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2025
TESSians Paul Nelson and Fred Holden were interviewed in the field and discussed their enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and carbon capture research (Paul was literally wearing his TESS hat).
20 May 2025
Distinguished Professor William F. Laurance was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. Over 90 outstanding researchers from across the world have been elected this year. The 2025 cohort includes trailblazers across a wide range of fields, from artificial intelligence and electron microscopy to global health and neuroscience. Among them are a public health expert working to prevent HIV in young women, a Nobel Prize winner whose team created the transformative AI model, AlphaFold, an immunologist whose work has led to new insights into how the immune system can distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ microbes, and the first Sudanese scientist to be elected to the Fellowship.
Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said:
“It is with great pleasure that I welcome the latest cohort of outstanding researchers into the Fellowship of the Royal Society.
“Their achievements represent the very best of scientific endeavour, from basic discovery to research with real-world impact across health, technology and policy. From tackling global health challenges to reimagining what AI can do for humanity, their work is a testament to the power of curiosity-driven research and innovation.
“The strength of the Fellowship lies not only in individual excellence, but in the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences each new member brings. This cohort represents the truly global nature of modern science and the importance of collaboration in driving scientific breakthroughs.”
Although often typified as an Australian short story writer, Louis Becke’s literary oeuvre includes over sixty articles and stories concerning the natural environments and ecologies of the South Pacific region, his knowledge of which was so respected by his peers that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. In The World in Which We Occur, Neil W. Browne uses the term “ecological writing” for that literary understanding of the participation between the human and natural worlds evident in this group of Becke’s works. Here, Becke observes and discusses not only animals (particularly fish and birds), as well as flora and fauna of various Pacific Islands and the Australian east coast littoral, but also human participation in those environments and ecologies that includes the Islanders’ sustainable management of their natural resources. At the turn of the nineteenth century, at a time when Americans, Europeans, and Australians alike knew little about the South Pacific, Becke articulated in his ecological writing, within his own literary ecosystem of the imagination in which writer, reader, text, landforms, creatures, and humans were vitally entwined, the complex interactions between the region’s human culture and natural world.
Bright photoluminescence in the fur of mammals has recently raised considerable scientific interest. The fur of many mammal species, including Australian northern long-nosed (Perameles pallescens) and northern brown (Isoodon macrourus) bandicoots, photoluminesces strongly, displaying pink, yellow, blue and/or white colours. We used reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry to investigate the luminophores contributing to this photoluminescence. At least two classes of luminophore were observed in bandicoot fur extracts, and four of the orange-pink photoluminescent molecules had molecular masses consistent with protoporphyrin, coproporphyrin, uroporphyrin and heptacarboxylporphyrin isomers. Fur extracts of three other species of marsupial, a placental and a monotreme also contained a luminophore consistent with the molecular mass of protoporphyrin, whether or not pink photoluminescence was evident in the pelage as a whole. This study is the first chemical analysis of luminophores contributing to photoluminescence in the fur of Australasian mammals since two tryptophan metabolites were identified more than 50 years ago.
Climate change is a major driver of global biodiversity loss, yet the precise mechanisms linking climate change to population declines remain poorly understood. We developed a novel, broadly applicable framework that integrates biophysical, nutritional, and population modeling to capture fundamental physiological constraints on mammalian herbivores and applied it to investigate the causes of declines in ringtail possums of the Australian Wet Tropics (Pseudochirops archeri and Hemibelideus lemuroides). Our approach bridges the gap between mechanistic (“bottom-up”) models, which simulate species' responses based solely on their traits and local microclimates, and the more common (“top-down”) statistical models, which infer species' responses from occurrence or abundance data and standard environmental variables. We quantified population dynamics over a 30-year period by generating species-specific estimates of temperature and water stress, foraging limitations, and linking these with annual monitoring and nutritional quality within an open population model. Our findings demonstrate that climate change has impacted populations through physiological stress, but in a species-specific manner. Both species have experienced population collapses at lower elevations and in low-nutritional sites. For P. archeri, we found evidence that population changes were driven by reduced survival due to overheating and dehydration, alongside diminished recruitment from limited foraging. In contrast, our model suggests that H. lemuroides populations were primarily affected by foraging constraints, emphasizing the importance of considering climate-driven limitations on foraging activity in addition to direct physiological stress. These mechanistic insights offer a foundation for targeted conservation strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate pressures on wild populations.
Rural China is undergoing dramatic transformation along with modernization and globalization, driven by increasing capitalist engagement to increase commercial crop production. This phenomenon has been termed “crop booms” and was widely observed in tropical and subtropical frontiers of the Global South. International concerns about crop booms driven capitalist agrarian changes have been widely documented due to its unexpected environmental and socioeconomic outcomes, such as exacerbating large-scale land acquisition, socioeconomic inequality, and environmental degradation. However, knowledge gaps can be found from existing literature, mainly ignorance of voices needs of smallholder farmers and the role of the state behind crop booms. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper offers insights to crop booms and agrarian change through case studies of coffee plantations in Southwest China. Different from large-scale and capital-intensified crop booms in other regions, which often result in negative environmental and social consequences, this paper reveals relatively positive aspects of crop booms in which fewer land transfers occurred and enhanced benefit-sharing helped improve equality. Findings suggest that security of agricultural land tenure system, increasing both international and domestic market competition, and involvement in value-added processing activities all enable smallholder farmers to engage in coffee plantations with support from government agencies and international companies. In connection with crop booms and agrarian change, policy implications drawn from this research call for deeper understanding of local dynamics in agrarian change and investment from governments to improve land tenure security and market infrastructure across the Global South.
We report on a decade of research on elephant impacts in equatorial evergreen forests in Gabon and Malaysia, comparing sites with (+) and without (−) elephants and documenting major differences in forest structure, tree species composition and tree species diversity. In both regions, we compared sites supporting natural densities of elephants with otherwise undisturbed sites from which elephants had been absent for several decades. Elephant (+) sites supported low densities of seedlings and saplings relative to elephant (−) sites. In Lope National Park, Gabon, 88% of saplings and small trees (<20 cm dbh) were of species avoided by elephants, implicating forest elephants as powerful filters in tree recruitment. In Malaysia, Asian elephants showed strong preferences for monocots over dicots, as we found through both indirect and direct means. Loss of elephants from both Asian and African forests releases diversity from top-down pressure, as preferred forage species increase in abundance, leading to increased density of small stems and tree species diversity. In contrast, loss of other major functional groups of animals, including top carnivores, seed predators and seed dispersers, often results in negative impacts on tree diversity.
