Theme 4 Flashcards
Describe what is meant by the term “anthropocene”.
The anthropocene is a newly coined term to describe a new geological time period which we have recently entered into, due to the effects that mankind has had on the Earth (which is comparable to large-scale natural geological events such as supervolcanic activity and/or asteroid impacts.
Some argue that the industrial revolution defines the beginning of the anthropocene - however, it was decided in 2016 that the start date should be 1950 (when world powers began testing atomic bombs). For this to be officially accepted as a new geological time period, it needs to fill certain criteria: sediment which is being deposited now must be distinct from the previous layer. Possible distinguishing aspects of the sediment in our era include radioactive elements from nuclear bomb tests and power activity, high levels nitrogen and phosphate from fertilisers, unburned carbon spheres emitted by power stations, plastics, aluminium and concrete particles, and fossilised domesticated animals.
In 2019, it was accepted that we are now in a new geological time period known as the anthropocene.
Discuss the causes and consequences of air pollution.
Air pollution can be subcategorised into household and ambient pollution:
Ambient pollution disperses wide ranges, and is harmful due to sulphate, ozone, carbon monoxide, and black carbon (most of these come from china and affect air pollution in the USA – travels all the way across the pacific ocean). PM2.5 are air pollutants consisting of particles less than 2.5 microns across – they are linked to a wide range of diseases in many organ systems. PM2.5s can be linked to heart attacks, hypertension, heart failure, lung cancer, as well as possibly diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, and even autism.
Discuss the causes and consequences of water pollution.
Water pollution is due to unsafe water sources or inadequate sanitation – these typically impact developing countries heavily. Water pollution kills due to diarrhoeal diseases, typhoid and paratyphoid fever, lower respiratory tract infections, and parasitic infections (also acute and chronic gastrointestinal disease).
Explain the impacts of human harvest on deep sea fish communities.
Peak fish diversity (and abundance) occurs at around 1000-1500m depth. Deep sea fish are extremely diverse, and can be very long-lived (can live over 100 years – K-selected species), making them very susceptible to endangerment from overfishing.
It has been found that although commercial fishing only harvests fish to a depth of 1500m, fish abundances are affected down to a depth of 2500m - this is because many fish species have early life stages under 1500m, and then gradually move down to 2500m over the course of their lives.
Most fish which are caught from trawling are not those which are targets for commercial trade, and so are discarded back to the sea - however, these fish die anyway, as their swim bladders will burst when they reach shallower water due to the drop in pressure.
Describe the position of humans in the tree of life.
Primates diverged from other members of the superorder euarchontoglires (which also includes rodents) around 55-70MYA. There are two sub-orders of primates - strepsirrhini (non-tarsier prosimians, such as lemurs) and haplorhini (tarsiers and simians - i.e. monkeys and apes). Haplorhini can then be sub-divided into platyrrhine (flat-nosed monkeys of the Americas) and catarrhines (narrow-nosed monkeys and apes in Africa and southeast Asia).
Within the ape superfamily, there are two families - gibbons (containing 16 species all found in Asia) and the great apes (hominidae - Orangutans, Gorillas, Chimps, and Humans).
Explain the history of the hominin lineage, including significant technological, physiological, and morphological milestones (including major groups before Homo, H. habilis and H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and H. sapiens).
The hominin lineage is the lineage of all the human species since our divergence from the last common ancestor with chimps.
1) Major groups which arose before Homo were Sahelanthropus (notably S. tchadensis, the oldest known non-chimp homininan - fossils found to be 7 million years old), Orrorin, Ardipithecus Australopithecus (believed to be the first fully bipedal hominins), Kenvanthropus, and finally, Paranthropus. The only evidence of these organisms is Africa - so it is widely accepted that the hominin lineage originated there.
2) The first of the genus Homo were H. habilis and H. ergaster, which arose roughly 2.3 MYA. They were fully erect, bipedal, and used Oldowan technology (bone and stone tools) H. ergaster was slightly taller and had a larger brain than H. habilis, made slightly more advanced stone tools, dused controlled fire, and was the first in our genus which is known to have dispersed out of Africa (1.7 MYA). It may have survived our of Africa for 500KY, and up to 1.5MY in small pockets.
