📰 EwA News Digest: Hurricane Season, Viral Birdsong, and Early Life in the Deep Ocean

[mlmcglathery]

Hey everyone! Mike here, with the latest EwA News Digest. I'm trying a new way of linking articles today - let me know how you like it!

As we reach our season of peak temperatures in Massachusetts, hurricane season is heating up in the Atlantic. In weathering these events together with our ecosystems, we can learn a lot from them. A recent study shows that the nesting habits of veeries can predict the severity of a hurricane season as well as or better than our meteorological models.

Speaking of useful adaptations, the resourcefulness of species remains an overlooked tool in working towards those species' conservation. Recent data support the somewhat common-sense notion that species more adaptable in their diet are more resistant to extinction.

Some changes in bird lifestyle are a little more aesthetic. An article from Audubon details how a new song dialect in white-throated sparrows went from a local oddity in British Columbia to a continent-wide phenomenon in the span of under twenty years.

Speaking of British Columbia, you may have heard of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the BC coast composed largely of rainforest. In 2018, a partnership was formed between the Haida nation and the canadian and provincial governments to conserve the land according to Haida principles.

Scientists have been theorizing about the origins of life for countless years, and these days those theories are getting a lot more specific. A new study shows that RNA, a critical component of life, is capable of replicating in the conditions like those around deep-sea heat vents, geological features of the ocean floor that have existed since before life began. 

Lastly, I'll leave you with a tale of persistence - a net-spinning caddis larva trying again, and again, and again, to expel a pebble from their nest. Hard work does pay off!

That's all for now! Catch you next time.