Forest Transition (FT) is a theoretical framework for understanding tree cover changes but often overlooks differences within countries, across forest types (e.g., second-growth forests, tree plantations replacing natural forests), regions, and climates. We quantified tropical tree cover dynamics across eight regions in four tropical countries, examining how these patterns relate to FT and how they vary between climates and forest types. Each country represented a different stage in the FT trajectory. We combined Landsat-derived time-series from 1990 to 2020 with Sentinel-2-based land cover classification to distinguish between mature natural forests (MF), second-growth forests (SF), tree plantations (TP), and their dynamics. During this period, 50 % of MF was lost, while tree cover gains averaged 16 % across regions; SF contributed 23 % and TP 12 % of total tree cover by 2020. SF steadily increased, yet its average lifespan was only 10 years, limiting its ecological contributions compared to MF. The studied regions followed the theoretical FT trajectory: the Ghanaian regions were in early transition (pre-inflection), Mexican regions were in late transition (pre-inflection), and the Australian and Brazilian (São Paulo state) regions were in post-transition (post-inflection). Evaluating FT while including or excluding TP results in different conclusions about the FT trajectory of a region or country. MF was lower in dry (from 55 % in the 1990s to 23 % in 2020) than in wet (from 73 % in the 1990s to 35 % in 2020) forest regions. SF gains were higher in dry (31 %) than in wet (23 %) regions, though SF increases did not compensate for MF loss, resulting in reduced biodiversity and ecological functioning. Hence, halting deforestation and protecting young forests are equally crucial. Evaluating FT excluding TP and quantifying SF persistence may have far-reaching consequences for how to evaluate tree cover by not only evaluating tree cover quantity, but also tree cover quality. Our findings can inform policymakers to design smart policy mixes that sequence the right policy instruments at the right time. Local people must participate in forest restoration strategies and issues of equity, justice and power imbalances must be addressed to facilitate FT. Dissecting FT increases our understanding of the underlying forest cover dynamics, which can lead to better policies for protecting local people`s livelihoods, halt deforestation, and facilitate FT to restore the natural world upon which people`s lives and society depend.
Anthropogenic biodiversity decline threatens the functioning of ecosystems and the many benefits they provide to humanity. As well as causing species losses in directly affected locations, human influence might also reduce biodiversity in relatively unmodified vegetation if far-reaching anthropogenic effects trigger local extinctions and hinder recolonization. Here we show that local plant diversity is globally negatively related to the level of anthropogenic activity in the surrounding region. Impoverishment of natural vegetation was evident only when we considered community completeness: the proportion of all suitable species in the region that are present at a site. To estimate community completeness, we compared the number of recorded species with the dark diversity—ecologically suitable species that are absent from a site but present in the surrounding region. In the sampled regions with a minimal human footprint index, an average of 35% of suitable plant species were present locally, compared with less than 20% in highly affected regions. Besides having the potential to uncover overlooked threats to biodiversity, dark diversity also provides guidance for nature conservation. Species in the dark diversity remain regionally present, and their local populations might be restored through measures that improve connectivity between natural vegetation fragments and reduce threats to population persistence.
Water loss and carbon gain are balanced by stomatal control, a trade-offthat has allowed trees to survive and thrive under fluctuating environmental conditions. During periods of lower water availability, stomatal closure prevents excess water loss. Various strategies of stomatal control have been found among tree species, but the trigger for this behaviour remains elusive. We found a uniform pre-dawn water potential threshold (−1.2 MPa) for stomatal closure across species, which coincided with stem-growth cessation. Meanwhile, midday water potentials at stomatal closure were more variable across species and stomatal control did not follow species-specific thresholds of hydraulic failure, a commonly adopted theory in plant biology, and often used in predictive water-use modelling. This indicates that nocturnal rehydration, rather than daytime hydraulic safety is an optimization priority for stomatal closure in trees . We suggest that these processes are critical for forecasting the global carbon cycle dynamics.
Until a few tens of thousands of years ago, Earth harboured a remarkable collection of large animals1, including giant ground sloths (Megatherium), woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) and elephant birds (Mullerornis and Aepyornis). Most of these iconic beasts are now extinct, and many large mammals are vanishingly rare following widespread human persecution and habitat disruption. Yet in India, a nation with a burgeoning human population, good news is reverberating about the population of wild tigers (Panthera tigris). Writing in Science, Jhala et al.2 present findings about tigers that provide key lessons for conserving imperilled large animals elsewhere in the world.
Evidence is accumulating of declines in widespread, abundant insect species. The consequences of these losses for ecosystem functioning are predicted to be severe but remain poorly tested in real-world ecosystems. Here we tested the relative importance of functional redundancy versus complementarity in conferring stability of multifunctional performance in the face of dominant insect species decline. We conducted an experimental manipulation of functional trait-space occupancy within naturally occurring ant communities in Australia. Experimental suppression of dominant ant species in multiple trait groupings caused a counterintuitive increase in multifunctional performance, which was associated with an increase in species richness. The resident ant community had high functional redundancy, contributing to rapid compensatory dynamics following suppression. However, colonization by new species with increased trait complementarity drove higher multifunctional performance. This increased multifunctionality probably occurred via reduced interspecific competition but at the cost of increased sensitivity of ecosystem multifunctionality to further species loss. Our findings show that functional redundancy can buffer multifunctional performance of a community against decline of dominant insect species but suggest that future stability of ecosystem multifunctionality depends more on functional complementarity and altered competitive interactions.
Animals communicate using multiple sensory channels, including via vision. The colourful plumage of birds is a model system to study visual communication having evolved through a complex interplay of processes, acting not only on the ability of a plumage patch to convey information, but also in response to physiological and environmental factors. Although much research on inter-specific variation in bird plumage has concentrated on sexual selection, much less has considered the role of non-sexual selection and how it is affected by the joint effects of avian viewing conditions and receiver vision. Here, we combined a taxonomically diverse databases of avian plumage reflectance measurements with bird vision models, habitat and behavioural data to test the effect of three factors that affect viewing conditions—habitat openness, migratory preference and diel activity—on avian plumage contrast, accounting for shared evolutionary history and variation in avian visual systems. We find that habitat structure and migratory preference predicted plumage visual contrast, especially for females. Our study therefore demonstrates the important role of nonsexually selected traits, viewing conditions and bird vision, in shaping avian plumage contrast.
In the tropics and beyond, roads are key proximate drivers of environmental impacts, including forest fragmentation,1,2 fires,3 mining,4,5 and land clearing.6,7,8 Such impacts may be amplified for the initial roads constructed in intact forests—which we term “first-cut roads”—which often promote a rash of associated secondary roads branching off the new infrastructure.9,10,11,12,13 These secondary roads in turn can dramatically elevate forest and biodiversity losses.10,14,15 Although widely seen as a conservation concern,12,15,16,17 the magnitude and effects of secondary road development have not been previously quantified. Without such information, impact assessment procedures for road projects risk misjudging the level of expected forest loss, hampering decision-making.16,18,19,20 Here, we quantify the environmental impacts of both first-cut and secondary roads in three of the world’s major tropical regions where high-quality road maps have recently become available: the Brazilian Amazon, the Congo Basin, and New Guinea. We identified 92 first-cut roads across our study region for which we quantified the length of adjoining secondary roads and the area of related forest loss and degradation. On average, we found 4.8, 9.8, and 49.1 km of secondary road for every kilometer of first-cut road in the Congo Basin, New Guinea, and Brazilian Amazon regions, respectively. Forest loss and degradation associated with these secondary roads was remarkably heavy, being 31.5, 22.2, and 305.2 times greater, respectively, than that directly linked with first-cut roads. Our findings provide key insights into the potential scale and extent of forest loss and degradation that will emerge with proposed roads and development corridors in tropical forests.
