes dissolved oxygen in the water through its skin. Water that becomes slow-moving, warm or polluted holds less oxygen.Over the past five years, two dams were removed on the Watauga River to help improve water quality and reconnect hellbender communities. The most recent one came down this summer — and two months later, Helene upended life not just for people, but also for animals like the salamander.For those working to ensure the species' survival, the newly proposed federal protection couldn't come soon enough, said Erin McCombs, Southeast conservation director for American Rivers. “We have to be paying more attention to the health of our nation's rivers and streams, and that means paying more attention to the critters that live in them,” she said. “When species like the hellbender, which are reliant on free-flowing and clean water, are declining, alarms need to be going off, because we'll feel the impacts next.”The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned and won protection for the Ozark subspecies of hellbenders in 2011 and for Missouri hellbenders, another population of eastern hellbender, in 2021. The group sued, seeking protection for all eastern hellbenders. As of this week, all hellbenders in the U.S. are protected or slated for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Hill says he hopes the new federal protection will usher in “bold strategies” to help the species recover.“It’s going to take a massive effort," he said.The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environmentCopyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Animals
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