BioFresh goes political: an overview of the 4th annual meeting of the BioFresh project
The 4th annual BioFresh meeting is just around the corner! The focus of this year’s meeting will be on the interface between science and policy and making freshwater biodiversity science more politically influential.
The fourth annual meeting of the BioFresh project will be held next week from April 15-19 in the trendy Germany city of Leipzig. The slogan of this year’s meeting is “BioFresh goes political”, which captures the focus of linking BioFresh science with policy and conservation outcomes. The meeting is a chance for members from our 19 partner organisations of the BioFresh team to get together and assess the progress of the previous 3 years and discuss plans for the final phase of the BioFresh project.
If you’re not familiar with the BioFresh project, you can check out this wonderful animation below explaining what it’s all about:
Alongside the important status updates and preparation for the future, a key feature of the meeting will be a workshop on understanding the science-policy interface and the implications for freshwater biodiversity research and funding. A full day of the week-long meeting will be dedicated to discussing the issues around making freshwater biodiversity science into policy, an indication the high priority BioFresh gives to linking the science of freshwater biodiversity with policy and conservation. This workshop should result in two main outcomes: one aim is to create a space where science and policy can come together to discuss current ways and methods of science-policy communication and its best practices, its challenges, and futures needs when engaging with policy makers and stakeholders. For this, BioFresh will profit from the experiences and inputs of several guests involved in other FP7 EU projects (KNEU, OpenNESS, REFORM, SPIRAL, ViBRANT, WaterDISS) related to freshwater, e-infrastructures, data mobilisation and publishing. Finally, BioFresh hopes to join forces with these EU projects to design a Science-Policy Symposium on freshwater biodiversity, to be held in the Spring of 2014 in Brussels.
With BioFresh entering its final project phase, all of us are also looking forward to what will be beyond BioFresh. What happens to the biodiversity infrastructures built up such as the BioFresh portal, the Metadatabase and the Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas? Will there be new initiatives? And where is and where should Europe be going in biodiversity research?
BioFresh newsletter out now
BioFresh’s latest newsletter has been published ahead the annual BioFresh meeting in one week’s time. The newsletter features the latest scientific papers that the BioFresh team have published and the work BioFresh is doing to link science with policy.
As BioFresh enters its final project phase it is important to remember the major goals of the BioFresh project. BioFresh aims to improve the capacity to protect and manage freshwater biodiversity by building an information platform, do scientific analyses, increase the awareness for freshwater biodiversity and support the European Union and other bodies’ environmental policies with our knowledge and results. Since the beginning of the project, BioFresh have made important progress in building the platform and doing science.
As an example of this work, in the last few months BioFresh papers have appeared in leading journals including in the fields of biology and ecology. An overview of each of these are included in the newsletter, which are listed below: 
- BioFresh in Hydrobiologia
- BioFresh in Ecological Indicators
- BioFresh in PLoS One
- BioFresh in Global Change Biology
- BioFresh in Systematic Biology
- BioFresh in Science
In addition to the many BioFresh papers that have been published over the last few months, the newsletter also covers some of the BioFresh work on linking science with policy. For example, the BioFresh newsletter highlights work by members of the BioFresh team and partners on freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) and the BioFresh Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas.
And last, but by no mean least, the newsletter discusses the annual BioFresh meeting, which will be held in Leipzig, Germany in one week’s time. The meeting will run from 15-19 of April and will. Make sure to stay tuned for a more detailed introduction to the meeting in the coming few days, as well as regular updates during the meeting itself.
New species of fish discovered in India
At team of Indian freshwater scientists have found a new species of freshwater fish in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world.
Newly discovered species of Stone Loach – Balitora jalpalli
The new species, which was found in the Kunthi river in South-West India, is a type of stone loach fish and has been called the ‘Balitora jalpalli’. It becomes the lucky 13th species of the Balitora genus, which live in the hill streams of South and South-East Asia, four of which can be found in India. The name ‘jalpalli’ is a combination of two Sanskrit words: ‘jal’ meaning water and ‘palli’ meaning ‘small lizard’ and it is named so because of its lizard-like appearance and its behaviour of clinging to rocks in fast-flowing waterways.