The island of New Guinea harbors some of the world's most biologically diverse and highly endemic tropical ecosystems. Nevertheless, progressing land-use change in the region threatens their integrity, which will adversely affect their biodiversity as well as carbon stocks and fluxes. Our objectives were to (1) compare deforestation drivers between Indonesian New Guinea and Papua New Guinea, (2) identify areas with a high risk of future deforestation under different development scenarios, and (3) evaluate the effects of potential deforestation scenarios on carbon pools. We integrated machine learning and cellular automata to model and forecast deforestation across New Guinea. We assessed the potential loss of irrecoverable carbon stocks for four deforestation scenarios ranging from 4.8 % (business-as-usual) to 28 % (high development scenario) forest loss between 2020 and 2040. Areas of high deforestation risk were consistently forecasted in lowland regions across the four deforestation scenarios. In Indonesian New Guinea, 75 % of deforestation was forecasted below ~380 m a.s.l., but ranged higher in Papua New Guinea (<750 m a.s.l.). Land change-induced carbon loss varied largely across the four scenarios and ranged between 156 and 918 Mt in Indonesian New Guinea and between 223 and 1082 Mt in Papua New Guinea, respectively. Our analysis reveals promising potential for integrating random forests and cellular automata models to forecast high-resolution deforestation over large spatial extents. Our models reveal the vulnerability of New Guinea's lowlands to future deforestation, emphasizing the need to protect key areas where deforestation conflicts with the conservation of carbon stocks, ecosystem functions, and biodiversity.
Understanding the capacity of forests to adapt to climate change is of pivotal importance for conservation science, yet this is still widely unknown. This knowledge gap is particularly acute in high-biodiversity tropical forests. Here, we examined how tropical forests of the Americas have shifted community trait composition in recent decades as a response to changes in climate. Based on historical trait-climate relationships, we found that, overall, the studied functional traits show shifts of less than 8% of what would be expected given the observed changes in climate. However, the recruit assemblage shows shifts of 21% relative to climate change expectation. The most diverse forests on Earth are changing in functional trait composition but at a rate that is fundamentally insufficient to track climate change.
Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy1,2. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties3. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically4. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.
Plants cope with the environment by displaying large phenotypic variation. Two spectra of global plant form and function have been identified: a size spectrum from small to tall species with increasing stem tissue density, leaf size, and seed mass; a leaf economics spectrum reflecting slow to fast returns on investments in leaf nutrients and carbon. When species assemble to communities it is assumed that these spectra are filtered by the environment to produce community level functional composition. It is unknown what are the main drivers for community functional composition in a large area such as Amazonia. We use 13 functional traits, including wood density, seed mass, leaf characteristics, breeding system, nectar production, fruit type, and root characteristics of 812 tree genera (5211 species), and find that they describe two main axes found at the global scale. At community level, the first axis captures not only the ‘fast-slow spectrum’, but also most size-related traits. Climate and disturbance explain a minor part of this variance compared to soil fertility. Forests on poor soils differ largely in terms of trait values from those on rich soils. Trait composition and soil fertility exert a strong influence on forest functioning: biomass and relative biomass production.
Tree kangaroos (Dendrolagus spp.) are poorly studied owing to their elusive arboreal nature, which makes detection difficult using traditional methods such as spotlighting and hand-held thermal cameras. This note documents the first successful detection of Bennett’s tree kangaroos (D. bennettianus) using thermal drones in tropical rainforest at Cape Tribulation, Australia. In less than an hour, six individuals were observed across 17 ha. The method proved minimally invasive and highly effective in rainforest environments despite dense vegetation and high temperatures, demonstrating both the unexpected abundance of this species and the utility of thermal drones for monitoring tropical arboreal fauna.
2024
Tropical forests play a large role in the global carbon cycle by annually absorbing 30% of our annual carbon emissions. However, these forests have evolved under relatively stable temperature conditions and may be sensitive to current climate warming. Few experiments have investigated the effects of warming on large, mature trees to better understand how higher temperatures affect these forests in situ.
We targeted four tree species (Endiandra microneura, Castanospermum australe, Cleistanthus myrianthus and Myristica globosa) of the Australian tropical rainforest and warmed leaves in the canopy by 4°C for 8 months. We measured temperature response curves of photosynthesis and respiration, and determined the critical temperatures for chloroplast function based on Chl fluorescence.
Both stomatal conductance and photosynthesis were strongly reduced by 48 and 35%, respectively, with warming. While reduced stomatal conductance was likely in response to higher vapour pressure deficit, the biochemistry of photosynthesis responded to higher temperatures via reduced Vcmax25 (−28%) and Jmax25 (−29%). There was no shift of the Topt of photosynthesis. Concurrently, respiration rates at a common temperature did not change in response to warming, suggesting limited respiratory thermal acclimation.
This combination of physiological responses to leaf warming in mature tropical trees may suggest a reduced carbon sink with future warming in tropical forests.
Australia has proposed a legislated market for biodiversity based on an existing carbon credits scheme which generates Australian carbon credit units (ACCU) from land-based projects. This provides a unique opportunity to assess the potential for markets to benefit biodiversity. We assessed the extent to which projects under the ACCU scheme overlap potential threatened species habitat, compared that to overlap afforded by protected areas, and compared the ability of different project types to deliver potential benefits to species most impacted by habitat loss. Projects are primarily located in low-cost, marginal arid lands, a pattern that reflects that of the protected area estate. Projects are smaller and fewer in number in more productive lands close to human populations. These lands also overlap most threatened species habitat, hence those species most in need of habitat restoration are the least likely to have their habitat restored under the ACCU scheme. Projects, however, do overlap the geographic range of 32% of the 1,660 threatened species assessed, including for 275 species with <17% of their range in protected areas. Biodiversity markets must incentivize actions in areas of high biodiversity value underpinned by regulations that align with national priorities for biodiversity conservation.
Sexual selection can result in extreme development of multimodal mate-attracting traits, including complex constructions. Male great bowerbirds build bowers for attracting females. Bowers contain a thatched twig tunnel (avenue) opening onto two courts covered with decorations. Males displaying on a court are seen by a female from within the avenue. She sees and hears displays through the avenue entrance but can only see the male's head and objects in his bill as it passes repeatedly across the entrance. Because the bower may affect the auditory as well as the visual parts of the multimodal male display we investigated bower acoustic properties by playing standard sounds from multiple court positions, recording the resulting sounds at the female's head position within the avenue. Bower geometry results in a limited zone at the avenue entrance where his vocalisations can be heard with maximum intensity; this corresponds to his typical display position. Experiments show that court decorations increase the intensity of some frequencies and reduce the intensity of others. Bower structure simultaneously affects both visual and auditory male display components and could be important in sexual selection. It is important to consider more than one sensory mode, especially in the context of built signalling structures.
