Monthly Archives: March 2022

Humans reshape the environments where they live, with cities being among the most profoundly transformed environments on Earth. New research now shows that these urban environments are altering the way life evolves.

A ground-breaking study led by evolutionary biologists at U of T Mississauga (UTM) examines whether parallel evolution is occurring in cities all over the world. In findings published in the journalScience, theGlobal Urban Evolution Project (GLUE)analyzed data collected by 287 scientists in 160 cities in 26 countries, who sampled the white clover plant in their cities and nearby rural areas.

What they found is the clearest evidence yet that humans in general, and cities specifically, are a dominant force driving the evolution of life globally. From Toronto to Tokyo, Melbourne to Munich, white clover is frequently evolving in direct response to environmental changes taking place in urban settings.

Weve long known that weve changed cities in pretty profound ways and weve dramatically altered the environment and ecosystems, says UTM biology PhD student and study co-leadJames Santangelo. But we just showed this happens, often in similar ways, on a global scale.

The GLUE study illustrates that the environmental conditions in cities tend to be more similar to each other than to nearby rural habitats. In that sense, downtown Toronto is more comparable to downtown Tokyo in many ways than it is to surrounding farmland and forests outside of the city.

Not only were researchers able to observe global adaptation to cities, they identified the genetic basis of that adaptation and the environmental drivers of evolution. White clover produces hydrogen cyanide as both a defense mechanism against herbivores and to increase its tolerance to water stress, and GLUE found that clover growing in cities typically produce less of it than clover in neighbouring rural areas due to repeated adaptation to urban environments.

It is the changes in the presence of herbivores and water stress in cities that is pushing white clover to adapt differently than their rural counterparts.

That finding holds true for cities across various climates, and the implications reach far beyond the humble clover plant.

This study is a model to understand how humans change the evolution of life around us. Cities are where people live, and this is the most compelling evidence we have that we are altering the evolution of life in them. Beyond ecologists and evolutionary biologists, this is going to be important for society, says Rob Ness, an assistant professor of biology at UTM who co-led the project with Professor Marc Johnson and their PhD student Santangelo.

GLUE examined white clover because it is one of the few organisms present in almost every city on Earth, providing a tool to understand how urban environments influence evolution.

Now that we know humans are driving evolution in cities across the planet, that information can be used to start developing strategies to better conserve rare species and allow them to adapt to urban environments, says Johnson. It can also help us better understand how to prevent unwanted pests and diseases from adapting to human environments.

For GLUE, this publication is just the beginning. Using the same techniques, collaborators collected more than 110,000 clover samples from 160 cities and nearby rural areas and have sequenced more than 2,500 clover genomes. It has created a massive dataset that will be studied for years to come.

And this unprecedented global collaboration began with a single Tweet.

Nearly everyone we asked to collaborate said yes and that was kind of remarkable, because we were asking people to take on a lot of work, says Johnson, who co-ordinated the more than 280 other researchers who participated in the study. Our collaborators recognized the importance of this project. There has never been a field study of evolution of this scale, or a global study of how urbanization influences evolution. It would have been impossible to do this without our global set of collaborators.

Johnson also calls the project a model for inclusive science. The team was equally split between women and men and included not just established researchers, but also students at all levels and from all inhabited continents across the world.

Here is the original post:

New, Clearest Evidence Yet That Humans Are A Dominant Force Driving Evolution - Eurasia Review

In Australia, poisonous cane toads have become their own worst enemies.

For decades, scientists have been witnessing cane toad tadpoles devouring their younger kin in the puddles and ponds they share. The cause of the cannibalistic behavior has been a mystery, until now.

A new study, published this month in the journal Ecology and Evolution, found that cane toad tadpoles in Australia develop an insatiable appetite when theyre exposed to a toxin found in cane toad eggs, the same toxin that makes the toads poisonous.

Cane toads, which are native to South America and Central America, were introduced to Australia in 1935 by scientists who hoped they would bring down the number of cane beetles, which were causing problems for Australias sugar cane farmers. With ample prey and no predators able to withstand their poison, the toads quickly proliferated to number in the tens of millions, becoming an invasive pest that has squeezed native amphibians out of habitats in Australia.

