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This Month in Conservation Science: Trojan Seahorses and ‘Vampire’ Birds

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Friday, November 22, 2024

When I worked for a major academic publisher in the early 2000s, Christmas came twice a year: once in December and once when the annual Journal Citation Reports came out. The JCR, published every year since 1975, ranks academic journals against each other. Each journal receives something called an “impact factor,” a calculation based on how many papers a journal publishes and how many times its papers are cited by subsequent research within two years. This is a very big deal in scientific circles. The higher the impact factor, the more readily the publisher can sell a journal to libraries and other institutions and the more likely the journal is to receive high-quality submissions. That, in turn, helps keep future impact factors high. It’s not a perfect system. Smaller journals — such as those from the Global South or those covering narrow topics — don’t get cited as often, so they may not receive a high impact factor. That doesn’t mean they don’t have an impact, though: Recent research found that these smaller, niche journals actually have a greater effect on policy — particularly when it comes to protecting endangered species. Meanwhile there are plenty of other ways to assess a journal’s impact. Media mentions are also a big deal, and many journals now publish statistics for each paper’s news links or social-media shares. It could be argued that nonscientific citations have a greater effect on policy and public perception than anything else. So let’s dive into those smaller journals and share the latest science from other conservation journals around the world. Below you’ll find more than three dozen papers that grabbed my attention in the past few weeks. They cover “vampire” birds, hungry monkeys, feral cats, roaming lions, the wildlife trade, and more. Most of the articles are open access, so they should be available to researchers (and any other interested readers) around the globe. Will they also shape policy? That remains to be seen, but some of these papers have only been downloaded a couple of hundred times as of this writing, so let’s give them a fighting chance. “Animal-borne sensors reveal high human impact on soundscapes near a critical sea turtle nesting beach” (Biological Conservation) “Are vehicle strikes causing millions of bee deaths per day on western United States roads? Preliminary data suggests the number is high” (Sustainable Environment) “Camouflage or Coincidence? Investigating the Effects of Spatial and Temporal Environmental Features on Feral Cat Morphology in Tasmania” (Ecology and Evolution) “Climatic drought and trophic disruption in an endemic subalpine Hawaiian forest bird” (Biological Conservation) “Conserving genetic diversity hotspots under climate change: Are protected areas helpful?” (Biological Conservation) “Counterillumination reduces bites by Great White sharks” (Current Biology) “Diurnal Activity Budgets and Feeding Habits of Grivet Monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops aethiops) in Fragmented Moist Afromontane Forest” (African Journal of Ecology) “Environmental Conservation and the Bulawayo CBD as a Linguistic Landscape Construction: An Ecolinguistics Perspective” (Journal of Asian and African Studies) “Fabulous but Forgotten Fucoid Forests” (Ecology and Evolution) “Facing the heat: nestlings of a cavity-nesting raptor trade safety for food when exposed to high nest temperatures” (Animal Behaviour) “Great Gerbils (Rhombomys opimus) in Central Asia Are Spreading to Higher Latitudes and Altitudes” (Ecology and Evolution) “Large Reductions in Temperate Rainforest Biome Due to Unmitigated Climate Change” (Earth’s Future) “Lead-based ammunition is a threat to the endangered New Zealand Kea (Nestor notabilis)” (Conservation Letters) “Madagascar’s proposed domestic rosewood trade undermines species protection and exposes fatal flaws in the CITES regime” (Madagascar Conservation & Development) “Native plants play crucial role in buffering against severity of exotic plant invasions in freshwater ecosystems” (Biological Conservation) “Nearly half of Colombian artisan craft plant species lack national and international vulnerability assessments” (Ecosystems and People) “Predicting conservation priority areas in Borneo for the critically endangered helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil)” (Global Ecology and Conservation) “Predicting the potential habitat of bears under a changing climate in Nepal” (Environmental Monitoring and Assessment) “Requiem for Argentine mammals: A spatial framework for mapping extinction risk,” (Journal of Nature Conservation) “Sacred Groves and the Conservation of Forest Genetic Resources: a review” (Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences) “The Trojan seahorse: citizen science pictures of a seahorse harbour insights into the distribution and behaviour of a long-overlooked polychaete worm” (Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences) “‘Vampire birds’: diet metabarcoding reveals that migrating Woodchat Shrikes Lanius senator consume engorged camel ticks in a desert stopover site” (Journal of African Ornithology) The Interplay of Lions and African Wild Dogs These papers, which examine some of the same species but share no authors, deserve to be looked at in unison: “Long-Distance, Transfrontier Carnivore Dispersals in Southern Africa” (Ecology and Evolution) “Spatial Risk Effects From Lions Compound Impacts of Prey Depletion on African Wild Dogs” (Ecology and Evolution) “Droughts reshape apex predator space use and intraguild overlap” (Journal of Animal Ecology) Focus on Microplastics This month also featured a lot of research on microplastics — as many as 10 papers a day, by my count. Here’s a small selection focusing on microplastics’ effects on wildlife. This weighs a little more heavily on subscription-access papers, but many of these are open access. “Bibliometric Insights into Microplastic Pollution in Freshwater Ecosystems” (Water) “The dual role of coastal mangroves: Sinks and sources of microplastics in rapidly urbanizing areas” (Journal of Hazardous Materials) “Ecotoxicological Impact of Cigarette Butts on Coastal Ecosystems: The Case of Marbella Beach, Chile” (Sustainability) “From insects to mammals! Tissue accumulation and transgenerational transfer of micro/nano-plastics through the food chain” (Journal of Hazardous Materials) “Is pollution giving fish a headache? Biomarker analysis in fish brains from Danube floodplain” (13th International Symposium Kopački Rit: Past, Present, Future 2024) “Microplastics alter the functioning of marine microbial ecosystems” (Ecology and Evolution) “Microplastics and terrestrial birds: a review on plastic ingestion in ecological linchpins” (Journal of Ornithology) “Microplastics in Animals: The Silent Invasion” (Pollutants) “Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) microplastics affect angiogenesis and central nervous system (CNS) development of duck embryo” (Emerging Contaminants) “Unraveling Plastic Pollution in Protected Terrestrial Raptors Using Regurgitated Pellets” (Microplastics) Our next column will be a bit different: We want to share researchers’ favorite peer-reviewed papers of 2024. For consideration, drop us a line at tips@therevelator.org and use the subject line TMICS. Send us a link, your name and institution, and 1-3 sentences about why you think readers should check out your paper. We’re eager to hear from you, especially if you’re from the Global South or an institution without much public-relations support. (Deadline: Dec. 10, 2024.) Scroll down to find our “Republish” button Previously in The Revelator: This Month in Conservation Science: ‘The Earth Is Dying, Bro’ The post This Month in Conservation Science: Trojan Seahorses and ‘Vampire’ Birds appeared first on The Revelator.