At the recently concluded Conservation Optimism Summit, held from September 16 to 18, 2024, at Keble College, Oxford University, Dr. Nandini Velho, wildlife biologist and alumni of James Cook University (JCU), delivered the opening plenary on the second day. Dr. Velho’s multi-disciplinary team—comprising a visual artist, musicians, clinical psychologists, and wildlife researchers—offered a groundbreaking presentation blending psychological, visual, and musical storytelling to deliver a compelling message of hope and collaboration in conservation.
One of the key highlights of the plenary was the Atlas of Living Hope, which featured a visually stunning artwork created by renowned visual storyteller Svabhu Kohli. These images, widely shared across social media platforms, created evocative visuals of the conference. The presentation captured inspiring landscapes of hope and resilience, showcasing stories of optimism among conservation practitioners across India. Dr. Velho and her team aim to expand this narrative further, bringing it to a broader audience to sustain motivation and spark hope for the future of global conservation efforts.
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Under the leadership of Professor Bruce Gummow, JCU has been a partner of the Asia Pacific Consortium of Veterinary Epidemiologists (APCOVE) over the past four years. During this period the consortium has developed 36 world-class eLearning modules on outbreak investigation, surveillance, data analysis, One Health, biosecurity, risk assessment, disease control, leadership, and communication that are also available to students at JCU. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has recognized the quality of the modules and plans to host the modules in their Virtual Learning Centre. Using these modules, the consortium has trained over 90 candidates from seven countries in Southeast Asia who successfully conducted over 30 field projects under the guidance of in-country mentors and are already applying these skills in tackling foot and mouth disease (FMD), African swine fever (ASF) and other diseases in their countries. In addition, the consortium conducted six workshops to upskill the WHO Field Epidemiology Training Program (FEPTV) facilitators and mentors in leadership, mentorship, One Health, data analysis and teaching methods. They achieved this through constructive engagement with international agencies, including CDC, FAO, WOAH's regional representation in South-East Asia, WHO, and key in-country partners in the target countries, such as universities and government departments/ministries responsible for livestock.
JCU, together with the APCOVE has secured a further $5 million from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to continue building capacities in veterinary epidemiology and One Health, which are essential for creating an animal health workforce that is able to tackle infectious diseases and work at the animal-human environmental interfaces. Leveraging the partnerships developed and lessons learnt in the previous four years, this project proposes to enhance the capabilities of the animal health workforce in the region to prevent, detect and respond to disease outbreaks. They will achieve this objective by conducting four activities: (1) frontline field epidemiology training in Laos, Cambodia, PNG and Timor Leste; (2) intermediate field epidemiology training in Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia; (3) One Health training in eight countries involving multiple sectors; and (4) epidemiology teacher training and curriculum development to improve the quality of veterinary graduates. Completing these activities will enhance the capacity of the Indo-Pacific region to detect and effectively respond to infectious disease emergencies promptly. In doing so the biosecurity of Australia will be enhanced and diseases that are a major threat to Australian food security and the livelihood of Australian farmers can be dealt with rapidly by our regional neighbours before they can enter Australia.
The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the importance of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), which can cause significant health impacts, trade disruptions, travel restrictions, and reduced economic output. More than 75% of EIDs are zoonotic, highlighting the need for a trained veterinary workforce to detect EIDs upstream in animals before they spill over to the human population. This is a key focus of the proposed project. Early detection and rapid response are crucial in containing the spread of EIDs, as seen with countries that could detect and respond to COVID-19 early having better outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has also demonstrated the need to adopt the One Health approach, recognizing interconnections between humans, animals, and the environment. One Health is a key component of the next phase of the project. Effective communication is crucial during a public health emergency, as clear and timely communication of accurate information and data interpretation can build trust, promote compliance with public health measures, and prevent misinformation and panic. The project includes specific modules on communication during emergencies and an independent module on what veterinarians can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic.
This project puts JCU in the forefront of building capacity that aims to address global challenges and improve outcomes for those living in the Tropics.
To avoid reaching lethal temperatures during periods of heat stress, plants may acclimate either their biochemical thermal tolerance or leaf morphological and physiological characteristics to reduce leaf temperature (Tleaf). While plants from warmer environments may have a greater capacity to regulate Tleaf, the extent of intraspecific variation and contribution of provenance is relatively unexplored. We tested whether upland and lowland provenances of four tropical tree species grown in a common garden differed in their thermal safety margins by measuring leaf thermal traits, midday leaf-to-air temperature differences (∆Tleaf) and critical leaf temperatures defined by chlorophyll fluorescence (Tcrit). Provenance variation was species- and trait-specific. Higher ∆Tleaf and Tcrit were observed in the lowland provenance for Terminalia microcarpa, and in the upland provenance for Castanospermum australe, with no provenance effects in the other two species. Within-species covariation of Tcrit and ∆Tleaf led to a convergence of thermal safety margins across provenances. While future studies should expand the number of provenances and species investigated, our findings suggest that lowland and upland provenances may not differ substantially in their vulnerability to heat stress, as determined by thermal safety margins, despite differences in operating temperatures and Tcrit.
Elevated ground-level ozone, a result of human activity, is known to reduce plant productivity, but its influence on tropical forests remains unclear. Here we estimate how increased ozone exposure has affected tropical-forest productivity and the global carbon cycle.
We experimentally measure the ozone susceptibility of various tropical tree species, and then incorporate these data into a dynamic global vegetation model. We find that current anthropogenic-derived ozone results in a substantial decline in annual net primary productivity (NPP) across all tropical forests, with some areas being particularly impacted. For example, Asia sees losses of 10.9% (7.2–19.7%) NPP. We calculate that this productivity decline has resulted in a cumulative loss in carbon drawdown of 0.29 PgC per year since 2000, equating to ~17% of the tropical contemporary annual land carbon sink in the twenty-first century. We also find that areas of current and future forest restoration are disproportionately affected by elevated ozone.
Future socioeconomic pathways that reduce ozone formation in the tropics will incur benefits to the global carbon budget by relieving the current ozone impacts seen across both intact forest and areas of forest restoration, which are critical terrestrial regions for mitigation of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The rate of extinction is increasing with little reversal of negative trends, prompting a need for conservation scientists and practitioners to rethink approaches to aid the recovery of threatened species.
Many extinctions could be prevented if impediments to protecting these species were addressed effectively. This article considers how current policies and practices are failing an endangered species and how biodiversity conservation is fraught with barriers such as rhetorical adoption, policy dismantling, circumvention of legislative obligations, and the deliberate disregard of scientific evidence.
These issues became evident while researching the endangered Spectacled Flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus Gould 1850), which, despite over a decade of recognized decline, received little attention from authorities who could have acted to stabilize or recover its populations. Recovery plans are often the primary means used by many countries to help threatened species recover and typically fall under government responsibility for implementation. For these plans to be effective, they should be mandatory, well-funded, and subject to stringent monitoring and reporting requirements.