But something changed as they settled into their Australian homes. Such cannibalism among cane toads had not been observed in the toads native range. It started to be observed across Australia only in recent decades, suggesting that this behavior evolved rapidly in the Australian population.

This is a unique case where evolution is extremely rapid and we can see it happening in real time, said Jayna DeVore, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney and an author of the study.

Just over a decade ago, scientists in Australia, including Michael Crossland, a research fellow at the University of Sydney who is also an author of the study, were studying the impacts of cane toads on native frogs when they discovered that cane toad tadpoles had a fierce appetite for hatching cane toad eggs, flocking to traps baited with them even when offered other kinds of amphibian eggs.

This led Dr. Crossland to conduct a series of experiments to better understand this phenomenon. Last year, he and his colleague Richard Shine, a biologist at Macquarie University, proved that cane toad tadpoles are attracted to chemical compounds associated with cane toad eggs and hatchlings. These eggs are chemically similar to those of other amphibians, but there is one important difference: They contain bufadienolide toxins, the same chemical that makes cane toads poisonous and protects them from predators. The researchers suspected that it was this chemical that was triggering the tadpoles to feed on the younger members of their species.

In their latest study, the researchers bred wild cane toads, put their tadpoles in tanks with different amounts of the bufadienolide toxin in the water, and presented them with cane toad eggs as well as the eggs of Australian frog species. The tadpoles that were not exposed to the bufadienolide toxin barely nibbled their toad and frog eggs. However, the tadpoles that had been exposed to the bufadienolide toxin consumed both the native frog eggs and the eggs of their own kind with gusto.

The researchers also offered the tadpoles eggs as they were hatching. They found that the hatching process caused the tadpoles to exhibit the same cannibalistic hunger as when the bufadienolide toxin was added to their water. That suggests the toxins within the eggs are released into the water when the hatchlings emerge from them.

Weve known for a while that theyre highly cannibalistic, but this explains the mechanism that seemed to be driving that cannibalism, said Matthew Greenlees, a cane toad expert and postdoctoral researcher at Monash University who was not involved with the study.

The studys authors argue that cane toads in Australia most likely evolved this response to their own toxins to reduce the number of other cane toads in their habitat.

Its well known that toad tadpoles in Australia compete very strongly with each other, Dr. Crossland said. The density of cane toads in Australia is so much greater than it is in their native range and under high-density conditions, cannibalism is likely to evolve. Theyre basically working out a way to eliminate future competitors.

The fact that cane toads have been able to evolve this cannibalistic behavior in such a short time is unbelievable, Dr. Crossland said. The toads only got to Australia in 1935. Its evolution in fast motion.

Invasive species tend to evolve faster than native species, in part because they multiply rapidly. This allows scientists to watch evolution unfold over the course of decades, as opposed to centuries or millenniums.

The researchers believe that cane toads in Australia are not done evolving. For their next study, they plan to examine how cane toad hatchlings are evolving to defend themselves against their cannibalistic elders. Its really an arms race between the increasingly cannibalistic tadpoles and the hatchlings, said Dr. DeVore.

Read more:

Cannibalistic Toads Reveal Evolution in Fast Motion, Study Finds - The New York Times

Pets are smarter than some people give them credit for, and many of their habits that seem so endearing can come with intentions more different than we realize. When your cat curls up on the bed covers or rubs up against your legs, for example, its seen as a display of love and affectionas opposed to a means of marking you with its scent. Or when your dog follows you around the house, you may take it as a sign of loyalty, though it is as equally possible that it's bored or anxious. Or maybe your pooch just wants a treat.

Like all species, domesticated or otherwise, household pets are subject to evolutionary development. While there is still plenty we dont know about evolutionary biology, strides have been made in the research and understanding of pet behavior.