Caudal peduncle
The tiny fish is just over 6cm in length and has a yellow-brown appearance. The researchers say that the new species can be distinguished from its cousins by the size of its head (length and width), unique patterns and the number of bands on its back, and differences in the narrow part of the fish’s body that connects to the tail fin – or for the fish biologists among us the caudal peduncle, a sexy name for a body part if ever there was one!
Western Ghats. Photo: UNESCO
The Kunthi, where the Balitora jalpalli was found, is a tributary of Bharathapuzha River, India’s second-longest river. It runs through the Silent Valley National Park in southern Western Ghats, in the state of Kerala. The Western Ghats is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and in the top 10 ‘hottest biodiversity hotspots’ in the world. This latest find follows the discovery of another species of stone loach in the Western Ghats just last year and highlights the importance of the region as one of the world’s richest sources of biodiversity. The Western Ghats is home to over 5,000 species of flowering plants, over 500 bird species, 179 amphibian species, 139 species of mammals, over 100 freshwater fish species and now one more ! It is likely than many more species remain to found in this oasis of biodiversity.
The findings were published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.
World Water Day 2013: Water as a medium for life
World Water Day is an opportunity to think about the importance of water and to reflect on what water really is. Water is not only an instrumental resource to meet the needs of humanity, but it is also a medium for life itself.
All life on Earth depends on water for its survival. Civilisations have risen and fallen around the question of water. Without water life as we know it would simply not exist. But water is not just an inert substance that sustains life. It is alive with an abundance of life itself.
Freshwater habitats cover just 1% of the Earth’s surface, but hold over 10% of all life on the planet and 35% of all vertebrates. Yet despite this, no component of global biodiversity is declining faster than freshwater ecosystems.
With 2013 marking the ‘International Year of Water Co-operation’, it is the perfect time to work together to meet the many pressing and interconnected issues relating to water. If the needs of people and freshwater ecosystems (and the services they bring) are to be met, freshwater ecologists, economists and policy-makers must all work together. The nexus between food security, water and biodiversity, is just one of many examples of the need for water co-operation.
Leafpack in the Cuisance river, France. Photo: Nuria Bonada
Given the interrelated and multiple roles that water plays on Earth, BioFresh member Dr. Paul Jepson from the University of Oxford asks whether “water policy should, therefore, also consider the diversity of life that inhabits freshwater ecosystems before it is harnessed, filtered and transformed into the inert substance used by humanity. The crucial question is how do we understand the relationship between water as an instrumental resource and water as the basis of dynamic, diverse and living ecosystems?”
A myriad of microscopic diatoms.
Today provides an opportunity to step back and reflect on the nature of water. UN Secretary-General stated today that “water holds the key to sustainable development, we must work together to protect and carefully manage this fragile, finite resource.” No-one would argue with that. But water is much more the simply a natural resource.
Look beneath the surface of this vital resource and it is transformed into another world filled with strange and fascinating creatures. Our lakes and rivers support an amazing diversity of life, from tiny diatoms all the way to us humans. These beautiful, complex webs of freshwater life often go unseen, and their importance un-noticed. However, this remarkable diversity of freshwater life is vital in supporting our everyday lives. Are we capable of creating policies to manage water not only as a resource for humanity, but also as a medium for life?
For more see the article ‘Going with the flow‘ by Dr. Paul Jepson and Rob St John.
Freshwater species given protection at international summit
It’s good news for some of the world’s most endangered freshwater species. Nearly 50 freshwater species – from threatened freshwater turtles and tortoises to the rare freshwater sawfish – were given stronger protection at the recent CITES summit.
The critically endangered Roti Island snake-necked turtle is highly south after on the exotic pet market. Photo: ARKive.
