Threatened species recover in fenced safe havens. But their safety is only temporary

If you want to see some of Australia’s most charismatic threatened mammals such as bilbies, boodies and stick-nest rats, chances are you’ll have to go to a zoo – or a safe haven.

What’s a safe haven? An area safe from feral predators, such as islands too far offshore for foxes to swim to, or mainland sites ringed with cat- and fox-proof fences.

Recent research has suggested we can now take 29 species off the threatened list, thanks in large part to safe havens. But unfortunately, it’s not that simple, as we’ve found in establishing several havens. Safe havens are not the same as the wild. When we try to reintroduce animals outside the fences, they disappear down the maws of cats and foxes.

Yes, they fend off extinctions. But safe havens require ongoing management, which is expensive, challenging and rarely guaranteed long term. We should not rely on them to take species off the threatened list.

What Are Safe Havens For?

In 1995, Australia had just a handful of havens. By 2017, we had 17 mainland havens and 101 island refuges, housing 38 different threatened mammals. The reason is they work, at least over the short term. Most of our threatened mammals are small and unwary, easy prey for two introduced predators which hunt by stealth.

When you take off the pressure from cats and foxes, reintroduced animals bounce back. Inside safe havens, populations soar by an average of 680% over a 17-year period. Outside, their populations declined by an average of 63%. No wonder governments are funding them.

Fenced safe havens are usually small, to make it possible to remove all feral predators and keep watch for any making it over the fence. The threatened mammals inside the fence are isolated, meaning they have a higher chance of inbreeding and are more vulnerable to random disasters. Sometimes, havens even provide extra food and water.

There are worrying signs these islands ringed by fence or sea are not entirely sustainable. Many species within safe havens breed frantically, sending their populations skyward to unsustainable levels before a severe population crash. Ideally, they would be controlled by native predators, but the havens are too small to allow this. We’ve seen this play out with burrowing bettongs at one of our safe havens, Arid Recovery, in South Australia.

Some species struggle even inside fenced havens. The stick-nest rat has failed to establish in at least four havens.

Are Safe Haven Animals ‘Wild’? Not Quite

Let’s say you have a growing population of bilbies in our zoo network. Does this mean the species is now safe? Hardly. Safe in zoos doesn’t mean species are safe in the wild.

Safe havens are similar. Yes, the animals are free-roaming. They forage, breed and hide from predators such as snakes and eagles. But safe havens are created and sustained by people. When havens lose funding and fall into disrepair, the predators eventually break in and kill everything they can. Fenced off Shark Bay bandicoots in Western Australia were eventually killed by cats.

When the government works out if a species is threatened or not, it counts the animals in safe havens as contributing to the wild population.

If we use this measuring stick, mammals like the bilby, boodie, stick-nest rat, golden bandicoot and Shark Bay bandicoot can indeed be taken off the threatened species list.

But this seems hasty. Threatened species are defined as those where a “relatively large risk of extinction in the wild, sometime in the future, is deemed to exist for a species”, according to our key biodiversity law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

If we remove a species from the threatened species list, we could place it at even higher risk of extinction.

When a species is threatened, it gets special consideration. Mining companies and developers have to ensure plans for land in its range won’t cause significant harm to the species. Companies may have to provide offsets to any damage. At the very least they are required to survey and monitor the species.

Consider the iconic bilby, whose range has shrunk by more than 80% in the last 150 years. It’s now found in the wild only in a small part of Queensland and in remote parts of Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Reports suggest it’s still declining in the wild, due to foxes and cats, more intense grazing and dangerous fire regimes. But because bilbies have been successfully reintroduced to islands and fenced safe havens, they no longer meet the criteria for being threatened.

Let’s say we remove them from the list. They would lose any special consideration when projects affecting their habitat are proposed, and conservation funding would dry up. Bilbies could quietly go extinct in the wild while reintroduced fenced populations thrive, at least in the short term.

Does This Mean Safe Havens Are A Bad Idea?

No. We’ve co-founded four fenced safe havens to protect populations of nine threatened species. They are necessary. They ward off extinction and let us research the species. But they are only the first step to recovery.

It’s much harder to reverse the decline of threatened species in the wild. But it’s not impossible. Gene drive technology is maturing, potentially making it possible to force feral predators to breed themselves out of existence by having only male offspring. Almost 70% of Australians favour this approach, if viable. We also have biological controls, new control tools and improved management of fire to draw on. ˇ

Havens are exactly that – a desperate measure to stop extinction. We should keep species on the threatened list even if they have management-dependent haven populations. This will protect wild populations and drive innovation and interest in how we can best control feral predators and other threats.

We cannot simply put our threatened mammals behind fences and consider the job done. 

Katherine Moseby, Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney and John Read, Associate Lecturer, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Move over, honeybees: Aussie native bees steal the show with unique social and foraging behaviours

Australian native bees have evolved complex social structures and foraging behaviours that help biologists answer longstanding questions, such as the origins of social behaviour, and the drivers of increased biodiversity.

In European honeybees, the queen governs the hive with her sterile female workers. Meanwhile, the males are little more than freeloaders, or hangers-on (sorry boys).

But most Australian bees are different. Some are solitary. Others live in cooperative, egalitarian societies where individuals share and jointly defend a nest. There is no clear division into queen and worker castes.

Our new research, in the journals Biology Letters and Apidologie, reveals fresh insights into the evolution and ecology of Australian bees. These creatures deserve more attention and respect, not only for the ecosystem services they provide, but for the scientific lessons they can teach us.

Unusual Bee-Haviour

All bees face pressure from parasites and predators. But we discovered a unique strategy in one Australian species known as the capricious masked bee (Amphylaeus morosus).

Of the more than 2,000 species in the highly diverse Colletidae bee family, only the capricious masked bee is known to be social. Females that choose to cooperate can dramatically improve their defence against enemies such as parasitoid wasps and flies.

In these cooperative groups, one female protects the developing brood while the mother is away on foraging trips. (European honeybee queens rely on workers for such tasks, while they stay home.)

The guards do not produce their own offspring. However, guarded colonies do tend to produce more offspring - and the extras are always males.

However, having too many nest guards in the population can lead to an excess of males. When males greatly outnumber females, far fewer males (compared to females) will reproduce and pass on their genes. This reduces the genetic “value” of males and in turn cooperative behaviour.

Eventually, the relative benefit of cooperative nesting is diminished. We suggest this limits the frequency of the nest guard strategy, putting the brakes on further social evolution.

The Birds And The Bees

When we took a closer look at the diet of other Australian colletid bees (also known as plasterer bees due to the way they smooth the walls of their nest cells with secretions that dry to a cellophane-like lining), we found it varied considerably.

One group in particular only visited a very restricted range of plants. This group, the euryglossines, account for almost a quarter of all Australian bee species. So why are they so fussy?

The answer may lie in the nature of the food itself. Euryglossines clearly prefer plants in the family Myrtaceae. These include the gums, melaleucas, and tea trees that dominate Australian landscapes and provide massive amounts of pollen and nectar. Their shallow, brush-like flowers are also easy for small bees to access.

These same distinctive flowers are heavily used by parrots such as ringnecks, lorikeets and rosellas - who also love pollen and nectar. This floral system has likely been shaped by co-evolution of parrots and gum trees, and we suspect it was later exploited by euryglossine bees and helps account for their high species diversity. Clearly they are both onto a good thing.

This research supports what many have suspected for years. Natives typically need other natives to flourish. Our native bees rely on our native plants, even if some have more flexible diets than others.

Spend some time looking at a flowering gum and you’re almost certain to see some of our tiniest but hardest-working pollinators - along with some of the brightest and loudest.

How To Observe Australian Bees

It is all very well for expert bee nerds, like us, to tell you about the value of native species. But to really appreciate our native bees, you should try observing them for yourself: they are all around us, but often smaller and less ostentatious than European honeybees.

Native bees are easy to spot, even in urban environments. Parklands, roadside verges, and even our gardens are full of them. Look for them at work pollinating flowers - they might look like little dark flies initially, but closer inspection will reveal their true bee shape.

They can be nesting in bare patches on the ground, the soft stems of tree ferns or grass trees, in the “bee hotels” made by people, or even pruned rose and hydrangea bushes. Just check for little perfectly round holes with insects buzzing around. With a bit of patience, a cold drink, and a comfy stool or cushion, one can watch these entrances and see critters hard at work.

Social Australian stem nesting bees are surprisingly complex, even though their colonies rarely contain more than four or five females. Watch for guard bees plugging the nest entrance with their red or black abdomens, while other females go to collect food. With extra patience it is possible to see ants or tiny wasps gather around the nest entrances, waiting for an unguarded moment to attack.

Australia has more than 1,650 native bee species. We encourage you to enjoy them on flowers, in the ground, in stems, or wherever you can find them. These little animals have a lot to offer us in terms of how we understand the world, in addition to being vital parts of the ecosystem. And importantly, they are our responsibility to understand and protect.

James B. Dorey, Adjunct Associate Professor, Flinders University; Lucas Hearn, Researcher, Flinders University; Mike Lee, Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University, and Patricia S. Slattery, Postgraduate Student, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Water buybacks are back on the table in the Murray-Darling Basin. Here’s a refresher on how they work

The federal government has announced a new round of strategic water buybacks in the Murray-Darling Basin. The government intends to purchase water entitlements from voluntary sellers in parts of New South Wales and Queensland.

A total of 49.2 gigalitres (GL) will be purchased across seven catchment areas through open, competitive and transparent tenders. This water will then be returned to the environment.

The government decided to restart buybacks because other methods, such as water-saving and offset measures both on and off farms, have been less effective and won’t be achieved in time. There is a 49.2GL “gap” between the current revised 2,075GL target set for June 30 2024, and the amount of water recovered so far.

The Morrison government effectively stopped using buybacks as a tool when Barnaby Joyce became federal water minister. Over time, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan – and buybacks in particular – became a focal point of blame for all kinds of problems in rural communities.

This blame played out in legislation to cap water recovery via buybacks in 2015. Although the Howard government introduced the water recovery schemes from 2007-08 onwards, it was the Rudd/Gillard governments that achieved the largest amount of water recovery. The Albanese government is now trying to get water policy and recovery back on track.

Why Are We Recovering Water For The Environment?

Over the past 50 years, water has been over-allocated to agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin. Coupled with the catastrophic Millennium Drought in the 2000s, this meant many ecosystems, and rural communities, were at crisis point. The Water Act 2007 and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan aimed to return water from irrigation to environmental use.

There were considerable arguments regarding how much water was needed for a sustainable river basin, and the final amount of 2,750GL legislated in 2012 was far less than the original proposal. Actual physical water recovery was then whittled downwards again in the 2018 Basin Plan amendment to 2,075GL, which reduced water recovery in the northern basin and implemented a sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism offset, made up of supply and efficiency projects.

