Speciose Weekly - 1/24/21
In Brief: New President, New Trajectory; More Work Needed to Preserve Salmon; Cities Cause Rich Evolution; Ridiculously Large Animal Genome; and much more...
Welcome to this week’s edition of Speciose Weekly, a newsletter about biodiversity and why it matters, by me, Nick Minor.
For more about the Speciose Weekly newsletter, check the about page and my recent post on the stakes for biodiversity in 2021.
THIS past week, with the inauguration of a new president in the United States, was a bit paradoxical. On the one hand, there was an immense amount of biodiversity-relevant news. We’ll get to that shortly. But on the other hand, very little actually happened. The majority of what took place were commitments, not results; projections rather than progress; an agenda rather than an action. In a few words, Biden and his administration set things in motion.
Still, for folks who care about their non-human neighbors or about the world’s ecosystems, this past week was reason to celebrate. The United States steered back in a direction that’s better for the species all around us: more solutions for the climate crisis and for lowering the temperature (literally) in strained ecosystems; more work to solve environmental racism; more preservation of wild land and seascapes; and more evidence-based thinking in general.
As with all democratic changing-of-guards, though, we must remember: the Biden administration re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement or ordering review of Trump-era environmental deregulations are not victories in and of themselves. They are first steps down a still-challenging path.
With a razor-thin majority in favor of climate action in the Senate, the Democratic Party will be unusually dependent on moderate Republicans. Meanwhile, pro-compromise Republicans are already facing backlash amongst their voters. We must follow closely to see how things actually play out—and speak up in the event of any missteps.
We have a real chance to make a difference now. Let’s get to the news and see, with a few headlines, how this difference will start.
News
Simple, concrete connections between biodiversity and current events.
1. The Biden-Harris Administration: A Prolific First Three Days
In his first three days, following what many environmentalists have recommended, Biden signed no less than 30 executive orders, effectively undoing much of former President Trump’s legacy. This included orders to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, place a moratorium on oil and gas activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and, most importantly, review and reverse more than 100 of Trump’s environmental orders.
This review process is likely to have a big, positive impact on ecosystems and the species taking part in them. Some of these impacts will be very direct, like undoing Trump’s actions to weaken the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act, the latter of which will once again be the world’s most powerful conservation legislation. Restoring the National Environmental Policy Act, re-closing the Tongass National Forest to logging, re-implementing protections for wetlands and waterways in the Clean Water Act, re-establishing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, removing the sensitive habitat-fragmenting border wall—these actions rank among the many outcomes likely to benefit biodiversity in the United States.
Of course, things are just getting started. We’ll follow along closely, here in Speciose Weekly, as President Biden’s policies go into full effect.
2. Intimate Ties Established between Janet Yellen’s Treasury Department and Climate
Shortly before her unanimous approval in the Senate, Yellen pledged to assemble a climate team at the Treasury Department, devoting some of the powerful agency’s resources to the climate crisis—which, by the way, Yellen described explicitly as an "existential threat."
In more of Yellen’s words,
Both the impact of climate change itself and policies to address it could have major impacts, creating stranded assets, generating large changes in asset prices, credit risks and so forth that could affect the financial system. These are very real risks.
Meanwhile, banks and insurers have began to respond proactively (though not comprehensively) to the prospect of climate policy—not to mention climate emergency. The synergy between banks/insurers, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve may well bear fruit, both for lowering emissions as well as for biodiversity. Economic stability, after all, is deeply intertwined with the stability of the natural world. When less money flows toward environmentally destructive industries, more ecosystems can recover and function to buffer the impacts of natural disasters, climate warming, and the like.
(Politico)
3. Biden Seeks to Overcome Divides within Democratic Party through Climate Task Force Leadership
Two names will be at the helm of Biden’ climate task force: architect of the Paris climate accord and former Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.S. Representative and architect of the Green New Deal Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Both leaders have expressed enthusiasm for ambitious climate goals packaged together with economic recovery. Us biodiversity activists must hope that, as part of their agenda, wild ecosystems that sequester carbon are preserved more enthusiastically than in the last four years.
The climate task force is one of six “unity task forces”, which the Biden-Harris administration hopes will energize progressives and Democratic moderates alike. Click the link below to learn more about the full task force.
