Category: Environment

{The Moon, and the question of how it was formed, has long been a source of fascination and wonder. Now, a team of Israeli researchers suggests that the Moon we see every night is not Earth’s first moon, but rather the last in a series of moons that orbited Earth in the past. The findings by the team of researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science are published in Nature Geoscience.}

The newly proposed theory by researchers Prof. Hagai Perets, of the Technion, and Weizmann Institute Profs. Raluca Rufo (lead author)and Oded Aharonson, runs counter to the commonly held “giant impact” paradigm that the moon is a single object that was formed following a single giant collision between a small Mars-like planet and the ancient Earth.

“Our model suggests that the ancient Earth once hosted a series of moons, each one formed from a different collision with the proto-Earth,” said co-author Prof. Perets. “It’s likely that such moonlets were later ejected, or collided with Earth or with each other to form bigger moons.” To check the conditions for the formation of such mini-moons or moonlets the researchers ran 800 simulations of impacts with Earth.

The new model is consistent with science’s current understanding of the formation of Earth. In its last stages of the growth, Earth experienced many giant impacts with other bodies. Each of these impacts contributed more material to the proto-Earth, until it reached its current size.

“We believe Earth had many previous moons,” said Prof. Perets, who added that, “a previously formed moon could therefore already exist when another moon-forming giant impact occurs.”

The tidal forces from Earth could cause moons to slowly migrate outwards (the current Moon is slowly doing that at a pace of about 1 cm a year). A pre-existing moon would slowly move out by the time another moon forms. However, their mutual gravitational attraction would eventually cause the moons to affect each other, and change their orbits.

“It’s likely that small moons formed through the process could cross orbits, collide and merge,” said lead author Prof. Rufo. “A long series of such moon-moon collisions could gradually build-up a bigger moon — the Moon we see today.”

{Non-invasive sonic technology measures wood decay in living, tropical trees.}

Living trees can rot from the inside out, leaving only a hollowed trunk. Wood rot in living trees can cause overestimates of global carbon pools, timber loss in forestry, and poor tree health. Understanding wood decay in forests is of special concern in the tropics because tropical forests are estimated to harbor 96% of the world’s tree diversity and about 25% of terrestrial carbon, compared to the roughly 10% of carbon held in temperate forests.

But how do foresters and researchers see into a living tree to measure wood decay? They use sound.

In a recently published article in Applications in Plant Sciences, a team of professors, teachers, and students established methods for using a sound wave technology called sonic tomography. Their methods were derived from measurements on more than 1,800 living trees of 173 tropical rainforest tree species in the Republic of Panama.

“We don’t yet know where internal decay and damage rank as a cause of tree mortality,” says Greg Gilbert, lead author of the article and Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Most of the decay is hidden — the tomography now allows us to see how many apparently healthy trees are actually decayed inside.”

Sonic tomography sends sound waves through tree trunks. The longer it takes for a sound wave to traverse a trunk, the more decayed the wood. Based on the velocity of sound, the tomograph (PiCUS 3 Sonic Tomograph; Argus Electronic GmbH, Rostock, Germany) makes a color-coded image of a cross section of the trunk.

Previous use of sonic tomography in forestry has focused on measurements in “typically shaped” trees with cylindrical trunks. However, tropical trees often have large buttresses, irregular trunk shapes, and prop roots that extend up the tree. The new study describes optimum placement of the sensors to avoid aberrant tomography results for the non-model tree shapes that populate the tropics and details how to analyze the tomograms to quantify areas of decayed and damaged wood.

The sonic tomography methods were developed and tested during an international field course for high school, college, and graduate students in the Republic of Panama and funded through the National Science Foundation. Gilbert and colleagues took students and their teachers into the field and used inquiry-based learning to teach molecular and field approaches to ecology, as well as foster an international pipeline to ecological research. Gilbert comments, “It was an exciting dive, with amazing people from diverse backgrounds, into the messy part of doing science — figuring out how best to do what you need in order to answer difficult questions.” All of the workshop participants contributed to the sonic tomography data collection and analysis for the article.