To appease South Australia – which, as the downstream state, suffers the most negative consequences of a declining river system – an extra 450GL was included as an additional target in 2012. This was to be achieved solely through efficiency measures such as upgrading irrigation infrastructure from gravity-fed to drip irrigation, or reducing evaporation from irrigation delivery channels. So far, only a few gigalitres have been achieved of this additional 450GL.

Environmental Water Recovery Methods

Water recovery has so far occurred via two main mechanisms that have cost a total of $7.2 billion. The main method is buybacks, with $2.67 billion spent to recover 1,228GL of water. Buybacks allow farmers to spend the money wherever they want, whether it be on reducing debt, reinvestment, improving productivity or adapting to dry conditions.

The second has mainly involved subsidising irrigation infrastructure on and off farms to improve water efficiency or to achieve water offsets. So far, $4.52 billion has been spent on things such as lining channels, or changing irrigation systems, which has garnered the 693GL now held in water licences by the government.

Data provided by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water in late 2022 suggests that on average, just over $2,100 per megalitre has been spent to recover water through buybacks, and more than $6,550 per megalitre to recover water through irrigation infrastructure subsidies. This is one of the reasons buybacks have been the most successful policy instrument in delivering water recovery. Most of this was already achieved by 2015, and since then, only some small strategic purchases have been made.

This cost differential in water recovery methods is expected to widen substantially. Water recovery projects put forward by states are now quoting huge amounts of money, regularly figures over $20,000 per megalitre.

On and off-farm efficiency projects have also been heavily criticised for their lack of effectiveness. The net “additional” increase to environmental water holdings is questionable, due to the fact they lead to reduced return flows into groundwater and surface water. There are also question marks over whether some supply “environmental equivalence” projects will actually work.

Water Policy Reversals

Following the introduction of the Basin Plan legislation in 2012, water policy has gone backwards. Capping buyback purchases to a total of 1,500GL in 2015 is one such example. This halted the most effective instrument we have in recovering water.

Lobbyists and irrigator groups have been successful in spreading misinformation and fostering widely held beliefs that buybacks are responsible for large-scale rural economic decline. Indeed, there is a “Beyond Buyback” campaign underway right now.

However, it has been shown that the social costs of buyback have been overestimated and the benefits underestimated.

Rural and farm prosperity reflects a more complex mix of factors, including falling commodity prices, increasing input costs, and climate change.

Environmental water has many benefits for rural communities, right across the Basin. Unfortunately these facts are often ignored, both in media commentary and in some very dodgy economic modelling that relies on highly simplistic and unrealistic assumptions about the impacts of water recovery.

What Do We Need To Do Next?

The very first Nobel Prize in Economics – Jan Tinbergen (1969) - was given for work demonstrating that one policy is needed to address one objective. If we have one policy for multiple objectives, unexpected responses occur.

When we subsidise irrigation infrastructure in order to meet farm productivity, economic development and environmental water recovery objectives, sometimes we end up not achieving our original aim – namely net water recovery for the environment.

Hence, the federal government’s announcement of the latest round of buybacks is very welcome, for it allows us to use the most effective instrument we can for environmental water recovery. Let’s hope we can use these lessons for the additional 450GL of water recovery, and for starting a conversation about cultural water rights.

This does not mean we don’t have to worry about rural regional consequences of water reform – of course we do. But let’s use the best policy options we have to address those issues.

For example, research shows that money spent on regional development (such as in essential social services) creates three to four times more jobs than efficiency upgrades. The Productivity Commission suggested there was little evidence that existing economic structural adjustment policies in the Murray-Darling Basin have helped local communities transition through water reforms.

In an era of climate change, we must grapple with the best ways to share water, and look after all interests as best as we can.

Sarah Ann Wheeler, Professor in Water Economics, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What if urban plans gave natural systems the space to recover from the cities built over them? It can be done

Our cities have altered their original landscapes so greatly that their natural systems are profoundly compromised. These systems – such as swamps, rivers, creeks, aquifers and bushland corridors – need more space to function properly. Sometimes they assert their underlying presence through land subsidence, floods and fires. As Margaret Cook wrote in her history of Brisbane floods, the Brisbane River is “a river with a city problem”.

In Australia, Melbourne in particular has been hugely altered. Historian James Boyce wrote:

Of all Australia’s major cities the natural environment of Melbourne before British settlement is perhaps the most difficult now to imagine. This is in part a product of the city’s size and flat topography, but it also reflects the extent to which the region was dominated by swamps and grasslands – the two ecosystems that were most comprehensively transformed by the conquest.

In response to climate change threats, cities around the world are making space to restore natural systems such as creeks, rivers, wetlands and vegetation on a larger scale. But this is an enormous task. These systems have been concreted, filled in or built over since the industrial revolution.

Sometimes Ecosystems Are Restored

One example of restoration is in Elsternwick, a suburb of southeast Melbourne. Here an ephemeral wetland behind the coastal dunes, on the traditional lands of the Yaluk-ut Weelam, Boon Wurrung clan of the Kulin Nation, was drained and filled. It became a parkland, trotting track and then golf course. Now a constructed wetland is transforming Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve (formerly Elsternwick Park) into a modified version of its former self.

There are many such projects, but still not nearly enough. They tend to be site-specific and isolated, lacking the connection to larger landscape-scale systems so crucial to their proper functioning. For instance, while water from the Elster Creek now flows “naturally” through a chain of ponds in the former Elsternwick golf course, for most of its length the creek is still a channel under and above ground.

When more space needs to be reserved for public benefit and use, the government can compulsorily acquire it through legislation, such as the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1986 (Vic), and through planning schemes, via an instrument called a public acquisition overlay.

The overlay was used in Victoria to remove the suburb of Summerland on Phillip Island over 25 years to conserve and restore habitat for penguins.

Similarly, housing in high fire risk areas was compulsorily acquired to reforest land in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne in the 1970-80s. More recently in New South Wales this approach is being used to move housing away from flood zones in Lismore and the Northern Rivers.

More Often Natural Systems Lose Contest For Space

Most commonly, such mechanisms are used to make space for roads and other infrastructure. A current example is in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen, just 50 metres from the Birrarung (Yarra River). Around 80 industrial buildings are making way for the Manningham Road Interchange of the North East Link project.

Meanwhile, the natural systems of the Birrarung struggle for enough space.

The story of the dispossession and transformation of the river corridor along the bends, floodplains and billabongs known as Banyule-Bulleen Flats is repeated across Australia. This important cultural place of rich food and resources for the Wurndjeri Woi Wurrung was capable of sustaining up to 500 people. It was cleared, farmed and grazed from the mid-1880s.

Piecemeal development has intensified the use of this once cheap, low-lying, flat land. This 2km by 1km parcel of land has been given over to an 18-hole golf course, 27-house estate, six sporting ovals, six soccer pitches, six clay tennis courts, three indoor basketball courts, an archery field, parking across multiple sites for at least 600 cars, a large social club with restaurant, futsal court and convention rooms, major electrical pylons, the large scar of a former drive-in cinema, a web of paths, fences, barriers, toilets, clubrooms, playgrounds and, until recently, an industrial estate.

Very soon, there will be a six-lane tunnel. The land being used for its construction is the subject of “future development potential”.

All this human activity is located there largely due to floodplains not being valued. Yet this area contains the last significant remnants of a network of billabongs and riparian woodlands with centuries-old river red gums.

How Can Urban Plans Help Restore Natural Systems?

Planning schemes are meant to recognise the environmental and cultural value of land. They regulate the use of land, what can be built there, and how we should go about it.

However, each intervention is mostly assessed at the scale of the parcel of land. The process has little to do with the land’s role in a wider, underlying and connected ecological structure.

We need an alternative urban plan that foregrounds and provides space for ecosystem regeneration. New and robust planning tools and governance processes are required if we acknowledge we cannot continue to urbanise areas of ecological significance and should repair and strengthen others.

Yes, we have detailed and careful regulations and controls for protection of vegetation, significant landscapes, land subject to flooding, and so on. But the fact is most buildings and development are not compatible with healthy natural systems that support the complex web of symbiotic relationships between soil, plants, animals and an array of other organisms.

We need urban plans that consolidate space for natural systems in our cities. This process will require long-term frameworks that strategically return land to enable connected ecological systems to function over large territories. To free up this space, urban density will have to increase in other areas through more intensive use of existing buildings and infrastructure.

This alternative approach will improve the quality and sustainability of our future cities.

Louise Wright, Practice Professor of Architecture, Monash University and Catherine Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The new major players in conservation? NGOs thrive while national parks struggle

It might surprise you to know that not-for-profit conservation organisations own, manage or influence growing chunks of Australia.

Not-for-profit NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Bush Heritage Australia and Trust for Nature contribute to management of over three million square kilometres, including owning about 50,000 square kilometres.

The land managed or owned by NGOs has grown at a staggering rate in Australia, which now has the second-largest percentage of land managed privately for conservation in the world, after the United States.

This growth has come as federal and state funding for protected areas has stagnated. Many of our national parks, for instance, are overrun with invasive mammals and weeds, while NGO-owned land tends to be better resourced and managed.

To have any chance of hitting our international commitment of 30% of land conserved by 2030, we will have to rely on fast-growing non-government conservation land alongside Indigenous Protected Areas.

How Did We Get Here?

In 1954, a group of US landowners were given an ultimatum: buy the 60 acre forest next to them, or see it developed. They bought it. From that event emerged The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a land trust which has protected over 50 million hectares of land worldwide, and spawned dozens of other land trusts across the globe.

In the 1970s, Australian conservationists launched their own efforts to acquire vital land. Now, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy manages, owns or influences around 1.7% of Australia; Bush Heritage Australia accounts for another 0.5%; and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy is heavily active in that state. There are a host of smaller land trusts, like Nature Glenelg Trust and Queensland Trust for Nature.

During the 1970s and ‘80s, there was strong growth in government conservation. Our public protected areas grew markedly. But then, interest and funding faltered. Queensland didn’t come close to its goal of protecting 17% of the state by 2020, for example.

That’s why conservation NGOs have stepped up, often in close partnership with First Nations groups. The US is further along this path, partly because of strong scepticism of government intervention. In Australia, we’ve tended to regard the preservation of nature as the government’s job. Unfortunately, our governments have never allocated sufficient funds to adequately stem the loss of species and habitat.

The Downside Of Protecting Large Areas? Ongoing Costs

One reason governments are wary of expanding their protected networks are the ongoing costs. Funding for management hasn’t kept pace with the growth of the reserve system. In part, that’s because Australia is really big and sparsely populated.

Science-based conservation means protecting samples of all habitat types, not just tracts of cheap infertile land. To protect 30% of Queensland would mean a park system the size of Spain. Then you have to look after it.

Why does management matter? Don’t you just need to find pristine bush, fence it and install a sign, a road, walking trails and an information kiosk?