4. The State of Salmon: Five Species in Crisis, Ten Behind in Recovery Goals, Others Have More Hopeful Prospects
Every other year, the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office releases a “State of Salmon in Watersheds” report, which relays the status of fourteen species of salmon and steelhead trout. Their 2020 report, released last week, emphasized that for some species, “Time is running out.”
The climate is changing, rivers are warming, habitat is diminishing, and the natural systems that support salmon in the Pacific Northwest need help now more than ever.
The report finds that five species are at imminent risk of extinction, while ten others are behind at reaching pre-existing recovery goals. For other species, though, conservation work is at least “treading water.” Two species, Hood Canal summer chum and Snake River fall chinook, are close to their recovery goal, and no salmon species had been added to the endangered list since 2007.
Still, at least 139 species depend on salmon in some way—including humans. Salmon species make possible some 16,000 jobs in the commercial fishing, recreational fishing, and tourism sectors. More resources, fewer dams, and less climate warming are necessary to protect this important group of species.
5. 100+ Aquatic Science Societies Speak up about Climate Emergency
Last week, 111 aquatic-science societies issued a joint “World Climate Statement”. The statement is an excellent summary of the challenges that climate change poses on aquatic ecosystems—and the world in general.
(Nature)
6. Advocacy on Behalf of Galápagos Marine Reserve Gains Traction
GOOD NEWS!! After months of organizing, a coalition of environmental organizations delivered 32,000+ signatures to the Government of Ecuador, imploring them to expand the Galápagos Marine Reserve. Click on the Instagram post below and slide through to learn more.
At its current size, the reserve is already one of the largest and most biodiverse marine protected areas on earth. By expanding the reserve from 138,000 square kilometers to almost 446,000 square kilometers, the reserve will better protect sensitive marine species. Crucially, it will also provide enough space for fish populations to recover from intense fishing pressures.
(Only One on Instagram)
Science
Your finger on the pulse of research from ecology, evolutionary biology, conservation, economics, and other fields where biodiversity counts.
Evolution in the City: a field that has come “into its own” - That latest issue of the journal Evolution Applications, all of which is open access, focuses broadly on how urbanization affects not just ecology, but also how populations evolve.
Included in this special issue are studies showing that city damselflies have evolved higher fitness during urban heatwaves, that urban ants have evolved faster metabolisms and faster running speeds in heat islands, that bumblebees have evolved larger—but also more variable—body sizes in cities, that some songbirds grow up more slowly in the city, and much more.
If you read nothing else from the special issue, I recommend diving into the final paper, titled, “Socio‐eco‐evolutionary dynamics in cities”. It’s a mouthful of a neologism, but the idea behind it is grand: human society, urban ecosystems, and the evolutionary pageant are all unfolding together in real time. (Evolutionary Applications)
For just a quick summary, take a look at this post from the excellent Life in the City blog.
“Giant lungfish genome elucidates the conquest of land by vertebrates” - Many hundreds of animals have had their genomes sequenced. But none, not even the previous record-holder the Axolotl, have genomes larger than the Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri). The lungfish’s genome is a truly ridiculous 43 billion base pairs long—more than fourteen times the size of the human genome.
Less than ten percent of the lungfish genome actually translates into the species’ phenotype. The other 90% is full of various genetic sequences, repeated over and over again, many of which are “selfish” transposable elements. Given the challenges inherent to sequencing such repetitive genomes, it took some 100,000 hours on a supercomputer to assemble the final sequence.
Why go to the trouble? After sequencing the full genome, researchers determined that the lungfish is really more land-based tetrapod (like mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds) than fish. Thanks to their efforts, we now know that lungfish represent a long-lasting branch on the tree of life, which first budded off around when fish first came onto land. (Nature)
“With business-as-usual, plants may only be able to capture half as much carbon as early as 2040” - Plant energy metabolism comes down to a formula of two processes: photosynthesis, which stores energy, and respiration, which uses energy. But only one of these processes—photosynthesis—has a thermal upper limit. As temperatures increase above that limit, respiration ramps up its us of energy and release of CO2, while photosynthesis stays that same.
This study finds that in the past decade, we have passed the point where photosynthesis can no longer capture more energy and more carbon, meaning that on average, plants are release more carbon than their capturing. At the current rate of climate warming, the average plant may capture half as much carbon as they release as early as 2040.
The silver lining? If the world’s nations actually achieve their climate goals, most ecosystems will avoid this tipping point. (Science Advances)
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With gratitude,
—Nick