📰 EwA News Digest: Air Monitors, Wildlife Psychology and Endangered Species
Madeline Logan
Hi everyone,
This is Madeline, one of the EwA interns for the summer and I am going to be sharing news stories of environmental discoveries across the globe. This week I’ll be looking at the sky and the threats and recoveries towards endangered species.
Air quality monitoring has been in the news recently due to wildfire smoke spreading across eastern North America, but this isn’t the only thing air quality stations are doing. Scientists have discovered environmental DNA (eDNA) has been collected in air quality filters in thousands of stations across the globe for decades. These eDNA samples can be used to monitor biodiversity and understand what species have visited an area. To learn more about the study and the potential benefits of eDNA read here.
Looking into the sky you won’t be able to see eDNA and other air particles, but if you're in the city you will likely see pigeons. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence have been conducting experiments into the sleep cycles of pigeons. They discovered that pigeons’ sleep cycles closely resemble those of humans and other mammals, with some significant differences. To read more about the importance of sleep cycles in birds read here.
Pigeons are not the only members of the animal kingdom that are more complicated than previously thought; the sensory world of bees is quite complex, as this article explains. Bees are capable of remembering human faces, navigating through mazes and even are aware of their body’s size. Bees see the world completely differently than humans, with vision 60 times less sharp than humans and a different set of primary colors (green, blue and ultraviolet). To learn more about the world of bees click here.
In other insect news the black-veined white butterfly was recently spotted in south-east London after being declared extinct in the UK in 1925. There is no known reason for the sudden reappearance of the butterfly, but some believe they may have been bred in captivity and released by someone. To learn more about the reappeared “extinct” butterfly check out here.
While some species may have been saved from extinction, many face even more threats, like Southern California’s Channel Island Foxes. The foxes were originally threatened by an increase in eagle attacks and an outbreak of canine distemper. Numbers were considered restored by 2017, but the loss of genetic diversity has had negative effects on the foxes’ ability to adapt to environmental changes. To read more about the risk this poses to the islands’ biodiversity, click here.
One method explored of preserving biodiversity through species recovery has been releasing captive populations into the wild. The organization Onçafari in Brazil is pioneering this technique with their plan to reintroduce jaguars into the Amazon. To learn more about this plan read here.
Thank you for reading this, stay curious and I’ll see you next month!
Madeline