No. Declaring a national park is the easy bit. In many parks, feral animals and invasive plants are all but uncontrolled. Plant diseases, cane toads, foxes, cats, blackberry, lantana – without management, the park will degrade rapidly. And then there’s the complexity of ensuring the right fire and flooding regime.

A smart organisation or government will put aside two to three times the cost of buying the land for management. The problem is, management costs do not excite us in the same way as acquisition.

And because we expect our national parks to be open to the public, budget constraints often means money goes to keeping facilities running, tracks open and little else. The money coming in from camping and ecotourism is a fraction of what’s needed to properly care for the government parks.

Why Are Conservation NGOs Better Placed?

NGOs are increasingly attracting donations and legacies from people interested in conservation action on the ground. These donors wouldn’t think to donate to the parks service – but they will to an NGO. The organisations can work strategically with landowners to, say, improve feral animal management on grazing land or fence off waterways, without actually taking ownership of the land.

Conservation NGOs also don’t have to open their areas to the public. Many do, but only at specific times of year. Others remain shut. By and large, they’re better managed than national parks – and some are much better, with intensive management such as feral-proof fences.

National park staff are often hamstrung by bureaucracy and budget, with limited resources to monitor and report successful outcomes. NGOs, by contrast, are very big on scientific reporting. A threatened species had a successful breeding season on their land? They’ll tell you because reporting conservation outcomes to donors is like reporting company returns to shareholders.

So when you see big-ticket plans to protect 30% of Australian land, you should know it’s not protection as you may have thought of it. It will draw very heavily on these NGOs and land protected by private individuals.

This shift towards a broader definition of conservation land is controversial.

In these newly expanded areas, there may be some environmental thinning of trees, targeted grazing and ecotourism, as well as areas closed to these activities. This is unavoidable. There are now very few areas free from our industries, cities and farms. What matters is finding ways to conserve the world’s wealth of species alongside us.

What Does This Mean For Me?

What we should take from this shift is we can no longer file environmental issues in that handy mental box we all have named “that’s why I pay tax”.

More and more, Australians are realising they don’t have to rely on the government to secure our natural heritage.

It’s not just the government’s problem. It’s a collective problem, which means it’s also your problem. More and more of us now realise the cavalry isn’t coming to the rescue. We are the cavalry.

Correction: this article originally stated The Nature Conservancy managed 1% of Australia, which is incorrect.

Hugh Possingham, Professor, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From deadly jaws and enormous strength to mushroom farming, Ant-Man is only tapping into a portion of the real superpowers of ants

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is the latest film in the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The ant-filled film follows the adventures of Scott Lang (AKA Ant-Man), Hope Van Dyne (AKA The Wasp) and Cassie Lang (AKA The Stinger), who all use science-derived technology to give them ant-like powers. In the Ant-Man films, Ant-Man also has the ability to direct the actions of several ant species, each with its own unique set of characteristics.

Tiny ants might seem like unlikely inspirations and sidekicks for a superhero, but real-life ants have astonishing superpowers that make them formidable allies.

Super Strength

Ant-Man and The Wasp both wear suits that allow them to shrink and also give them the proportionate strength of an ant.

Ants are well known for their super-strength, with some workers being able to carry up to 50 times their own body weight. Since ants – like other insects – have their skeletons on the outside, their muscles do not have to support much of their body weight, leaving them free to apply more strength to lifting.

In addition, smaller animals tend to have greater strength relative to their body weight. Even ants’ joints are strong: the neck joints of the common field ant Formica exsectoides can withstand 5,000 times the ant’s body weight.

Super Speed

Ant-Man and The Wasp don’t have super speed – but real-life ants certainly do!

Saharan silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina) can travel 100 times their body length in a second, making them one of the fastest animals on the planet. That’s like a 180-centimetre human running at 200 metres per second (or 720km per hour)! Usain Bolt, the all-time fastest person in the world, could only hit a maximum speed of 47km per hour.

Ants are not just fast runners – they can move other parts of their bodies with mind-boggling speed. Trap jaw ants (Odontomachus bauri) can slam their jaws shut at an incredible 137km per hour, one of the fastest movements in the animal kingdom. Trap jaw ants use their super-fast mandibles to catch their favourite prey: termites.

The jaws of trap jaw ants are also impressive defensive weapons and can be used to stun attacking predators such as spiders. These ants can even make a rapid retreat by striking their jaws against the ground. This “bouncer defence” throws the ant an astonishing 8cm into the air, the equivalent of an average-sized human jumping 40 metres.

Strength In Numbers

What ants lack in size, they make up for in sheer numbers. A recent study estimated that there are more than 20 quadrillion ants alive at any one time – there are many more ants on Earth than stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) build some of the largest supercolonies on Earth, containing billions of workers spread over 6,000 square kilometres.

By working together in overwhelming numbers, ants can successfully attack animals many times bigger than themselves. Army ant swarms can take down large prey such as lizards, frogs and even scorpions. Like the Ant-Man comic character Cassie Lang, some ant species possess a stinger capable of delivering painful venom. South American bullet ants (Paraponera clavata) have one of the world’s most painful stings. It’s no wonder they were featured as “attack ants” in the first Ant-Man movie.

No Leaders Necessary

Throughout the Ant-Man films, the heroes use communication devices to lead colonies of ants. However, there are no leaders in a real ant colony.

Worker ants are responsible for tasks such as hunting, cleaning and rearing larvae, while queens lay eggs to keep the colony stocked with workers. You might think a society containing millions of tiny-brained animals with no leader would be chaos, but by working together, ants can achieve feats that far exceed the brain power of any individual – this is called “swarm intelligence”.

Argentine ants, for example, can find the shortest path between nests, while fire ants escape flooding by linking their bodies together to form enormous living life rafts. In the First Ant-Man movie, Scott Lang uses the coordinated skills of fire ants to break into Pym Headquarters.

Super Sized Societies

In the latest movie, a colony of ants accidentally enters the mysterious quantum realm where they undergo 1,000 years of evolution, resulting in a society of highly intelligent ants living in a futuristic society.

But modern-day ants have already evolved exceptionally complex societies. Some ant species have even evolved forms of agriculture by tending to and protecting herds of sap-sucking aphids. Aphids respond to their ant farmers by producing droplets of a sugary substance called “honeydew” which the ants harvest as food.

Amazingly, leaf cutter ants in South America care for immense underground fungi gardens which they grow for food. The ants feed the fungus leaves and are able to select the leaf species that maximise fungal growth. Ants weed the garden by removing weedy fungi species, and can even use antibiotics to protect the fungi from disease.

Given their super strength, incredible speeds and amazing swarm intelligence, Ant-Man is lucky to have ants on his side!

Tanya Latty, Associate professor, University of Sydney and Caitlyn Forster, Associate Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The art of balding: a brief history of hairless men

Balding is really common, affecting more than 50% of men. It’s also physically inconsequential (bald men live just as long as haired men). So why, in his memoir Spare, does Prince Harry refer to his brother’s baldness as “alarming”?

As a social psychologist with a special interest in balding (and author of an upcoming book entitled Branding Baldness), I know this didn’t used to be the case – as the presence of balding men in art history demonstrates.

Historically, baldness was treated with neutrality, as a regular part of daily life. In 2019, Egyptology professor Samar Kamal found evidence of 122 bald men painted in private Ancient Egyptian tombs, circa 2613 to 525 BC.

Most of these men were visibly aged (their remaining hair was white). They were depicted in varied spheres of Egyptian society, from farming and fishing to sculpting and scribing.

The art suggests that the Ancient Egyptians didn’t treat bald men any differently from their haired peers.

Kamal also observed that the Ancient Egyptians had specific terms for male baldness, included a “baldness line” during mummification, and had different balding hairstyles (e.g. short all over or long at the back).

Balding Men In European Paintings

European art also showcases baldness’s historical ordinariness. Vincent van Gogh’s painting On The Threshold Of Eternity (1890) features the balding Dutch pensioner Adrianus Zuyderland.

While the painting evokes a sense of existential despair, Zuyderland’s baldness is an incidental – even attractive – feature of the artwork. Van Gogh described the painting in his letters, writing: “What a fine sight an old working man makes, in his patched bombazine suit with his bald head.”

Zuyderland is not an exception – there are many other bald men featured neutrally in historical art. For example, Dutch Golden Age painter Frans van Mieris the Younger’s Man With A Tankard (1793) depicts a bald man contentedly enjoying a pub lunch.

Balding men have also historically been idealised in art. For example, Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese’s 16th-century The Eternal Father features a balding God performing an ethereal miracle.

Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (circa 1632) shows multiple balding doctors studying dissection. Impressionist Pierre-August Renoir’s Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (1908) depicts the eponymous balding art collector.

And there is plenty of other historical evidence to challenge the claim that baldness is “alarming”.

Balding religious figures exist across almost every faith. There’s Buddha, the Christian saints Jerome and Augustine, and then there are bald deities including the Japanese gods Fukurokuju and Hotei.

Religious and political directives have also promoted baldness. This ranges from Christian monks’ tonsure, where hair was grown around a centrally shaved part of the scalp, to the Manchu “queue” haircuts, where hair at the back of the head was grown into a long plait while the rest of the head was shaved.

How Baldness Became ‘Alarming’: Advertising And Mass Media

The mass marketing of anti-baldness products in the 20th century changed how baldness was seen. It transformed the perception of baldness from a benign aesthetic to a disadvantageous disease in need of “cure”.

Such “cures” ranged from expensive and ineffective “snake oil” products to the regulatory approved formulations that have some (though limited) hair regrowth properties, such as minoxidil.

The advertising of these products fostered the idea that baldness is alarming. In 2013, sociolinguistics professor Kevin Harvey observed that online anti-baldness adverts characterise haired men as attractive, successful and happy.

In contrast, the same adverts promoted the claim that baldness was a disease that severely distressed and disadvantaged men. Adverts for anti-baldness shampoo Renaxil, for example, depicted hair follicles on the verge of suicide. Renaxil bottles are shown extending a hand to save them.

In contemporary mass media, baldness is rarely seen beyond the few actors (such as Jason Statham, Vin Diesel and Bruce Willis) who have made lack of hair their unique selling point. Research conducted in 2006 found that just 3% of 1,356 characters in US popular children’s TV shows were balding.

In a study I led of 5,000 images of men in popular magazines published between 2011 and 2012, we found that just 8% were balding.

There are also negative stereotypes in many contemporary depictions of baldness. The website TV Tropes indicates that bald TV and film characters tend to be villains or aged. Another study found that more than 60% of 1980s TV actors portrayed bald characters who were “ugly”, incompetent or lazy.

Alarm around baldness is even promoted in academic research. Myself and Dr Hannah Frith recently found that about 80% of baldness psychology studies had links to businesses. The studies tended to depict baldness as a disease (77%), and promoted anti-baldness products (60%) without meaningful discussion of their limitations (68%).