3) H. erectus was a significant milestone in human evolution, originating 1.8-2 MYA in Africa. It had a significantly larger brain size and used much more advanced stone tools, including axes. It also dispersed into many regions of the world, where it diversified into many of the other known Homo species. It had the greatest logevity of all hominin species so far, as they were very successful dispersers, able to adapt to many environments. What held them back was a lack of cumulative innovation - they did not build ont he innovations of their ancestors, but technology stayed very constant over long periods of time.
4) H. erectus likely speciated into H. heidelbergensis, which is our LCA with Neanderthals and Denisovans. This split occured roughly 600-700 KYA. Neanderthals ranged from western Europe to central Asia/Siberia, and as such were more adapted to colder climates. They were well muscled, as they hunted large game, and had a similar brain size to H. sapiens. The last neanderthals died out roughly 20 KYA, most likely to due competitive exclusion by H. sapiens, as well as climate change.
5) The earliest anatomically modern H. sapiens emerged in Africa roughly 300 KYA, and have since split into many ethnic lineages. The “deepest” ethnic divergence within anatomically modern humans occurred just over 100 KYA (between souther African and other African lineages), and then another split occurred around 45 KYA (Biaka/Mbuti split). Anatomically modern humans MUST be older than the deepest ethnic divergence within our species, as this is the only way we can recognise that all humans alive today are part of a cohesive species.
There is strong evidence of interbreeding between the sub-species of the Homo genus. This is a process known as introgression (infrequent mating between sub-species). People originating from Europe/Asia today have 2-4% neanderthal DNA; indigenous Australians have 2-6% denisovan DNA; and Africans have small contributions (roughly 2%) from different “ghost” species (unknown human species).
Compare the similarities and differences in reproductive strategies of humans compared to our closest living relatives.
Distinct characteristics of human reproduction compared to other great apes include:
Altricial offspring, long lactation period, high lactose (carbohydrate) content in milk (required for early brain development), extended juvenile period including unique adolescent growth spurt, menopause (protects childhood mortality and allows alloparenting by grandmothers?), pair-bonding/temporary monogamy (but changes across history and cultures).
The testes of Gorillas and Orangutans are small, since there is low sperm competition (as they are harem-holding). For chimps and bonobos, whose mating systems are promiscuous, sperm competition is high - this leads to them needing to deliver large sperm loads with each mating attempt to ensure the highest probability of fertilisation, resulting in enlarged testes.
Enlarged human penis and breast sizes may be due to sensory bias leading to runaway selection.
Discuss the history of mankind’s overexploitation of ocean resources.
The aquatic ape hypothesis is the theory that humans evolved largely in coastal ecosystems due to plentiful resources (this is consistent with morphological adaptations such as hairlessness, subcutaneous fat, and webbing between fingers). It is believed that the Steller’s sea cow - a Sirinid marine megaherbivore which existed in shallow seas - was hunted to extinction by early humans. However, it wasn’t until more recently that marine ecosystems were exploited in a sophisticated fashion.
Whaling began as early as 6000BC in Korea, and 5500BC in Norway. Docile, slow-swimming coastal whales with thick blubber (especially mother-calf pairs) were targeted at first, and when these depleted and technology advanced, offshore Arctic whaling began. After the industrial revolution, offshore casking of oil became possible, meaning that mid-ocean whale populations could be targeted (no longer had to be brought to shore). Commercial extinction of some whale species began in the mid 1800s. A second boom of impact to whale populations occurred in the mid 20th century, when diesel fuel meant that ships were able to move much faster.
Evidence suggests that trade of marine species began to emerge between the 9-11th centuries, potentially tied to prestige, population density (increased demand for protein), urbanisation, and Christianity (feasting). Overfishing, decreased forest on river banks to make space for agriculture (leading to increased corrosion of river banks), and migratory barriers (such as dams) resulted in the decline of freshwater fish abundances.
The first documented trawlers were used around 1376, and were recognised as damaging to the seabed as early as this. Industrialised fishing in the early 19th century vastly increased the capture effort of fish by coal-burning fishing vessels which were able to move faster and catch larger loads, and train lines were created to transport these vast quantities across the UK and other countries.
Today, the capture effort of fishermen is exponentially increasing as the oceans become more and more depleted. Despite this the catch rates are not increasing, but remaining levels, indicating the depletion of fish stocks. This is massively subsidised by the government.
Outline the 6-step plan for helping alleviate the damage imposed on marine ecosystems by unsustainable fishing practices.
1) Reduce fishing capacity: the owners of the massive fishing boats are the banks, because they are the ones who are being paid off by the fishers for their loans (meaning the fishers are fishing as hard as possible to pay their loans, mortgages, etc).
