Ecology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38448510

Crossposted from https://beehaw.org/post/22702394

A multimedia article showing changes migration of several different bird species, and suggestions on what may be causing them.

“Bird migrations rank as one of nature’s greatest spectacles. Thanks to GPS tracking, scientists are uncovering extraordinary insights into ancient and mysterious journeys – and new threats that are reshaping them.”

A sweeping analysis of some 14,600 conservation projects over 25 years confirms that bias in stark terms. The authors, led by Benoit Guénard, found that 83 percent of funding and 84 percent of projects went to vertebrates, leaving plants, invertebrates, fungi, and algae to divide the scraps. Within vertebrates, mammals and birds claimed nearly all support, while amphibians—though the most threatened of all vertebrate groups—received just 2.5 percent of recent funding, a share that is declining.

Abstract

The monitoring of bird populations provides valuable insights into biodiversity variations and their correlation with environmental changes. This study proposes a flexible hybrid edge computing IoT architecture for a low-cost bird song detection system. The system integrates low-power microcomputers, such as Raspberry Pi, equipped with USB microphones, LoRa modules, and Wi-Fi for seamless operation across rural and urban environments. By utilizing deep learning techniques, including convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on bird song datasets, the system performs real-time species detection at the edge, minimizing the need for high-bandwidth transmission. Nodes dynamically select communication technologies based on availability, sending data to an IoT analytics platform. Field deployments demonstrate the system's efficiency, interoperability, and adaptability for biodiversity monitoring, particularly in remote areas with limited connectivity. This architecture addresses the challenges of real-time species detection while ensuring low cost, scalability, and energy efficiency. The main advantage is that devices can operate in areas without mobile coverage, as they only transmit the detection signal. This results in significant bandwidth savings, since the processing is carried out at the edge.

Animal communities, including thousands of tubeworms and bivalves, have been observed at depths up to 9,533 meters in the Mariana Trench, marking the deepest and most extensive chemosynthesis-based ecosystems known. These organisms rely on chemical energy, such as methane produced by microbes, rather than sunlight, indicating that such deep-sea life may be more widespread than previously recognized.

The study

Marine experts say governments must protect fragile ecosystems from destructive practices such as bottom trawling and deep sea mining to combat the climate crisis.

The preserved area is more than 1,000 square miles, larger than New York City and Los Angeles combined. When Field Museum scientists visited the region in 2016 to conduct an inventory of wildlife, they estimated that the area is home to at least 3,000 species of plants, 550 fish species, 110 amphibians, 100 reptiles, and 160 mammals.

The study titled, "Expansion of the genomic and functional diversity of global ocean giant viruses," was published on April 21, 2025 in the journal Nature npj Viruses.

Now, for the first time ever, an international study led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint center of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (the Spanish National Research Council [CSIC]) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), in conjunction with the Botanical Institute of Barcelona (IBB, CSIC-CMCNB), has discovered a species of blow fly (family Calliphoridae) whose larvae infiltrate colonies of harvester termites.