Journals this month looked at “fabulous but forgotten” ecosystems, hungry monkeys, roaming lions, lead-poisoned birds, and more — including a focus on microplastics. The post This Month in Conservation Science: Trojan Seahorses and ‘Vampire’ Birds appeared first on The Revelator.

When I worked for a major academic publisher in the early 2000s, Christmas came twice a year: once in December and once when the annual Journal Citation Reports came out.

The JCR, published every year since 1975, ranks academic journals against each other. Each journal receives something called an “impact factor,” a calculation based on how many papers a journal publishes and how many times its papers are cited by subsequent research within two years.

This is a very big deal in scientific circles. The higher the impact factor, the more readily the publisher can sell a journal to libraries and other institutions and the more likely the journal is to receive high-quality submissions. That, in turn, helps keep future impact factors high.

It’s not a perfect system. Smaller journals — such as those from the Global South or those covering narrow topics — don’t get cited as often, so they may not receive a high impact factor.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have an impact, though: Recent research found that these smaller, niche journals actually have a greater effect on policy — particularly when it comes to protecting endangered species.

Meanwhile there are plenty of other ways to assess a journal’s impact. Media mentions are also a big deal, and many journals now publish statistics for each paper’s news links or social-media shares. It could be argued that nonscientific citations have a greater effect on policy and public perception than anything else.

So let’s dive into those smaller journals and share the latest science from other conservation journals around the world. Below you’ll find more than three dozen papers that grabbed my attention in the past few weeks. They cover “vampire” birds, hungry monkeys, feral cats, roaming lions, the wildlife trade, and more. Most of the articles are open access, so they should be available to researchers (and any other interested readers) around the globe.

