Ok! So after returning from Oslo in one piece and a little bit of a harried adventure getting to my connection in Charlotte I have returned to the states. I have spent the past few days resting finally and catching up on some much needed sleep. I thought I would spend some time discussing some highlights of IPY 2010! I saw many great talks and learned a lot about many different critters.
1. One of the first talks I saw centered around over exploitation of baleen whales in the 19th and 20th centuries in Arctic regions. At least 1.4 million whales have been killed since the early 1900's. However, the laws and regulations protecting the whales are not well enforced and many whales are still dying today. Many problems plague the few baleen whales including scientific whaling, noise (which can disorient the whales), pollution, tourism, and fisheries.
2. Another talk discussed the importance of terrestrial organisms on the ecosystem structure of Antarctica and how the impact of humans can alter the balance. Only about 0.34% of Antarctica is ice free ground. This very small amount is shared by scientists, tourists, and flora/fauna. Some 11,000 tourists may visit a single site during one season. Humans introduce invasive species (about 200 counted thus far!!). We must stop right now and think about what we want Antarctica to look like in 50 years, 100 years. As it stand right now it is more of a free for all and humans (both scientists and tourists) may disrupt the few ice free sites on the continent
3. A similar talk to (2) is a really cool study that asked the question: Are humans disturbing the natural beauty and aesthetics of Antarctica by building infrastructure. So what he did was take images of the continent with buildings and trucks and people and used Photoshop to remove these images. These images were then put into an online survey and people could take the survey and were shown both non-altered photos (i.e. those with buildings and infrastructure) or altered photos (those with infrastructure removed). Data were then pooled together based on whether the survey taker had actually visited the continent or not. As it turns out people significantly prefer those images without buildings and such (really no surprise I would guess). Though not for all sites. However, there were some images with a very small buildings in the background that quite frankly I could hardly see during the presentation. Even with these images people still selected the altered image. Pretty neat way to do a study and here is the link for the survey so you too can contribute to the data!
www.geom.unimelb.edu.au/survey/Antarctica
4. Another noteworthy talk centered around tracking of two penguin colonies (Adelie penguins and King penguins). I found out during this talk that the traditional method of tagging penguins (and probably all birds) by wrapping a band around their legs is actually detrimental to their health. According to the presenter those penguins with a band around their leg die 17% more often than those penguins with a small transponder inserted just under the skin. For their study over 500 penguins were tagged each year since 1998. These penguins are apparently born into a colony and then soon after their first year of life is complete they leave the colony. Of these that leave 53% return to the colony. Of these that returned 82% returned around the two year of life mark and the other 18% at three years. So that leaves 47% of penguins that leave the colony never return. The penguins that do return to the colony are born at a higher mass as chicks than those that never return. Possibly suggesting that those whom do not return are dying from harsh environmental conditions. Since 2003 there has been a slight population decline. The presenter then extrapolated a 0.2 degree Celsius per decade rise in temperature on the penguin colonies. In their model this would mean that these penguins would be endangered by 2070 and extinct by 2120! That is pretty astonishing!
5. Another talk was based around the migration/movement patterns of three types of seals (Weddell, Crabeater, and Elephant). By tracking the seals and presenting their movement patterns in a visual sense the presenters came up with some patterns. Elephant seals move a lot more than the others and go out further to sea. They also dive longer and deeper. Elephant seals are also NOT ice obligate whereas at least the crabeater seals are. More importantly if global warming keeps occurring at the rates currently observed crabeater seals would suffer greatly as most of their diet consists of krill that would die with loss of ice. The circumpolar deep water offers more foraging dives for elephant seals.
6. Probably one of the coolest facts from the whole meeting. If one were to plot the USA's GDP (Gross domestic product) in millions of dollars and also plot the number of endangered species on the same graph, the relationship is nearly one to one (R2=98.4%)! And this is apparently similar to many countries. This means that as a country expands it is pushing into habitats of flora and fauna and subsequently endangering these organisms.
7. Bipolar organisms. No, not animals with severe psychological issues. Rather, bipolar organisms are those that occur at both poles with no intermediate representative at lower latitudes. The authors used the "Census of Marine Life" to come up with roughly 329 bipolar species. These species were then shipped out to experts for those organisms and through synonomy and clear definition of the polar regions only 74 were confirmed as present in both poles. One of the reasons this dramatic reduction occurs is because the authors were rigid in their definition of the poles. Of those 74, 57 were found to have distributions that would connect the two poles. Thus, 17 are ONLY found in polar regions, they have a disjunct distribution. Using genetics these remaining 17 were analyzed and it was found that some of them are actually unique species. In other words a single species that was thought to be found in both regions is actually two separate species according to genetic work. However, it appears that a few copepods are truly bipolar. And of these deep sea species have the lowest amount of genetic variability. In other words, a single species found at both poles may have a certain amount of "genetic drift". So much in fact that they are two separate species. With some deep sea organisms this genetic difference in a single species is quite small, and thus appear to be truly bipolar. The reason deep sea organisms may have little genetic difference between poles is because the deep sea (for the most part) does not change environmentally.
8. (Last one I promise!) The last talk I saw was noteworthy because it was the ONLY bivalve talk that I was able to find all week. Basically the authors used two species of bivalve to determine ecological conditions in two fjords. After each year they would collect some of the bivalves from moorings they put them in and analyze their growth lines visually and by drilling the shells along the length of the valve. Doing this showed that when food was high for these organisms they would grow. They were also able to determine relative temperature in this way. When food was low the bivalve would stop growing. The presenter seemed excited that this "new" methodology could be used to document environmental conditions for fjords up to 100 years ago because they had museum collections that collected these bivalves over that time period. This could be useful because it could document climate change over the past 100 years. However, I was confused because I believe paleontologists have been doing this for quite a while for shells much older.
Alright, I went to more talks but either because my colleagues discussed them in their blogs or they were not very good I will not discuss them here. I will have more to say later tonite! Specifically how my poster presentation went and a little bit more of what the experience was like in Norway (with photos!). Takk!