Last week governments from across the world came together in the Thai capital, Bangkok, to discuss proposals to protect some of the most threatened species on the planet from harmful international trade. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) puts in place rules agreed upon by the world’s governments for the conservation of some of the most threatened species by banning the trade of certain species or placing quotas, restrictions and rules concerning the trade of endangered species (these are known as Appendix I, II or III listings).
The biggest news from the summit was that countries agreed to protect 47 species of the world’s most endangered freshwater tortoises and turtles in Asia and the United States. The decision to strengthen the rules governing the trade of these species was agreed upon by consensus from the nearly 200 countries present and saw the United States and China vote together for the first time ever at the international wildlife summit. This saw 44 species of freshwater turtles and tortoises in Asia and three species of pond turtles in America receive increased protected to prevent these species from disappearing.
The Ryukyu black-breasted leaf turtle is a National Treasure of Japan.
Over half of the world’s freshwater tortoises and turtles face extinction and are in desperate need of conservation efforts, but many are still under threat from hunting for food, collectors of exotic animals, use in traditional medicine and for their shells, which are made into ornaments. And the trade is a lucrative one too. Some collectors are willing to pay anywhere between €2000-€10,000 per individual of some species, which will prove a big challenge in terms of cracking down on illegal trade.
Last week’s summit also saw another precedent: Japan, for the first time ever for any species at CITES, asked the help of the world’s governments to protect the rare Ryukyu Black-breasted Leaf Turtle, which is a ‘natural monument’ in the country.
Prized for its fins and unique saw.
The freshwater sawfish (Pristis microdon) is another critically endangered species that was given the top protection under CITES. This elusive animal is a large, shark-like ray that used to found in the waters in and around the Indian sub-continent, South-East Asia and Australia, but is now virtually extinct in most of this region having not been seen in decades in Indonesia and Thailand and now only found in northern Australia. The freshwater sawfish can live in on the bottom of muddy or sandy rivers and estuaries or shallow coastal water and are high-order predators, eating a delicious diet of mainly fish and prawns. These unique sea creatures are sought after for their valuable fins and saws and the decision to protect the freshwater sawfish means that international trade in all species of sawfish has now been banned.
There was another win for freshwater biodiversity at the CITES summit. The critically endangered Siamese freshwater crocodile retained the highest level of protection under the convention, after a bid from Thailand to downgrade it failed. The Siamese crocodile is one of the most endangered crocodiles in the world. Once found widely throughout most of South-East Asia, it is now confined to just 1% of its original habitat. Although a few small wild populations remain, mostly in Cambodia with smaller populations in Indonesia, Laos, and Thailand, there is a significant captive population for commercial uses throughout the region. The importance of this decision is underscored by the extinction of the crocodile in Vietnam last year. The last Siamese crocodile in Vietnam was found strangled to death aged nearly 100 years old, possibly killed by hunters.
Though there is still work to be done in enforcing these new rules and cracking down on illegal poaching and trade, the outcomes of the CITES 2013 summit can definitely be seen as a big win for freshwater conservation and biodiversity and is welcome news.
For an overview of some of the other key decisions made during the CITES summit see here and here.
Progress towards a global freshwater biodiversity atlas
An online atlas providing open access to information on global freshwater biodiversity is an exciting and important future output of the BioFresh project. The atlas will map primary data available through the new BioFresh data portal as well as make available key map overlays such as the Freshwater Ecoregions. Maps will be accompanied by an up-to-date and authoritative survey of the underlying science and their policy relevance and organized into thematic chapters.
Atlas editor Dr. Jörg Freyhof of the Leibnitz Institute of Freshwater Ecology explains his vision for the BioFresh Biodiversity Atlas
The Atlas editorial team would welcome suggestions for additional content . If you have, or know of, maps and overlays relevant to freshwater biodiversity science and policy which you would like to see included in the Atlas please contact Jorg Freyhof email freyhof[a]igb-berlin.de or Vanessa Bremerich email bremerich[a]igb-berlin.de
Drugs used for anxiety making fish angry
Drugs used for anxiety in humans have been making freshwater fish more aggressive. But this is only the latest in a growing list of common drugs that are affecting our freshwater ecosystems.
