SOURCE: Technology x Sustainability Weekly Update

Under The Sea

In September and October 2022 the Museums Victoria Research Institute in Australia led an expedition of scientists to the Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands on board the CSIRO research vessel Investigator to search for new species many kilometres deep in unexplored underwater mountains and ridges, as well as map the area in high-resolution 3D.

The team has documented some truly bizarre fish and sea life that may already be known to science (further research on shore will determine whether they are species that have already been documented and classified or if they are new) but the project’s most important discovery is the blind cusk eel, which the scientists suspect is a new species.

[Source: ABC News]

A Tiny Clam With A Big History

In 2018 Jeff Goddard, a marine ecologist and researcher at the University Of California, Santa Barbara in the USA, noticed two translucent clams less than 10mm in size in a tidal pool near Santa Barbara. He’d never seen the species before. He took photos, which he sent to Paul Valentich-Scott, the curator of malacology at the Santa Barbara Museum Of Natural History. In order to prove that it was a new species they first searched the fossil record to make sure that it hadn’t been identified before.

They ultimately found a 1937 paper by paleontologist George Willett describing the species – then known as Bornia cooki – which had been discovered by amateur collector Edna Cook in a collection of 30 000 fossils from a Pleistocene-era marine deposit in Baldwin Hills, California. The species was assumed to be extinct but after Goddard was eventually able to retrieve a sample of the elusive clam so that they could compare it, the scientists realised it was the same species, which has now been named Cymatioa cooki. Their report was published on 7 November 2022 in the journal ZooKeys.

[Source: Smithsonian Magazine]

On The Lookout For Owls

An international team of scientists and field assistants representing institutions in Portugal, Spain, South Africa, S?o Tomé and Príncipe, France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden has officially documented and described a new species of owl on Príncipe Island, which is part of S?o Tomé and Príncipe in Africa. The results of the research survey, which took place in 2017, 2018, and 2019, and which also argues for conservation of the bird and for it to be classified as critically endangered, were published in October 2022 in Bird Conservation International. The description of the species – Otus bikegila, or the Príncipe scops owl – was published in the same month in ZooKeys.

Local communities had knowledge of the bird that was documented going back to at least 1928, and scientists first confirmed the owl’s presence on the island in 2016, but it was necessary for the results of the research trips to be analysed to determine whether the owl was a unique species. This included taking blood samples for comparison, unfortunately euthanasing an owl for research and storage purposes, and recording vocalisations of both males and females in the field.

The Príncipe scops owl isn’t the only scops owl known of via local knowledge but still elusive to science: an expedition has just scoured a forested island in Indonesia to find the Siau scops owl, which was last documented in 1866. The bird is “of the top 10 most wanted birds” by Search For Lost Birds, which is a collaboration between

American Bird Conservancy, BirdLife International, and Re:wild. The results of the expedition are still under wraps.

[Source: Phys.org and Re:wild]

Out Of Sight For 140 Years

In September 2022 a team of researchers from Cornell University in the USA, the Papua New Guinea National Museum, the University Of Oxford in the UK, and the American Bird Conservancy rediscovered Otidiphaps nobilis insularis – the black-naped pheasant pigeon – on Fergusson Island in Papua New Guinea. American Bird Conservancy and Search For Lost Birds supported the expedition.

Scientists first – and last – saw the species in 1882 and collected two specimens, before describing it in 1883, but there were no recordings of what it sounds like, which would have been another tool that would have helped previous unsuccessful expeditions to identify and track down the bird.

After a month of searching the mountainous, rain-forest covered island, with the help of local community members on the expedition team and indigenous knowledge obtained from hunters and villagers, the international team was two days away from going home when a camera trap finally photographed the bird. The rediscovery of this critically endangered species has excited the local community, which wants to help to protect the bird.

Re:wild is an international conservation organisation that works with local communities, scientists, politicians, and NGOs all over the world to protect wildlife. One of its focus areas is in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic Of The Congo, where it helps to protect gorillas and which is where Dian Fossey also first started her work before moving to the other side of the mountains to the Ruhengeri province of Rwanda.

We at formula D_ have worked with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda on multimedia and immersive-storytelling experiences in its visitors’ centre in the Cindy Broder Conservation Gallery on The Ellen DeGeneres Campus. The centre’s purpose is to give tourists an overview of Dian Fossey’s life and conservation efforts but it is also designed to educate local communities – particularly school children and university students – about gorillas and spark their enthusiasm for conservation. As with Fergusson Island in Papua New Guinea, it is local knowledge and local efforts that are most vital when it comes to preserving biodiversity and saving species from extinction; vital to this getting the next generation of future scientists on board.

[Source: Cornell University and Re:wild]