Baldness representation matters. Modern depictions in TV, advertising and research sanction the claims that hair loss is a disadvantage and a disease. But a look at the art history of the balding man shows this hasn’t always been the case. Bald men can be healthy, successful and content – just as much as their haired counterparts.

Glen Jankowski, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Why would you go to uni?’ A new study looks at what young Australians do after school

This week, the federal government released a discussion paper for a Universities Accord, which it hopes will make a 30-year plan for the sector.

One of the key priorities of the upcoming accord is equal access to university. The discussion paper specifically asks:

what is needed to increase the number of people from under-represented groups applying to higher education?

Our new book, based on ten years of research, aims to look beyond narrow definitions around equity and access to university.

We argue these ignore more subtle inequalities that shape access to higher education, particularly those that play out at a local level.

Equity Targets In Higher Education

Thirty years ago, the Hawke government set national targets to increase university participation for First Nations Australians, people from low socio-economic backgrounds, people from regional and remote areas, people with disabilities and people from non-English-speaking backgrounds.

The goal was to make sure university students reflected Australian society and ensure Australians from all backgrounds could participate successfully in higher education.

As of 2021, there was a lower proportion of students from these groups enrolled in higher education compared with the proportion in the general population (with the exception of students with a disability). The discussion paper notes 17% of university students were from a low socioeconomic background, 2.4% were First Nations Australians, 21% were from regional or remote areas, and 9% were students with a disability.

As Education Minister Jason Clare told ABC Radio on Wednesday, when it comes to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, “we failed”.

Our New Book: Community Matters

Since 2012, we have conducted one of the largest studies to date of how young Australians form their ideas about their education and what they want to do after school. We gathered 10,000 survey responses and did 700 interviews with students in Years 3 to 12, as well as surveys and interviews with parents/carers, teachers and community members.

We published our findings in a new book, Community Matters, released this week.

The book examines seven communities and their relationships with higher education (the names of interviewees and their communities have been changed). These include a metropolitan suburb with a large culturally and linguistically diverse community, a small coastal town, a remote community and a regional centre.

Our aim is to shift the focus away from impersonal “equity target groups” to diverse suburbs, towns and areas across Australia. This shows how equitable access to higher education is shaped by the communities where young people grow up, live and develop a sense of their place in the world.

Aspirations Are High

Significantly, in all of the communities we looked at, young people want to go to university.

When we asked them about their aspirations for education, going to university was always the most popular choice among students as young as eight and as old as 18. This proportion ranged from 30% to 78% of students in the various communities.

These findings challenge the view that young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds have “low” aspirations for their futures. What is important, however, is the broader context in which these aspirations play out.

Local Labour Markets Matter

In historically working-class communities and those in rural areas, we found local employment options matter. For some young people, the realities of their local area impacts on their ideas about their futures.

Kathleen is a teacher in Ironbark, a regional agricultural community currently experiencing relative prosperity associated with the wine industry:

My brother was offered a school-based traineeship as an electrician […] Now he’s earning more money than me […] Why would you go to uni when you can study here at TAFE, earn big money, especially during vintage season?

Community Norms Have An Impact

Many young people do not have any exposure to university study in their families or even more broadly in communities. Mel, a Year 6 student in Excelsa, a working-class urban community, told us:

Nobody I know in my family has gone to university or TAFE. My Aunty might have because she does computer work and she gets paid lots of money. Yeah, so she must have, like, studied it at university or something.

Zoey, a Year 7 student at a local high school in Excelsa, also told us how the aspirations of her peers at school are shaped by gendered norms within the community:

Probably most girls would probably be stay-at-home mums or might just work at KFC or McDonalds. And the boys might be working in surf shops.

The Broader Context Matters

We also found factors like drought, technology and globalisation had an impact of young people’s choices in some rural areas. Interviewees spoke about farms being sold and the local school dwindling in size.

These devastating effects translated into an awareness among young people of barriers they would face in even attempting to get to university. Year 12 student Lora is a young Indigenous woman living in the remote township of Olearia:

I used to say I’d want to go to uni, when I was younger. But, as I got older […] everything changed, and it just got too hard.

As Catherine, a parent, further explained:

Not many go through to Year 12, see? […] To do any of the bigger, better stuff you’ve got to have a lot of willpower because you don’t really get a teacher with it […] If you wanted to go on to university you sit there and do your own work, because you’re not with the other kids that are just doing Year 11 and 12.

Infrastructure Often Lags Behind

In communities where pursuing higher education is not the norm, we also found significant problems with infrastructure.

In one case, a satellite university campus had been established in a community but there was no viable way to get there on public transport. As Adam, a local community member, told us:

It’s as simple as in the absence of having a decent transport system that is more than a bus every two hours […] it’s really hard if you don’t have a car. […] Talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn’t.

Where To Next With Equity Policy?

Jason Clare has stated numerous times that he wants to improve access to university in Australia:

where you live, how much your parents earn, whether you are Indigenous or not, is still a major factor in whether you are a student or a graduate of an Australian university.

There is now a specific opportunity to focus on this in the upcoming Universities Accord, which talks about “widening opportunities” and “removing barriers”.

What our research shows, however, is that “removing barriers” is not about imploring more young people to choose university, nor is it about rectifying a lack of aspiration or ambition.

Our findings highlight the urgent need for policymakers to consider how universities can better meet the needs of diverse and changing communities. This includes much broader consideration of the role of university in society and how access can be better supported through alignment with local industries, improved infrastructure, and working directly with community members to understand their challenges and concerns.

The Australian higher education sector is now at a crucial juncture. If institutions are not going to better align themselves with their communities, the question might indeed become: why would you go to uni?

You can find out more about our research on young people’s education aspirations here.

Sally Patfield, Senior Research Fellow, Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle; Jenny Gore, Laureate Professor of Education, Director Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle; Jess Harris, Associate Professor in Education, University of Newcastle, and Leanne Fray, Senior Research Fellow, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Empires of ice: how Edmund Hillary’s Antarctic adventure 65 years ago helped loosen NZ’s colonial ties to Britain

When the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition ended on March 2, 1958, it marked what many called the last great adventure possible on Earth: an overland crossing of the Antarctic continent.

Sixty-five years later, it’s remembered in New Zealand chiefly for Sir Edmund Hillary’s unplanned and controversial “dash” to the South Pole in a convoy of modified Massey Ferguson tractors.

But as a historian of Antarctic science, I believe the expedition tells us about more than just Kiwi ingenuity and attitude. It was also about national competition and prestige, disputed sovereignty, and competing versions of masculinity.

Perhaps most significantly, an exercise designed to showcase Commonwealth unity ended up demonstrating the opposite. And it helped cement New Zealand’s independent relationship with Antarctica, specifically the Ross Dependency and Scott Base, as quite separate from its ties to Britain.

Science And Nationalism

The expedition’s origins go back to 1953, when Vivian Fuchs, a geologist with the Falkland Islands Dependency Survey, began circulating a proposal for the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE). This would be the first overland crossing of the frozen continent.

Although Fuchs later stressed the scientific potential of his plan – which he said took initial shape as he sheltered from a blizzard, huddled in a tent on Antarctica’s Stonington Island – the proposal also had geopolitical motivations.

At the time, the United Kingdom’s claims in Antarctica were under increasing threat from Argentina and Chile. Even the American expedition to the Weddell Sea in 1947-48 did not acknowledge British sovereignty. In Fuchs’ words:

A trans-continental journey made wholly within territory claimed by the British Commonwealth […] would gain prestige and at the same time contribute to the solidarity of Commonwealth interests.

Fuchs tied the Trans-Antarctic Expedition to the scientific programme of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-1958. This was an international collaborative scientific project that focused on gathering new observations on the oceans, weather systems, outer space and the poles.

Even though the expedition remained officially separate, it could be seen as supporting the IGY’s wide-ranging scientific research efforts. While Fuchs soon won the support of many in the Commonwealth polar and scientific communities, some derided what appeared to be a geopolitical exercise using the supposedly apolitical, science-focused IGY.

The Hillary Factor

For Fuchs to succeed in journeying from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea via the South Pole, his plan – like that of Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated attempt 40 years earlier – depended on a supporting party from New Zealand.

Led by Edmund Hillary, an international celebrity since his 1953 ascent of Mt Everest, this party would lay depots of food and fuel to support the second part of Fuchs’ journey, from the South Pole to the Ross Sea.

Hillary’s expedition, intended to be largely privately funded, initially lacked widespread support from New Zealanders, many of whom believed their government should cover the entire cost.

But the Ross Sea Committee, which organised the expedition, worked to imbue the public with a sense that their country had a stake in the Antarctic territory they claimed: the New Zealand Antarctic Expedition, as it was often called domestically, would be a triumph for their nation.

At the head of a major public relations campaign, Hillary’s attachment to the expedition was a big factor in growing support for the expedition. In the end, New Zealanders donated more to the TAE per capita than the British public did. Nonetheless, the New Zealand government still had to heavily subsidise the enterprise.

To The Pole By Tractor

The newly established Scott Base was intended to serve the interests of both New Zealand’s IGY and TAE parties, and was placed under Hillary’s command. In fact, it was Hillary who selected, in a last-minute change, the base’s location on Ross Island, as it was more convenient for the TAE’s priority of travelling over the Polar Plateau.

This was to the chagrin of many scientists in both parties, including the IGY scientific leader Trevor Hatherton, who decried the site’s poor conditions for geologic, geomagnetic and seismic research.

Hillary began his depot-laying journey on October 14, 1957. To reduce costs and reflect New Zealand’s agricultural strengths, he travelled with three TE20 Massey Ferguson tractors, modified with a full tracking system for use in the snowy conditions. His team made good time and established Depot 700, the last one scheduled, in late December.

In the meantime, Fuchs’ team had encountered rough conditions and crossed the continent much more slowly than expected. Deviating from the expedition’s initial plans and disobeying orders from the Ross Sea Committee, Hillary continued to the South Pole and arrived at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on January 3, 1958, becoming the first to make this journey using overland vehicles.

Between 1992 and 2015, an image of a modified Massey Ferguson tractor graced the New Zealand $5 note, commemorating the achievement.

End Of Empire

Shortly after his arrival at the Pole, Hillary sent a message to Fuchs suggesting he abandon his plans for completing a crossing, given the difficult conditions. This telegram was accidentally released to the New Zealand press.

By the time Fuchs arrived at the Pole on January 19, a media firestorm had exploded. The expedition was now characterised as a “race to the Pole” by two national parties headed by the “adventurer” Hillary and the “scientist” Fuchs. Like the first race to the Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott in 1911-12, this one was framed as yet another loss by Britain.

The remainder of the expedition was an exercise in damage control, with the organising committees in New Zealand and the UK stressing there was indeed only one expedition, and there had been no race to the Pole. Fuchs’ party arrived, rather anticlimactically, at Scott Base on March 2, 1958, completing the historic 3,473 kilometre journey.