Photo: Creative commons
An article in Science this week showed that a common anti-anxiety medication, which has been ending up in rivers from wastewater as patients on the medication pass it through their urine, is also affecting the mood of the European Perch (Perca fluviatilis), a species of freshwater water. Even tiny amounts of the drug has been found to make the timid fish more bold, anti-social and voracious, according to the recent study.
European Perch (Perca fluviatilis). Photo: Wikimedia commons
The drug in question is Oxazepam, part of the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines, which are the most commonly used anxiety drugs. It acts on neurons that suppress brain activity and relaxing the patients. But the drug seemed to have to opposite effect on Perch. It is thought that in the fish the drug acts to reduce the level of fear the fish experience. Michael Jonsson, co-author of the paper, explains that “if the fish were anxious to begin with, perhaps the drug reduces anxiety and allows the fish to become more active.” In the lab, that led to medicated fish from natural populations being more adventurous, tending to spend less time with their fellow fish, and eating more zooplankton.
Oxazepam is the latest in a growing list of drugs that are significantly altering fish behaviour and escaping into our waterways. A type of contraceptive pill, which contains the chemical 17-β-estradiol, and the widely used antidepressant Prozac (fluoxetine) have both been detected in rivers and have been shown to change to behaviour of the fathead minnow, a common freshwater fish species in the US. In another study it was discovered that Ibuprofen, one of the most commonly used anti-inflammatory drugs, caused a reduction in male zebrafishes’ libido.
This is a cause for concern because these drugs may have a negative impact upon freshwater ecosystems. For example, young perch eat zooplankton, which in turn feed on algae. If medicated perch have bigger appetites, that may potentially lead to algal blooms. However, Jonsson cautions that it is difficult to extrapolate from laboratory setting and make definitive claims about the effects in natural habitats.
Previously, it was thought that drug pollution in waterways was only of concern when the level of toxicity became lethal to freshwater species. But these studies are important because they highlight the significance of non-lethal effects of pollution from medication and how they may affect freshwater species and ecosystems.
New intergovernmental biodiveristy platform kicks off
It’s the biodiversity community’s answer to the IPCC. The newly formed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, held their first meeting last month. In this blog post, we discuss the meeting, as well as the important role a body like the IPBES can play to help translate science into effective policy for conservation action.
The IPBES’s first plenary meeting, which was held in Bonn, Germany from the 21-26 of January, attracted more than 600 participants from the 105 member states as well as various stakeholders groups. This meeting was set up to lay the groundwork for how the platform will operate so that all future meetings can focus on scientific and technical work.
One aim of the meeting was to formulate a way to represent the link between biodiversity and its benefits to human well-being, sustainability, and conservation to help develop an initial IPBES work programme. Another key aim of the meeting was to elect members to the IPBES Bureau, the administrative body of the IPBES, as well as an international group of renowned experts to the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel (MEP), which will ensure the scientific credibility and independence of the IPBES work.
The new top nature platform was established in April 2012 and was set up to assist governments and citizens to better understand the state, trends and challenges facing the natural world and humanity in the 21st century. It aims to be the ‘leading intergovernmental body for assessing the state of the planet’s biodiversity, its ecosystems and the essential services they provide to society’ by providing scientific support for policy-making. Hendrik Segers, member of BioFresh partner the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, followed the formation of the IPBES, which we covered with a series on our blog posts which can be accessed here (June 2010), here (July 2011) and here (Nov 2011).