Fungi cause wood rot by entering a tree trunk and decaying wood from the inside out, releasing carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Gilbert explains that without a reliable method to detect missing wood, you cannot understand how trees are contributing to or moderating increasing levels of global atmospheric carbon, or how apparently healthy forests and tree species are responding to shifts in climate.

Gilbert’s research on wood decay is building toward a large study about how pathogens and diseases control the prevalence of tropical tree species. “The hypothesis is that species that are more susceptible to heart rot fungi will usually remain rare in the forest, and only those species that are resistant will become common,” says Gilbert. He and his colleagues are measuring and tracking tropical trees in the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s long-term Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) site on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal.

Future work will continue validating sonic tomography technology for tropical tree systems using felled or already dead trees. Tropical trees are highly diverse in both form and function, and they are thus potentially distinct in their methodological requirements for sonic tomography. For example, this method does not work on palm species or any tree species that use internal tissues to store water.

Urban forestry also benefits from sonic tomography. Gilbert and colleagues with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute are collaborating with Panama City to use tomography to evaluate the health and property risks of Panama’s urban trees that may be decayed and vulnerable to snapping in high winds and heavy precipitation.

{Globally, 2016 edged out 1998 by +0.02 C to become the warmest year in the 38-year satellite temperature record, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Because the margin of error is about 0.10 C, this would technically be a statistical tie, with a higher probability that 2016 was warmer than 1998. The main difference was the extra warmth in the Northern Hemisphere in 2016 compared to 1998.}

“The question is, does 2016’s record warmth mean anything scientifically?” Christy said. “I suppose the answer is, not really. Both 1998 and 2016 are anomalies, outliers, and in both cases we have an easily identifiable cause for that anomaly: A powerful El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event. While El Niños are natural climatic events, they also are transient. In the study of climate, we are more concerned with accurately identifying long-term temperature trends than we are with short-term spikes and dips, especially when those spikes and dips have easily identified natural causes.

“Some records catch our attention because we usually struggle to cope with rare events. For example, the Sept.-Nov. record heat and dryness in the southeastern U.S. (now a thing of the past) will be remembered more than the probability that 2016 edged 1998 in global temperatures. So, from the long-term perspective, 2016’s record may be less noteworthy than where the month-to-month temperature settles out between warming and cooling events.”

Compared to seasonal norms, the warmest average temperature anomaly on Earth in December was in south central China, near the town of Qamdo. December temperatures there averaged 3.91 C (about 7.04 degrees F) warmer than seasonal norms. Compared to seasonal norms, the coolest average temperature on Earth in December was near the town of Buffalo Narrows in west central Saskatchewan. December temperatures there averaged 4.13 C (about 7.43 degrees F) cooler than seasonal norms.

The December 2016 GTR includes the global temperature anomaly map for the month and the month-by-month graph of global temperature anomalies for the duration of the satellite temperature dataset. It also includes a global map of the 2016 temperature anomalies, and a global map of the regional climate trends from December 1978 through December 2016.

As part of an ongoing joint project between UAH, NOAA and NASA, Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Dr. Roy Spencer, an ESSC principal scientist, use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available.

The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. Once the monthly temperature data are collected and processed, they are placed in a “public” computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad.

Neither Christy nor Spencer receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups.

All of their climate research funding comes from federal and state grants or contracts.

{The world of forest ants may provide a macrocosm of the complex reactions and interactions among species affected by global climate change, according to a research project involving Bowling Green State University biologist Dr. Shannon Pelini.}

As escalating amounts of carbon dioxide are introduced into the atmosphere, a chain reaction is induced, leading to increasingly warmer temperatures, Pelini said. This is taking place at an alarming rate, making it more important than ever that we understand how climate change will affect our natural world.

Many scientists have attempted to tackle this issue by determining the thermal tolerance of various species, then predicting what will happen to them as our world warms. However, this approach as a way to understand nature has its drawbacks because one species never acts alone. Individuals are constantly interacting with other species and the environment in which they live, so comprehending how global change impacts these interactions is crucial to a holistic understanding.