2) Remove politicians from the decision-making process: eliminate risk prone decisions, politicians don’t make good scientific decisions.
3) Base fishing quotas on capture effort (implementation of catch quotas means you have to fish harder and harder to obtain the same amount of fish, so fishing effort quotas are better).
4) Eliminate discard.
5) Ban or restrict damaging gear.
6) Introduce no fishing areas.
Explain the species approach to prioritising conservation efforts.
The species approach to protecting wildlife is used to mobilise interest, concern, and funding around prominent species which are endangered, or are keystone, thus protecting the ecosystems in which they reside.
The IUCN red list of threatened species is a recently standardised, scientific-based approach to evaluating the risk of extinction of many species worldwide. This is important for influencing decision making and generating advocacy for action. There are several criteria for this, including quantitative analyses (e.g. population viability), geographic range size, fragmentation, decline or fluctuations, restricted distribution, etc.
Flagship species (such as the giant panda) are ambassadors or icons which are endangered and may be key to protecting defined habitats. This can be highly effective for advocacy, but can become outdated by only focusing on conservation of a single species.
Keystone species have immense impacts on the structure of the environment and vegetation of their ecosystem, and so are very good candidates for conservation focus, due to limited resources.
EDGE (evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered) species focuses on conserving species with disproportionate amounts of distinct evolutionary history, rather than just those which are at risk of extinction.
Explain the ecosystem approach to prioritising conservation efforts.
The ecosystem approach targets dynamic ecosystems and the biological communities they contain (to maintain ecosystem processes) rather than the individual species.
IUCN have also recently produced a red list of threatened ecosystems. The criteria for threatened ecosystems include reduction in geographic distribution, restricted geographic distribution, environmental degradation, disruption of biotic processes or interactions, and quantitative analysis that estimates the probability of ecosystem collapse. These factors all categorise ecosystems based on their risk of collapse.
Explain the biodiversity hotspots approach to prioritising conservation efforts.
The biodiversity hotspots approach focuses on protecting areas with high levels of species richness and endemism (uniqueness).
Around the world, 25 areas qualify under this definition (as well as 9 other possible candidates), which combined support nearly 60% of the world’s plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species. This is a good prospect for using limited resources on conservation efforts (best bang for buck).
The global 200 is a map of 200 outstanding and representative habitats for biodiversity (used by the WWF). Large wilderness areas have also been identified (areas where anthropogenic impact is limited, so just need to be protected, rather than replenished). However, these areas are not necessary rich in biodiversity.
Explain the relationship between poverty and conservation regimes in developing countries, and how this issue may be solved.
Introducing protected areas has several socioeconomic impacts, such as landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, economic and social marginalisation, and food insecurity. Despite the fact that direct costs of protected areas rests on the shoulders of the locals, it is the state and the globe who benefit from the conservation efforts - for example, reintroducing elephants in Africa may benefit the ecosystems in which they reside, as well as the country as a whole, but also means infrastructure and crop destruction, as well as trampled civilians.
A potential solution to this issue, which arose throughout the 80s and 90s, is the transfer of power from political bodies to local authorities in management of their protected areas. This was known as CAMPFIRE (communal area management programmes for indigenous resources). However, the resulting lack of antagonism from the community towards protected areas generated by this did not suffice to solve the issue, as changes in funding meant that less went towards enforcement of the parks, and illegal activities such as poaching therefore increased.
Compare consumptive and non-consumptive utilisation of wildlife resources.
1) Consumptive utilisation includes harvest for food, ornaments, skin, fur, wool, ivory, trophies, etc (as well as exotic pets), and is most productive when populations have maximised growth rates, such that they can replenish themselves (in theory, it should be sustainable).
2) Non-consumptive utilisation includes eco-tourism, and is most productive when populations are at their largest sizes.
Outline the biology behind sustainable harvest, with reference to maximum sustainable yield, fixed proportion harvest, fixed escapement strategy, and constant effort harvesting.
The fundamental idea behind sustainable harvest is that you harvest a resource at the same rate as it reproduces, which results in a sustainable yield. This is based on the assumption of logistic growth of a population. Recruitment (rate of new individuals coming into the population or new production of a resource being harvested) is the difference in birth rate and death rate (or production and harvest). According to a logistic function, the maximum recruitment occurs at half the maximum carrying capacity (K/2). In theory, a fixed quota could at this level could provide a stable equilibrium known as the maximum sustainable yield. However, this is an oversimplified model, as there is high variability in environmental conditions, meaning that resources may vary throughout or between years, altering recruitment.