The creation of the IPBES is especially exciting for BioFresh because we share the goal of providing access to data, information, and our scientific tools may be able to contribute to the IPBES assessments. Another reason to be excited is that the IPBES will work on another key BioFresh area of focus, the science-policy interface, helping to create dialogue between the scientific community, governments, and other stakeholders on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
There are plenty of science-based organisations and institutes around the world warning of the severe effects that declining global biodiversity will have, as are there numerous policy-oriented organisations (e.g. CBD). But nothing exists in the middle. Until the IPBES, there was no other independent, international body tasked with integrating the science of biodiversity and ecosystem services with the development of policy. The IPBES is unique because it fills this gap and meets the requirements of governments around the world to have access to the scientific assessments of the status and implications of the current decline of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
The IPBES will be an invaluable tool to help conserve the world’s declining biodiversity and the services they provide and will be key in helping countries to implement the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and achieve their Aichi Biodiversity Targets. In addition, it will contribute to the preparation of the next global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services, to be launched in 2018.
This newest biodiversity body offers plenty of promise, but must also ensure that it collaborates with existing initiatives to avoid duplication and to align its objectives as closely as possible with the Aichi targets and other biodiversity conventions. Indeed according to Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), collaborating with current initiatives will help achieve shared goals. “By working closely together,” he says, “the IPBES and the conventions can support their common objectives of the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and maintenance of ecosystem services for human well-being.”
Waterfalls promote freshwater biodiversity in rivers, new study
A new study by BioFresh members shows that waterfalls may promote biodiversity creation in river sub-drainages by acting as natural barriers to migration over an evolutionary time-frame.
Angel Falls, Venezuela. The tallest waterfall in the world is located within the Orinoco river basin, where the study was conducted. Photo: Creative Commons
A recent scientific paper by BioFresh colleagues at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and France’s interdisciplinary Institute of Research for Development (IRD) makes an important contribution to the science of freshwater ecology and biodiversity. Their study on the effect of natural habitat fragmentation in river systems, which was conducted in the Orinoco river basin in South America, found that highly fragmented sub-drainage ecosystems have higher neo-endemic species richness. This suggests that natural habitat fragmentation caused by waterfalls drives speciation for freshwater fish in sub-drainages.
The Orinoco river basin is located in Venezuela and Columbia. Photo: Creative Commons.
Speciation is a key evolutionary process that generates different species. The paper shows the role that natural fragmentation in river systems plays in this process, and therefore in promoting freshwater biodiversity, but it also highlights the importance of river sub-drainages as areas of neo-endemic species richness. This has important implications for conservation planning and the protection of biodiversity, which is central to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets under the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the EU’s biodiversity strategy to 2020. Investments in biodiversity informatics – the assembly of larger data sets by projects such as GBIF and BioFresh – are key to achieving these goals by assisting effective conservation planning through improving the data and knowledge about freshwater biodiversity, notable hotspots, and endemic areas.
Without such datasets, which are able to provide researchers and policy-makers with bigger and better data, many important studies, such as this one, would not be possible. By using a published dataset of fish species occurrence from the Orinoco drainage basin the researchers were able to highlight the evolutionary role that natural habitat fragmentation plays in the promotion of freshwater biodiversity, as well as drawing attention to sub-drainage basins as important areas of neo-endemic species richness.
Thierry Oberdorff, BioFresh member and co-author of the paper, explains that they “found that the number of waterfalls within a sub-drainage positively influences the number of neo-endemic fish species inhabiting this sub-drainage.” He adds, “this result leads us to make the hypothesis that habitat fragmentation generated by natural waterfalls drives speciation by promoting and maintaining (in the long-term) population divergence (barrier to gene flow).”
In short, both history and natural fragmentation (i.e. waterfalls) play important roles as biogeographic barriers that promote freshwater biodiversity in river drainage basins.
Orinoco river. Photo: Creative Commons.
But habitat fragmentation is also widely known to lead to extinctions. So a question that may arise is if natural fragmentation of freshwater habitats can lead to the creation of species, can human-induced habitat fragmentation, such as that caused by dams, also have the same effect?