Pelini and her colleagues have made significant progress in this direction with their new study, “Climatic Warming Destabilizes Forest Ant Communities,” which looks at complex interactions of ant communities and their responses to warming. The study was published in the Oct. 26 edition of the journal Science Advances.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Program for Ecosystem Research and the National Science Foundation, the long-term experiment looked at the interactions ants exhibit over nesting structures in two distinctly different geographical areas. As a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, and in collaboration with investigators from the University of Vermont, the University of Tennessee and North Carolina State University, Pelini designed and built large warming chambers within Harvard Forest in Massachusetts. These chambers were also replicated in Duke Forest in North Carolina to provide a comparison to the cooler Harvard Forest.

“It’s one of the biggest climate change experiments in the entire world, which is a really exciting thing to be a part of,” Pelini said. “We were shooting for understanding what goes on with ant communities that exist in a cooler northern latitude and how their responses compare to the same suite of species in populations that occur in the warmer lower latitude.”

The researchers, led by Dr. Sarah Diamond, now an assistant professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University, placed artificial nest boxes in the warming chambers and checked them once a month for five years to measure which species of ants were utilizing them. They were interested to see if the ant species in the nest boxes would differ depending on the intensity of the warming treatment.

“We literally put heaters around the forest floor and warmed the ant communities up to see what would happen so we could more precisely ask how extinction and colonization and occupancy of these local habitats change,” Pelini said.

In fact, Pelini and her colleagues found some interesting and unexpected results. In warmer chambers, there was more occupancy of heat-loving ants, which is intuitive. However, less expected was the amount of time those ants were remaining in one single nest. Typically, ant colonies are constantly competing with each other for prime nest habitat, which promotes resilience to environmental changes within the community. When one ant species, like the heat-lovers, remains in a nest for a long time, there is less resilience in the community and so it is more likely to fall apart following a disturbance event, Pelini said.

According to Pelini, these results occurred for two reasons. First, warming will create an environment that preferentially selects organisms with broader or higher thermal tolerances. Second, those species that will do well under warming conditions will also have more opportunities to interact with other species that may or may not do as well under those conditions. The latter is something that current climate change models cannot capture because they do not focus on the community as a whole.

“I think the most exciting part of this experiment is being able to just watch the community and how it responded,” Pelini said.

Ants play an important role in the ecosystem of forests, dispersing seeds and keeping soil aerated and as a food source for other animals, Pelini said.

Although the study provided a new understanding of how climate change is going to influence a group of vital invertebrates that inhabit our soil, there is still much more to understand about this system and how it will respond to change.

“Ants are very charismatic; we know a lot about their natural history, their physiology, and their ecology,” Pelini said. “And I think we’re doing a good job linking physiology or using physiology to monitor what the impacts of climate change are, but we need to do more with behavior. So, that’s one direction in which I’d like to see climate change research move.”

{The diversity of plants and animals in Earth’s arctic regions is moderate. Tropical latitudes in contrast are teeming with different species where new organisms are being discovered all the time.}

What is the cause of this uneven distribution? Why are the tropics home to more species than higher latitudes? “This question has intrigued ecologists for some time,” says Professor Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter from the University of Würzburg’s Biocenter. “Already about ten years ago, the publishers of Science declared this to be one of the 25 most important questions of science to be answered yet.”

{{Several hypotheses circulating}}

To date, this core question has been subject to controversy. One hypothesis, for instance, is that the primary productivity of a habitat is ultimately decisive for the number of species living there. Simply put: “A larger cake can sustain more species than a small one,” explains Würzburg ecologist Dr. Marcell Peters. Another hypothesis assumes that the rate of evolution and speciation depend on temperature. According to this assumption, more species thrive in a warmer climate than in a cold one.

