‘Extinct’ Galapagos tortoise still alive?

From the BBC:

9 January 2012 Last updated at 17:11 GMT

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

A giant Galapagos tortoise believed extinct for 150 years probably still exists, say scientists.

Chelonoidis elephantopus lived on the island of Floreana, and was heavily hunted, especially by whalers who visited the Galapagos to re-stock.

A Yale University team found hybrid tortoises on another island, Isabela, that appear to have C. elephantopus as one of their parents.

Some hybrids are only 15 years old, so their parents are likely to be alive.

The different shapes of the giant tortoises on the various Galapagos islands was one of the findings that led Charles Darwin to develop the theory of evolution through natural selection.

The animals are thought to have colonised the archipelago through floating from the shores of South America.

Colonies on each island remained relatively isolated from each other, and so evolved in subtly different directions.

C. elephantopus is especially notable for its saddleback-shaped shell, whereas species on neighbouring islands sported a dome-like carapace.

Three years ago, the Yale team reported finding some evidence of hybrids around Volcano Wolf at the northern end of Isabela Island, in amongst the native population of Chelonoidis becki.

They speculated that through careful cross-breeding, it might be possible to re-create the extinct lineage – a process likely to take many generations.

Now, in the journal Current Biology, they report that this might not be necessary. A further expedition to Volcano Wolf found 84 tortoises that appear, from genetic samples, to have a pure-bred C. elephantopus as a parent.

Thirty of these are less than 15 years old; so the chances of the pure-blood parents still being alive are high, given that they can live to over 100 years old.

“Around Volcano Wolf, it was a mystery – you could find domed shells, you could find saddlebacks, and anything in between,” recounted Gisella Caccone, senior scientist on the new study.
Map

“And basically by looking at the genetic fingerprint of the hybrids, if you do some calculations you realise that there have to be a few elephantopus around to father these animals.

“To justify the amount of genetic diversity in the hybrids, there should be something like 38.”

This number appears to include both males and females, given that some of the hybrids carry C. elephantopus mitochondrial DNA, which animals inherit exclusively from their mothers.

The theory is that some of the tortoises were probably taken by whaling ships that sailed from Floreana via the relatively remote Volcano Wolf en route to multi-year cruises in the Pacific looking for sperm whales.

Some of the giants made it to shore on Isabela, somehow, and established a presence.

The tortoises made an ideal food stock for whaling ships, as they can go without food for months and provided a source of fresh meat whenever the captain decided to kill them.
Needles, haystacks

The giant tortoises are so large, growing to nearly half a tonne, that you might think the elusive C. elephantopus would be easy to find.

The reality is rather different, according to Dr Caccone.

“The landscape on Volcano Wolf is hard, the vegetation thick with lots of bushes and nooks, and the carapaces are translucent so you need a trained eye to see the shininess of the shell,” she told BBC News.

“The thing that struck us is that no-one knows what the population is on Volcano Wolf. We took 40 people [on our last expedition], and we had to stop collecting basically when we finished our supplies.”

That trip took samples from over 1,600 individuals – which could be a small fraction of the population, indicating just how big a role the giant tortoises play in the ecosystem of the islands.

The Yale team now plans to discuss with Galapagos authorities whether to mount further exploratory expeditions, or whether to press ahead with a captive breeding programme.

See also here. And here. And here.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2012) — Land and marine iguanas and giant tortoises living close to human settlements or tourist sites in the Galápagos Islands were more likely to harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria than those living in more remote or protected sites on the islands, researchers report in a new study: here.

Nazca boobies and human abuse

From the New York Times in the USA:

In Birds, a Possible Clue to the Cycle of Abuse

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Published: October 10, 2011

Although it has never been definitively proven, many social scientists believe that abused children are more likely to become abusers as adults. Now for the first time, there is evidence of the phenomenon in animals in the wild.

Researchers writing in the October issue of The Auk, the journal of the American Ornithologists’ Union, studied Nazca boobies, ground-nesting birds native to the Galápagos Islands. The adults leave their chicks — they raise only one at a time — to forage for food, and often other adults approach the unguarded young. Almost all chicks have some contact with unrelated adults, which can be aggressive or sexual.