Yet the drama was still not over. Three years after Fuchs and Hillary’s official account of the expedition was published, Hillary published his own tell-all version which played up the masculinity and daring of the New Zealand party in opposition to the British.

What had begun as a show of Commonwealth unity with Britain at the head became an international incident, reinforcing perceptions of a fracturing British Empire. Hillary’s dash to the Pole was far more memorable than the actual crossing.

Moreover, it marked the beginning of modern New Zealand’s close identification with Antarctica and its own Scott Base, and the end of old colonial hierarchies on the ice. Indeed, by the end of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition, New Zealand’s biggest partner in Antarctic science was not the United Kingdom, but the United States.

Daniella McCahey, Assistant Professor of History, Texas Tech University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Scientists just revealed the most detailed geological model of Earth’s past 100 million years

Earth’s surface is the “living skin” of our planet – it connects the physical, chemical, and biological systems. Over geological time, landscapes change as this surface evolves, regulating the carbon cycle and nutrient circulation as rivers carry sediment into the oceans.

All these interactions have far-reaching effects on ecosystems and biodiversity – the many living things inhabiting our planet.

As such, reconstructing how Earth’s landscapes have evolved over millions of years is a fundamental step towards understanding the changing shape of our planet, and the interaction of things like the climate and tectonics. It can also give us clues on the evolution of biodiversity.

Working with scientists in France (French National Centre for Scientific Research, ENS Paris university, University of Grenoble and University of Lyon), our team at the University of Sydney has now published a detailed geological model of Earth’s surface changes in the prestigious journal Science.

Ours is the first dynamic model – a computer simulation – of the past 100 million years at a high resolution down to ten kilometres. In unprecedented detail, it reveals how Earth’s surface has changed over time, and how that has affected the way sediment moves around and settles.

Broken into frames of a million years, our model is based on a framework that incorporates plate tectonic and climatic forces with surface processes such as earthquakes, weathering, changing rivers and more.

Three Years In The Making

The project started about three years ago when we began the development of a new global-scale landscape evolution model, capable of simulating millions of years of change. We also found ways to automatically add other information into our framework, such as palaeogeography – the history of Earth’s landscapes.

For this new study, our framework used state-of-the-art plate tectonic reconstructions and simulations of past climates on a global scale.

Our advanced computer simulations used Australia’s National Computational Infrastructure, running on hundreds of computer processors. Each simulation took several days, building a complete picture to reconstruct the past 100 million years of Earth’s surface evolution.

All this computing power has resulted in global high-resolution maps that show the highs and lows of Earth’s landscapes (elevation), as well as the flows of water and sediment.

All of these fit well with existing geological observations. For instance, we combined data from present-day river sediment and water flows, drainage basin areas, seismic surveys, and long-term local and global erosion trends.

Our main outputs are available as time-based global maps at five-million-year intervals from the Open Science Framework.

Water And Sediment Flux Through Space And Time

One of Earth’s fundamental surface processes is erosion, a slow process in which materials like soil and rock are worn and carried away by wind or water. This results in sediment flows.

Erosion plays an important role in Earth’s carbon cycle – the never-ending global circulation of one of life’s essential building blocks, carbon. Investigating the way sediment flows have changed through space and time is crucial for our understanding of how Earth’s climates have varied in the past.

We found that our model reproduces the key elements of Earth’s sediment transport, from catchment dynamics depicting river networks over time to the slow changes of large-scale sedimentary basins.

From our results, we also found several inconsistencies between existing observations of rock layers (strata), and predictions of such layers. This shows our model could be useful for testing and refining reconstructions of past landscapes.

Our simulated past landscapes are fully integrated with the various processes at play, especially the hydrological system – the movement of water – providing a more robust and detailed view of Earth’s surface.

Our study reveals more detail on the role that the constantly evolving Earth’s surface has played in the movement of sediments from mountaintops to ocean basins, ultimately regulating the carbon cycle and Earth’s climate fluctuations through deep time.

As we explore these results in tandem with the geological record, we will be able to answer long-standing questions about various crucial features of the Earth system – including the way our planet cycles nutrients, and has given rise to life as we know it.

Tristan Salles, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Extinct elephant birds were 3 metres tall and weighed 700kg. Now, DNA from fossil eggshells reveals how they lived

Madagascar’s extinct elephant birds – the largest birds ever to have lived – have captured public interest for hundreds of years. Little is known about them due to large gaps in the skeletal fossil record.

A new study published today in Nature Communications used ancient molecules extracted from fossil eggshells to reveal surprising new insights into the biology of these flightless giants. How many species were there? Where did they live? What did they eat?

Answers to these questions contribute to our understanding of the origin and loss of species, which is especially important today as global biodiversity continues to rapidly decline.

Staggeringly Large Birds

As a biodiversity hotspot, the island nation of Madagascar is a natural test tube for studying evolution and extinction. The numerous species of now-extinct megafauna that once roamed there play a key role in furthering our understanding of these processes.

One such group were the elephant birds, about which precious little has been gleaned since they were first described over 150 years ago.

Alongside Africa’s ostrich, Australia’s emu and cassowary, South America’s rhea, and New Zealand’s moa and kiwi, the elephant birds of Madagascar (or vorompatra in Malagasy language) were large, flightless ratites. They became extinct around 1,000 years ago, soon after humans first settled Madagascar.

These were truly enormous birds, with some weighing over 700kg and standing up to 3m tall. Their eggs, weighing 10kg, were 150 times the size of a chicken’s egg.

Elephant birds (Aepyornithiformes) have been the stuff of legends for hundreds of years, with early sightings possibly being the origin of the mythical creature, roc (or rukh), and inspiring writers such as H. G. Wells. British naturalist David Attenborough also took a special interest in elephant birds, documenting his journey for answers about his own elephant bird egg in Attenborough and the Giant Egg.

In recent years, elephant birds were found to be most closely related to the chicken-sized kiwi bird – a result that changed our view of avian evolution.

A Patchy Record

Yet there is still debate about how many species of elephant bird there actually were. At one time, 16 species were named based on differences found between skeletal fossils. In the 1960s, this dropped to seven species, and the most recent revision classified elephant birds into four species. But why the controversy?

Although these birds became extinct relatively recently, the skeletal fossil record through time and space is patchy. Madagascar’s climate can be very hot and humid, which is not conducive to preserving biological material.

When bones are incomplete or fragmented, it can be hard to tell apart different species – and sometimes, bone doesn’t preserve at all, like in the far north of Madagascar where there have been reports of eggshells but no bones.

Modern DNA technology can help overcome this barrier. In a similar way that we can identify people, or tell how they are related to each other by comparing their DNA, ancient DNA from fossils can help identify unknown specimens or uncover relationships within and between species.

The more differences there are between two organisms’ DNA, the more distantly they are related. These differences can then be used estimate when species evolved, which provides clues about how and why. But, just like the elephant bird bones themselves, the DNA within them is not well preserved either.

Thick And Abundant Eggshell

This is where eggshell comes in. Compared to other birds, elephant bird eggshell is very thick, so the DNA trapped inside is better protected. Eggshells are also much more abundant than bones, with fragments densely scattered across beaches along Madagascar’s coastline, where these birds presumably once nested.

On top of preserving DNA and proteins, eggshell preserves “stable isotope” signatures which can be matched to those of plants and animals from the environment to get an idea of what the birds were eating and drinking.

Physical characteristics of eggshell (such as thickness and pore density) can also reveal information about egg size, bird size, the nesting environment, nesting behaviour, and can sometimes be used to distinguish between bird groups.

With the help and support of Malagasy locals, our team collected hundreds of 1,000-year-old fossil eggshell from across Madagascar. We looked at their thickness, their micro-structure (through micro-CT scanning), DNA and proteins, and their stable isotopes. We screened hundreds of eggshell fragments to find 21 with sufficient DNA to reconstruct a family tree using eggshell and bone specimens of known identity.

A Mysterious Lineage

We found there were not as many species of elephant bird as previously thought – there was very little genetic difference between specimens. We think some of the size and shape differences seen in the skeletal fossils are just differences between males and females, and not differences between species. It is common among ratites for females to be much larger than males – and to be mistaken for different species.

But more surprisingly, we identified a mystery eggshell from Madagascar’s far north as belonging to a novel lineage of large elephant birds that weighed 230kg and laid 3kg eggs. Although these birds were closely related to the elephant birds of central Madagascar, they were genetically distinct and had a different diet. They were also separated by about 1,000km in distance and 1.5km in elevation.

This proves that elephant birds were living in Madagascar’s far north where no skeletons have ever been found, a result that is reminiscent of the finding of a new hominid from DNA analysis of an unknown fossil.

These weren’t the only unexpected findings: we also identified potential drivers of speciation (formation of new species) and extreme gigantism in elephant birds. As Madagascar became drier and cooler during the last ice age, the vegetation changed, and elephant birds may have adapted to new niches. This led to the evolution of the largest species in a rapid and recent time frame – within the last 1.4 million years, a fraction of their evolutionary history.

These findings demonstrate how ancient DNA from eggshell is a promising avenue for studying the evolution of extinct birds. It contributes to our understanding of Madagascar’s past biodiversity – an important step towards understanding how to conserve its unique species into the future.

Alicia Grealy, Research Projects Officer, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Older women are doing remarkable things – it’s time for the putdowns to end

It’s not easy to claim being an old woman. To start with, how can I be 75 when I feel about 40? And isn’t it shameful to be old when youth is valued? People proudly parrot statements such as, “I’m growing older but not getting old” (meaning, “How terrible to be old!”). I even heard that line quoted approvingly by one of the middle-aged hosts of the recent Australia Day Award ceremony.

Then there are shop assistants who serve an old person by asking, “What can I do for you, young lady/man?” (i.e. “I see that you’re old and will mock it by calling you young”). When author Jane Caro wrote about her husband’s angry response to this example of ageism it created quite a Twitter storm. Can’t you take a joke? But, as Caro replied, “Benign ageism, hostile ageism. One often turns into the other and both make the recipients feel diminished”.

Benign ageism applies as much to the stereotyping of young people (wasting their money on smashed avocado), as it does to the old.

Ageism is bad enough, but it’s often compounded by sexism. It is humiliating for a boy to be told he’s playing like a girl but even worse for a man expressing doubts or concerns to be called an old woman. The stereotype of the old woman is anxious, dependent, useless, and a burden – if she isn’t a nasty, bitter old witch. Dismissing old women in this way renders them invisible because they are considered of no use to society.

Women experience a sense of invisibility from late middle age: being overlooked in shops, ignored in restaurants. People walk into me in the street as though I’m incorporeal. Of course, it can be liberating to be ignored, not to be constantly assessed for one’s looks as young women are, and I try to make as much lemonade as possible from life’s lemons. Nevertheless, I’d prefer not to be completely disregarded.