So far, these hypotheses have been examined usually by focusing on selected groups of species: For example, the studies observed only birds, bees, ants or ferns and analysed their diversity in different regions of the world, e.g. in North America, Europe or along elevational gradients in the Alps. “Some studies supported one hypothesis, whereas others backed another assumption,” Peters says and states that it is still a long way from establishing a “general rule” which ecologists are aiming for.

Unique study conducted at Mount Kilimanjaro

In the journal “Nature Communications” Peters and the team of the Research Unit “FOR1246” funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) now present a new study which is unique so far and is the synthesis of four years of working: “On Mount Kilimanjaro, one of Earth’s largest climatic gradients, we observed so many animal and plant groups in parallel as never before,” the researcher says.

Overall, the team examined eight groups of plants and 17 groups of animals, from bees to bats. 38 scientists from Germany, Tanzania and other countries participated in the large-scale study; they were supported by around 50 local drivers, carriers and other assistants. “We had to climb in mountainous areas for several days to reach the highest study sites,” Peters says.

The area of study stretched from the savannahs at the foot of the mountain to the habitats at an altitude of 4,550 metres that barely sustain plants. The data across all groups were collected over the same areas and in the same period of time, respectively. “This approach allowed us to not only analyse the biodiversity of each individual group, but also that of whole communities.”

{{Diversity increases with temperature}}

The study revealed that biodiversity in communities is mainly determined by temperature. The warmer it is, the greater the diversity. “The more groups of animals and plants you investigate in parallel, the greater the significance of temperature for explaining biodiversity, whereas the importance of all other variables decreases accordingly.”

The scientists believe that this is strong evidence supporting the assumption that temperature is actually more decisive for distribution patterns of overall biodiversity than productivity or size of habitats.

{If countries abide by the Paris Agreement global warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, potential fish catches could increase by six million metric tons per year, according to a new study published in Science.}

The researchers also found that some oceans are more sensitive to changes in temperature and will have substantially larger gains from achieving the Paris Agreement.

“The benefits for vulnerable tropical areas is a strong reason why 1.5 C is an important target to meet,” said lead author William Cheung, director of science at the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program and associate professor at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.

“Countries in these sensitive regions are highly dependent on fisheries for food and livelihood, but all countries will be impacted as the seafood supply chain is now highly globalized. Everyone would benefit from meeting the Paris Agreement.”

The authors compared the Paris Agreement 1.5 C warming scenario to the currently pledged 3.5 C by using computer models to simulate changes in global fisheries and quantify losses or gains. They found that for every degree Celsius decrease in global warming, potential fish catches could increase by more than three metric million tons per year. Previous UBC research shows that today’s global fish catch is roughly 109 million metric tons.

“Changes in ocean conditions that affect fish stocks, such as temperature and oxygen concentration, are strongly related to atmospheric warming and carbon emissions,” said author Thomas Frölicher, principal investigator at the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program and senior scientist at ETH Zürich. “For every metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, the maximum catch potential decreases by a significant amount.”

Climate change is expected to force fish to migrate towards cooler waters. The amount and species of fish caught in different parts of the world will impact local fishers and make fisheries management more difficult.

The findings suggest that the Indo-Pacific area would see a 40 per cent increase in fisheries catches at 1.5 C warming versus 3.5 C. Meanwhile the Arctic region would have a greater influx of fish under the 3.5 C scenario but would also lose more sea ice and face pressure to expand fisheries.

The authors hope these results will provide further incentives for countries and the private sector to substantially increase their commitments and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“If one of the largest carbon dioxide emitting countries gets out of the Paris Agreement, the efforts of the others will be clearly reduced,” says author Gabriel Reygondeau, Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program senior fellow at UBC. “It’s not a question of how much we can benefit from the Paris Agreement, but how much we don’t want to lose.”

{Discovery may explain why birds are toothless.}

Researchers have discovered that a species of dinosaur, Limusaurus inextricabilis, lost its teeth in adolescence and did not grow another set as adults. The finding, published today in Current Biology, is a radical change in anatomy during a lifespan and may help to explain why birds have beaks but no teeth.

