Enlarge / A peacock butterfly ( Aglais io ) has eyespots on the upper surface of each forewing and hindwing that appear to look you in the eyes—a perceptual phenomenon known as the "Mona Lisa effect." (credit: Hannah Rowland/CC BY-SA )

Visitors to the Louvre have long reported that the woman in Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa (aka La Gioconda ), has eyes that seem to follow one around the room. A small 2019 study found that this perceptual "Mona Lisa effect" is indeed real—it just doesn't apply to the famous painting. As we reported at the time, she's actually "looking" to the right-hand side of her audience. But that type of effect does seem to play a significant role in the animal kingdom, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution—specifically in warding off potential predators.

"Eyespots with concentric circles seem to stare at potential predators from many directions, just like portraits that seem to maintain eye contact no matter where you are in the room," said co-author Hannah Rowland , who heads an independent research group on predators and toxic prey at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. "This probably also explains why, in nature, eyespots have evolved independently in different animals to successfully deter enemies."

Since the 1960s, perceptual psychologists have known that we're very good at sensing when someone is looking at us. That includes the eerie sensation of being watched by the subjects of paintings or photographs, which typically occurs when the subject is looking straight ahead out of the image, at an angle between 0 and 5 degrees. There are also multiple species of fish, butterflies, moths, beetles, and praying mantids that boast circular markings on their bodies that look a lot like eyes—hence they're often called "eyespots." It's believed that these eyespots deflect the attention of predators to non-vital body parts, and/or intimidate or ward off attacks entirely, and there is scientific evidence that this is indeed the case.

Felix Mendelssohn's The Hebrides was inspired by the composer's 1829 trip to the British Isles. His overture has now inspired collaboration between a Cambridge economist and a composer, using sound to call attention to the loss of biodiversity on Earth. Hebrides Redacted successively removes notes from the 10- to 11-minute overture in proportion to the decline in humpback whale populations over many decades. A short film about the project (embedded above) was released today as part of the Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival.

“Over the past century we have seen nearly a million species pushed to the brink of extinction—nature is going quiet,” said Matthew Agarwala , an economist at the University of Cambridge. “Researchers—including me—have been sounding the alarm about the consequences of biodiversity loss for a long time, but the message isn’t landing. Music is visceral and emotional, and grabs people’s attention in ways that scientific papers just can’t.”

Mendelssohn visited England and Scotland at the invitation of the Philharmonic Society. It was during his tour of Fingal's Cave on the Scottish island of Staffa that inspiration struck, and he quickly wrote down the opening theme that came to him. The opening notes feature violas, cellos, and bassoons to evoke the cave's beauty, while a secondary theme is meant to convey the rolling waves of the sea.

Enlarge / The story of a conquest: The fruiting body of a parasitic fungus erupts from the body of its victim. (credit: Roberto García-Roa/CC BY 4.0 )

The striking photograph above vividly captures the spores of a parasitic "zombie" fungus ( Ophiocordyceps ) as they sprout from the body of a host fly in exquisite detail. Small wonder it won the 2022 BMC Ecology and Evolution image competition, featured along with eight other honorees in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution. The winning images were chosen by the journal editor and senior members of the journal’s editorial board. Per the journal, the competition "gives ecologists and evolutionary biologists the opportunity to use their creativity to celebrate their research and the intersection between art and science."

Roberto García-Roa, an evolutionary biologist and conservation photographer affiliated with both the University of Valencia in Spain and Lund University in Sweden, snapped his award-winning photograph while trekking through a Peruvian jungle. The fungus in question belongs to the Cordyceps family. There are more than 400 different species of Cordyceps fungi, each targeting a particular species of insect, whether it be ants, dragonflies, cockroaches, aphids, or beetles. Consider Cordyceps an example of nature’s own population control mechanism to ensure that eco-balance is maintained.

According to García-Roa, Ophiocordyceps, like its zombifying relatives, infiltrates the host's exoskeleton and brain via spores scattered in the air that attach to the host body. Once inside, the spores sprout long tendrils called mycelia that eventually reach into the brain and release chemicals that make the unfortunate host the fungi’s zombie slave. The chemicals compel the host to move to the most favorable location for the fungus to thrive and grow. The fungus slowly feeds on the host, sprouting new spores throughout the body as one final indignity.