Fixed proportion harvest is an alternative approach, where constant proportions of the entire population are taken each year. This alleviates the issue of varying recruitment, however, it requires accurate estimates of abundance in order to set quotas, which can be logistically challenging.
Fixed escapement strategy means that harvest only takes place when the abundance is over a certain threshold. This ensures that the population being harvested from is robust enough to cope with the harvest by guaranteeing that recruitment never falls below a certain threshold. The issue with this is that many people’s livelihoods depend on the harvest, and if the abundance is not sufficient then this can lead to infeasible industry, and periods of unemployment.
Constant effort harvesting is where the effort of harvest is kept constant at all times, regardless of abundance. This is typically a safer, more efficient means of managing harvests than regulation by quota, but means that yield is not predictable.
Explain the bioeconomics behind exploitation of natural resources, with reference to the tragedy of the commons.
Long-term benefits are the key focus of sustainable practices, but this is challenging because natural capital is generated at a much slower rate than human-produced capital. This means that it is more profitable to liquidate natural resources and invest the revenue in human-produced capital than relying on the slow growth rate of natural capital itself.
The tragedy of the commons uses a hypothetical scenario to illustrate why overexploitation occurs at an individual level: A common resource is shared across several individuals, and each individual benefits equivalent to their share of that resource. The incentive is to reap the benefits at present for personal wealth, and so all individuals do this for their respective share, and in the end the resource becomes depleted. Each individual sees their share of the resource as their responsibility, and they will exploit it as they desire, but they are unaware, or feel less responsibility towards, the overall health of the system.
It is possible to overexploit a resource by a small amount, and still have maximal profits for a short period of time. This, paired with the incentive generated by demand and supply (affecting the market value of the resource as it depletes), leads to continued overexploitation of that resource despite its rapidly decreasing yield.
Describe the causes, consequences, and potential sustainability interventions on the crocodile skin trade.
A solution to overexploitation of crocodiles for their skin is their life-strategy – they are r-selected species, meaning they lay many eggs, and infant mortality is very high, but reduces with age. Therefore, removing a substantial proportion of eggs or hatchlings (rather than mature breeding parents) will have a much lower impact on their overall abundance than removing sexually mature adults. The young can then be raised in captivity, traded, and used as resources, with low impact on the robustness of the wild populations (also reduces the incentive of people who kill the animals due to conflict). Skins are tagged with cereal numbers which contain unique information of the origins of the animal, and allow it to be tracked while it is traded.
This is a lucrative trade, grossing >$200 million annually. However, there is a major ethical issue around this trade – many crocodiles are raised for slaughter and skinning. There has been a fairly considerable reduction in illegal trade of wild-caught crocodile skins since the domestic trade began.
This is a key example of how conservation incentives have been generated by markets – the economic importance of the resource has led to stronger institutional arrangements for conservation and management, and this is effective because of strong regulation and clear points in the supply chain for identification of legally-sourced products. However, one major drawback of the trade is that the people at the start of the chain (those who actually suffer to live with the dangerous wildlife) receive a relatively small proportion of the profits made from the trade.
Describe the causes, consequences, and potential sustainability interventions on the ivory trade.
After the industrial revolution (late 19th century) there was a huge spike in ivory trading, but this declined as the economy crashed during the great wars. A second spike came towards the end of the 20th century when the value of the far east ivory market substantially increased. During the first exploitation, there was actually very little impact on the abundance of elephants. The second exploitation had a much more profound impact on their abundance, and this was due to the major reduction in carrying capacity due to habitat loss and fragmentation.
In the 2000s, increasing prosperity in the far east has continued to escalate the demand for ivory, and many organised crime syndicates are involved in its trade. In 1975, a ban on trade of Asian elephants was implemented, and in 1990 a ban of trade of African elephants was implemented – these bans were accompanied by massive increases in funds for protection. Unfortunately, these bans have not been extremely effective – though there has been some degree of bounce back in elephant populations in southern African countries.