Take Raymond Coppinger, for example. The biology professor devoted his entire career to the study of canine behavior. He bred and raced sled dogs and becamealong with his scientist, wife Lornaa renowned expert in the behavior of sheepdogs. Coppinger published several books, among them Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution, which made an impact in the world of animal behavioral research. The bookposited the notion that present-day domesticated dogs evolved not from cross-breeding with wolf pupswhich had been a widely accepted theorybut rather from self-domestication. This domestication resulted from scavenging off humans and adapting to the ever-growing human population.

More recently, there is John Bradshaw, author of Cat Sense, who believes there is no evidencethe average household cat has evolved much from its ancient ancestry. Yet, Bradshaw concedes the adaptive behaviors in cats can be tagged to their interactions with humans.

When pets furrow their brows at you or look guilty for doing something they shouldnt have, it may look cute and sweet, but in actuality, these are evolutionarily developed behaviors pets have formed to adapt to living with humans. These traits arise often in response to a humans own behavior or as a means for pets to get what they want, such as more food in their bowl or receiving more attention. These behaviors are, in essence, survival instincts and communication tools pets have picked up after living with humans for thousands of years.

To gain a little perspective on certain common pet behaviors, Native Pet compiled a list of scientific insights from journals and news reports. Keep reading for a look at howand whyour pets behave the way they do.

See original here:

Breakthrough discoveries in the evolutionary biology and behavior of pets - Wetumpka Herald

What separates the industrys most successful advisory firms from all the others? A key teaching from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey comes to mind.

Covey observes that we begin life dependent on our families and communities for food, shelter, protection, and everything else until we are able to take care of ourselves. But once we have our independence, we often get stuck. We, quite naturally, fight to keep our independence when it is threatened. Yet, counterintuitively, those of us who achieve our fullest potential in life do soby evolvingbeyond independence. We learn to embrace interdependence to become something greater.

Many independent registered investment advisors, large and smalland some hybrid firmshave also evolved into a state of interdependence, one in which they recognize that they can be their best only by proactively embracing their place in a broader ecosystem. But not all independent advisory firms can or are willing to make this evolution, hence the fiercely independent advisory firm, a term that has become a celebrated clich in our industry. Fiercely independent firms reactively engage with the broader ecosystem only as necessary and only as a means to address obvious gaps in their core capabilities.

Before I go any further, let me acknowledge that even the most interdependent firms will, and should, preserve many of the traits of their independence. Independent advisory firms do and should report solely to their clients and themselves and not to third-party shareholders that control how the firm is operated on a daily basis. Independence in this fundamental sense is a good thingas long as it does not preclude interdependence.

So, with that point made, lets see how interdependent firms differ from their fiercely independent peers.

Clients. Interdependent firms understand that they rely on their clients just as much as their clients rely on them. They are willing and eager to adapt and innovate to serve their clients changing needs and will humbly take great measures to satisfy and retain those clients. They will, for instance, readily move out of their comfort zone by adding, or contracting for, less traditional tax, bill-pay, or cash-management services clients may need or request.

Fiercely independent firms, by contrast,believe that they always know best and that it is their clients who need to adapt to the firms service model and capabilitieswhich have sometimes become stagnant, unbeknownst to firm leaders. Obvious examples are firms that are unwilling even to consider adding new services or evolving their investment approach to incorporate broader asset classes, investment vehicles, or investment themes like sustainable investing. Clients who cannot conform are seen as not getting it and are easily discardedoften on the false assumption that they are a lost cause.

Employees. Interdependent firms see each employee as a unique and important contributor to the team, know workers have choices about where and how to pursue their career and understand that their firm is only as good as their team members make it. They provide employees with attractive compensation and benefits, along with clear career paths, training and education, transparency about firm plans and results, and ample opportunities to share their perspectives and ideas.

In the mindset of a fiercely independent firm, just about everyone is replaceable and employees should consider themselves lucky to work for them. These firms also tend to view a select group of employees as essential and all others as non-essential and their leaders may get carried away using pronouns such as my and mine as opposed to our and ours.