The research team studied 19 Limusaurus skeletons, discovered in “death traps,” where they became mired in mud, got stuck and died, in the Xinjiang Province of China. The dinosaurs ranged in age from baby to adult, showing the pattern of tooth loss over time. The baby skeleton had small, sharp teeth, and the adult skeletons were consistently toothless.

“This discovery is important for two reasons,” said James Clark, a co-author on the paper and the Ronald Weintraub Professor of Biology at the George Washington University’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. “First, it’s very rare to find a growth series from baby to adult dinosaurs. Second, this unusually dramatic change in anatomy suggests there was a big shift in Limusaurus’ diet from adolescence to adulthood.”

Limusaurus is part of the theropod group of dinosaurs, the evolutionary ancestors of birds. Dr. Clark’s team’s earlier research of Limusaurus described the species’ hand development and notes that the dinosaur’s reduced first finger may have been transitional and that later theropods lost the first and fifth fingers. Similarly, bird hands consist of the equivalent of a human’s second, third and fourth fingers.

These fossils indicate that baby Limusaurus could have been carnivores or omnivores while the adults were herbivores, as they would have needed teeth to chew meat but not plants. Chemical makeup in the fossils’ bones supports the theory of a change in diet between babies and adults. The fossils also could help to show how theropods such as birds lost their teeth, initially through changes during their development from babies to adults.

“For most dinosaur species we have few specimens and a very incomplete understanding of their developmental biology,” said Josef Stiegler, a graduate student at George Washington University and co-author. “The large sample size of Limusaurus allowed us to use several lines of evidence including the morphology, microstructure and stable isotopic composition of the fossil bones to understand developmental and dietary changes in this animal.”

{From a fleet of shining beetles to sharks and an alarming bird virus, spanning 5 continents and 3 oceans, these discoveries add to Earth’s tree of life}

In 2016, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added 133 new plant and animal species to our family tree, enriching our understanding of Earth’s complex web of life and strengthening our ability to make informed conservation decisions. The new species include one bee fly, 43 ants, 36 beetles, one sand wasp, four spiders, six plants, 23 fishes, one eel, one shark, seven nudibranchs, five fossil urchins (and one fossil sand dollar), one coral, one skate, one African lizard, and an alarming new bird virus. More than a dozen Academy scientists — along with several dozen international collaborators — described the discoveries.

Proving that our planet contains unexplored places with never-before-recorded plants and animals (with their own set of evolving viruses), the scientists made their finds over five continents and three oceans, ventured into vast deserts, plunged beneath the sea, and scoured thick rainforests and towering mountain ranges. Their results help advance the Academy’s mission to explore, explain, and sustain life on Earth.

“Biodiversity scientists estimate that we have discovered less than 10% of the species on our planet,” says Dr. Shannon Bennett, Academy Chief of Science. “Academy scientists tirelessly explore the lesser-known regions of Earth — not only to discover new species, but also to uncover the importance of these species to the health of our natural systems. Each of these species, known and as-yet-unknown, is a wonder unto itself but may also hold the key to ground-breaking innovations in science, technology, or society. Species live together in rich networks that thrive on complexity whether we can see it or not. Even the tiniest organism,” she adds, “can be beautiful and important.”

{ {{Below are a few highlights among the 133 species described by the Academy in 2016.}} }

{{Flashy “twilight zone” groppo — deepest fish discovered by human hands}}

One pink-and-yellow fish has earned its spot in deep reef history. Grammatonotus brianne — an eye-popping species of groppo — is the deepest new fish discovery ever made by human hands. The discovery was captured on film at 487 feet beneath the ocean’s surface.

Academy scientists are currently diving to twilight zone reefs around the world. In these narrow bands of deep reefs, animals live in partial darkness, well beyond recreational diving limits yet above the deep trenches patrolled by submarines and ROVs. Reaching extreme depths requires Academy divers and their collaborators to push the boundaries of both technology and the human body, using closed-circuit “rebreathers” that extend the amount of time they can spend underwater.

