Criteria for 'Red List' of Endangered Ecosystems Released

With many of the world's ecosystems threatened or endangered by human activities like logging and urbanization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its criteria for a new "Red List" of endangered ecosystems today (May 8) in the journal PLOS ONE.

The list, which measures an ecosystem's risk of collapse, will be similar to the group's authoritative Red List of Endangered Species, which created internationally accepted criteria for assessing extinction risk.

"The Red Lists for species and ecosystems will together provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the environment and its biodiversity than either can on its own," said lead study author David Keith, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

"The Ecosystem Red List focuses on a high level of biodiversity, the habitats for species, as well as their interactions and dependencies, including food webs,” Keith told OurAmazingPlanet in an email interview. “These are difficult or impossible to address in Red List assessments of individual species, but very important for the functioning of ecosystems and the services that they provide to support our standards of living."

Through 20 case studies, Keith and an international team of biologists and conservationists designed criteria that could assess the health of all of Earth's varied ecosystems, from spring-fed limestone caves to sparkling coral reefs.

"This is really a unifying framework," said study co-author Richard Kingsford, also a professor at the University of New South Wales. "The most important thing here, from my point of view, is providing evidence that pushes governments to do things to protect these magnificent parts of the world."

Of the ecosystems examined in the case studies, the most endangered site was the Aral Sea. Drained by a massive irrigation project and further devastated by drought and pollution, the inland sea's ecosystem has collapsed — the equivalent of species extinction, the study concludes.The rest of the ecosystem threat categories mirror those for species: critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable and least concern.

North American ecosystems appearing in the case studies included Alaska's giant kelp forests; the Great Lakes' rare Alvar beaches, a legacy of glaciers grinding across the landscape; and Caribbean coral reefs.

The IUCN group that developed the Red List of Ecosystems criteria plans to formally propose the framework to IUCN leadership this year. Funding is in place for listing ecosystems in the Americas, and the organization hopes to have a global list in place by 2025.

Development of ecosystem and species Green Lists are also underway — the carrot to the Red Lists' stick — to help the IUCN promote conservation by rewarding successes.

Here are the 20 case studies published today, from most to least endangered, with the ecosystem type noted if available.

Aral Sea — Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan: freshwater, collapsedRaised bogs — Germany: critically endangeredGonakier forests — Senegal River floodplain: freshwater, critically endangeredCape Sand Flats — Fynbos, South Africa: terrestrial, critically endangeredCoorong lagoons — Australia: freshwater/marine, critically endangeredKarst rising springs — Southern Australia: freshwater, critically endangeredCoastal sandstone upland swamps — Australia: freshwater, endangered/critically endangeredSwamps, marshes and lakes in the Murray-Darling Basin — Australia: freshwater, endangered/critically endangeredGiant kelp forests — Alaska: marine, endangered/critically endangeredCaribbean coral reefs — Caribbean: marine, endangered/critically endangeredSeagrass meadows — Southern Australia: marine, endangered-critically endangeredGerman tamarisk pioneer vegetation — Europe: freshwater, endangeredCoolibah-Black Box woodland — Australia: freshwater/terrestrial, endangeredTapia forest — Madagascar: terrestrial, endangeredSemi-evergreen vine thicket — Australia: terrestrial, endangeredGreat Lakes Alvars — United States and Canada: terrestrial, vulnerable/endangeredReed beds — Europe: freshwater, vulnerableFloodplain ecosystem of river red gum and black box — southeastern Australia: freshwater, vulnerableTepui shrubland - Venezuela: terrestrial, least concernGranite gravel fields and sand plains - New Zealand: terrestrial, least concern

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Gene machines may help save endangered Tasmanian devil

Zoo keeper and breeder Tim Faulkner holds a Tasmanian devil -- an endangered marsupial found in the wild in the Australian island-state of Tasmania.

Credit: Reuters/Penn State University/Stephan C. Schuster/Handout

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO | Tue Jun 28, 2011 8:59am EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists are using high-tech gene sequencing machines in a desperate attempt to save the Tasmanian devil from an infectious cancer called devil facial tumor disease that is threatening to wipe out the species.

"The disease is like nothing we know in humans or in virtually any other animal. It acts like a virus but it actually is spread by a whole cancerous cell that arose in one individual several decades ago," Penn State University's Stephan Schuster, who is working on the project, said in a statement.

The cancer, first observed just 15 years ago, is quickly spreading among populations of the already endangered Tasmanian devil, the world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupial that lives on the Australian island state of Tasmania.

Devil facial tumor disease disfigures the victim and causes death from starvation or suffocation.

"It has 90 to 100 percent lethality in a few months. In many regions of Tasmania, it is completely lethal," said Schuster, who worked on the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Conservation experts have been isolating and breeding a population of healthy animals and plan to release them in the wild once the cancer runs its course.

To help select the best animals for the effort, a team led by Schuster and Webb Miller of Penn State and Vanessa Hayes of the Venter Institute in San Diego sequenced two Tasmanian devils, Cedric and Spirit, from the extreme northwest and southeast regions of Tasmania, respectively, to determine the genetic diversity of the animals.

GENETIC DIVERSITY

Then they compared the range of genetic diversity to that of humans, the most studied species on the planet.

"In the case of the Tasmanian devil, those two only have 20 percent of the genetic diversity that living humans have," Schuster said in a telephone interview.

The study is one of the first to use whole genome sequencing as a tool to conserve an endangered population, Schuster said.

Whole genome sequencing technology allows researchers to read all the little bits of code -- the A, C, T, G sequences -- that are the building blocks of DNA.