However, the implementation of such plans is often inconsistent, with many not meeting these criteria. The scientific basis for recovery actions is usually well-researched, although uncertainties around outcomes remain since these actions are experimental and success is not guaranteed. The failure to implement recovery plans can be highly frustrating for conservation scientists and practitioners, often stemming from policy failures. For those involved in conservation research and practice, learning how to identify and overcome policy impediments would help to ensure the successful implementation of recovery plans.
Vigilance is required to ensure that recovery teams function effectively, that recovery actions are executed, that decision-makers are held accountable for endangering species, and that legislation includes merits review provisions to challenge poor decision-making. Conservation scientists who monitor species of concern are often best placed to track the progress of recovery actions. When they detect insufficient action, they have a responsibility to intervene or to notify the responsible authorities.
Ultimately, government policies should prioritize the protection of threatened species over economic and political interests, recognizing that extinction is irreversible and the stakes are high for biodiversity conservation.
Summary:
- Elevated air temperature (Tair) and vapour pressure deficit (VPDair) significantly influence plant functioning, yet their relative impacts are difficult to disentangle.
- We examined the effects of elevated Tair (+6°C) and VPDair (+0.7 kPa) on the growth and physiology of six tropical tree species. Saplings were grown under well-watered conditions in climate-controlled glasshouses for 6 months under three treatments: (1) low Tair and low VPDair, (2) high Tair and low VPDair, and (3) high Tair and high VPDair. To assess acclimation, physiological parameters were measured at a set temperature.
- Warm-grown plants grown under elevated VPDair had significantly reduced stomatal conductance and increased instantaneous water use efficiency compared to plants grown under low VPDair. Photosynthetic biochemistry and thermal tolerance (Tcrit) were unaffected by VPDair, but elevated Tair caused Jmax25 to decrease and Tcrit to increase. Sapling biomass accumulation for all species responded positively to an increase in Tair, but elevated VPDair limited growth.
- This study shows that stomatal limitation caused by even moderate increases in VPDair can decrease productivity and growth rates in tropical species independently from Tair and has important implications for modelling the impacts of climate change on tropical forests.
With less than half of the world's tropical forests remaining, ecological restoration is urgently needed to halt biodiversity loss. However, the efficacy of different active reforestation methods remains largely untested particularly with respect to the recovery of fauna during the early years of restoration.
Here, we present the results of a long-term restoration project in the Australian Wet Tropics after 6 years of planting. Using dung beetles as bioindicators of restoration success, we investigated how the diversity and density of trees in experimental plots influence the recovery of dung beetle diversity and their ecological functions (dung removal and secondary seed dispersal). We found that after only 6 years since planting, a native dung beetle community, representing around 41% of the species found in the adjacent rainforest, has colonized the experimental plots. Plots with the highest diversity of trees (24 species planted) showed higher dung beetle diversity, dung removal, and seed dispersal but only when the density of trees on the plots was low.
These plots also have higher species richness, diversity, and abundance of rainforest species, while the opposite trend was found for open-habitat species. Therefore, planting a higher diversity of trees appears to be the best method for the early recovery of rainforest dung beetle communities and their functions. This is particularly crucial at low tree density, which is a common issue in active restoration projects as tree mortality is relatively high in the early years.
Abstract: Roads are expanding at the fastest pace in human history. This is the case especially in biodiversity-rich tropical nations, where roads can result in forest loss and fragmentation, wildfires, illicit land invasions and negative societal effects. Many roads are being constructed illegally or informally and do not appear on any existing road map; the toll of such ‘ghost roads’ on ecosystems is poorly understood. Here we use around 7,000 h of effort by trained volunteers to map ghost roads across the tropical Asia-Pacific region, sampling 1.42 million plots, each 1 km2 in area.
Our intensive sampling revealed a total of 1.37 million km of roads in our plots—from 3.0 to 6.6 times more roads than were found in leading datasets of roads globally. Across our study area, road building almost always preceded local forest loss, and road density was by far the strongest correlate11 of deforestation out of 38 potential biophysical and socioeconomic covariates. The relationship between road density and forest loss was nonlinear, with deforestation peaking soon after roads penetrate a landscape and then declining as roads multiply and remaining accessible forests largely disappear.
Notably, after controlling for lower road density inside protected areas, we found that protected areas had only modest additional effects on preventing forest loss, implying that their most vital conservation function is limiting roads and road-related environmental disruption. Collectively, our findings suggest that burgeoning, poorly studied ghost roads are among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests.
2023
Northern Australian biomes hold high biodiversity values within largely intact vegetation complexes, yet many species of mammals, and some other taxa, are endangered. Recently, six mammal species were added to the 20 or so already listed in the Australian endangered category. Current predictions suggest that nine species of mammal in northern Australia are in imminent danger of extinction within 20 years.
We examine the robustness of the assumptions of status and trends in light of the low levels of monitoring of species and ecosystems across northern Australia, including monitoring the effects of management actions. The causes of the declines include a warming climate, pest species, changed fire regimes, grazing by introduced herbivores, and diseases, and work to help species and ecosystems recover is being conducted across the region. Indigenous custodians who work on the land have the potential and capacity to provide a significant human resource to tackle the challenge of species recovery. By working with non-Indigenous researchers and conservation managers, and with adequate support and incentives, many improvements in species’ downward trajectories could be made.
We propose a strategy to establish a network of monitoring sites based on a pragmatic approach by prioritizing particular bioregions. The policies that determine research and monitoring investment need to be re-set and new and modified approaches need to be implemented urgently. The funding needs to be returned to levels that are adequate for the task. At present resourcing levels, species are likely to become extinct through an avoidable attrition process.
Successful cost-effective reforestation plantings depend substantially on maximising sapling survival from the time of planting, yet in reforestation programs remarkably little attention is given to management of saplings at the planting stage and to planting methods used. Critical determinants of sapling survival include their vigour and condition when planted, the wetness of the soil into which saplings are planted, the trauma of transplant shock from nursery to natural field soils, and the method and care taken during planting.
While some determinants are outside planters' control, careful management of specific elements associated with outplanting can significantly lessen transplanting shock and improve survival rates. Results from three reforestation experiments designed to examine cost-effective planting methods in the Australian wet tropics provided the opportunity to examine the effects of specific planting treatments, including (1) watering regime prior to planting, (2) method of planting and planter technique, and (3) site preparation and maintenance, on sapling survival and establishment. Focusing on sapling root moisture and physical protection during planting improved sapling survival by at least 10% (>91% versus 81%) at 4 months.
Survival rates of saplings under different planting treatments were reflected in longer-term survival of trees at 18–20 months, differing from a low of 52% up to 76–88%. This survival effect was evident more than 6 years after planting. Watering saplings immediately prior to planting, careful planting using a forester's planting spade in moist soil and suppressing grass competition using appropriate herbicides were critical to improved plant survival.
From the outside, planting trees seems simple. Seedlings want to grow – pop them in the soil, water them and walk away.
But Australia has never seriously invested in restoration and has barely monitored outcomes when it has been done. Recent research into the replanting of 20 million trees nationwide found little impact on the threatened species these trees were meant to support.