The new groppo is one of several new species discoveries made during an Academy expedition (along with research partners from Hawaii’s Bishop Museum) to the Philippines in 2014 — part of an ongoing, multi-year exploration of the Coral Triangle’s biological treasures from the shallows to deep mesophotic “twilight zone” reefs 200 to 500 feet beneath the ocean surface.

Deep-diving Academy ichthyologist Dr. Luiz Rocha and Bishop Museum research associate Brian Greene spotted the neon groppo (later named G. brianne for Greene’s wife) during a murky, cold dive in the Philippine Verde Island Passage, a region known as the “center of the center” of Earth’s marine biodiversity.

“This groppo is the most beautiful fish I’ve ever seen,” says Rocha, a co-leader of the Academy’s monumental push to explore, explain, and sustain coral reefs around the world. “But beyond its looks, it’s a reminder that we know very little about the mysterious half-lit reefs we call the twilight zone. We need to understand the life inside these largely-unexplored deeper reefs because they may help us understand how the oceans respond to great change.”

G. brianne joins 24 new species of fishes — from camouflaging gobies to lanternsharks of the Indian Ocean — described by Academy scientists in 2016 alone.

{{43 new ants (and a crowd of blood-sucking “Draculas”)}}

Dr. Brian Fisher, Academy curator of entomology and real-life “Ant Man,” recently added a whopping 43 new species to the tree of life. Fisher is a fierce advocate for the importance of small animals that support all terrestrial communities, and has devoted his life to the study of ants and biodiversity. Since 1996, he has conducted fieldwork in Madagascar — where only 10% of natural habitat remains — to explore regional biodiversity and generate data to drive conservation priorities in the country.

“Our work in Madagascar focuses on determining which ants live where as we develop new field guides as tools for diagnosing and understanding conservation problems,” Fisher says. “It’s not just about generating data — we are trying to create a culture of interest in the natural world, from the smallest ant to the tallest tree.”

Several of this year’s finds belong to a group called Stigmatomma — “Dracula ants” that build tiny, few-chambered colonies (generally no larger than a dime) beneath the soil. In a bizarre but fascinating means of distributing nutrients throughout the colony, ants from this group are known to wound their colonies’ babies before drinking their blood — a substance called “hemolymph” in insects. An elongated jaw with two large pincers also allows the ants to grasp prey mostly comprised of centipedes, but also beetle larvae.

“Because these ants are so rarely collected, finding them is like uncovering buried treasure,” says Flavia Esteves, a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy who has joined Fisher in the field since 2010. Most Stigmatomma species spend the entirety of their lives beneath the soil or inside rotten logs. Esteves cuts through Madagascar’s clay-like soil with a machete, and then uses a pocket knife — and finally, forceps — to carefully expose the ants.

“In an island like Madagascar where human activities are destroying sensitive habitats, understanding specialized species such as Stigmatomma is even more important. We fear that the unique environmental niche they occupy will go unfilled once these ants are gone,” says Esteves. “We still have so much to learn from these specialized soil dwellers,” adds Fisher.

Fisher recently returned from a nine-month expedition to Mozambique, accompanied by Esteves, as part of a Fulbright Scholar Grant to study ants and climate. His work in Madagascar (including founding the country’s first and only biodiversity research center) and Mozambique continue to provide conservation partners with a wealth of new biodiversity data and monitoring aids to inform future land-use planning.

{{A gray-haired “grandfather” bee fly}}

All around us, insects flit, hover, and buzz about, but one family — the bee flies (Bombyliidae sp.) — may cause passersby to look twice. The nearly 5,000 species that make up this fly group imitate a wide range of relatives, from delicate honey bees to menacing wasps and spiders. “Don’t be deceived by stripes or fuzzy adornments,” says fly-expert Dr. Michelle Trautwein, Academy curator of entomology: insects from this group are all flies. A new species from Madagascar was recently discovered as part of a collaborative project between the Academy and the Schlinger Foundation to document the country’s diversity of insects and their close relatives.

