MC Hammer Thinks You Can’t Touch This Science. That Story And Other Headlines For March 21, 2021

H2O Radio

March 21, 2021

Butterfly Numbers Are Rapidly Declining in the U.S. West Due to Climate Change

Besides being beautiful, butterflies are important pollinators for a variety of food crops and flowers. However, these insects are disappearing at an alarming rate, particularly in the western part of the U.S. A new study led by the University of Nevada, Reno, shows that over the past four decades, hundreds of species have declined at an average rate of over 1.5 percent per year. The drop in numbers is associated with increasing temperatures in the autumn.

In the past, the decline had been blamed on the use of pesticides or the loss of habitat, and it was assumed that, far away from humans, butterflies would be just fine. But now climate change is driving their disappearance. Summer temperatures that last into the fall can dry out vegetation and may disturb the seasonal cycles of the insects. Warming may force butterflies to delay going into a hibernation-like state in fall months, which leads to their starvation.

The decline in butterfly numbers also portends problems for plants and whole ecosystems because climate effects will almost certainly impact many other insects, including bees.

The director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation told National Geographic that there’s a lot individual citizens can do to protect butterflies and other insects at home, such as planting native vegetation and avoiding pesticides—adding that it doesn’t matter whether you have a little tiny yard or you manage a national park.

Most of the Kelp in Northern California Is Replaced by Urchin Barrens

Sea urchins feed on kelp along the northern coast of California, and they’ve eaten so much that areas that used to be kelp forests are now becoming “urchin barrens.” Commonly called seaweed, kelp thrive in cool, relatively shallow waters close to the shore and grow much like a forest on land, providing food and shelter for thousands of marine animals.

But the kelp ecosystems north of San Francisco are nearly gone, having dropped by more than 95 percent in about a decade. Research from the University of California, Santa Cruz, finds that sunflower sea stars, or starfish, which eat the urchins, have succumbed to a wasting disease, leaving the kelp forests vulnerable.

In other areas to the south, like Monterey Bay, sea otters prey upon the urchins protecting the kelp, but sea otters haven’t been seen along the Northern California coast since the 1800s.

Another factor in the kelp decline is increased water temperatures. Kelp thrive when there is a strong upwelling of deep cold water that brings nutrients to the surface, but marine heatwaves result in warm water, which isn’t good for seaweed. In the past, kelp were resilient to marine heatwaves. Then, about five years ago, a blob of warm water spread along the West Coast, and coinciding with the increased numbers of urchins, the kelp forests were reduced dramatically.

The study was published in the journal Communications Biology.

Humans Evolved to Live On Less Water than Other Primates

There are low-flow showerheads and low-flow toilets, but according to new research, we humans are also low-flow, using water more efficiently than our
closest primate relative. And that may have provided an evolutionary advantage.

Research from Duke University shows that the amount of water we lose and replace on a daily basis can be 30 to 50 percent less than our animal cousins. The average person processes about three liters, or 12 cups of water each day, while a chimpanzee or gorilla goes through twice that much.

The scientists were surprised because humans have ten times as many sweat glands as chimps per inch of skin, making it possible for a person to sweat more than half a gallon during an hour-long workout—the equivalent of two Big Gulps from a 7-Eleven.

One of the researchers told Duke Today that an ancient shift in our body’s ability to conserve water may have enabled our ancestors to venture farther from streams and water holes to search for food. Going a little bit longer without water would have been a big advantage, as early humans started living in dry, savannah landscapes.

The findings suggest that something changed over the course of human evolution that reduced the amount of water our bodies use. One possible explanation is that humans developed a more prominent nose compared to gorillas and chimpanzees, who have much flatter noses. Our nasal passages help conserve water by cooling and condensing the water vapor from exhaled air, turning it back into liquid on the inside of our nose, where it can be reabsorbed.

The study was published in Current Biology.

The Coffee You Choose May Help Save Birds

The number of people taking up birdwatching, especially since the pandemic, has increased in the U.S. and comes at a time when bird populations are declining. Since 1970 bird populations in North America have dropped by approximately 2.9 billion—a loss of more than one in four birds due to habitat loss and ecosystem degradation.

To help protect our feathered friends, researchers from Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment, Cornell University, and Columbia University are reaching out to coffee drinkers and asking them to buy beans that are "bird-friendly." Bird-friendly coffee beans are grown under the shade canopy of mature trees, where birds find food and shelter.

Worldwide demand for java has caused farmers in Central and South America to plant dense rows of crops in full sun—often using pesticides—that incentivizes deforestation and also stresses surrounding ecosystems.

The researchers surveyed birdwatchers to learn what kind of beans they bought. Only nine percent purchased bird-friendly certified coffee and less than 40 percent were familiar with it. The authors of the study are hoping to raise awareness to look for the Bird-Friendly label created by Smithsonian conservation scientists the next time they stock up on beans. The label means coffees are guaranteed to support bird habitat, in addition to fair and stable prices for coffee producers and healthy environments for local communities.

She’s Known as the "Fish DJ," and The Hammer Thinks She Nails It

Rebecca Poulsen is a PhD candidate in neuroscience at the University of Queensland. But when she’s not in the lab she’s spinning cool beats as “Bexta” one of Australia’s best DJs. As of late, she’s combining her expertise in music and brain science to conduct some breakout research on fish.

Known as the “Fish DJ,” Poulsen designed a speaker system with whole-brain imaging and discovered that zebrafish larvae have better hearing than previously thought. She and her team tested different sounds to see if the fish could discriminate between single frequencies, white noise, short sharp sounds, and sound with a gradual crescendo of volume.

The tiny size of the fish larvae allowed the scientists to see which brain cells and regions were active with each sound that included many they would hear in the wild, like running water, other fish swimming past, objects hitting the surface of the water, or predators approaching.

Poulsen says the research helps scientists to better understand how fish use sound to find food and communicate with each other and might have applications for studying conditions in humans, such as autism.

In the course of her research, she pumped some of her own beats into the speakers—as well as from one of her favorites—MC Hammer. To her great surprise, the rapper retweeted her post promoting her research that used his classic “U Can’t Touch This.”

The study was published in the journal Current Biology.

H2O Radio’s goal is to help their audience become invested and knowledgeable caretakers of our environment and water supply by cutting through noise, opinion, and ideological narrative to present facts and truth with a clear, strong signal. Noting the urgent situation of climate change there is little time to waste.