It took 10 years and $3 billion for the international Human Genome Project to get the first draft of the human genome a decade ago.

The scans now cost $10,000 to $20,000 each, but companies such as Illumina, Life Technologies Corp, Pacific Biosciences and Roche Holding are working hard to bring the cost down even more.

Schuster's scan of the two Tasmanian devils showed the population already had low genetic diversity, which likely made them vulnerable to the infectious cancer, which is spread by skin-to-skin contact.

"Transmission is through biting, fighting and mating," he said, and the disease has the potential of "burning through the entire population within a decade."

Using the genetic code from the two animals, the team devised a test that could look for specific genetic differences within the species to find the most genetically diverse animals for the breeding program.

"It costs $150 per animal, whereas the sequence of the complete genome is in the $10,000 range," Schuster said.

The team used a new gene sequencing platform from Roche Holding AG, which helped pay for the research.

Schuster said the findings show that whole genome sequencing can be a useful tool in conservation. He said future studies are planned in cattle and other domestic animals.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Group seeks endangered listing for Franklin's bumblebee

By Jeff Barnard, Associated PressGRANTS PASS, Oregon — A conservation group filed a petition Wednesday to add a bumblebee from Southern Oregon and Northern California to the endangered species list.The Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Robbin Thorp, an entomologist at theUniversity of California at Davis, formally petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the insect — called a Franklin's bumblebee — under the Endangered Species Act.

Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society in Portland, said the petition is part of an effort to reverse the decline of bumblebees and other native bees around the world due to habitat loss, pesticides and diseases spilling out of commercial greenhouses.

The group is preparing petitions to protect other bumblebee species as well. The Franklin's bee was chosen for this petition because documentation of its decline is more detailed than for other species. Thorp found 94 Franklin's bumblebees in 1994, but he has seen none since 2006.

Farmers often hire honeybee keepers to pollinate crops, but hives have been decimated by a mysterious honeybee killer known as colony collapse disorder.

So some farmers are turning to bumblebees to pollinate, especially for hothouse crops such as tomatoes, peppers and strawberries, and field crops such as blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, squash and watermelon.

Bumblebees pollinate about 15% of all crops grown in the nation, worth $3 billion.

"The decline in Franklin's bumblebee should serve as an alarm that we are starting to lose important pollinators," Black said. "We hope that Franklin's bumblebee will remind us to prevent pollinators across the U.S. from sliding toward extinction."

While many native pollinators have seen declines related to loss of habitat and pesticides, Franklin's bumblebee and some related species have suffered deep and sudden declines that Thorp has theorized may be related to a fungus that was inadvertently transported with bumblebees brought from Europe for commercial use.

Researchers at the University of Illinois are working to see if the fungus known as nosema bombus caused declines in a number of related bumblebees, including the once-common Western bumblebee, the rusty-patched bumblebee, and the yellow-banded bumblebee in the Northeast.

Earlier this year, the Xerces Society and other conservation groups and scientists called on federal agricultural authorities to start regulating shipments of commercially domesticated bumblebees to protect wild bumblebees from diseases threatening their survival.

A 2007 National Academy of Sciences report blamed the decline of pollinators around the world on a combination of habitat loss, pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of greenhouses using commercial bumblebees.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more.

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Group seeks endangered listing for Franklin's bumblebee

By Jeff Barnard, Associated PressGRANTS PASS, Oregon — A conservation group filed a petition Wednesday to add a bumblebee from Southern Oregon and Northern California to the endangered species list.The Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Robbin Thorp, an entomologist at theUniversity of California at Davis, formally petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the insect — called a Franklin's bumblebee — under the Endangered Species Act.

Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society in Portland, said the petition is part of an effort to reverse the decline of bumblebees and other native bees around the world due to habitat loss, pesticides and diseases spilling out of commercial greenhouses.

The group is preparing petitions to protect other bumblebee species as well. The Franklin's bee was chosen for this petition because documentation of its decline is more detailed than for other species. Thorp found 94 Franklin's bumblebees in 1994, but he has seen none since 2006.

Farmers often hire honeybee keepers to pollinate crops, but hives have been decimated by a mysterious honeybee killer known as colony collapse disorder.

So some farmers are turning to bumblebees to pollinate, especially for hothouse crops such as tomatoes, peppers and strawberries, and field crops such as blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, squash and watermelon.

Bumblebees pollinate about 15% of all crops grown in the nation, worth $3 billion.

"The decline in Franklin's bumblebee should serve as an alarm that we are starting to lose important pollinators," Black said. "We hope that Franklin's bumblebee will remind us to prevent pollinators across the U.S. from sliding toward extinction."

While many native pollinators have seen declines related to loss of habitat and pesticides, Franklin's bumblebee and some related species have suffered deep and sudden declines that Thorp has theorized may be related to a fungus that was inadvertently transported with bumblebees brought from Europe for commercial use.

Researchers at the University of Illinois are working to see if the fungus known as nosema bombus caused declines in a number of related bumblebees, including the once-common Western bumblebee, the rusty-patched bumblebee, and the yellow-banded bumblebee in the Northeast.

Earlier this year, the Xerces Society and other conservation groups and scientists called on federal agricultural authorities to start regulating shipments of commercially domesticated bumblebees to protect wild bumblebees from diseases threatening their survival.

A 2007 National Academy of Sciences report blamed the decline of pollinators around the world on a combination of habitat loss, pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of greenhouses using commercial bumblebees.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more.

View the original article here