Named Thevenetimyia spinosavus (which translates to “thorny grandfather”), this gray-haired bee fly was discovered by Natalia Maass, who worked with Trautwein for two summers as an undergraduate intern. While examining specimens under the microscope, Maass noticed one quite unlike the rest.

“He was longer and more slender than other bee flies, with big spikes on his thorax and longer, gray bristly hairs,” says Trautwein, describing why Natalia granted it its grandparent moniker. What’s more, this stubbled bee fly was completely isolated from any other species within the same relative group. Similar species of bee fly are found in Northern Africa and North America — both a long way from Madagascar — meaning this “thorny grandfather” is part of a group with an incredibly wide distribution.

No matter where they’re found, adult bee flies spend their time pollinating nearby plants. But as larvae, they prey viciously upon the larvae of other species. Adult bee flies will deposit their larvae in an aerial raid: dropping them from above to land in strategic locations where they can hatch, invade a nearby nest, and consume larvae of other insect colonies before growing up to be gentler, flower-visiting — rather than larvae-poaching — adults.

“An important piece of this project was being able to support a young woman in science so devoted to learning the language of species anatomy and descriptions,” says Trautwein. “Watching Natalia grow and become a graduate student gives me great confidence in the young scientists who will continue to contribute to natural history collections — our best snapshots of biodiversity in the face of great change.”

{{New bird virus linked to beak-bending disorder}}

This year, scientists uncovered a fascinating new clue in the global mystery surrounding wild birds with grossly deformed beaks. Dr. Jack Dumbacher, Academy curator of ornithology and mammalogy — alongside a team of researchers from UCSF and USGS — identified a new virus that has been linked to Avian Keratin Disorder (AKD), a disease responsible for debilitating beak overgrowth and whose cause has remained elusive despite more than a decade of research.

This new virus — identified from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest — is being investigated as a potential cause of AKD and represents a critical step in understanding the emergence of this disease in wild bird populations around the world.

“Take one look at a bird suffering from Avian Keratin Disorder, and you’ll understand the importance of stopping its spread,” says Dumbacher. “Birds must be able to feed themselves and preen their plumage by carefully spreading waterproofing oils on their feathers. When deformed beaks restrict them from these life-giving activities, birds become cold, hungry, and often die. We’re trying to understand the causes, origins, and distribution of this disorder.”

After sifting through hundreds of thousands of DNA fragments (and comparing them to known virus groups among birds), scientists identified a new virus suspect belonging to the picornavirus family — a large and diverse group that includes well-known human offenders like polio, hepatitis A, and the common cold. The team named their discovery Poecivirus after the genus of black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) from which the sequences originated, and in which AKD was first documented.

Though more research is necessary to establish Poecivirus definitively as the main cause of AKD, it remains the strongest lead yet. As part of the new virus description, the team generated a detailed map of Poecivirus’ genetic material — a tool that will enable scientists all over the world to aid in its identification among birds exhibiting clinical signs of AKD.

{{A fleet of beetles from Africa and China}}

After more than a dozen combined expeditions to the damp rainforests of Madagascar and cloud-kissed mountains of southwestern China, Dr. Dave Kavanaugh — Academy emeritus curator of entomology — is sharing 36 exciting new discoveries. Ground beetles are a wildly diverse group of winged and wingless predators that feast on other insects, and some are known to survive in extreme environments around the world.

Twenty-six of Kavanaugh’s recent species discoveries hail from Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park — an area of lush tropical rainforest stretching nearly 160 square miles across the southwestern portion of the island. During one 5-week expedition, Kavanaugh’s daughter Kathryn (for whom he later named a beetle Chlaenius kathrynae) assisted him in the field by searching for species of ground beetles in the leaf litter.

“The first few days of one Madagascar expedition were dry as a bone, making the rainforest insects very hard to find,” says Kavanaugh. “And then the rains came. It poured day and night for the next month. We worked through the storms with jungle rot on our feet from the constant damp.” The rain led to the successful collection of many new beetle species, including flat-backed, fungi- and log-dwelling Eurydera oracle, named in honor of generous expedition support provided by Oracle.

