Gangster Birds of the Kalahari Desert

A drongo in the Kalahari. (Photo/Andy Radford, University of Bristol)

Drongos, African Kalahari Desert birds with a penchant for thievery, are taking a turn towards the avian equivalent of organized crime, a new study finds.

The victims in this case, pied babblers, have long contended with the risk of drongos popping in to make off with the babblers’ hard-earned insect prey. Now it seems a set of behaviors have evolved that are taking this interaction from a purely parasitic relationship to one of more mutual benefit. Researchers found that the drongos form protection squads for foraging babblers, keeping an eye out for trouble and strong-arming danger when it arrives.

“Like any good gangster,” says Andrew Radford, a scientist with the University of Bristol who led the research team, “as well as lying and stealing, the drongos also provide protection by mobbing aerial predators and giving true alarm calls on some occasions.”

That means pied babblers can spend less time watching for predators and more time looking for prey. The relationship is not without its caveats. Drongos still aim to take advantage of babblers, crying wolf to scare the babblers and grab the insects. The babblers likely put up with it, the researchers say, because the benefit of not having to worry about predators outweighs the cost of the drongos’ antics.

The research, which is a collaboration with the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Cape Town, is published online in the current issue of Evolution.

Andy Radford (University of Bristol) and a pied babbler in the Kalahari. (Photo/Matthew Bell, University of Cambridge)

A pied babbler in the Kalahari. (Photo/Andy Radford, University of Bristol)

Elephants in the Oilfields

Forest elephants in the Mbeli River, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Congo. (Photo/Thomas Breuer)

I never thought I’d say this, but could oil and gas development actually be good for wildlife?

If you’re an African forest elephant hanging out in the oilfields of Gabon, the answer looks to be a resounding yes. In fact, new research shows elephants might actually prefer living in active oil and gas fields over the surrounding national parks. So what do the elephants know that we don’t? The new study by the Smithsonian Institute’s Center for Conservation, Education and Sustainability takes a look at this unusual relationship.

Gabon is home to a lot of elephants, about 11,000. The central African country also boasts an incredible level of biodiversity with more than 353 species of plants and 75 species of amphibians in the Gamba Complex of Protected Areas (a network of national parks covering slightly less area than the state of Connecticut) alone. But Gabon is also rich in natural resources, including petroleum, and there are several active energy fields operating in the region, two of which, Rabi and the Gamba-Ivinga, sit between national parks in the Gamba complex.

Usually energy development of this kind conjures images of destroyed environments and absent wildlife. But in Gabon, oil and gas concessions seem to serve as a type of wildlife haven, at least for the elephants, and the study indicates that these fields could also help out the forest’s other inhabitants, including primates.

Past research shows that roads, abandoned villages and croplands likely create new and approved dining spots for elephants. But a land with lots of roads often means a land with lots of hunters, so those dining spots often go untouched by the elephants. As nature would have it, take away the hunters, and the story begins to sound a bit different.

Joseph Kolowski, a researcher with Smithsonian Institute’s and the National Zoo’s Center for Conservation, Education and Sustainability, along with a team that includes six other researchers from the center, the Wildlife Conservation Society and various universities decided to track the movements of elephants in the Gabon region to find out what was going on with elephants in the oilfields.

They fitted four elephants, two each in the Rabi and the Gamba-Ivinga oilfields, with GPS telemetry collars. Researchers tracked and correlated location points of elephants with roadways and other disturbed areas during a 20-month period in 2004 and 2005. They also looked at the movements of other elephants in the region outside the oilfields. What they found was nothing short of astounding.

Overall, the elephants collared in the oilfields showed a clear preference for staying within the boundaries of the concessions. They walked shorter home ranges, and liked to hang out near roadways. One female in particular never strayed more than 2.6 km from a road and her home-base centered on the most active area of the Rabi oilfield. It’s the first study, according to the researchers, to show elephants residing almost exclusively within an oilfield. In Rabi, for example, the two elephants tagged there, stayed within the concession 86 and 98 percent of the time.