Enlarge (credit: Wikimedia Commons )

Of all the species that humanity has wiped off the face of the Earth, the thylacine is possibly the most tragic loss. A wolf-sized marsupial sometimes called the Tasmanian tiger, the thylacine met its end in part because the government paid its citizens a bounty for every animal killed. That end came recently enough that we have photographs and film clips of the last thylacines ending their days in zoos. Late enough that in just a few decades, countries would start writing laws to prevent other species from seeing the same fate.

On Tuesday, a company called Colossal, which has already said it wants to bring the mammoth back, is announcing a partnership with an Australian lab that it says will de-extinct the thylacine with the goal of re-introducing it into the wild. A number of features of marsupial biology make this a more realistic goal than the mammoth, although there's still a lot of work to do before we even start the debate about whether reintroducing the species is a good idea.

To find out more about the company's plans for the thylacine, we had a conversation with Colossal's founder, Ben Lamm, and the head of the lab he's partnering with, Andrew Pask.

Enlarge (credit: Alfian Widiantono )

Forests are among the world’s best bets for carbon capture. But according to this year’s State of the World’s Forests report from the United Nations, forests are also the foundation of green and equitable economies, sustainable resource management, and biodiversity preservation and are generally key to a brighter future.

This latest report highlights how much forests are undervalued in economic analyses and re-emphasizes a three-pronged approach: preserve existing forests, restore degraded lands and expand agroforestry (the integration of trees and shrubs into agriculture), and sustainably use forest products. These actions need upfront financing, but the amount needed is modest compared to other government spending. And the return on investment—in terms of avoiding climate calamity and building a more equitable and sustainable economy—would be significant.

“Governments are estimated to spend $1.8 trillion a year in military expenditures and more than $5 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies, but only about $50 billion on landscape restoration,” said Robert Nasi, the managing director of The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in CIFOR-ICRAF’s media release about the report. “It’s time for society to rethink our priorities to enable a better future.”

Enlarge (credit: Dan Ripplinger / 500px )

As the Earth’s climate warms, some animals may seek a reprieve from the heat in colder, northern climates or higher altitudes . For some species, these cooler locales may provide greener—so to speak—pastures than their current homes as annual average temperatures continue to increase.

For the diminutive Anna’s hummingbird—which calls North America’s West Coast from California to Vancouver, British Columbia, home—this might not be an option. According to research published Thursday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, a move to chillier and higher altitudes would achieve only two things: cause them to struggle to hover as their metabolic rate drops and sleep most of the day.

“As you get upslope, it’s colder, and also there’s less oxygen available. You can think of this like Everest; people have to go up to basecamp and bring extra oxygen and get used to it up there,” Austin Spence, one of the paper’s authors and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California Davis’ Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, told Ars.

Le dimanche 15 septembre 2019, sous un soleil de plomb nous avons bloqué avec succès le pont Wilson en plein centre de #Lyon.

Cet évènement coup de poing, non-violent et festif nous a permis de dénoncer la gravité de la situation face aux chamboulements écologiques et climatiques que nous vivons présentement et à venir très prochainement.

• Entre 1970 et 2014, la population mondiale de vertébrés sauvages a chuté de 60% https://www.wwf.fr/vous-informer/actualites/rapport-planete-vivante-2018
• L’ONU s’attend à 200 millions de réfugiés climatiques d’ici à 2050 http://publications.iom.int/books/mrs-ndeg31-migrations-et-changements-climatiques
• Une grande partie de la population mondiale vivra une partie de l’année dans des zones où la température et l’humidité seront au dessus du seuil de mortalité https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322
• Dans 30 ans, le climat de Lyon sera similaire à celui de Canberra (estimation optimiste) https://www.lyoncapitale.fr/actualite/en-2050-lyon-subira-le-meme-climat-que-le-sud-de-l-australie-aujourd-hui/

Cet évènement a été relayé dans la presse par Rue89 et a fait l'ouverture du journal du soir France3 Rhône-Alpes.

De nombreuses actions de désobéissance civiles non-violentes sont à prévoir prochainement. Plus d'informations sur le site officiel de XR France et sur le site international.

#ecology #climate #france #extinctionrebellion #xr #action #movement #bridge #pont