Flying-foxes worldwide have suffered population declines and some extinctions, and due to negative attitudes to bats, achieving population recovery is challenging. The Spectacled Flying-fox of north-east Australia, a species vital to the wet tropics region, experienced a population crash of over 75% in <15 years. Despite this decline, little action has been taken over the last two decades to help the species recover.
The scientific evidence of the continuing population decline of the Spectacled Flying-fox has been presented to multiple levels of government, but detrimental decisions have been made despite the evidence. Scientific evidence and arguments by themselves are clearly not sufficient to change attitudes. The approach and narrative have to change to persuade people that the species is important for the rainforests and other forests that people love. Better engagement, narrative and story-telling are required.
Bringing together communication specialists, social scientists and wildlife scientists are necessary to create narratives that people understand and accept, and that persuades them that the Spectacled Flying-fox is worth protecting. Actions to reduce impacts on the human community are essential but need to be done in tandem with changing hearts and minds. Otherwise, the Spectacled Flying-fox will continue its decline.
2022
With more than 20 publications, the TESS team project Thiaki Rainforest Restoration has been listed on the special TreeDivNet site. The project is one of only two projects listed for Australia. There are only 34 sites listed worldwide, and only 6 as 'Application Trials'. It started as an ARC project in 2009 and has provided a basis for further research that led to 2 more ARC projects. Along the years, the project has supported annual student visits from JCU and post-graduate students through TESS. A great opportunity if you are looking for study sites.
2021
This article presents some experience and observations from Indigenous
landholders who have worked with research protocols and other people who have
worked on Indigenous lands. Some learned principles that can benefit researchers are presented.
Implications for managers Research protocols determine if and how research is to be
conducted, how landholders are to be engaged and acknowledged and what and how
research outcomes are to be published and reported Agreements must be reached between
researchers and landholders before research is conducted Agreements are becoming more
legally binding Joint authorship is becoming more common, and this may influence how the
scientific methods and process are understood Cultural and social matters are core to
research protocol negotiation in many instances and may require researchers to think differently
from the ways in which they have been educated.
The predictive power of our models was high, explaining, on average, 55% of the deviance across taxa. Despite interspecific variation in the strength of the abundance–suitability relationship associated with potential intrinsic estimation biases, our approach provides a powerful tool for predicting abundance across the species range at a fine scale. The potential for robust abundance predictions from occurrence-based species distribution models shown in this study are numerous, and it could have a significant impact in enhancing species conservation and management decisions.
The greatest abundance was found in the savanna, followed by the moist forest and then the deciduous forest. Both diversity and abundance were extremely low in the abandoned teak plantation. Eleven species were identified as potential indicators of environmental deterioration if their numbers were to decrease. Frogs and toads were the best indicators in the moist forest, while lizards were the most suitable indicators for savanna and deciduous forest. No snakes were identified as indicators. It is concluded that herpetofauna can be useful and cost-effective indicators of environmental change.
The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity built on these principles. Negotiations are now underway for a post-2020 framework for biodiversity. Ambio papers have argued for a stronger scientific basis for conservation and for the need to adapt to changing conditions and to the rich diversity of societal preferences for conservation. International processes favour simple, generalizable approaches to conservation but we call for recognition of the diversity of ecological and human conditions in which conservation occurs. There is a need to build capacity to support a diversity of conservation approaches that are adapted to changing local conditions and to the priorities of diverse human societies.
Our results show that any of these alternative scenarios would provide a policy that is not only more coherent, but that also would result in more effective and efficient policy implementation. This policy audit method should have wide potential application for auditing best practice and policy effectiveness in complex landscapes across the globe and should have immediate application in helping to resolve the current issues on the Kampar Peninsular.
Forest cover changes in Indonesia’s terrestrial national parks between 2012 and 2017. Biodiversitas 22: 1235-1242. Tropical rainforests are among the most important ecosystems on earth. After Brazil, Indonesia has the second-largest tropical forest area in the world. Since the 1970s, Indonesia's forests have decreased from covering 87% to 50% of its land area. With the ever-increasing pressures from economic and human development, it appears likely that much of the biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by forests in Indonesia will only remain in protected areas. National parks currently cover around 60% or 16 Mha of the total area of protected areas in Indonesia. Between 2012 and 2017, 43 terrestrial national parks in Indonesia lost 1.62% of their total forest cover. However, primary forest cover increased by 0.07%. National parks in the Jawa Bali bioregion, through their better management inputs and community collaborations, ecosystem services to the surrounding areas, as well as natural mountainous conditions, have contributed to the increase of primary forest covers and keeping total forest loss relatively low in Indonesia’s national parks.
The human footprint (HF) was developed to measure of the impact of human activities on the environment. The human footprint has been found to be closely related to the vulnerability of protected areas around the world. In Indonesia, as nature conservation is still seen as hindering economic development, it is especially important to assess the human footprint in order to comprehend the overall pressures resulting from the various human activities on Indonesia’s national parks. This study measured the change in the human footprint in and around 43 terrestrial national parks over 5 years, between 2012 and 2017. As many as 37 out of 43 NPs experienced an increase in the HF, ranging from 0.4 to 77.3%. Tanjung Puting in Kalimantan experienced the greatest increase (77.3%), while Ujung Kulon in Jawa Bali bioregion had the greatest decrease (10.5%). An increase in human population density and improved access to parks from roads, rivers and coastlines are the main drivers of increasing impacts on national parks.
Road-infrastructure projects are expanding rapidly worldwide while penetrating into previously undisturbed forests. In Sumatra, Indonesia, a planned 88-km-long mining road for transporting coal would imperil the Harapan Forest, the island's largest surviving tract of lowland rainforest. Such roads often lead to increased forest encroachment and illegal logging, fires, poaching, and mining. To evaluate the potential impact of the proposed road, we first manually mapped all existing roads inside and around the Harapan Forest using remote-sensing imagery. We then calculated the expected increase in forest loss from three proposed mining-road routes using a metric based on travel-time mapping. Finally, we used least-cost-path analyses to identify new routes for the road that would minimize forest disruption and road-construction costs. We found that road density inside and nearby the Harapan Forest is already 3–4 times higher than official data sources indicate. Based on our analyses, each of the three proposed mining-road routes would lead to 3,000–4,300 ha of additional forest loss from human encroachment plus another 424 ha lost from road construction itself. We propose new routes for the mining road that would result in up to 3,321 ha less forest loss with markedly lower construction costs than any other planned route. We recommend approaches such as ours, using least-cost-path analysis, to minimize the environmental and financial costs of major development projects.
TESS's team says: removing the queens from a colony of yellow crazy ants leads to workers producing fertile, but lazier offspring. A crucial outcome to help eradicate the yellow crazy ants?
Prof Eric Wolanski latest publication
2020
TESS team genetic findings will help conservation and management of great gliders in Australia.
TESS’s team explores how the chance of a pandemic similar to COVID-19 breaking out in Australia might seem far-fetched
TESS's team uses network analysis to find the key players for effective conservation in Cambodia.
TESS's Bill Laurance and collegues quantified global patterns of tree palm relative abundance to help improve understanding of tropical forests and reduce uncertainty about these ecosystems under climate change.