When Jane Fisher and I interviewed Baby Boom women (born 1946 to 1964), we found that they wanted to be treated with respect, which doesn’t seem like much to ask. They said that respect includes requiring we all challenge – and refuse to perpetuate – these harmful stereotypes.

Ageist stereotypes reinforce age-based discrimination. An Australian survey of more than 2000 people aged over 60 found experiences of ageism have an adverse effect on mental health, prompting depression and anxiety.

Challenging Stereotypes

My recent interviews with women from the previous generation, dolefully named the Silent Generation (born before 1946), challenge these stereotypes. In their late seventies, eighties, and nineties, these women are leading fulfilling lives; contributing to their communities and to the wider society.

There is Mig Dann, whose PhD was conferred in her early eighties. Her thesis explored memory and trauma through art theory and practice. Exhibitions of her work are breathtaking.

Olive Trevor OAM developed her love of plants as her five children grew up and, in her eighties, was recognised as a world expert in bromeliads.

Lester Jones runs an educational coaching business, specialising in people with learning difficulties. She is in her nineties.

Jacqueline Dwyer was ANU’s oldest successful postgraduate student when she became a Master of Arts at 90; a book about her research was published when she was 92.

After a difficult young adulthood as an itinerant worker, Raylee George found her vocation in typesetting. When she was made redundant, an employer who values older people took George on in her seventies as a specialist call-centre operator.

As she approaches 80, environmental scientist and climate campaigner Dr Sharron Pfueller continues to set an example of how we should all be living sustainably.

After working as a TV make-up artist and in managerial roles, as well as doing voluntary work, Robina Rogan at 76 joined a team that built a boat and rowed it around Port Phillip Bay. In her eighties, she’s still rowing.

Dr Miriam Rose Ungunmerr Baumann AM was Senior Australian of the Year in 2021; her life is committed to supporting Indigenous youth and to maintaining bridges that unite Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures and people. These are just a few examples.

It was Ungunmerr Baumann who led me to ponder the contrast between the way in which so many of us (appropriately) pay our respects to First Nations Elders past and present while disrespecting old people in general. As she says to audiences of people in late adulthood, “You are all Elders”.

The life stories of these women reveal they endured hardship and grief while displaying resilience and determination. But personal qualities can’t fully account for lives that continue to have meaning. It isn’t enough to tell women to exercise, eat more vegetables, do lots of puzzles, and volunteer at the local op shop. We live in communities and societies in which we are all interdependent.

The Baby Boom women demonstrated that their whole life course influenced their experience of ageing, including their mental health. Were they adequately parented? Disadvantaged? Victims of violence? Well nourished in body and mind? Did they have good health? And, crucially, were there people, policies, and a culture that valued and supported them?

A Social Responsibility

Women may have qualities that help them to live productive and satisfying lives, but they can achieve their potential only in a milieu that enables, rather than inhibits, them.

The milieu includes other people (family, friends, workmates, the community), the built environment and social policies. Ageing well is a social responsibility, to be shouldered by everyone – not only because it is the right thing to do but because we all stand to benefit.

Preparations for old age begin with care and support for parents and infants and even with preconception healthcare: anything that contributes to physical and mental health and to parents’ capacity to nurture children. It includes financial support, adequate housing, early identification and treatment of postnatal depression, good childcare and high-quality education for all.

Anti-discriminatory policies, informed and inclusive healthcare, and social structures that support and enhance the lives of girls and women – as well as boys and men – will benefit everyone, not only older women.

The United Nations has declared the years 2021 to 2030 to be the Decade of Healthy Ageing: a time for worldwide collaboration to promote longer and healthier lives. Physical health is emphasised not as an end but as a necessary condition for full participation in society. This endeavour is part of a magnificent movement towards creating age-friendly neighbourhoods. The World Health Organization has taken the lead through its age-friendly cities framework.

The eight areas in the framework are community and healthcare, transportation, housing, social participation, outdoor spaces and buildings, respect and social inclusion, and civic participation and employment. These areas are interconnected. They encompass the physical, psychological and social components of life, all of which are implicated in ageing. We need to develop and maintain a world in which everyone, of any age, feels welcome and is encouraged to participate.

Socially constructed ideas of ageing can similarly be socially dismantled.

I’m proud to be old, but my age is not what I want you to see first, especially when “old” means useless, past it, of no interest to anyone else. A woman of 25 might have firm flesh and a future full of possibilities, but she doesn’t have all the decades of life experience embodied by a wrinkly woman of 75.

I’d like people to be interested in old women’s stories, to be prepared to learn about their lives: not only their past, but what they’re doing now, what they plan to do in the time to come.

This isn’t a whinge. I enjoy getting old. I love birthdays and cake. But I would like old age to be valued. It seems perverse for those who are not yet old to condemn their own futures.

Maggie Kirkman’s book Time of Our Lives: Celebrating Older Women is out on 1 March.

Maggie Kirkman, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women's Health, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tax-free super for the super rich is a bad deal for the rest of us – and Morrison said it first

You’d be forgiven for thinking Treasurer Jim Chalmers had done something dramatic.

From 2025 he will double the tax rate on earnings from superannuation balances above A$3 million, lifting it from 15% to 30%.

Only 80,000 Australians have accounts that large, and many of them who have retired have shoved the maximum permissible $1.7 million into a separate so-called retirement account whose earnings are entirely tax-free.

That’s right. Retirees with $1.7 million in retirement accounts pay nothing whatsoever on what those accounts earn, which in normal years amounts to $85,000.

By way of comparison, wage earners on $85,000 get taxed $18,000.

But though you’d never know it from some of the “socialist tax grab” commentary around this week, Chalmers isn’t the first treasurer to act on this rort. Scott Morrison got there first.

Howard’s Super Deal For The Richest 1%

In 2006, in what economist Saul Eslake describes as one of the worst taxation decisions in modern times (an honour for which he says there’s a fair bit of competition), then Prime Minister John Howard exempted from tax withdrawals from super for Australians aged 60 and over.

By itself, this was unremarkable. We don’t tax withdrawals from bank accounts, because the interest they earn has been taxed within the account.

But Howard left in place a preexisting exemption from tax for earnings within the retirement accounts of Australians aged 60 and over.

This meant the earnings on the sometimes very large accounts of retirees aged 65 and over weren’t taxed at all. Not at the normal super tax rate of 15%, not at any rate – without limit, no matter how much was earned, merely because the person owning the account was aged 65 or over and had retired.

Morrison Wound Howard’s Policy Back

In office, the Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard didn’t touch the open-ended opportunity to earn unlimited amounts from super tax-free. Instead, we had to wait a decade, until Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his Treasurer Scott Morrison wound it back in 2016.

Facing off against critics in his own party, Morrison cut the amount that could be transferred from an ordinary super account into a tax-free “retirement” super account to $1.6 million, a ceiling that is adjusted every few years with inflation.

“If you’ve got more than $1.6 million in a superannuation account, you’re in the top 1% and you’ve worked hard to get there, that’s fabulous,” Morrison said at the time. “But that $1.6 million is the limit.”

The Seeds Of Chalmers’ New Plan

They were words echoed by Chalmers on Tuesday, who said his change would only affect half of the top 1%. If people had done well, that was “a good thing”.

But Chalmers said the system should be fairer.

And I think for any objective observer, the idea that ordinary working people subsidise incredibly generous tax breaks for people with millions and millions of dollars in superannuation doesn’t stack up.

Chalmers did more than channel Morrison’s language. The idea of a 30% super tax rate isn’t new.

Most Australians pay 15% on contributions, but in 2016 then treasurer Morrison expanded a 30% contributions rate from Australians with combined incomes and super contributions exceeding $300,000 to Australians with incomes and contributions exceeding $250,000.

And Chalmers received encouragement from another source.

In last year’s pre-budget submission, the Association of Superannuation Funds (ASFA) pointed the new treasurer to 11,000 super accounts holding more than $5 million, some of them holding hundreds of millions, “well in excess of retirement needs”.

The peak body for super funds called on the then Morrison government to end super tax concessions when accounts grew to $5 million, an amount it said could not “reasonably be justified as necessary to support a comfortable lifestyle in retirement”.

On Tuesday Chalmers picked up the idea – an idea that came from the super industry itself – but made the limit $3 million, instead of $5 million.

As ASFA proposed, that ceiling won’t climb over time with inflation, meaning over time more and more Australians will be taxed at 30%.

You Don’t Need Millions For A Comfortable Retirement

There are two points worth noting. One is that the quoted tax rate of 30% won’t work out at 30%. The best guess within the industry is that few pay anything like 15%. They are able to use concessions on capital gains and dividend imputation to drive down the tax actually paid to something nearer 7%.

The other is most Australians don’t need anything like what $3 million would buy in retirement – or even the $1.7 million they are allowed to use tax-free.

The ASFA retirement income standard has a “comfortable” retirement costing $48,266 per year (or $68,014 for a couple).

ASFA defines comfortable to mean $90 per month on broadband, $80 in alcohol, $46 in Netflix-like services, $258 dining out, top-flight private health insurance, and one domestic flight per year and an international flight every seven years.

It’s a level of largess not bestowed on many of us while working. If it was felt necessary in retirement (and doubtless many wealthy retirees do feel it is necessary) there’s no reason to expect them to get it all from super.

The government’s 2020 retirement income review found high-income Australians earned as much again from investment income outside super as they made from withdrawals from it. They do alright.

Scott Morrison, much criticised for the generosity to high income earners of his Stage 3 tax cuts, moved in the right direction on super. Jim Chalmers is picking up where he left off.

Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Dark Side of the Moon at 50: how Marx, trauma and compassion all influenced Pink Floyd’s masterpiece

Dixi et salvavi animam meam.

This Latin phrase – I have spoken and saved my soul – sits at the end of Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme.

Written in 1875, this text imagines a communist society that will come about “after the enslaving of the individual to the division of labour, and thereby also the antithesis between mental and physical labour has vanished”.

Only then, Marx argues, “can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be completely transcended and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!”

Roger Waters – bassist, lyricist and conceptual mastermind behind Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, released 50 years ago today – knows Marx’s Critique. Indeed, he quotes it when discussing the record with music journalist John Harris.

“Making The Dark Side of the Moon, we were all trying to do as much as we possibly could,” Waters told Harris.

It was a very communal thing. What’s that old Marxist maxim? ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ That’s sort of the way the band worked at that point.

Assertions about solidarity, cooperation and shared “unity of purpose” – as Waters says – situate Dark Side in the context of Pink Floyd’s notoriously fractious recording career and helps us understand the album’s enduring appeal.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Pink Floyd formed in London in 1965. Led by the charismatic songwriter, guitarist and lead vocalist Syd Barrett, the group established itself as a leader in the London underground music scene. They released their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in 1967.

Soft Machine member Kevin Ayers described The Piper at the Gates of Dawn as “something magical, but it was in Syd Barrett”.