The data quality for this is quite inconsistent and not very accurate, and the fact that elephants are K-selected means they have less bounce-back potential compared to other organisms. There has also been an issue in these southern African countries which have been successfully protecting their elephants, as the elephants are exceeding the carrying capacity of their ecosystems and are raiding crops and spilling over into rural neighbourhoods. As a result, they have been pushing to down-list elephants from CITES appendix I to appendix II, so that they can effectively control the elephant numbers. There were many criteria which allows this to happen, such as no ivory being re-exported, and they must be able to distinguish between legal and illicit ivory (effectively track, etc).
Unfortunately, this opened the flood gates to illegal poaching and trade of ivory in recent years, as this was not sufficiently regulated. Legalisation of trade in this case was catastrophic, and an all-out ban seemed to be the only effective way to address the problem.
Describe the causes, consequences, and potential sustainability interventions on trophy hunting.
The result of trophy hunting is often a huge increase in abundance of many species (due to the displacement of agriculture from these areas), and the ecosystems in which they take place typically have very high abundances and richness. Hunting revenue is therefore low volume, low impact, but high revenue.
Trophy hunting generates around 20 times the revenue per visitor compared to photo tourism in wildlife parks. They can also be covered in less accessible (more remote) areas where visibility is lower. As well as this, tourism in wildlife parks has been found to affect wildlife much more (roads, places to stay, jeeps, etc). When managed appropriately, it can also allow excess animals to be culled (those who are not contributing to the population anymore).
However, on the other hand, these businesses often lack the information required to make informed decisions about their quotas (no professional biologists, etc). There is also little tangible data which has found that it actually improves protection of many wild animals, and due to how lucrative it is, it is rifled with corruption and political interference. Again, very little of the money actually goes to the poor communities. The ethics can be considered very bad – many of the animals are bated and drugged before being hunted.
With reference to gold mining in Venezuela, explain the impact of anthropogenic pollution of freshwater ecosystems.
Recent (and catastrophic) economic downturn in Venezuela has had many adverse impacts on the freshwater ecosystems there. As a result of the economic downturn, many individuals have moved from densely populated north-western regions of the country, towards the richer south-eastern illegal gold-mining region, Bolívar (oil has recently run out). These gold mines are located around areas which used to be rainforest, and are all run by huge crime syndicates with the support of corrupted military (there is a gold economy – since the money is worthless, they use gold-dust as currency). They use mercury to extract the gold. As well as this, there are very high rates of malaria in this region. Many individuals return to their home regions from this malaria hotspot with their gold.
Mining of this gold involves the collection of ore from alluvial sediments. Ore is then crushed and washed over copper plates covered with mercury (to amalgamate the gold). Therefore, mines are concentrated along water ways – they are a good source of water for washing, and sediment for ore. They then put it into a crucible, vaporising the mercury and separating the gold. Inorganic mercury becomes bioactive when microbial activity converts it to methyl-mercury. This bio-accumulates up trophic levels, and acts as a neurotoxin.
Sediment pollution can prevent light coming through, inhibiting primary production and preventing light-dependent fish spawning. It also alters the characteristics of sediment flow as it settles.
With reference to the Canadian great lakes experiments, explain the impact of anthropogenic pollution of freshwater ecosystems.
There are so many lakes in Canada that they decided to set aside some of them to experiment on. They tested the long-term effects of different types of pollution on freshwater ecosystems (a network of 58 formerly pristine lakes), such as eutrophication, heavy metal pollution, etc. Eutrophication is the enrichment of water by nutrient salts that causes structural changes to the ecosystem (e.g. algal blooms, depletion of fish, etc), and is often due to washing of fertiliser from agriculture into freshwater habitats.
To test what the fundamental drivers of eutrophication, they split a lake in two with a barrier (i.e. what were the nutrients in freshwater ecosystems that limited algal growth?). On one side of the barrier, they introduced nitrogen and carbon, and on the other side, they introduced nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorous. They found that phosphorous is a key limiting nutrient in algal metabolism – this means that phosphorous which runs off from urban, agricultural, and residential sources into freshwater is key to the overgrowth of algae, and the collapse of these freshwater trophic systems.
Another experiment done in the Canadian ecosystem was the analysis of the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) – these are chemicals which primarily affect hormonal functioning of freshwater fish. Compounds responsible for this include oestradiol and oestrone from human excretions which end up in sewage, as well as 17-alpha-ethinyloestradiol, a main component of the female contraceptive pill (also some other industrial chemicals). Non-organic dairy agriculture can also be a source of EDCs (hormonal treatments to make dairy cows produce more milk). This can cause the feminisation of male gonads in fish species (oocytes are produced in male gonads in stead of sperm) – this results in male fish becoming infertile. Therefore, the recruitment of fish each year reduces, causing overall population decline of these fish populations.