The researchers studied the birds over three breeding seasons, recording the numbers and types of interactions with unrelated adults of 24 banded nestlings. Then, during the 2004-5 season, another team of observers, unaware of the birds’ experiences as chicks, recorded the behavior of the same birds as adults interacting with unrelated nestlings. They found high correlations between the amount of aggressive behavior demonstrated by the adults and the amount of abuse they had endured as nestlings.

David J. Anderson, the senior author and a professor of biology at Wake Forest University, said that other studies had found increased levels of the stress hormone corticosterone in abused chicks, which may influence aggressive behavior later in life.

“It’s not just humans, and it’s not just a pathology associated with captivity,” Dr. Anderson said. “Maybe the cycle of violence is generalizable, and we may have other research models to work with in ways we can’t work with humans.”

It would be interesting to repeat this study with birds related to Nazca boobies, like Atlantic gannets, and with unrelated birds, mammals, etc.

Galapagos frigatebirds, a distinct species?

This video says about itself:

Magnificent Frigatebird

A male in a colony, displaying. Seymour, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.

From ScienceDaily:

Researchers Find Differences Between Galapagos and Mainland Frigatebirds

(Sep. 28, 2010) — Although the magnificent frigatebird may be the least likely animal on the Galapagos Islands to be unique to the area, it turns out the Galapagos population of this tropical seabird may be its own genetically distinct species warranting a new conservation status, according to a paper by researchers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the University of Missouri-St. Louis published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The Galapagos Islands, which once served as a scientific laboratory for Charles Darwin, boast a number of unique plant and animal species, from tortoises to iguanas to penguins. Magnificent frigatebirds, however, can fly hundreds of kilometers across open ocean, suggesting that their gene flow should be widespread and their genetic make-up should be identical to those of the magnificent frigatebirds on the mainland coast of the Americas. Even Darwin predicted that most Galapagos seabirds would not be very different from their mainland counterparts. But researchers at SCBI conducted three different kinds of genetics tests and all yielded the same result — the Galapagos seabirds have been genetically different from the magnificent frigatebirds elsewhere for more than half a million years.

“This was such a surprise,” said Frank Hailer, a postdoctoral research associate at SCBI and lead author of the paper. “It’s a great testimony to just how unique the fauna and flora of the Galapagos are. Even something that is so well-adapted to flying over open oceans is isolated there.”

Scientists began the research to determine whether the magnificent frigatebird on the Galapagos was more similar genetically to the magnificent frigatebirds on the Caribbean side or the Pacific side of the islands. Using frigatebird samples from Betty Anne Schreiber at the National Museum of Natural History, Iris Levin and Patricia Parker at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and those they collected in the field, SCBI researchers determined that the Galapagos version differ not only genetically, but also morphologically.

Now scientists are left with a number of questions: Are the genetics of the magnificent frigatebird on the Galapagos different enough to classify it as a distinct species? And what, exactly, accounts for the genetic and morphological differences when the seabirds can travel far and wide and therefore should not be isolated to one area to reproduce? SCBI and National Museum of Natural History researchers plan to collaborate with others in the field to find the answers.

What is clear, however, is that this small population of genetically unique magnificent frigatebirds is a vulnerable population. Any catastrophic event or threats by humans could wipe out the approximate 2,000 magnificent frigatebirds that nest on the Galapagos Islands.

“The magnificent frigatebirds on the Galapagos are a unique evolutionarily significant unit, and if the Galapagos population did go extinct, the area will not likely be recolonized rapidly by mainland birds,” said Robert Fleischer, head of SCBI’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics and one of the paper’s co-authors. “This emphasizes the importance of protecting this small population of birds there.”

Magnificent frigatebirds are currently considered of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, but the Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper recommends that, because of the genetic uniqueness of those on the Galapagos, this status be revisited.

Think of it as Habitat for Penguinity. A University of Washington conservation biologist is behind the effort to build nests in the barren rocks of the Galápagos Islands in the hope of increasing the population of an endangered penguin species: here.

Theorists have estimated that around 90% of the bird species which have become extinct in recent years were island species: Birds at Risk of Extinction: Why are Island Species Vulnerable? Here.