Will they also shape policy? That remains to be seen, but some of these papers have only been downloaded a couple of hundred times as of this writing, so let’s give them a fighting chance.

    • “Animal-borne sensors reveal high human impact on soundscapes near a critical sea turtle nesting beach” (Biological Conservation)
    • “Are vehicle strikes causing millions of bee deaths per day on western United States roads? Preliminary data suggests the number is high” (Sustainable Environment)
    • “Camouflage or Coincidence? Investigating the Effects of Spatial and Temporal Environmental Features on Feral Cat Morphology in Tasmania” (Ecology and Evolution)
    • “Climatic drought and trophic disruption in an endemic subalpine Hawaiian forest bird” (Biological Conservation)
    • “Conserving genetic diversity hotspots under climate change: Are protected areas helpful?” (Biological Conservation)
    • “Counterillumination reduces bites by Great White sharks” (Current Biology)
    • “Diurnal Activity Budgets and Feeding Habits of Grivet Monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops aethiops) in Fragmented Moist Afromontane Forest” (African Journal of Ecology)
    • “Environmental Conservation and the Bulawayo CBD as a Linguistic Landscape Construction: An Ecolinguistics Perspective” (Journal of Asian and African Studies)
    • “Fabulous but Forgotten Fucoid Forests” (Ecology and Evolution)
    • “Facing the heat: nestlings of a cavity-nesting raptor trade safety for food when exposed to high nest temperatures” (Animal Behaviour)
    • “Great Gerbils (Rhombomys opimus) in Central Asia Are Spreading to Higher Latitudes and Altitudes” (Ecology and Evolution)
    • “Large Reductions in Temperate Rainforest Biome Due to Unmitigated Climate Change” (Earth’s Future)
    • “Lead-based ammunition is a threat to the endangered New Zealand Kea (Nestor notabilis)” (Conservation Letters)
    • “Madagascar’s proposed domestic rosewood trade undermines species protection and exposes fatal flaws in the CITES regime” (Madagascar Conservation & Development)
    • “Native plants play crucial role in buffering against severity of exotic plant invasions in freshwater ecosystems” (Biological Conservation)
    • “Nearly half of Colombian artisan craft plant species lack national and international vulnerability assessments” (Ecosystems and People)
    • “Predicting conservation priority areas in Borneo for the critically endangered helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil)” (Global Ecology and Conservation)
    • “Predicting the potential habitat of bears under a changing climate in Nepal” (Environmental Monitoring and Assessment)
    • “Requiem for Argentine mammals: A spatial framework for mapping extinction risk,” (Journal of Nature Conservation)
    • “Sacred Groves and the Conservation of Forest Genetic Resources: a review” (Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences)
    • “The Trojan seahorse: citizen science pictures of a seahorse harbour insights into the distribution and behaviour of a long-overlooked polychaete worm” (Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
    • “‘Vampire birds’: diet metabarcoding reveals that migrating Woodchat Shrikes Lanius senator consume engorged camel ticks in a desert stopover site” (Journal of African Ornithology)

The Interplay of Lions and African Wild Dogs

These papers, which examine some of the same species but share no authors, deserve to be looked at in unison:

Focus on Microplastics

This month also featured a lot of research on microplastics — as many as 10 papers a day, by my count. Here’s a small selection focusing on microplastics’ effects on wildlife. This weighs a little more heavily on subscription-access papers, but many of these are open access.

    • “Bibliometric Insights into Microplastic Pollution in Freshwater Ecosystems” (Water)
    • “The dual role of coastal mangroves: Sinks and sources of microplastics in rapidly urbanizing areas” (Journal of Hazardous Materials)
    • “Ecotoxicological Impact of Cigarette Butts on Coastal Ecosystems: The Case of Marbella Beach, Chile” (Sustainability)
    • “From insects to mammals! Tissue accumulation and transgenerational transfer of micro/nano-plastics through the food chain” (Journal of Hazardous Materials)
    • “Is pollution giving fish a headache? Biomarker analysis in fish brains from Danube floodplain” (13th International Symposium Kopački Rit: Past, Present, Future 2024)
    • “Microplastics alter the functioning of marine microbial ecosystems” (Ecology and Evolution)
    • “Microplastics and terrestrial birds: a review on plastic ingestion in ecological linchpins” (Journal of Ornithology)
    • “Microplastics in Animals: The Silent Invasion” (Pollutants)
    • “Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) microplastics affect angiogenesis and central nervous system (CNS) development of duck embryo” (Emerging Contaminants)
    • “Unraveling Plastic Pollution in Protected Terrestrial Raptors Using Regurgitated Pellets” (Microplastics)

