The legend of the argonaut
A rare and misunderstood octopus, the argonaut lives far out to sea, where females construct fragile shells to live in, marble-sized males woo them with severed arms, and much of their lifecycle has never been observed.
A rare and misunderstood octopus, the argonaut lives far out to sea, where females construct fragile shells to live in, marble-sized males woo them with severed arms, and much of their lifecycle has never been observed.
New Zealand is a biodiversity hotspot, one of 36 areas around the world recognised by the global scientific community as containing unusual, irreplaceable forms of life. Within these hotspots are cities, and in particular areas, city growth is on a collision course with biodiversity. By combining layers of data, three landscape architects created maps of the 33 largest, fastest-growing cities in these biodiversity hotspots, showing how growth projections conflict with endangered species and remnant habitat. One of those cities is Auckland. This map superimposes an urban growth forecast for 2030 by Seto Lab with data on remnant vegetation and ranges of terrestrial animals ranked on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. (Maps and data are collated on the project’s website, Atlas for the End of the World.) Hotspot cities, write the authors of the atlas, are the custodians and beneficiaries of their extraordinary life, and recognising where that life is threatened by urban growth is the first step towards protecting it: “The cultural equivalent to destroying these landscapes is akin to bulldozing the world’s libraries and burning all the books.”
Bees understand the concept of zero, the first invertebrate shown to do so. Researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne trained bees to select the smaller of two numbers using platforms with up to six shapes placed on them. Bees learned to associate a sweet reward with a platform that had fewer shapes, while a bad-tasting solution was placed on a platform with more shapes. Then, when given a choice between up to four shapes and zero, bees identified zero as the smaller quantity. Zero was invented after other numbers, and it takes children longer to learn than other numbers, as they can struggle to identify whether zero or one is greater. Bees’ mathematical ability means they join a select club, which includes humans and chimpanzees.
One of the greatest mysteries on our planet is the capricious behaviour of the continent we arrived at last of all. Granted, Antarctica doesn’t look like a mystery. It looks like a blank space. It’s mostly made of water. It’s shaped like a child’s first attempt at a pancake. On its surface, nothing moves except wind, snow, and some of the least sensible forms of life: human beings attempting to prove something, and the comedy acts of the animal world, waddling to and from the ocean. Yet within Antarctica is a complicated infrastructure built of ice, pressure, wind, snow, air and ocean currents. The entire continent flexes in response to changes in other parts of the world, and it runs on its own internal logic. We’ve learned that it has two settings: freeze and melt. Right now, it’s busy freezing. But at some point—perhaps soon, perhaps not—a shift will take place somewhere within, and its glaciers and ice sheets and ice shelves will pour themselves into the sea. There will be no foreshadowing of this. So it isn’t like the seasons. It’s more like waking up. This reversal has taken place several times in the past, but because Antarctica was the last continent we stood on, we’ve only been watching it for a hundred years, and it’s been deceptively inert all that time. Scientists learned about its melting mode from looking at layers of mud on the seafloor, but the geological record doesn’t tell us what kind of invisible hand flips the switch. Once, humans raced from one part of Antarctica to another. Now, we are racing to figure out the system that runs Antarctica, something we appear to understand less than deep space or atoms. In this issue, we transport you to the heart of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest platform of floating ice in the world. Underneath there is a dark, covered ocean we’ve barely visited, one of the world’s biggest blank spaces: the Ross Ice Cavity. It hasn’t had any concerted attempt at measurement, or understanding, for almost half a century. Beneath, in layers of sediment, is written Antarctica’s history. Within that, clues to its future. Antarctica is difficult to talk about because there aren’t very many certain things we can say, and possibilities don’t make for good stories. Moreover, uncertainty seems to make people suspicious about science, that maybe the job hasn’t been done well, that the scientists have the wrong end of the stick, or maybe they are deceiving us about what kind of stick it is. Humans prefer simple stories, even when they’re wrong. And we prefer to be sure, even in a world that tries to show us, over and over again, that little is certain. But science works in the gaps that uncertainty makes. There is uncharted territory to be charted, whether underneath ice shelves at the bottom of the world, or underneath our feet in the soil we’re only just properly getting to know. “In the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act,” wrote one of my favourite authors, Rebecca Solnit. “When you recognise uncertainty, you recognise that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone, or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others.” It’s hard to tolerate complexity. It’s an effort to comprehend something that lies in many pieces and won’t come together to form a whole. But at New Zealand Geographic we know, and are grateful, that you relish the challenge of embracing large, wobbly, shapeshifting ideas. Welcome to the 150th issue of the magazine. Over the past 29 years, our form and style has evolved, but our mission remains the same: to communicate curiosity, discovery, and a desire to understand.
Atoll islands such as Tuvalu are proving remarkably good at keeping their heads above water.