Several additional new species (including three new genera) are described from the Gaoligong Mountains of China’s Yunnan Province, a region where extreme physical geography has caused a jaw-dropping array of species to evolve over millennia. Since 1998, Kavanaugh and his colleagues have trekked mountains packed with endemic species — those found nowhere else in the world. Scientists view the region as an isolated paleoenvironment, or an area that (due to its location) has remained relatively unchanged for millions of years. In less than two decades, the team has grown the list of the area’s known ground beetles from 50 to 550 species.

Kavanaugh collaborates with local Chinese colleagues on the China Natural History Project to document the vast array of ground beetles and other animals and plants still being discovered in this isolated region. “Due to the restricted range and specialization of these insects, they are often some of the first to indicate significant changes to regional climate and biodiversity,” says Kavanaugh, “which is why it’s so important that we learn all about the life around us. You never know what clues even the smallest insects underfoot may hold to the rhythms of life on this planet.”

{{Armored lizards of Angola}}

Amid outcroppings of granite in the arid, sloping lowlands of southern Angola, a newly discovered species of lizard wedges itself into particularly tight crevices, head-first. Only threatening spines are left exposed along its body and tail to deter approaching predators. Despite this clever maneuver, there was no escaping discovery by Dr. Edward Stanley, Academy herpetology research associate, who suspected this particular lizard might differ from known species in the area.

Stanley formally described this new species of armored lizard with the aid of CT scans, a type of imaging technology that combines a series of x-rays to reveal information about the lizard’s uniquely armored body. Scans revealed that the tiny, bony spikes of Cordylus namakuiyus are actually embedded in the lizard’s skin rather than attached to the skeleton itself.

“CT technology allowed us to visualize and measure the armoring structure in this new lizard species,” says Stanley. “This is also the first time a 3D digital representation of a newly described species is freely available to download as part of a species description.”

The species discovery — the result of a joint expedition between the Academy and partner institutions in Angola — represents a strong collaborative step towards exploring the region’s extreme natural landscape. “Not much is known about Angolan species of armored lizards,” says Stanley, “particularly in remote or inaccessible parts of the country, so we are excited to be exploring this biologically rich area.”

{{Local coral discovery helps double California sanctuary}}

Just north of San Francisco off California’s coastline, countless species thrive in the deep, chilly waters that make up the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary — one of the most biologically productive regions on the planet. Here, scientists use remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, to explore life beneath the surface. On a 2012 expedition with NOAA, octocoral expert and Academy curator of invertebrate zoology Gary Williams set off aboard the R/V Fulmar to investigate vibrant offshore life down to 1,400 feet deep.

Among the sea stars, sea worms, snails, sponges, and crabs, Williams saw a single, whip-like stalk — only 15 inches in length — of a snow-white coral gently swaying in the ocean currents. Unlike the hard coral relatives that compose the famous tropical reefs closer to the ocean’s surface, this soft-bodied coral species stands alone at depth and feeds on microscopic plankton floating through the water column.

Even before its formal description, the new species — now named Swiftia farallonesica after its sanctuary home — served as a brilliant symbol of the region’s ecological importance, and helped strengthen the case for sanctuary expansion. In March 2015, NOAA ensured these sanctuaries would be protected for years to come by more than doubling their size and adding strict industry regulations on commercial fishing as well as a ban on all drilling, mining, and ship discharges. The expansion added 2,700 square miles of protected territory, reaching up to Point Arena in Mendocino County.

“Discovery is always an exciting thing,” says Williams. “It’s crucial to continue exploring the unknown so we can properly manage and protect these priceless marine ecosystems in our own backyard.”

Other new invertebrate species highlights include: five fossil species of ancient urchins and one fossil sand dollar described by invertebrate zoology curator Dr. Rich Mooi, and seven colorful new nudibranchs (sea slugs) described from the world’s shallow reefs — including one from California — by longtime invertebrate zoology curator Dr. Terry Gosliner.