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Category: Ecology

Wuhan virologist identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves and warns more are out there

Wuhan virologist identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves and warns more are out there

Scientific American reports: Before SARS, the world had only an inkling of coronaviruses—so named because their spiky surface resembles a crown when seen under a microscope, says Linfa Wang, who directs the emerging infectious diseases program at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School. Coronaviruses were mostly known for causing common colds. “The SARS outbreak [in 2003] was a game changer,” Wang says. It was the first emergence of a deadly coronavirus with pandemic potential. The incident helped to jump-start a global search…

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Even the Anthropocene is nature at work transforming itself

Even the Anthropocene is nature at work transforming itself

Beth Lord writes: In his book Novacene (2019), James Lovelock writes: ‘We must abandon the politically and psychologically loaded idea that the Anthropocene is a great crime against nature … The Anthropocene is a consequence of life on Earth; … an expression of nature.’ This insight resonates with the 17th-century philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Lovelock is the inventor of Gaia theory, the idea that the Earth is one living organism that regulates and strives to preserve itself. Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’ is…

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The ‘murder hornet’ has arrived in North America

The ‘murder hornet’ has arrived in North America

The New York Times reports: In his decades of beekeeping, Ted McFall had never seen anything like it. As he pulled his truck up to check on a group of hives near Custer, Wash., in November, he could spot from the window a mess of bee carcasses on the ground. As he looked closer, he saw a pile of dead members of the colony in front of a hive and more carnage inside — thousands and thousands of bees with…

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Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists

Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists

The Guardian reports: The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be followed by even more deadly and destructive disease outbreaks unless their root cause – the rampant destruction of the natural world – is rapidly halted, the world’s leading biodiversity experts have warned. “There is a single species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic – us,” they said. “Recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity, particularly our global financial and economic systems that prize economic growth at any cost. We…

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When confronting a pandemic, we must save nature to save ourselves

When confronting a pandemic, we must save nature to save ourselves

Sahir Doshi and Nicole Gentile write: The COVID-19 pandemic has brutally and tragically exposed the extent to which the health and well-being of every family in America depends on the health and well-being of nature—both here at home and around the world. Nature is connected to human health, from the inherent mechanisms through which ecosystems regulate the emergence of new pathogens to the health benefits of spending time outdoors. But in our destruction of earth’s natural resources, we are losing…

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How viruses are a hidden driving force controlling the planet

How viruses are a hidden driving force controlling the planet

A re-post of an article that appeared in January at Inside Science: Viruses control their hosts like puppets — and in the process, they may play important roles in Earth’s climate. The hosts in this case aren’t people or animals: They are bacteria. A growing body of research is revealing how viruses manipulate what bacteria eat and how they guide the chemical reactions that sustain life. When those changes happen to a lot of bacteria, the cumulative effects could potentially…

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As humanity isolates, wild animals start coming out of exile

As humanity isolates, wild animals start coming out of exile

  The coronavirus pandemic has rightly been compared to wartime. At the same time, it is reminiscent of the First World War armistice as gunfire gave way to birdsong, and offers glimpses of what might happen if we were to end our war against this planet and impose our presence here less harshly, by allowing wild habitats to grow, by reducing how much we foul up the air, land, water, and oceans, and by simply learning how to become a…

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The new coronavirus emerged from the global wildlife trade – and may be devastating enough to end it

The new coronavirus emerged from the global wildlife trade – and may be devastating enough to end it

Government officers seize civets in a wildlife market in Guangzhou, China to prevent the spread of SARS in 2004. Dustin Shum/South China Morning Post via Getty Images By George Wittemyer, Colorado State University COVID-19 is one of countless emerging infectious diseases that are zoonotic, meaning they originate in animals. About 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, accounting for billions of illnesses and millions of deaths annually across the globe. When these diseases spill over to humans, the cause frequently…

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It’s wrong to blame bats for the coronavirus epidemic

It’s wrong to blame bats for the coronavirus epidemic

A small colony of Townsend’s big eared bats at Lava Beds National Monument, Calif. Shawn Thomas, NPS/Flickr By Peter Alagona, University of California, Santa Barbara Genomic research showing that the COVID-19 coronavirus likely originated in bats has produced heavy media coverage and widespread concern. There is now danger that frightened people and misguided officials will try to curb the epidemic by culling these remarkable creatures, even though this strategy has failed in the past. As an environmental historian focusing on…

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Deforestation plays a key role in triggering epidemics

Deforestation plays a key role in triggering epidemics

On Feb. 18, 2020, in Seoul, South Korea, people wearing face masks pass an electric screen warning about COVID-19. AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon By Suresh V Kuchipudi, Pennsylvania State University The coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19, is a frightening reminder of the imminent global threat posed by emerging infectious diseases. Although epidemics have arisen during all of human history, they now seem to be on the rise. In just the past 20 years, coronaviruses alone have caused three major outbreaks worldwide….

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Ecosystems the size of Amazon ‘can collapse within decades’

Ecosystems the size of Amazon ‘can collapse within decades’

The Guardian reports: Even large ecosystems the size of the Amazon rainforest can collapse in a few decades, according to a study that shows bigger biomes break up relatively faster than small ones. The research reveals that once a tipping point has been passed, breakdowns do not occur gradually like an unravelling thread, but rapidly like a stack of Jenga bricks after a keystone piece has been dislodged. The authors of the study, published on Tuesday in the Nature Communications…

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The unintended beauty of murmurations

The unintended beauty of murmurations

Mark MacNamara writes: Eugene Schieffelin was the eccentric ornithologist who in 1890 shipped 60 starlings from London to New York City and set them free in Central Park. The next year he released 40 more, and today there are maybe 200 million starlings in the United States and Southern Canada. As immigrants go, starlings are shrewd flyers, clever mimics, and often unwelcome. The truth is they’re no more than uptown blackbirds, stocky, three-ounce grifters with iridescent blue and green plumage,…

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The demise of bees will lead to ours too unless we change the way we grow food

The demise of bees will lead to ours too unless we change the way we grow food

Alison Benjamin writes: The oldest love affair in history is between the bee and the flower. It began more than 100m years ago, when nature devised a more efficient way than winds for plants to procreate. About 80% of plant species now use animals or insects to carry pollen grains from the male part of the plant to the female part. The plants developed flowers. Their perfumed scent, colourful displays and sweet nectar are all designed to woo pollinators. Over…

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More evidence of ‘insect apocalypse’

More evidence of ‘insect apocalypse’

The Guardian reports: Two scientific studies of the number of insects splattered by cars have revealed a huge decline in abundance at European sites in two decades. The research adds to growing evidence of what some scientists have called an “insect apocalypse”, which is threatening a collapse in the natural world that sustains humans and all life on Earth. A third study shows plummeting numbers of aquatic insects in streams. The survey of insects hitting car windscreens in rural Denmark…

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Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

PA Media reports: Bumblebees are in drastic decline across Europe and North America owing to hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures, scientists say. A study suggests the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place has declined by 30% in the course of a single human generation. The researchers say the rates of decline appear to be “consistent with a mass extinction”. Peter Soroye, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and the study’s lead author,…

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The playbook for poisoning our planet

The playbook for poisoning our planet

The Intercept reports: In September 2009, over 3,000 bee enthusiasts from around the world descended on the city of Montpellier in southern France for Apimondia — a festive beekeeper conference filled with scientific lectures, hobbyist demonstrations, and commercial beekeepers hawking honey. But that year, a cloud loomed over the event: bee colonies across the globe were collapsing, and billions of bees were dying. Bee declines have been observed throughout recorded history, but the sudden, persistent and abnormally high annual hive…

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