TESS' Bill Laurance and colleagues says: Tree mortality decreased with wood density and generally increased with tree size, but was apparently unaffected by neighborhood crowding.
TESS's Bill Laurance and colleagues generated the first globally-consistent, continuous index of forest condition as determined by degree of anthropogenic modification, by integrating data on observed and inferred human pressures and an index of lost connectivity.
TESS' Bill Laurance and colleagues says: Amazonian forests are diverse but the estimatives on richness is debatable.
Prof Bill alerts: Brazilian citizens and decision-makers must consider the consequences of such bills for Brazilian national parks and make their concerns about irreversible environmental impacts known to policymakers.
TESS' team says: Local institutions in tropical forest landscapes must have greater control over development benefits if they are to
reinvest assets to achieve conservation success.
"These five techniques have proven effective in achieving deeper understanding of context, engagement with all stakeholders, negotiation of shared goals and continuous learning and adaptation."
They found that despite the incredible diversity of species (~600 species) produced for restoration plantings, a relative small handful (52) of species dominated seedling production. Most of these species had characteristics of early successional species such as small animal dispersed seeds, and low wood densities which demonstrates some of their similarities to natural forest recovery.
"Climate responsive urban planning and design is, therefore, key to secure a healthy urban lifestyle"
Willingness to reforest at landscape scales depends, to a large extent, on restoration costs, opportunity costs, and a reliable and reasonable carbon price. Finding the most beneficial restoration methods is essential.
"How urban spaces perform during disease outbreaks now also demands our close attention."
"...However, the implications of the development of highway and dams for forest integrity, biodiversity and ecosystem services remained largely unreported".
Biodiversity hotspots that have given species a safe haven from changing climates for millions of years will come under threat from human-driven global heating, a new study has found.
We urge that ungazetted protected forests be given equal priority to gazetted protected forests in regard to conservation planning for road development, and also that gazetted forests be expanded in the Leuser Ecosystem and Batang Toru area to hedge against further incursions.
Sophisticated modelling was used to determine not only the likely routes travelled by Aboriginal people tens of thousands of years ago, but also the sizes of groups required for the population to survive in harsh conditions.
This study is the first to demonstrate innovation ability across task complexity in an Australian rodent and provides promising avenues for future studies of innovation.
Influence of floods on the Australian biota should be considered an ongoing ecological and evolutionary driver, and one that is likely to intensify as extreme floods are expected to become more frequent under climate change.
Our results also show that it is not enough to focus management and conservation actions on riparian zones, but that conservation strategies should be expanded to entire catchments as well.
2019
The forest-transformation narrative was presented as a complement to the forest-transition narrative, appearing particularly suited to Southeast Asia. There, planted areas are extensive and expansive, but related net tree cover gains are rare and tenuous, reflecting political-economic trends in forest management.
This study showed that genome skimming provides well resolved nuclear and plastid phylogenies that provide valuable insights into the complex evolutionary relationships of Nepenthes.
Maps of mangroves have often been limited to showing the presence or absence of mangrove trees and seldom have studies shown an important indicator of ecosystem integrity such as vegetation cover.
We urge that ungazetted protected forests be given equal priority to gazetted protected forests in regard to conservation planning for road development, and also that gazetted forests be expanded in the Leuser Ecosystem and Batang Toru area to hedge against further incursions.
Given the pace of climate change, it is imperative that we inform and accelerate adaptation progress in all regions around the world.
A celebration of the exceptional contribution Australian sites make to humanity's collective legacy, it is also an entreaty to preserve them for future generations.
Persistent effects of fragmentation on tropical rainforest canopy structure after 20 yr of isolation
A simple thing like designing an area to make it more walkable can boost local business profits.
The science says one of our most endangered bird species – the black-throated finch – is at serious risk under the present Adani plan to dig up the Galilee Basin for coal.
Professor Steve Williams, a co-author of the Report, has been monitoring rainforest biodiversity for over 20 years across the whole Wet Tropics region. The long-term monitoring of the rainforest vertebrates has observed a systematic decrease in the abundance and distribution of many Wet Tropics endemic species.
Check the news
Australia heavily relies on the work of Indigenous rangers to meet our conservation targets, but they’re being short-changed by federal government funding.
An accurate understanding of the impacts of climate change on terrestrial vegetation is essential for managing risks associated with human-caused climate change: gauging the historic response of terrestrial photosynthesis is an important step in this direction
Peter Hitchcock was one of Australia’s most remarkable environmentalists, with national and global contributions to forest conservation, rainforest protection, World Heritage, and national parks.
Recognized as World Expert in Conservation of Natural Resources.
Antioxidant supplementation during tropical summer appears to mitigate the negative impact of heat stress on DNA integrity but not concentration nor motility of boar spermatozoa; which may provide one solution to the problem of summer infertility in the pig.
We believe that future liana research will benefit from new technologies such as high‐quality aerial photography taken from drones when the aim is to detect the relative burden of lianas on individual trees.
Tropical fire ants (Solenopsis geminata), originally from central and South America, are a highly aggressive, invasive ecological pest. Our new research has shed light on how they successfully establish new colonies
For time immemorial, many wildlife species have survived by undertaking heroic long-distance migrations. But many of these great migrations are collapsing right before our eyes.
The endangered African wild dog (AWD; Lycaon pictus) is a highly social canid living in packs with a separate male and female hierarchy. Immobilisation, handling and translocations are acute stressors for AWDs, however such interventions are often needed for species management.
We are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history. The most ambitious scheme is China’s Belt & Road Initiative, which will involve 7,000 planned infrastructure and extractive-industry projects that span much of the planet.
There is a global shift of forest management to local levels to better reconcile local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. We argue that achieving such outcomes will require embedding science in landscape-scale management systems.
Made from discarded plastic bottles—to underscores the growing threat of micro-plastics in our environment and bodies.
The results indicate that the risk of Fusarium wilt negatively impacting banana growth differs between soils of the main Australian banana-growing region.
The landscape sustainability discourses studied here suggests that landscape approach “learners” must focus on ways to remedy poor governance if they are to achieve sustainability and multi-functionality.
What links Brazil and Madagascar? Both are renowned for their biodiversity and face the prospect of an autocratic leader bent on destroying their nation's environment for short-term gain.
Incorporating complex social system into metaecosystem approaches will be more useful towards a better understanding of our changing world.
Can the Land of a Million Elephants Survive the Belt and Road? Chinese-funded projects in Laos could hasten the eradication of the elephant population
2018
Relative to controls, drought‐affected individuals of different tree species variously exhibited trait measures consistent with increasing hydraulic safety.
That, essentially, is one of the key conclusions of a new landmark study of the Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra, Indonesia — the last place on Earth where orangutans, tigers, elephants, and rhinos still survive together.
Sperm banking and AI could benefit endangered African wild dog conservation. However, it is unclear whether their dominance hierarchy causes a decrease in reproductive and sperm quality parameters in subordinate males that typically do not breed.
By 2070, there will be no suitable tiger habitats remaining in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. Climate change will have a more pronounced effect on tiger habitats than that of sea level rise in the area.