Communities. In his TED talk, How to build a business that lasts 100 years, Martin Reeves of BCG noted that enduring companies see themselves as embedded within a larger community. They know they must work in harmony with that community to ensure their own survival. This construct lends itself well to advisory firms. A firms communities are a source not only of clients, employees, and business partners but also of culture, support, and even purpose.

Fiercely independent firms struggle with the notion that they may needtheir communities. And, unlike their interdependent peers, do not see their communities as stakeholders. This belief system may have loosely worked in the past, but in the age of instantaneous information flows and employees and clients focused not only on profit but also on people and planet, these firms inevitably will confront the same pressures as todays public companies already face in this regard.

Peers. Interdependent firms do not see their peers myopically as competitors but rather as potential allies. They join study groups, attend industry conferences and proactively seek out reciprocal relationships. They are inspired by their peers successes and understand that most colleague failures are harmful to the entire industry. Interdependent firms also have a special perspective on industry consolidation. They pursue mergers not to be larger but to be better. They see strategic transactions as an efficient means to add new ideas, capabilities, and team members, as well as other synergies that extend beyond mere size, ego and dollars. They believe that mergers will lead to long-term sustainability, a status that organic activity alone may not activate because it is typically too insular.

Fiercely independent firms that do not share or communicate well with others become inward-looking and staleusually without any awareness of having achieved that state. If they pursue any form of consolidation, they do so primarily to solve a short-term problem, make money, assuage egos, or avoid a forced sale in the future.

Partners. Interdependent firms avoid thinking of custodians, technology providers, and other business partners as mere vendors. They understand that their own success will be enhanced by building a network of strong, symbiotic third-party relationships. Interdependent firms even see regulators as allies. They know that a healthy ecosystem, in which all firms play by the same rules and in which clients feel the greatest confidence and security, is good for everyone.

Fiercely independent firms limit their relationships with third parties and see vendors as working for, not with, them. They tend to see regulators as obstacles who dont understand how business is done.

Gandhi said, Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. In a sense, the same is true for independent advisory firms. Their independence is an important differentiator, but the best firms also embrace interdependence as the most powerful differentiator of all.

Michael Nathanson is chair and CEO of The Colony Group. He hosts the Seeking The Extraordinary podcast, which aims to identify, understand, and explore the undiscovered world of the extraordinary. He is a co-author of the book Personal Financial Planning for Executives and Entrepreneurs: The Path to Financial Peace of Mind. He is dedicated to bringing meaning and joy to the lives of The Colony Groups clients and team members by fostering a culture that values lifelong learning, cultivates innovation and offers opportunities to live lives full of passion and purpose.

Read more:

The Interdependent RIA: The Next Stage of Advisory Evolution - Barron's

CONWAY,Ark. (March 18, 2022)New research now shows that urban environments arealtering the way life evolvesand a Hendrix College faculty member, retiredfaculty member, and four recent alumni participated in the project.

AssistantProfessor of Biology Dr. Adam Schneider, Professor Emerita of Biology Dr. JoyceHardin, Sierra Hubbard 20, Savannah Draud 19, Tristian Wiles 21, and CaraleeShepard 20 are listed as co-authors of a report appearing in the journal Science, detailing the findings of astudy that revealed the clearest evidence yet that human activity influences theevolution of plant life in cities worldwide.

The urbanevolution study, led by evolutionary biologists at the University of TorontoMississauga, found evidence of parallel evolution in the white clover plantacross multiple locations around the world. The study analyzed data from 160cities and nearby rural areas in 26 countries.

Hereat Hendrix, the research group of six took part in gathering samples of whiteclover and recording their data through the GlobalUrban Evolution Project (GLUE).

Schneiderand Hardin recruited the four students to collect samples from Little Rock,Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee. The study found that clover evolution inurban areas worldwide had more in common than they did with the changes in ruralhabitats nearby those cities. For example, clover in downtown Memphis wouldhave more in common with clover in downtown Toronto than it would with cloverjust a few miles away in rural eastern Arkansas.

The studentstook the lead on designing transects, collecting samples, conducting theassays, and presenting our teams results at local research meetings, whileforwarding phenotype data and leaf samples for genotyping to the Lead Team,Schneider said.