Explain the causes and consequences of invasive species on freshwater communities.
Invasive species outcompete native organisms in an ecosystem and oust them from their niche. This can often lead to the collapse or the rearrangement of trophic structures. However, this isn’t always bad – for example, zebra mussels (invasive in central-west Irish lake systems) have cleared the cloudy water and increasing how photic they are, and there has since been a dramatic increase in biodiversity as a direct result of this. on the other hand, these organisms tend to be an issue to people, as they can clog water pipes. This is an example of an ecosystem engineering role which the mussels assume, but invasive species can also have effects due to displacement of native species, predation of native species, and parasite introduction.
For example, European eels are critically endangered due to the introduction of parasites from non-native eels which were brought for aquaculture. In almost all cases, invasive species become keystone species.
Explain the causes and consequences of habitat alteration on freshwater communities.
European beavers are an example of a keystone species which was massively overexploited throughout the 19th century (used for their fur). They are so important because they are keen ecosystem engineers – they enhance wetland habitats by reducing down-stream flooding and silt runoff, and they diffuse pollution in major water courses.
Organisms which benefit from this include mammals (otters, water voles, water shrews, and bats), insects (dragonflies, aquatic invertebrates), reptiles and amphibians (grass snakes, newts, frogs, and toads), fish, birds, and higher plants. Beavers therefore shape their ecosystems in a way which improves the biodiversity and allows for the abundance of many other organisms.
Describe several techniques of biologging - radio tags, TDRs, geolocators, GPS tags, accelerometers, Dtags, proximity tags, physiological tags, and cameras.
Biologging is the use of devices (biologgers), which are attached to animals (mounted on collars, harnesses, or implanted internally), which provide data about the movements of animals, behaviours, and/or physiology.
1) Radio tags transmit radio signals to track the gross movements of wildlife. These signals must be received in real-time, by drone/plane or by hand.
2) TDRs (time-depth recorders) document pressure changes across time of deep diving animals.
3) Geolocators (archival light tags) are tiny devices which can track the position of an organism around the globe by analysing the angle of the sun relative to them. These are typically used to track large-scale migrations as they are not very accurate, and also they need to be retrieved.
4) GPS tags use satellites to triangulate positions of animals in real-time, and some have SIM cards, meaning they don’t need to be retrieved, as long as there is phone coverage.
5) Accelerometers can track the dynamic body acceleration of an animal, by combining the way they move on three axes (surge, heave, and sway). This is directly correlated to energy usage. When combined with video footage, data can be annotated such that specific patterns in dynamic body acceleration data can be known to correspond with specific behaviours.
6) Dtags are digital acoustic recording tags which record audio, pitch, roll, heading, and depth - these are often used for whales to see how they move in the water. They have suction cups which attach to the whale’s skin, and pop off after a pre-determined quantity of time, then transmit a signal so that they can be retrieved from the water.
7) Proximity tags use radio frequencies to monitor the distance between tagged individuals (two or more required for this). This is useful in places like caves where there is no GPS signal.
8) Physiological tags measure the internal conditions of an organism (e.g. stomach pill which monitors internal stomach temperature to tell you when it eats).
9) Cameras can also be attached externally to animals to log their movements and behaviours from their perspective.
Explain how biologging can be used for conservation purposes.
Biologging can better inform the use of potential interventions, such as protected areas, by providing information about the movements which animals naturally take in these areas.
An example of a recent study which led to a positive conservation outcome due to biologging was with Cheetahs living near cattle farms in Namibia. Using satellite collars, it was found that male Cheetahs reside around important trees in their habitats called “play-trees” (where they put their scent as a way of communicated with other Cheetahs). Farmers who were suffering the greatest cattle losses were where their cattle stayed too close to these trees. As a result of this, farmers were advised to move their cattle to other parts of their farms, further from the trees – the Cheetah stayed near the trees and did not follow the cattle. This reduced the impact of Cheetah predation on cattle by over 85%.
A new initiative right now being developed is called ICARUS (international cooperation of animals research using space). They have developed very small devices (<5g) which have GPS, accelerometers, thermometers, and magnetometers, and these directly link with the international space station when it goes over that area of the globe (orbits 16 times per day). The ISS then uploads this information to a ground station, then an ISS control centre, then an operations centre, and then to a database called movebank, where researchers can download their results.