This is a Brown noddy, Anous stolidus, sitting on the head of a Galápagos brown pelican, Pelecanus occidentalis urinator. The noddy is harassing the pelican to give up its meal of freshly caught fish, a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism (literally, parasitism by theft). Brown noddies are capable of catching their own meals, but will resort to kleptoparasitism when the opportunity arises: here.

Sea Shepherd steps up the fight against poachers in the Galapagos Islands: here.

PHOTOS: Unique animals of the Galapagos: here.

Lady bug fights Galapagos invasive pest

From the University of California in the USA:

Control of invasive insect in Galapagos called a success

Date: 2010-04-22
Contact: Iqbal Pittalwala
Phone: (951) 827-6050
Email: iqbal@ucr.edu

RIVERSIDE — The Galapagos Islands, made famous by Charles Darwin, have a unique biota now highly threatened by invasive species because of increased tourism and population growth.

Indeed, alien or exotic insects today constitute 23 percent of the Galapagos insect fauna. One of these insect invaders is the cottony cushion scale, a sap sucking bug native to Australia.

Capable of infesting many woody ornamentals and crops, the cottony cushion scale decreases the vitality of its host by sucking phloem sap from the leaves, twigs, branches, and trunk. But natural enemies, such as the lady bug beetle, Rodolia cardinalis, can bring the cottony cushion scale under control in a short time — a form of pest suppression called biocontrol.

In fall 2009, entomologist Mark Hoddle, the director of the Center for Invasive Species at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues visited the Galapagos Islands to assess the impact and safety of the lady bug beetle that had been released in 2002 to suppress the cottony cushion scale.

“Populations of cottony cushion scale in 2002 were so high and spread across so many islands that several endemic and native plant populations were thought to be going into decline because of heavy infestations,” said Hoddle, also a biocontrol specialist in the Department of Entomology.

Combating the cottony cushion scale was a joint effort between the Charles Darwin Research Foundation and the Galapagos Islands National Park Service, which neighbors the foundation on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos.

“Soon after release, the lady bug beetle readily established and spread,” Hoddle said. “Subsequent monitoring indicated that it was having the desired effect on the cottony cushion scale populations, which were collapsing because of feeding by larval and adult lady bug beetles. Our project was to follow up to see whether the lady bug beetle in 2009 was still exerting high levels of control over the cottony cushion scale and whether the project was safe as predicted by lab studies.”

After about three months of survey work Hoddle, along with Christina Hoddle (UC Riverside), Charlotte Causton (Charles Darwin Research Station) and Roy Van Driesche (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), concluded that the cottony cushion scale populations were very low in most areas on the Galapagos Islands.

“Pest numbers have been reduced by more than 99 percent on some native plants like mangroves, which were very susceptible to attack by cottony cushion scale,” Hoddle said. “While from other rarer native plants, like Darwiniothamnus tenuifolius, the pest appears to have been completely removed.”

To assess the impact of the beetle on the cottony cushion scale, Hoddle’s team surveyed native plants across five different islands – Santa Cruz, Isabela, Espanola, San Cristobal, and Santiago – and recorded the presence and absence of cottony cushion scale and the lady bug beetle, and their densities. The team then compared the data to similar data from the same areas – and in many instances, from the very same trees – that had been collected before the lady bug beetle was released into the Galapagos.

“We also found no evidence that the lady bug beetle was attacking non-target species,” Hoddle said. “The bug was never seen feeding on other insects in the Galapagos even when the cottony cushion scale and the non-target species were side by side on the same twig.”

The cottony cushion scale project with the beetle was born in Southern California in 1888-1889 and saved California’s then fledging citrus industry.

“The project in the Galapagos is an extension of the California success story,” Hoddle said. “But in the Galapagos the biocontrol agent is protecting native plants instead of agricultural crops. The project has gone full circle – from 1880′s citrus protection in Southern California to, in 2010, conservation of endangered plants in the Galapagos. A pretty incredible progression that would have been inconceivable by California entomologists and citrus workers back in 1888!

List of all known species from the Galapagos Islands: here.

Non-native plant species are extending the growing season in eastern US forests by an average of four weeks, a study has suggested: here.