Thestudents brought their own individual interests to the study.

I wasfascinated by questions related to how humankind has and continues to impactthe evolution of life on earth, Draud said. I could see how scientists canuse smaller study systems to chip away at answers to larger and more complexquestions in Biology. Working with other students with varying scientificinterests, as well as with an experienced researcher, helped me learn moreabout how to approach scientific questions from many different angles.

Havingthis research experience as an undergraduate and learning about the publicationprocess helped prepare me for a successful graduate career in plant ecology andevolution, said Hubbard, now in graduate school at Oklahoma State University.

Allfour of the Hendrix students who contributed to GLUE are now in Ph.D. programs,in diverse subjects including cell biology, systematics, plant-fungiinteractions, and the urban ecology of native bee communities, Schneider said.And the data they gathered as undergraduates will be studied for years tocome, to better understand how life is evolving in response to human-engineeredlandscapes.

Schneideris now in the process of recruiting another cohort of students to participatein one of the follow-up studies that have been dubbed GLUE 2.0.

AboutHendrix College

Aprivate liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix College consistentlyearns recognition as one of the countrys leading liberal arts institutions,and is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Changethe Way You Think About Colleges. Its academic quality and rigor,innovation, and value have established Hendrix as a fixture in numerous collegeguides, lists, and rankings. Founded in 1876, Hendrix has been affiliated withthe United Methodist Church since 1884. To learn more, visit http://www.hendrix.edu.

Follow this link:

Hendrix Faculty, Alumni Co-Author Paper on Global Urban Evolution Following Participation in Study Spanning 26 Countries - Hendrix College

Earth can be a noisy place. Humans are especially efficient at filling the environment with sounds, from speech to music to heavy machinery. Plenty of other creatures contribute to the global soundscape as well: crickets trill, birds chirp, wolves howl, and whales sing their low, mournful-sounding songs. Its easy to take these sounds for granted nowadays. But for most of our planets history, they didnt exist.

For 3 billion years, life was nearly silent, its sounds confined to the tremors of cell walls and the eddies around simple animals, David George Haskell, a writer and professor of biology at the University of the South, writes in his latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolutions Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction. At first, sound on Earth was only of stone, water, lightning, and wind.

Haskell is no stranger to writing about the natural world. His first book, The Forest Unseen, is a record of the goings-on in a single square meter of old-growth forest in Tennessee, and was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction. He followed that with The Songs of Trees, which explores the webs of interconnections that shape the lives of 12 trees around the world. In Sounds Wild and Broken, Haskell turns his ear to the vibrating air around us to write a book that is equal parts meditative observation of nature and treatise on our responsibility to the planet.

I spoke with Haskell about the first animal sounds, humans impact on the worlds soundscape, and the looming crisis of what he calls a sensory extinction. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What did the ancient world sound like?

Earth was not silent. There were waves crashing on shores, geologic rumbles and bellows coming from deep down in the Earths belly, the sound of thunderstorms rolling in over the horizon, and softer sounds, like the sounds of rain and wind going through the leaves.

But if we could teleport back, there would be no singing insects, no birds, no frogs. It was a strange world familiar in some ways, but also deeply, deeply alien because this was a different planet than the one we live on now in terms of acoustics.

It was shocking to me, in researching this book, how long the time period was that Earth lacked any communicative sound the sound that evolved for the purpose of carrying a signal from one creature to another, usually one animal to another. It took hundreds of millions of years after even complex animals evolved for those first communicative sounds to evolve, as far as we know.

What were the first sounds made by organic life? And were they heard?

The very first sounds made by organic life were the hums and fizzes of bacteria and single-celled creatures. Theyre busy little creatures, chemically. All those reactions and shifts in the cell surface shape cause vibrations in the surroundings, and those vibrations actually stimulate the growth of other bacteria.

So they are sensitive to one another, but as far as anyone knows, theyre not communicating. No bacterium is singing to find a mate or to shout out warning signals.