Our next column will be a bit different: We want to share researchers’ favorite peer-reviewed papers of 2024. For consideration, drop us a line at tips@therevelator.org and use the subject line TMICS. Send us a link, your name and institution, and 1-3 sentences about why you think readers should check out your paper. We’re eager to hear from you, especially if you’re from the Global South or an institution without much public-relations support. (Deadline: Dec. 10, 2024.)

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button

Previously in The Revelator:

This Month in Conservation Science: ‘The Earth Is Dying, Bro’

The post This Month in Conservation Science: Trojan Seahorses and ‘Vampire’ Birds appeared first on The Revelator.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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A lawsuit to protect the snail darter from the Tellico Dam in Tennessee offered the first real test of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. But a new study disputes the fish's status as a distinct species

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English wildlife ‘could be disappearing in the dark’ due to lack of scrutiny

Conservationists issue warning as figures show three-quarters of SSSI sites have had no recent assessments Conservationists have said wildlife could be “disappearing in the dark” after figures showed that three-quarters of England’s most precious habitats, wildlife and natural features have had no recent assessment of their condition.The warning follows the publication of figures covering assessments of protected natural sites known as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) in the last five years. SSSIs are legally protected because they contain special features such as threatened habitats or rare species, and together they cover more than 1.1m hectares (2.7m acres), about 8% of England’s land area. Continue reading...

Conservationists have said wildlife could be “disappearing in the dark” after figures showed that three-quarters of England’s most precious habitats, wildlife and natural features have had no recent assessment of their condition.The warning follows the publication of figures covering assessments of protected natural sites known as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) in the last five years. SSSIs are legally protected because they contain special features such as threatened habitats or rare species, and together they cover more than 1.1m hectares (2.7m acres), about 8% of England’s land area.Nearly two-fifths of the habitats and other features for which SSSIs are protected were in an unfavourable condition, according to figures from the conservation agency Natural England.They also show that only 3,384 – or about 25% – of features had been assessed for their condition since the start of 2019 up to last month. It leaves 10,148, or 75%, without an up-to-date assessment of how they are faring.The figures, revealed after a request from PA Media, were described by conservationists as a reminder of the under-resourced state of environmental watchdogs.SSSIs are integral to Britain’s international commitment to protect 30% of its land and seas for nature by 2030, a pledge made by Boris Johnson as prime minister and sometimes called the 30x30 commitment.Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “The protected site network is critical natural infrastructure supporting wildlife, health and wellbeing, and a resilient economy. But with over three-quarters of sites not inspected in the last five years, regulators will have no idea whether they are in good condition and the government won’t know where it should be targeting its efforts in order to reach critical 2030 targets.“Wildlife could be disappearing in the dark while ecosystems break down. It’s like shutting the door on a new power plant and not visiting for a decade.”More than 5,000 SSSI features, about 39% of the total, were in an unfavourable state in their last assessment, which could have been well before 2019. Of those, 10% were declining and 22% recovering.About 40% of features were in a favourable condition, more than a fifth were classed as “not recorded” due to incomplete data, and less than 0.5% had been destroyed.A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Protected sites are at the heart of our vision for making space for rare habitats and threatened species to thrive as well as green spaces for us all to enjoy. It’s why this government has wasted no time in establishing a rapid review of our plan to deliver on our legally binding targets for the environment, including measures to improve the condition of protected sites. We will deliver a new statutory plan that will help restore our natural environment.”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 promotionNatural England is developing a long-term programme to determine when SSSIs need to be assessed, as well as improving monitoring with remote sensing technology and greater use of data.The amount of land that is “effectively protected” for nature in England has declined to just 2.93%, despite government promises to conserve 30% of it by 2030, according to research published in October.The land figure was found to have been falling owing to declines in quality of SSSIs, which are changing because of the climate crisis, water pollution and overgrazing.

Conservation
Climate
Food

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