Related articles

• Galapagos Expedition Journal: Face to Face with Giant Tortoises (newswatch.nationalgeographic.com)
• Raptor Center On Mission To Protect Galapagos Tortoises (minnesota.cbslocal.com)
• The Galapagos Islands’ Finch Bay Eco Hotel wins South America’s Leading Green Hotel at World Travel Awards (prweb.com)
• Science at home | Learning about the Galapagos Islands (heartfeltbalancehandmadelife.com)
• Galapagos Expedition Journal: In the Footsteps of Charles Darwin (newswatch.nationalgeographic.com)
• Galapagos Islands – Part 6 (sherrijosbecauseicanworldtour.wordpress.com)
• Reduce Effects of Mass Tourism on Galapagos Islands (forcechange.com)

Galapagos tortoises video

From National Geographic:

November 24, 2009—On the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, get a Galápagos tortoise’s-eye view via a National Geographic Crittercam—a first.

Wildlife of Galapagos Islands ‘devastated by ocean warming’: here.

New coral species discovered in Galapagos waters

This video is called White-tipped Reef Shark in the Galapagos.

From British daily The Guardian:

Scientists have discovered three new coral species – and one that was thought to be extinct – in an extensive survey of reefs around the Galapagos Islands, raising hopes that reefs may be more resilient to rising sea temperatures than previously thought.

Honeycomb coral (Gardineroseris planulata) had apparently been wiped out in in 1997-98 by the last big El Niño event. This natural periodic event affects weather globally and another is expected this year. But the study around the relatively unexplored areas of the coasts of Wolf and Darwin islands to the north-west of the main archipelago turned up several separate colonies. …

The three new coral species are from the genera Hydrozoanthus, Parazoanthus and Antipathozoanthus. They also found a fourth possible new species and other corals that were thought not to inhabit the waters around the Galapagos.

A team of geologists led by Cindy Ebinger of the University of Rochester have deployed 16 seismic sensors on one of the Galapagos Islands to study the processes of ocean island formation — particularly those that occur right above mantle “hotspots”: here.

Vanishing coral reefs, photos here.

Related articles

• David Attenborough first to capture on film newly-discovered Galapagos pink iguana (rawstory.com)
• Galapagos tortoises migration (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Galapagos islands exhibition in Switzerland (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Face to face, Sir David and the pink iguana as Attenborough reveals lizard even Darwin missed in new series on Galapagos Islands (dailymail.co.uk)
• Sir David Attenborough on never-before seen animal in new series (digitalspy.co.uk)
• Scientists: Galapagos tortoise can be revived (sacbee.com)
• Show offers glimpse of rare reptile (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)
• Invasive Rats to be Exterminated in Galapagos Islands (hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)
• In the pink: Sir David Attenborough captures new species of pink iguana on film for first time (mirror.co.uk)

Galapagos islands blog

This video says about itself:

An overview of wildlife found on the islands of Galapagos, Ecuador that inspired and stimulated Charles Darwin during his visit.

Dutch sociologist and photographer Jacintha van Beveren is going to work for eight months in the Darwin Centre on the Galapagos islands, during the International Darwin Year.

She is writing a blog about this. It is in Dutch, but can be translated into English or other languages by Babelfish or other Internet translation programs.

UPDATE July 2012: the blog is gone.

Galápagos marine iguanas and climate change

This is a video of a marine iguana coming out of the water to join his friends.

From Yale University in the USA:

Global climate change: The impact of El Niño on Galápagos marine iguanas

New Haven, Conn. — A before-and-after study led by Yale biologists, of the effects of 1997 El Niño on the genetic diversity of marine iguanas on the Galápagos Islands, emphasizes the importance of studying populations over time and the need to determine which environmental and biological factors make specific populations more vulnerable than others. …

“Since global warming is expected to cause an increase in the strength and frequency of El Niño events, it is important to evaluate the impact of El Niño on natural populations and their capacity to respond to environmental stresses,” said Gisella Caccone, senior research scientist in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, and senior author of the paper published this week in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) One.

In this study, the researchers investigated the effect of sea surface warming associated with the single, intense El Niño event of 1997 to 1998 on genetic diversity in Galápagos marine iguana populations. They found that populations within the same species responded very differently.