We found that planned and ongoing road and rail-line developments will have many detrimental ecological impacts, including fragmenting large expanses of intact forest.
Home to such unusual creatures as Tree-Kangaroos and Birds of Paradise, New Guinea is exceptional not only for the uniqueness of its fauna and flora but also its astonishing cultural diversity — with more than 700 indigenous societies and languages.
Summer infertility continues to undermine pig productivity, costing the pig industry millions in annual losses.
This week marks the twentieth birthday for the towering crane that stands at the heart of James Cook University’s Daintree Rainforest Observatory (DRO) at Cape Tribulation
Clarivate Analytics has published the list of the top 1% of the globe’s researchers, based on data related to how often other researchers cite their published work.
A brief review of ongoing Brazilian national initiatives that would allow the construction of a general biomonitoring network scheme in protected areas; with additional focus on linking independent monitoring schemes.
Scientists must call out — not merely greenwash — infrastructure building that will ruin environments, lives and economies, urges William Laurance.
Research co-led by a James Cook University professor suggests the Amazon rainforest is changing fast—but not fast enough to keep up with climate change.
The Best Australian Science Writing 2018 draws on the knowledge and insight of Australia’s brightest authors, journalists and scientists to challenge perceptions of the world we think we know.
Production of many crops, including bananas, is threatened worldwide by the spread of pathogenic strains of Fusarium oxysporum, the causal agent of Fusarium wilt. Though not all soil attributes can be managed, pH, organic matter content and availability of nutrients show promise for manipulation to reduce disease severity and mitigate risk.
The social impacts of roads, particularly on indigenous people, have not been adequately quantified. In reality, indigenous people are rarely consulted in the planning phase of road projects despite the fact that they have rights to self-determination and consultation involving the development of indigenous lands and resources, including road construction...
Earth's environmentally riskiest venture ever undertaken?
Scientists Warn That World’s Wilderness Areas Are Disappearing
As oil palm plantations continue to expand in Latin America, identifying critical transitions in land use, at which animal communities can be drastically altered, is crucial for conservation planning.
The Rising Stars Early Career Researcher (ECR) Leadership Program provides advanced professional development to fast-track the careers of JCU's future research leaders. It is an elite program with a cohort of 5-10 ECRs selected biennially on a competitive basis.
The Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) is an academic research communication competition developed by The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. JCU has a proud history of participating in the event.
Follow archaeologist Professor Sean Ulm's journey from growing up in a small country town in coastal eastern Australia to collaborating with Aboriginal communities across northern Australia to help tell the incredible epic story of Australia's past.
“This new protected area not only brings more key wildlife habitat under protection, but also protects vital forested watersheds that provide important ecosystem services to the people of Terengganu,” Sheema Abdul Aziz, a conservation ecologist and president of the Malaysia-based conservation research NGO Rimba, said in a statement.
This and many of the other of NSHE's arguments are outlandish and easily countered. The best analogy I can use is this: using NSHE's logic, someone could cut off your head and there would only be minor damage, because far less than 1 percent of your tissue would be destroyed.
If Orinoco oil palm cultivation surpasses 75 percent of the total area, mammal populations will suffer drastic and accelerated declines, a new study warns. A “sustainable” level of cultivation would need to reserve 55 percent of the land for natural ecosystems. Palm cultivation in the country’s eastern grassland plains has already exceeded these limits.
Rhinos in Australia might seem like an insane proposition – after all, we’ve had historically bad luck with introduced species. But on reflection it’s not quite as crazy as it sounds.
We found removing rare species at any cover threshold produced characteristic species appearing to correspond to landscape scale changes and better predicted species cover in grasslands and shrublands. However, in woodlands it made no difference.
This paper contributes to the debate on why scientists need to learn to program, not only to challenge prevailing approaches to mangrove research, but also to expand the temporal and spatial extents that are commonly used for mangrove research.
A project as sweeping as China’s multitrillion-dollar "Belt and Road" initiative has the potential to shake up global trade and geopolitics. But its toll on the environment may be just as significant.
KUALA TERENGGANU, 15 August – Malaysia’s Terengganu state government announced today that it has designated 10,386 hectares of land formerly slated for logging as a new protected area for conservation. This new state park in the Kenyir region of Terengganu is phase one of a much larger conservation project that lies within a globally important Tiger Conservation Landscape and critical wildlife corridor.
"Screen, not just green’ infrastructure projects to help economies and the environment"
Debugging diversity ‐ a pan‐continental exploration of the potential of terrestrial blood‐feeding leeches as a vertebrate monitoring tool.
We need to make our urban areas more welcoming to wildlife.
Global forest discourses must connect with local forest realities.
We are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history. To meet the United Nations’ development goals, we would need to invest tens of trillions of dollars in new roads, railways, energy ventures, ports, and other projects by 2030.
A pair of proposed hydroelectric dams that will encroach on the habitats of critically endangered primates—in Guinea and Indonesia—are receiving fierce criticism from conservation groups, who fault what they call inadequate scientific review of the harmful effects of these big infrastructure projects'
New research has revealed a deadly disease that threatens the survival of the world's frogs originated from East Asia, and global trade was almost certainly responsible for the disease's spread.
China is planning a series of massive infrastructure projects across four continents, an initiative that conservation biologist William Laurance described as “environmentally, the riskiest venture ever undertaken.”
Research shows for the first time that colonisation of Australia by 50,000 years ago was achieved by a globally significant phase of purposeful and coordinated marine voyaging.
The rapid expansion of oil palm cultivation in the Neotropics has generated great debate around possible biodiversity impacts.
It’s being called the biggest infrastructure project in human history, the likes of which Planet Earth has never seen before.
Into the sinkhole. Ecologist Mick Brand and meteorologist Costijn Zwart of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, abseil a boat into a 40-metre sinkhole in Arnhem Land to investigate the area’s geological record.
Susan Laurance describes the excitement of working on the frontiers of science. She describes the incredible experiment to create drought conditions in the Daintree Rainforest and what we can learn about how climate change is affecting our environment.
Conserving Species in a Fragmented World: The Established Researcher.
TESS team shows that road improvement enhances smallholder productivity and reduces forest encroachment in Ghana.
Newly Discovered Orangutan Species Requires Urgent Habitat Protection.
China-backed Sumatran dam threatens the rarest ape in the world.
Crushed rocks to boost crops,
Chocolate: brought to you by bugs!
Innovation Award winner, Prof. Bill Laurance, affirms the importance of protecting the planet's most ancient ecosystems.
Many believe that Australia's draft 'Strategy for nature' doesn't cut it.
Africa's great migrations are failing.
Warning signals may aid in identifying the proximity of ecological communities to biodiversity thresholds from habitat loss—often termed “tipping points”—in tropical forests.
TESS article on Amazonian rainforest fragmentation is selected as one of the world's top 20 conservation papers of 2017
The Amazon rainforest is one of the last great wildernesses. A new road project threatens a flood of illegal road building, logging, poaching, and droughts. So why build it?
Looking back at past sea level rises.
Highlighting governance challenges in Indonesia.
Assessing nature's values to people.