Not long after the record’s release, Barrett suffered a catastrophic, LSD-induced breakdown. In response, the band recruited David Gilmour on guitar and recorded a second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, as a five-piece in 1968. Around this time, the increasingly unstable Barrett was unceremoniously ousted by the rest of the band.

After Barrett left, says Ayers, “Pink Floyd became something else totally”.

There are different versions of Pink Floyd. The recordings released after Barrett left the band in 1968 bear little resemblance to the first.

Dark Side sounds nothing like the whimsical Piper. But it is obvious the record is in large part preoccupied with the loss of Barrett.

This preoccupation comes to the fore in the album’s penultimate track.

Brain Damage, written and sung by Waters, references Barrett’s adolescence (“Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs”), alludes to his illness (“And if the dam breaks open many years too soon”), and acknowledges his leaving the group (“And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes; I’ll see you on the dark side of the Moon”).

Drummer Nick Mason confirms the group didn’t want to lose Barrett.

In his autobiography, he writes:

He was our songwriter, singer, guitarist, and – although you might not have known from our less than sympathetic treatment of him – he was our friend.

If The Dam Breaks Open Many Years Too Soon

What we hear on The Dark Side of the Moon is a band dealing with trauma.

In this sense, Dark Side represents the start of a reckoning with the past – a process that culminated with the band’s next record, 1975’s elegiac Wish You Were Here.

Culmination is a useful term when it comes to Dark Side more generally. On this record, all the avant-garde techniques and tendencies the band had toyed with in the post-Barrett period – musique concrète, sonic manipulation, extended improvisation, analogue tape manipulation – come together to spectacular effect.

Money – with its anti-capitalist lyrics penned by Waters (“Money, it’s a crime; share it fairly, but don’t take a slice of my pie”), odd time signature, and handmade tape-loops mimicking the sounds of cash tills, bags of coins being dropped from great height and bank notes being torn up – is one of the stranger hit singles in pop music history.

Be that as it may, Money and the album from which it is taken, of which more than 50 million copies have been sold, continue to resonate with listeners worldwide, five decades on from its initial release.

The Enormous Risk Of Being Truly Banal

“I made a conscious effort when I was writing the lyrics for Dark Side of the Moon to take the enormous risk of being truly banal about a lot of it,” Waters told John Harris, “in order that the ideas should be expressed as simply and plainly as possible.”

On this point, if nothing else, David Gilmour agrees. He told Harris:

There was definitely a feeling that the words were going to be very clear and specific. That was a leap forward. Things would mean what they meant. That was a distinct step away from what we had done before.

Mortality, insanity, conflict, affluence, poverty and, in another nod to Marx, alienation are some of the themes presented on the record. The need – and this brings us full circle – for compassion, if not outright solidarity, is another.

This is an album about the importance of understanding, as Waters insists:

the potential that human beings have for recognising each other’s humanity and responding to it, with empathy rather than antipathy.

Given the sorry state of the world in 2023, about which Roger Waters has many contentious and problematic things to say, I wager Pink Floyd’s masterwork will continue to resonate with listeners for a while yet.

Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What is delirium?

Delirium is a sudden decline in a person’s usual mental function. It occurs when signals in the brain aren’t sending and receiving properly, causing confusion in thinking and altered behaviour or levels of consciousness.

Delirium isn’t a disease – it’s a clinical syndrome or condition that is usually temporary and treatable. It’s often mistaken for dementia because both conditions have similar symptoms, such as confusion, agitation and delusions. If a health-care professional doesn’t know the patient, it can be difficult to tell the difference.

Up to one-third of older people admitted to hospital are diagnosed with delirium. This increases the risk of unnecessary functional decline, a longer hospital stay, falls, needing to be admitted to a residential aged care facility, and death.

However, identifying the condition early reduces these risks. Delirium can also be prevented by identifying who is vulnerable to the condition and finding ways of reducing the person’s risk.

What Causes Delirium?

Delirium is usually caused by a number of underlying acute (short-term) illnesses and medical complications. Elderly people are vulnerable to delirium because their bodies have fewer reserves than younger people to respond to these stressors. People with dementia are particularly at risk.

Factors that cause or increase the risk of delirium include:

• malnutrition
• dehydration
• new medications
• a fall
• surgery
• infection
• admission to the intensive care unit
• multiple bed moves
• pain.

A diagnosis of delirium is made on the basis of clinical history, behavioural observation and a cognitive assessment by a clinician trained to assess delirium.

The patient and their family or carer should also be asked about any recent changes in the patient’s behaviour or thinking.

So How Can It Be Prevented Or Treated?

Clinical care focuses on preventing delirium, managing risk factors and symptoms, and reducing the chance of complications, which prolong or worsen the condition.

To help prevent delirium we can:

• frequently reorient the person (reminding them of their location, the date and time)
• encourage the person to get out of bed and, where appropriate, to walk around, while ensuring they’re safe from falling
• manage their pain
• ensure adequate nutrition and hydration
• reduce their sensory impairments (helping them put on glasses and hearing aids and ensuring they’re working)
• ensure proper sleep patterns.

Why Is Delirium Under-Diagnosed?

While delirium is potentially preventable, it’s poorly recognised, and cases are often missed. This is due to inadequate knowledge among the attending health-care staff, a lack of routine formal screening and assessment, and health-care staff not knowing the patient.

Diagnosing delirium can be difficult when symptoms fluctuate during the day. Changes in alertness come and go, with people usually more alert in the morning and less so at night.

Delirium is also under-recognised because it can present very differently. In some people it can result in hyperactivity (hallucinations, delusions or uncooperative behaviour), and in other people, hypoactivity (decreased arousal which can be mistaken for fatigue or depression), or mixture of both.

Around 50% of people who are discharged from hospital with unresolved delirium symptoms can experience symptoms lasting for months. Alarmingly, some people transition into permanent states of cognitive impairment.

Delirium Takes A Toll On Carers

Delirium costs the Australian government around A$8.8 billion a year.

The greater cost, however, is that experienced by the patient and their family. The sudden change in a person’s behaviour and/or emotions as a result of delirium causes high levels of stress and anxiety for family carers.

Carers of older adults diagnosed with delirium report high levels of psychological distress, poor wellbeing and less satisfaction with life because of their care-giving role.

The identification and management of risk for delirium is therefore imperative for safe and quality care for both patients and their family.

Partnering With Family Carers

Partnering with family carers can improve the care outcomes for older people who are hospitalised.

Family carers and friends are well placed to detect changes in patients’ cognition and behaviour. Close family members, in particular, have intimate knowledge about the person’s previous mental state and can identify subtle changes in their behaviour.

However, many carers of patients discharged from hospital with delirium receive little advice or ongoing support. Despite recent clinical standards recommending family carers be active participants in care, they’re often left out. This has been compounded by the COVID pandemic.

To address this shortfall, we have developed a model of care to support the integration of carers as partners in the prevention and management of delirium to improve health outcomes.

Using a web-based toolkit, we’re hoping to increase awareness and knowledge of delirium among carers of older adults in hospital who are at risk of delirium. It also aims to support the carer’s wellbeing.

The toolkit is currently being trialled and evaluated at Tweed Hospital and, if successful, could be rolled out to all hospitals.

Christina Aggar, Associate Professor of Nursing, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Genomics has helped identify a new strep A strain in Australia – and what has made it dangerous

Group A streptococci, also known as “strep A”, has been on the rise around the world with a new strain reported in the United Kingdom and Europe. This variant has been linked with surges of scarlet fever and a marked increase in life-threatening invasive strep A infections.

Now genomic research by our team of scientists has identified this new strain in the Australian community for the first time. In parallel, we have seen an increase in invasive strep A cases across New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria.

Strep A is a common bacteria carried by people primarily in their throat. It can cause mild illness including sore throat, scarlet fever (named for the red rash it causes) and impetigo (“school sores”). But it can also cause “invasive” disease, such as sepsis. Repeated strep A infections can lead to other serious conditions including acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.

We investigated the genetic composition of the new strep A strain called “M1UK” and zeroed in on what makes it different to the previous strain.

What We Know About Strep A

Strep A only infects humans, with around 10% of school-aged children carrying it. It causes more than half a million deaths worldwide per year.

We’ve known about the bacteria for over 100 years and it was a major cause of childhood death in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But it’s been less of a public health threat since antibiotic medications were developed to treat it. In the 1980s, one type of strep A strain called “M1” emerged as the major cause of invasive strep A infections in high-income settings.

Over the last decade, resurgence of scarlet fever strep A infections has been reported in the United Kingdom and China.

Invasive infection is rare. But when it occurs, the death rate can be as high as 20% of those infected.

What’s Different About This Strain?

The M1UK variant of strep A was first reported in the UK in 2019 and identified using genomics – the study of the DNA sequence to identify changes in the genetic makeup of an organism.

UK scientists identified that the M1UK variant expressed up to five times more of a specific strep A toxin than the previous M1 strain, but they weren’t sure how. This toxin, originally termed the “scarlet fever toxin”, is associated with the development of invasive strep A by short-circuiting the host’s immune system.

Our laboratory team went about trying to understand which changes in the bacteria led to this increased expression.

We looked at the genetic code of the strep A M1UK variant and compared it to previous ones. We found a number of mutations, one of which was located near the toxin gene.

Then we worked backwards to repair that change and see how it affected the amount of toxin expressed. In this way, we identified the mechanism of how M1UK strep A became toxin supercharged.

Will We See More Dangerous Strep A Strains?

Genomics helps us identify and track bacterial variants. Then scientists need to use that knowledge within a biological context to figure out how a strain is gaining competitive advantage to become dominant over a previous strain – as M1UK has in the UK.

It’s possible this new strain of strep A is better at transmitting from person to person, but we’ll need more research to know if this is the case.

Invasive Strep A Is Now A Notifiable Disease

Invasive strep A infection was added to Australia’s National Notifiable Diseases List in July 2021, paving the way for it to be formally recorded across states and territories. This means that detected invasive strep A cases get reported to a central registry so authorities can keep track of outbreaks and case numbers.

Our researchers will have access to a repository of national strep A strains. We will be piloting a national strep A genomic surveillance program within the AusPathoGen program, which will speed up our ability to identify and track emerging strep A variants.

We’ve seen how this type of genomic research has helped track COVID changes and guide public health response. By undertaking this pilot program with public health partners, we aim to build a national invasive strep A surveillance framework.

How Can People Protect Themselves?

Invasive strep A is still extremely rare, so there’s no need to panic – but we shouldn’t be complacent either.

Basic hygiene practices and staying away from other people when sick remain important for preventing spread.

Kids or the elderly are more likely to get invasive disease, so if you note symptoms such as high fever (especially with a skin rash), severe pain from an infected skin sore, and any difficulties with breathing then you should go to your local hospital’s emergency department or consult a GP immediately.

Antibiotics are highly effective at treating infection, provided they are available.