In fact, the opposite is actually true. This is because speciation and extinction processes for fish act at very different time scales. As Oberdorff explains, “while speciation is a rather slow process (generally of the order of hundred thousand years – million years), the process of extinction can be much faster (hundred of years). As all anthropogenic barriers are usually ephemeral (around 200 years for dams) the only contemporary process acting is extinction.”
This is one of the reasons why the construction of large-scale dams (such as the Xayaburi mega-dam in Laos) are of such concern for freshwater biodiversity scientists and conservationists, because the fragmentation of river ecosystems (such as the Mekong) caused by damming may lead to the extinction of freshwater species crucial for ecosystem functioning upon which millions of people rely.
For more information see the full paper: Dias M et al. 2012, ‘Natural fragmentation in river networks as a driver of speciation in freshwater fish’, Ecography, vol. 35, pp. 001-007.
New research from members of the BioFresh team has found that amphibians are the best group of animals to act as ‘surrogates’ for freshwater conservation planning.
There is plenty of information out there about the patterns and predictors of biodiversity on land. But the picture gets a little murkier when we dive beneath the surface into freshwater ecosystems. While many freshwater species and ecosystems are among the most threatened in the world, global conservation priorities have, to a large extent, overlooked freshwater ecosystems. Yet without sufficient information, effective conservation planning and actions are made all that much more difficult.
Photo: WWF/TNC
That’s why BioFresh is so passionate about making as much information about freshwater ecosystems, and the creatures that live within them, as open and accessible to scientists, policy-makers and practitioners as possible. And new research from members of the BioFresh team has shed some light on the situation for freshwater ecosystems.
Their research, which appeared in the Journal of Animal Ecology in a paper titled ‘Global diversity patterns and cross-taxa convergence in freshwater ecosystems’, analysed for the first time the global distribution of five different freshwater animal groups or taxa across 819 river basins around the world. The taxa investigated were aquatic mammals, aquatic birds, freshwater fish, crayfish, and amphibians. The study looked at how environmental factors drive biodiversity patterns at the river basin level and tested the ‘convergence hypothesis’, which takes the view that the environment drives evolution in a predictable direction (i.e. the same causes should produce the same effects).
Golden Tree Frog. Photo: Creative Commons
The study found that species richness and endemism patterns are significantly correlated and that contemporary climate, history and area are the main factors in explaining species richness and endemism patterns for most of the taxa at the river basin scale. In addition, and importantly, the research also found that amphibians, and then freshwater fish, display the highest level of congruency with other groups (taxa) of animals.
BioFresh member and co-author of the study Thierry Oberdorff, explains just why the results have potentially important implications for global freshwater conservation planning: “as most of the examined taxa display convergent patterns, one taxon can be used to predict patterns for the others.” This is significant because by using one group of animals, such as amphibians, to base conservation planning around may be the best and most cost-effective means of protecting the largest number of species, and broader freshwater ecosystems, in the resource-constrained world of conservation. And, says Oberdorff, the research suggests that “as amphibians and fishes display the highest levels of congruency with other taxa, these two taxa appear to be good ‘surrogate’ candidates for developing global freshwater conservation planning at the river drainage basin scale.”
However, it is important to note the scale of the investigation, which was at the river drainage basin scale, because it can greatly influence our perceptions of patterns and processes. Therefore, while the results may be useful for broad intergovernmental planing to increase trans-boundary cooperation, their validity for conservation planning at finer scales (e.g. the subdrainage level) is not warranted and requires further research. In addition, because amphibians are considered highly threatened and have previously been listed as potential surrogates in terrestrial ecosystems, the use of amphibians to represent spatial patterns of biodiversity may also help unify terrestrial and freshwater conservation efforts under a common framework, at least at an intergovernmental planning level.
You can read more about amphibians in our 6-part amphibian special feature.
The reference for the BioFresh paper is: Tisseuil C. et al. 2012, ‘Global diversity patterns and cross-taxa convergence in freshwater ecosystems’, Journal of Animal Ecology.
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