“Why?” you might ask. True, Rabi is one of the countries largest and most active oilfields, but it’s also one of the best protected. More than 90 percent of the field’s forest remains intact. The oilfield limits road access to industry personnel and rigorously enforces a zero-hunting policy. The fact that there aren’t many people around also helps. In Gamba-Ivinga, the oilfields also limit road access and hunting, but not as strictly as in Rabi, and the oilfield also exists near a village of 9,000 people, many of which are employed by the industry.

Nevertheless, both oilfields provided new foraging opportunities and protection for the forest elephants in this study, showing that not all oilfields are bad, and that managed well, they may even offer benefits not available in the national parks. If only there weren’t more stories like this one associated with mass-scale fossil fuel extraction.

This study is available online early in the African Journal of Ecology.

Oops! Endangered tuna unwittingly served at sushi restaurants

Yellow fin tuna (Thunnus albacares) and short-beaked common dolphin in a diorama of the eastern tropical Pacific at the AMNH's Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Live. (Image/R. Mickens/AMNH)

Next time you head out to your favorite sushi restaurant, you might want to think twice about ordering the tuna. There’s a good chance the fish on your plate could be an endangered species.

A new study by the American Museum of Natural History conducted DNA investigations on tuna at restaurants in New York City and Denver and found that nearly 30 percent of the tuna tested was actually endangered bluefin, and less than half of that was labeled as such.

A single bluefin tuna can sell for tens of thousands of dollars at market, a popular draw for the fishing industry. But that popularity comes with a price. Western stocks of northern bluefin tuna now hover around 10 percent of their “pre-exploitation” numbers. And last October, the country of Monaco nominated northern bluefin tuna for a listing under a complete international trade ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), according to a press release.

The serving up of a critically endangered fish is not necessarily on the shoulders of the restaurants. They might not know they’re doing it, just as consumers might not know they’re eating it. This is because the eight species of tuna are so genetically similar – closer than humans are to chimpanzees – that even with DNA testing, it’s hard to distinguish the difference, and once tuna arrives to the U.S. market, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved marketing label is simply “tuna.” A new and improved method of genetic detective work just might help change all that.

“When you eat sushi, you can unknowingly get a critically endangered species on your plate,” says Jacob Lowenstein, a graduate student affiliated with the Museum and Columbia University in the press release. “But with an increasingly popular technique, DNA barcoding, it is a simple process for researchers to see just what species are eaten at a sushi bar.”

DNA barcoding can be used to identify what animal became which product, even down to the origin of a leather handbag, according to the press release. In the case of the bluefin tuna, DNA barcoding defines a genetic key of 14 nucleotides exclusive enough to identify whether the tuna being served is bluefin. A similar method has been used to identify endangered whales on the Asian market and wildlife being sold in the African bushmeat trade.

With any luck, researchers will develop a handheld barcoding machine that can be used to identify fish on-site.

This study can be found in the current issue of PLoS ONE.

Elephants captured to supply safari tours

There’s sad news coming out of the New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. According to a letter from the organization, it appears ten elephants have been captured in the Matabeleland South Province and sold to the tourism industry. Several of the elephants were reportedly bought by a co-owner of the Elephant Experience in Victoria Falls.

An excerpt from the NZSPCA letter explains in more detail:

“The elephants were captured in October 2008 and whilst ZNSPCA heard “rumours” regarding this capture, after investigating both Chengeta Safaris and Elephant Experience, and asking the permit office at Parks for details,  we met with the Director General of National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority who assured us that no permit for such a capture had been issued.  We were obviously relieved to hear this news and assured ourselves that we had been given the correct information and since we could not find the elephants on both facilities we were confident that this cruel act had not happened.

Yet the elephants were indeed captured.  Mike Le Grange from AWMC  captured 4 elephants on the 21^st October 2008 and another 6 on the 22^nd October 2008. “

“The elephants range from 4years old to two female elephants of about 18 years old.  They are housed in a metal boma  with no shade or shelter and are chained continuously, only being released for training.    The elephants are sprayed with water during hot days to keep them cool.

ZNSPCA Inspectors noted that some elephants had old wounds on their legs which could have been caused by the chains as well as wounds on their foreheads.  According to the information supplied to us, no vet was present at the capture or has examined the elephants since the capture.”

Glynis Vaughan, chief inspector with the NZSPCA, is investigating this case further and inspectors are continuing to monitor the captured elephants.  The Zimbabwean also reported on the elephant capture last weekend.