We also need to think about alternative ways of controlling infection. Australian scientists are at the forefront of efforts to develop a global strep A vaccine. 

Mark Davies, Laboratory Head, Doherty Institute, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia has a new cybersecurity agenda. Two key questions lie at its heart

The federal government is pursuing a new cybersecurity agenda in the wake of last year’s major cyber breaches with Optus and Medibank.

“For businesses these days, cybersecurity is as important as having a lock on the door”, said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in opening the government’s cybersecurity roundtable in Sydney on Monday. There, Minister for Cyber Security Claire O’Neil released a discussion paper that seeks to answer questions about the role the government should play in order to improve Australia’s cyber resilience.

The government will also create a National Office of Cyber Security, and a new role based in the Department of Home Affairs – Coordinator for Cyber Security.

O’Neil said the government was struggling to find appropriate responses to last year’s major hacks due to a lack of prior policy or regulation.

The Optus and Medibank breaches each affected around a third of the Australian population. Hackers leaked personal information including drivers licenses, passports and highly personal medical details.

In both cases, government intervention was necessary, such as by creating methods for people to replace drivers license ID numbers.

The discussion paper consists of 21 questions, and many focus on how government and industry can work together.

But two questions stand out as critically important.

1. Should The Government Ban Ransomware Payments?

Whether ransomware payments should be banned is a complicated question, and one that I’ve covered before.

In short, a blanket ban on all ransomware payments would be unlikely to stop cyber criminals from continuing their attacks. And the damage done to businesses and critical infrastructure could be severe. A legal ban from paying to recover their systems could mean small and medium businesses can’t recover.

O’Neil has previously stated she’s considering a ban on ransom payments. The discussion paper demonstrates a more thoughtful approach.

It suggests the possibility of a distinction between different types of ransomware payment bans. For example, whether the government should prohibit payment to keep stolen data secret, versus payment to unlock a company’s hacked systems. It also asks whether, instead of banning companies from paying ransom, we should instead ban insurance payouts to businesses who fall victim.

2. Should The Government Be Able To Commandeer Companies’ IT Systems?

The Security of Critical Infrastructure Act was introduced in 2018 in response to the growing threat of attacks against the nation’s most important systems. It was more recently expanded to include a total of 11 sectors from electrical grids and telecommunications, to education and data storage.

The act is specifically about securing the systems that our critical infrastructure run on.

But the discussion paper asks whether that should expand to include the personal data held on these systems, and to allow the Australian Signals Directorate to commandeer the IT systems of companies suffering from a hack.

While a seemingly small addition to the act, the inclusion of personal data and expanded Australian Signals Directorate powers could be reaching too far.

Specifically, it might include handing over citizens’ personal data held by the telecommunication and health sectors to the government.

What’s more, expansions to the act in 2021 and 2022 to include data storage means virtually any company could fall within its scope.

No specific details of how this potential change could work are included in the discussion paper, but it may be a step with severe consequences.

Anything Else I Should Know?

The discussion paper also calls for simplifying regulations as a priority.

Australia’s data laws are spread across a range of acts: the Privacy Act, the Critical Infrastructure Act, the Telecommunications Act, the National Health Act, and the list goes on. Having the requirements spread out across so many acts makes it difficult for businesses to understand their obligations when it comes to cybersecurity.

What’s more, the paper clearly outlines the need to prioritise cybersecurity workforce training, both in technical and non-technical roles.

Australia has an estimated skills shortage of 30,000 cybersecurity professionals.

The discussion paper has many suggestions that will likely be welcomed by industry, but clearly some questions raise concerns amongst industry professionals about government overreach.

At the moment, these are just questions. And industry, government and education providers will have a chance to respond to these questions over the next six weeks before decisions are finalised. Hopefully, they’ll be heard.

Jeffrey Foster, Associate Professor in Cyber Security Studies, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A ‘recently discovered’ whale feeding strategy has turned up in 2,000-year-old texts about fearsome sea monsters

In 2011, researchers observed a previously unknown feeding strategy in whales, now called tread-water feeding or trap-feeding. It was thought to be a new technique developed by specific whale communities.

Trap-feeding is one of several whale feeding strategies first recorded in recent decades, including lunge feeding, lobtail feeding and the dramatic bubble-net feeding, when whales create a fence of bubbles to herd krill or fish together.

In trap-feeding, whales lie at the surface of the water with their mouths open. This allows shelter-seeking prey species such as herring and krill – which do not perceive a stationary object as a threat – to shoal into their open mouths. The whale then heaves its mouth closed, trapping hundreds of prey in a single gulp. This behaviour has been observed in the Gulf of Thailand in Bryde’s or Eden’s whales, and in Canada in humpback whales.

But it appears parallels to this behaviour were also documented in medieval literature, as we describe in a new paper published today in Marine Mammal Science.

The Hafgufa

There are striking parallels between trap-feeding and the hunting strategy of a monstrous sea creature called the “hafgufa”, described in medieval Scandinavian manuscripts.

The mid-13th-century Old Norse text Konungs Skuggsjá (the King’s Mirror) says of this creature:

‘when it goes to feed, it gives a great belch out of its throat, along with which comes a great deal of food. All sorts of nearby fish gather, both small and large, seeking there to acquire food and good sustenance. But the big fish keeps its mouth open for a time, no more or less wide than a large sound or fjord, and unknowing and unheeding, the fish rush in in their numbers. And when its belly and mouth are full, [the hafgufa] closes its mouth, thus catching and hiding inside it all the prey that had come seeking food‘ (M. Firth, Trans.).

Although this text exaggerates the creature’s size, the other details match trap-feeding surprisingly closely. Even the hafgufa’s belch may correspond to reports of rorqual whales expelling a surplus slurry of water and food particles as they filter and swallow their prey.

Interestingly, the creature is not described as a fantastical monster, but as a fish, a term often used interchangeably with whales in medieval sources.

Ancient Parallels

If these medieval Scandinavian texts really are describing trap-feeding, it demonstrates the technique is much older than previously thought. So, we examined other pre-modern descriptions of sea creatures looking for parallels.

Many of the texts had been adapted or translated directly from earlier texts, so it was impossible to know if the community which produced them had first-hand experience of trap-feeding. However, in some texts new accurate details had been added, suggesting an eye-witness connection.

The earliest of these, an ancient work on natural history called the Physiologus, was compiled in Egypt and dates back nearly two millennia.

How Did We Not Notice This Before?

But if trap-feeding was first recorded 2,000 years ago, why has it not been reported in modern times until 2011?

One possible explanation is that the devastating effect of historical whaling has caused whale numbers to remain much lower than they were in medieval and ancient times. North Atlantic humpback numbers are estimated to be only a fifth of their pre-industrial whaling levels.

Trap-feeding may be a response to higher population density. Just this month, new research on Australian humpbacks showed that whalesongs are becoming less frequent as populations recover from whaling and competition for mating becomes more intense.

The rise in whaling in the 17th and 18th centuries was accompanied by developments in technology and a corresponding prejudice against medieval society, which was increasingly seen as backwards, unscientific, and superstitious.

However, the most fantastical descriptions of the hafgufa are actually from 17th- and 18th-century writers, who conflated the creature with all kinds of other sea monsters, such as the kraken, resulting in a general confusion about the nature of this creature in modern times. One notable recent depiction of the hafgufa in the popular PlayStation game God of War Ragnarök even depicts it as a giant jellyfish!

In conducting our research, we spoke to marine biologists who assumed it would simply be impossible to determine how long whales had been trap-feeding. So, this multidisciplinary research provides evidence from an unexpected quarter, and may highlight new avenues for researching our marine past.

It also shows that although medieval and ancient people did not have modern scientific frameworks to interpret the natural world, their observations can contain unique evidence of natural phenomena and may be more accurate than we realise.

John McCarthy, ARC DECRA Fellow, Flinders University; Erin Sebo, Associate Professor in Medieval Literature and Language, Flinders University, and Matthew Firth, Associate lecturer, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Albanese government to hike tax on earnings from big super balances – but not until 2025-26

The tax rate on earnings from superannuation balances above $3 million will double to 30% from 2025-26.

The pre-budget decision – approved by the government’s expenditure review committee on Monday and ticked by the cabinet on Tuesday morning – cuts off what was becoming a potentially damaging debate for the government.

The timing of its implementation – not until the next parliamentary term – also seeks to neutralise the “broken promise” argument. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said before the 2022 election that Labor had no intention of changing superannuation arrangements.

“No superannuation tax change proposed by the government will take effect this term of parliament,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on Tuesday.

But the government will introduce legislation for the measure “as soon as practicable”.

The decision was announced by Albanese and Chalmers at a news conference.

At present earnings from superannuation in the accumulation phase are taxed at up to 15%.

The Treasury’s statement of “tax expenditures”, also released on Tuesday, shows super tax breaks make up a third of the more than $150 billion annual total of the top ten tax expenditures.

Chalmers pointed out the majority of the about $50 billion in super tax breaks go to high income earners.

The tax change will bring $900 million over the forward estimates, $2.3 billion in its first full year, and $3.2 billion over five years.

What the government terms “a modest adjustment” is not retrospective – it applies to future earnings.

The government said the change would only affect 0.5% of those with superannuation accounts – some 80,000 people. These people will continue to have the current 15% rate on earnings from the $3 million below the threshold. The change does not limit the size of account balances.

Chalmers said the threshold would not be indexed, meaning that in time, more super accounts would be drawn into paying the 30% rate.

The treasurer said the measure was to improve “the structural position of the budget” – it was not about using the money for another purpose.

Chalmers said the “Tax Expenditures and Insights Statement” showed more than 55% of the benefit of superannuation tax breaks on earnings went “to the top 20% of income earners, with 39% going to the top 10% of income earners”.

A “tax expenditure” is where certain taxpayers or activities receive special treatment. They include, for example, concessional rates, discounts, exemptions and rebates.

The statement is required under the Charter of Budget Honesty, which dates from the days of then treasurer Peter Costello.

The latest statement includes a distributional analysis of large tax expenditures which shows a breakdown by income, gender and age.

In 2019-20 91% of the benefit of the concessional tax on superannuation contributions went to people with above median income, and 30% to those in the top income decile, the statement said.

“People in higher taxable income deciles receive a larger share of the benefit due to making larger contributions and paying higher marginal rates of tax, which makes the flat 15% rate of tax on superannuation contributions more concessional.”

Men received an average benefit of $1950; women an average benefit of $1390. This reflected men on average having higher incomes, making larger contributions, and facing higher income tax rates.

People with above median income received 82% of the benefit from the concessional tax on superannuation earnings; those in the top income decile received 39%. Men received an average benefit of $1100, and women $750.

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said the super decision broke a promise. “This is the Labor party that says one thing before an election and does something very different afterwards,” he said.

“When the Labor party runs out of money, it comes after yours.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.