For marine iguanas living in the Galapagos Islands, an El Nino can be deadly. Some die from starvation while others survive. Scientists have long believed that the difference between life and death for the iguana depended on the animals’ ability to secrete the stress hormone corticosterone: here.

Related articles

• Video Of The Day: Galápagos Islands Captured On A Cellphone (gadling.com)
• Old salt lizard at home in Darwin’s primal landscape (newscientist.com)
• The Galapagos Wildlife (ecoandessilver.org)
• New Silicon Valley in the Andes: Promise and paradox (ecuadoroverseasservices.wordpress.com)
• Galápagos Islands – “A Little World Within Itself” (losttribeofdan.wordpress.com)
• Pliocene El Nino (enn.com)

Galapagos and Californian sea lions are separate species

This is ‘Freediving with sea lions, dolphins, sharks, and others in the Galapagos. Video by Felix Leander’.

From Frontiers in Zoology:

Accurate formal taxonomic designations are thought to be of critical importance for the conservation of endangered taxa. The Galapagos sea lion (GSL), being appreciated as a key element of the Galapagos marine ecosystem, has lately been listed as ‘vulnerable’ by the IUCN. To date there is, however, hardly any scientific evidence, whether it constitutes a separate entity from its abundant Californian neighbour (CSL). In this paper, we delineate the taxonomic relationships within the genus Zalophus being comprised of the Galapagos sea lion, the Californian sea lion and the already extinct Japanese sea lion (JSL). …

Conclusions

Based on molecular evidence we build a case for classifying the Galapagos sea lion (Zalophus wollebaeki), the Californian sea lion (Zalophus californianus) and the Japanese sea lion (Zalophus japonicus) as true species. As morphological characters do not necessarily fully reflect the rapid divergence on the molecular level, the study can be considered as a test case for deriving species status from molecular evidence. We further use the results to discuss the role of genetics in conservation policy for an organism that already is under the general protection of the habitat it lives in.

Galapagos kelp: here.

April 2013. After several weeks of unusually high levels of sea lion strandings and high numbers of dead sea lions washing up on the beaches of Southern California, the local authorities have declared ‘An unusual mortality event’ (UME): here.

Islands in the sea: extreme female natal site fidelity in the Australian sea lion, Neophoca cinerea: here.

Related articles

• Sea lion found relaxing in luxury Californian hotel (metro.co.uk)
• Sea Lion Pups Continue To Die Along Southern Californian Coast, Scientists Struggle To Find Answers [Video] (latinospost.com)
• Ronan The Dancing Sea Lion – This Seal Lion Has Rhythm (americanlivewire.com)
• Sea Lion ‘Smiles’ After Startling Man (aol.com)
• Head-Bobbing Sea Lion May Keep the Beat Better Than You (wired.com)

New research on Galápagos finches

This video is about the Galápagos finches.

From National Wildlife Magazine in the USA:

The Continuing Saga of the Galápagos Finches

By Sharon Levy

The island birds that helped shape Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution are giving scientists new insights into how natural selection works

CHARLES DARWIN believed that natural selection was far too slow to be observed in the wild.

But for the past three decades, the same small Galápagos birds that inspired Darwin to form his revolutionary theory have been revealing that the process works with surprising speed.

Scientists can, and do, watch evolution in action—a development that would have boggled the English naturalist’s mind.

In 1835, as he traveled through the Galápagos, the 25-year-old Darwin saw a multitude of little birds.

He prepared specimens to bring back to England, assuming he was collecting Galápagos varieties of the warblers, sparrows and finches found on the South American mainland.

Many months later, John Gould, an ornithologist studying Darwin’s bird skins at the Zoological Society of London, informed him that instead he had found 14 new species—every single one of them a finch, every single one found only in the Galápagos.

When he published a memoir of his voyage, Darwin wrote that in the ground finches of the Galápagos, “a nearly perfect gradation may be traced, from a beak extraordinarily thick, to one so fine, that it may be compared to that of a warbler.

New Research on Darwin’s Finches Offers Rare Glimpse Into How Species Diverge: here.

Zebra finches: here.

Stephen Jay Gould: here.