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Climate change an imminent threat to B.C.’s ‘living dinosaurs’

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UBC seahorse expert wins world’s top animal conservation award

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Honey bees could help monitor fertility loss in insects due to climate change

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Dinosaurs in danger: Warming ocean temperatures and acidification drastically reduce the skeletal strength and filter-feeding capacity of glass sponges, according to new UBC research. Glass sponge reefs are considered ‘living dinosaurs’ thought to have been extinct for 40 million years before they were re-discovered in B.C. in 1986. ⠀ ⠀ “When most people think about reefs, they think of tropical shallow-water reefs like the beautiful Great Barrier Reef in Australia,” says Angela Stevenson, who led the study as a postdoctoral fellow at UBC Zoology. “But we have these incredible deep-water reefs in our own backyard in Canada. If we don’t do our best to stand up for them, it will be like discovering a herd of dinosaurs and then immediately dropping dynamite on them.” ⠀ ⠀ Photo: Adam Taylor/MLSS.⠀ #UBC marine biologist Amanda Vincent has won the 2020 Indianapolis Prize, the world’s top award for animal conservation, for her trailblazing work to protect seahorses and marine life. Vincent, the first biologist to study seahorses in the wild, has dedicated her career to investigating their ecology, uncovering their extensive global trade and establishing projects for their conservation around the world. “My interest in them began as a way to study the evolution of sex differences because only male seahorses get pregnant and give birth,” says Vincent, who discovered that some species form monogamous pair bonds. Vincent has partnered with local communities and biologists, industry groups, aquariums and governments around the world to develop sustainable approaches to seahorse trade, rather than work to ban all trade outright. 🐠 By the time #UBC alumna Elaine Leung finished her PhD she realized that over 30 of the species she'd studied would go extinct within her lifetime. She decided to start Sea Smart, a non-profit dedicated to educating children about ocean conservation. She says their educational programs are Sometimes our students go very far for their research, literally. In the case of Sarah Dier-McComb, Master of Science in Zoology, she ventured to the Falkland Islands to study Gentoo penguins. By studying their diving mechanism scientists can better understand their foraging behavior and therefore know more about their breeding ability. Penguins are some of the birds most threatened by climate change and Gentoo penguins seen more resilient to this change. Therefore, they might provide information about how to protect other penguin species. But how do we study penguins? You can see in one of these pictures Sarah is holding a bag with time-depth recorders. These are tiny devices that are strapped to a penguin's back and send back data. When scientists retrieve them, they can see where the penguins have been and what they've done. Congrats to UBC botanist and Canada Research Chair in Plant Evolutionary Genomics Loren Rieseberg who has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. His work focuses on members of the sunflower genus Helianthus. Sunflowers have a natural resilience to droughts and could help us tackle climate change. Earth Day is turning 50 years old this April 22. #UBC ocenographer Philippe Tortell is the author of Earth 2020: An Insider's Guide to a Rapidly Changing Planet, in which he discusses the history of this celebration and how it helped launch changes to environmental legislation. Sarah Cannon, a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Geography and the Institute for Oceans and Fisheries, is a marine biologist with a love for interdisciplinary research. Her work focuses on the complex relationships between human use of marine resources and the health of coral reefs.

Alumni

Elaine Leung on conservation outreach: You only protect what you love
Elaine Leung

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