From the start, life was making some sound. But the question of communicative sound is a different one. The first physical evidence dates to about 270 million years ago, to an insect that looks like a cricket. [The fossil was found in southern France.] The wing of this insect has a little ridge with a row of knobs on it. And there is no function for that ridge that we know of, other than making a sound. When the wings rub together, they make a little raspy sound in a way thats analogous to how modern crickets and katydids sing. This early fossil, named Permostridulus, has a much cruder device [than modern crickets]. But its recognizable as a singing device.

LISTEN: What a Permostridulus chorus might have sounded like

Why did this cricket-like creature decide to sing?

Intention is really hard to fossilize. What we can say is that modern insects make sounds partly to attract mates. Perhaps Permostridulus was doing the same and think of the advantage in doing that, because Permostridulus itself was just a few centimeters long. But if its sound is audible over, say, 10 to 20 meters, it has increased the presence of its body by about 10 or 20 million times in terms of area. It can be found by potential mates with much more accuracy and speed.

So a mating display is one possibility. The other is a defensive signal: If you pick up a lot of insects now, theyll give a little buzz or chirp that sounds weird and alarming and makes you want to drop it. Lab experiments have shown that mice and spiders and other creatures, when confronted with these alarm chirps, do indeed let go of the prey. Permostridulus may have made a sound to surprise predators and gain itself a means of escape.

That sort of implies that the animals around this creature could hear it.

I think one of the reasons that communicative sound took so long to evolve was that right from the get-go animals were sensitive to vibrations in the water or in the air. If you made a sound, you were at risk of becoming someone elses lunch, so the first singers had to be creatures that could get away quickly. Permostridulus probably had pretty good jumping legs; it certainly had wings that it could use to fly away.

On the vertebrate side, frogs were among the first creatures that made sounds, and they have powerful jumping legs. To this day, frogs are very vocal, but salamanders make almost no sound whatsoever even though theyre just as legit an amphibian as the frogs. Making a sound would be far, far more costly for them [because they cant jump away].

Your book draws a connection between flowers and sounds, which came as a surprise. How are the sonic world and the world of flowers linked?

The fossil and ecological evidence is pretty clear that the evolution of flowers, by about 100 million years ago, helped boost the diversity of sound. They did this in a few ways: first, they formed partnerships below-ground with bacteria that turned nitrogen into nutrients. That increased productivity, which then increased the amount of food and energy available up the food chain into the insects.

Even more important, though, is that flowers, by producing nectar and pollen, fruit, and lush foliage, provided habitat for bees, ants, butterflies, moths you name it. All the terrestrial insects were connecting to flowering plants, where pollinators and herbivores specialized on particular plant families and co-evolved with them.

Every time a new species evolves, theres a potential for innovation, and so as species split into two and four and eight, the potential for new sounds [and] ways of communication really took off. Flowering plants became a trigger for animal diversification in evolution that then led to more diverse sounds in the world.

As you write, though, there are two big exceptions to this relationship between flower and sound diversity.

One is that flowering plants are really not a thing in the oceans. As the continents fragmented and created inland seas and new seashores, and the oceans separated somewhat from one another, that created an awful lot of ecological diversity, which created new possibilities for flourishing and expanded biodiversity. When we drop a hydrophone [an underwater microphone] or a fishing net into the oceans, what comes up through sound or as dinner are the descendants of those creatures that really diversified 100 to 150 million years ago.

Another big exception is mammals. This is our own story the evolution of lactation and its effect on the human voice. Young animals had to suckle on this incredibly nutritious milk, which is an amazing way for mothers to pass on energy and nutrients instead of just giving them regurgitated food or letting [them] find their own food.

Suckling involves using jaw and throat muscles in new ways. The mammalian jaw and throat was transformed by the gift of milk. Evolution then got to work putting that to use to modify sound. When Im speaking, Im using muscles down in my throat and my tongue in the back of my mouth and my lips and my jaw and my hyoid [neck] bone. No reptile can do this because theyve got very slack, unsophisticated jaws compared to us. They do other things marvelously well, but speaking is not one of them.