As things stand, the land can’t endure our enterprise much longer. If it’s to sustain our grandchildren, we have to change the way we think and cultivate. The Our Land and Water National Science Challenge is helping us forge a new accord with the soil beneath our feet.
Monitoring groups of wild dolphins with a computer algorithm is close to being a reality, after the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California recorded more than 50 million dolphin echolocation clicks on remote sensors placed throughout the Gulf of Mexico. These clicks come in many speeds and pitches, and are generally about three times higher-pitched than the highest frequency humans can hear. Researchers handed the clicks over to a machine-learning programme, an algorithm developed to identify patterns in the sounds. “Imagine people snapping their fingers,” says lead researcher Kaitlin Frasier. “The sound is so short that it would be hard to identify whose snap that was, although if you listened to a very large number of them, you might be able to find differences.” The algorithm found seven patterns, and so far, one of them has been matched to Risso’s dolphins. The next step is to match the other click patterns with the remaining dolphin species. The hope is that eventually, acoustic sensors will be able to monitor dolphin populations year-round, and in all weather—as opposed to the time-consuming method of spotting dolphins from boats.
Clemency Montelle reads mathematics and astronomy texts in ancient languages.
The ozone layer is healing, because chlorine dispersed into the atmosphere is slowly disappearing, according to a study by NASA. The ozone hole over Antarctica has formed every year in spring since 1985, when it was first reported. The culprit is human-made chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which have risen to the stratosphere. Ultraviolet rays break up the CFCs, releasing chlorine, which destroys ozone. The resulting hole exposes life on Earth to harmful ultraviolet rays. CFCs were banned in 1996, but their lifetime is around 50 to 100 years. In 2016, scientists observed that the hole had started to open later in the spring, as well as being smaller, and not as deep. Now, NASA has direct measurements that show ozone destruction is lessening, and the amount of chlorine in the atmosphere is declining. Since 2005, NASA has measured atmospheric gases in the Antarctic winter—the 24-hour darkness ensures any deterioration of UV can’t be attributed to the sun—and has recorded a 20 per cent decrease in ozone depletion during the winter months. Meanwhile, chlorine levels have been declining about 0.8 per cent every year. According to projections, the hole may be fully healed in 2080.
Is it possible to predict whether a species will be invasive? Having a small genome may be a red flag when the biosecurity risk of plants is being assessed. A study published in Ecology screened 900 clumps of the grass Phragmites australis. This species has many subspecies, all with different genome sizes, and the smaller the genome, the more invasive the grass was. The European Phragmites is a noxious invader in the United States, outcompeting the North American species. It has a much smaller genome than the Gulf of Mexico species, which hasn’t moved out of its region. This has been noticed in other species, such as pines, but has never been studied within a single species. Study author Laura Meyerson says the invasive Phragmites can outcompete others by growing faster, earlier and denser, even when soil is colder, hotter, drier, saltier or darker than normal. “Because they have less genetic material to deal with, they are able to replicate more quickly, allowing them to complete their lifecycle,” says Meyerson. “In other words, the cell cycle is shorter and the plants need fewer resources that may be in short supply, for example nitrogen and phosphorous.”
Mānuka honey has exploded in value in recent years, and now it’s a high-stakes business, attracting hive thieves, counterfeit products, unscrupulous players—and triggering a race for the blossom every spring, wherever the trees are in flower.
As the planet warms, soil releases more carbon dioxide, which further warms the planet—a vicious cycle. But why does heating soil result in more emissions? It was thought the increased temperature boosted the metabolisms of detritus-eaters, such as worms, insects and microbes, meaning they ate and breathed more. But a four-year study of the soil of the cold boreal forests of North America, published in Nature Climate Change, showed that heating the soil 1.7°C or 3.4°C didn’t make a difference to the appetites of detritivores. In drought conditions, feeding decreased by 14 per cent. So why does hot, dry boreal soil produce more carbon dioxide than when it’s cold? Study author Madhav Thakur suspects this is due to plant respiration—the breathing of their roots and their resident microbes.
Coprosma rhamnoides
Antarctica is a puzzle that science is racing to solve. The continent shifts from stable to unstable, frozen to melting, without much warning—and we don’t know why, or how. This switch hasn’t taken place in the century we’ve been observing it. But Antarctica has its own records that go back millennia, buried in the sea floor beneath hundreds of metres of ice. To retrieve them, a New Zealand-led expedition journeyed to the heart of the Ross Ice Shelf—a featureless, inhospitable expanse the size of France.
At the 1960 Olympic Games, the runners lining up for the 800-metre final all wore Adidas shoes—except one.
“Nothing can be said to be certain,” sighed Benjamin Franklin, “except death and taxes.” But there is one creature inconvenienced by neither.
The legendary recluses of Cobb Valley.
The politics of a Hawke’s Bay landmark.
A folk hero is born.
What Neil Silverwood learned out in the cold.
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