You spend a significant portion of your book examining other ways we impact the soundscape, and you write about what you call a sensory extinction. What do you mean by that?

What makes life work is connections between species and individuals within them. We connect through the senses. And were pumping massive amounts of sound into some ecosystems that block the capability of animals to live. Theres a sensory crisis of just total overload.

Were setting off explosions in the oceans, through seismic exploration for oil, that are audible over hundreds of miles loud enough to kill things that are unlucky enough to be nearby, and drive away others. Around interstates or heavy industry in some cities, theres so much sound that insects and birds and frogs cant hear one another.

Human life also is extremely negatively affected. Noise isnt just an annoyance; it causes cardiovascular disease, prevents children from learning, and fragments neighborhoods. A sensory crisis is a real crisis causing measurable harm, and also intersects with some of these other problems.

You write that if theres a sonic hell, its in the ocean. Why not cities?

For some people in cities, there is a sonic hell. But the city is a paradoxical thing in that for humans, at least its sounds can also be a source of energy and vitality.

In the oceans, though, we are pumping the sound in through drilling and shipping and exploring with seismic guns, but were not suffering. We are the creatures creating the hellscape for others.

Ocean species are fully immersed in sound. Sound penetrates all of their tissues. They hear it all throughout themselves. Were immersing these beings who have no agency and no choice in the matter in an experience that is devastating to them.

In other words, sound can be both an indicator of a problem and also an issue in itself, especially for beings that are particularly sensitive to it.

It is a problem in itself, and the fact that it is an indicator is scientifically useful because you can then go measure sound.

One thing were learning is that alongside the crisis of too much noise is a crisis of silencing. In tropical forests, for example and we know this from the testimony of Indigenous peoples as well as through digital recording devices in the rainforest were losing the diversity of sounds of living beings from many of those ecosystems, partly through processes that are pretty obvious. When you cut down a rainforest and put a palm oil plantation in, or you turn a prairie in the Midwestern US into corn or wheat fields, you lose almost all species that were there before. When ecosystems change their acoustic signature over time, its probably because theyre losing some species.

Why should people be worried about that?

I think there are multiple levels for why we should care about the diversity of sound. To have a vital and just future on this planet, we need fully functioning forests, because forests are where medicine and food and fuel and soil and clean air and clean water come from. The same is true for prairies and healthy oceans. By listening to these habitats, we can ensure a better future for ourselves and for those who come after us.

Think of a piece of music. Out of silence comes a brief experience of narrative and form, beauty and connection. Thats what the narrative arc of the planet is doing: coming out of and going into silence, with a brief expression of beauty and form and narrative and connection and meaning in the middle. Theres no single composer, no solitary musical genius. Instead, there are billions of musical geniuses out there, all creating this beautiful anarchy of sound.

We should care for that reason as well. Its harder to encode that in a piece of policy legislation.

LISTEN: A meadow in Tennessee. [In the murmurs of cells and the voices of animals, we hear solar energy refracted into sound, Haskell writes in his book. We are acoustic conduits for plant-snared light as its escapes to air.]

What can we do to avoid the sensory extinction crisis?

We can become more attuned to the soundscape of our own worlds. Listen to our neighborhoods and ask, What is broken here, and what might I do individually or collectively to fix [it]? Theres nothing like sitting down with a room of people and hearing the diversity of voices and perspectives and trying to work through that as a lesson in the meanings of political engagement.

Because we live in a globalized world economy, we need to be in solidarity with people working in their local environments elsewhere. We need to engage at the regional, national, and international levels by voting. The soundscapes of the oceans and tropical forests, which are in a particular crisis now, are affected by our political structures.

We also need to consider the soundscapes of our cities. In general, mainstream environmental groups have neglected where most people live, and where a lot of other species live next to humans, which is in cities. The reorientation of the environmental movement toward environmental justice in cities is part of what we need to be working toward.

Audio courtesy of David George Haskell; more sounds from the book can be found on his website.

See the article here:

Animal sounds are a marvel of evolution. We cant afford to drown them out. - Vox.com