![]() For further information, please contact the cited source.Permafrost conditions in the Northeast Siberian Coastal Tundra have formed uncountable lakes, bogs, and hummocks, which are home to low-growing plants, mosses, and lichens adapted to cope with the endless cold. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. This article has been republished from the following materials. Geochemical landscapes as drivers of wildlife reproductive success: Insights from a high-Arctic ecosystem. Reference: Van Beest FM, Schmidt NM, Stewart L, et al. Next step would be to use the same approach to map out other areas in Europe, Floris M. Now we know a little more about how these elements are spread through the ecosystem and how they affect the animals. But you can use the approach in other areas. Not every animal needs the same amount of elements. The next step would be to study other animals and other areas with different chemical compositions in the ground. But, of course, it’s different for wild animals, Sophia V. They have given animals supplemental food for a long time and know some of the effects. But from veterinarians and zoos we do know something. We don’t know much about how this works in the wild. Hansson stress that other animals must be affected by the chemistry of the ground in a similar manner. When they migrate into the mountains and forage on heathlands, they have fewer calves, he says.Įven though the results only cover musk oxen in Greenland, both Floris M. We can see that the reproductive success of the musk oxen is higher when they stay in the valleys and eat grass. Normally the musk oxen prefer to stay in the valleys foraging on grass and dwarf willow. Typically contaminants such as lead and arsenic are more concentrated in the heathlands further up the mountains. Normally it would cause the reproductive organs to collapse, but there are still musk oxen present, so somehow they found a way to survive, he says. However, we did not find a causal effect here. In some areas we found arsenic and lead and we know that it can reduce the reproductive success of the musk oxen. The researchers also found areas where higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic and lead were present.Īnd that is not a good thing for the oxen, Floris M. Not all the areas in the tundra of southern Greenland where the musk oxen feed is filled with good chemicals. The data from 25 years of studying musk oxen were then paired with maps created from the chemical composition of vegetation and soil samples gathered at 50 different spots. Also, every summer a field crew of researchers perform visual counts of all the musk oxen they find in the area and make a note of how many adults, males, females and calves they see. Some of the animals have GPS-trackers on them, allowing the researchers to know where the animals go to forage. Luckily the musk oxen in Greenland have been studied closely for the last 25 years. And they needed to know the chemical composition of the ground and the plants. They needed to know which plants were abundant in the different areas. They needed to know the number of animals and how the population expanded or decreased over time. They needed to know where the musk oxen were at different times. So how did the researchers show how the chemistry of the ground affects the reproductive success of the musk oxen? ![]() Here, we’ve only mapped 25 square kilometers of Greenland, but much more of the arctic area could be mapped in a similar way, she says. It’s a truly interdisciplinary study, combining chemistry, geology and ecology, and I hope that the approach will be used in other areas as well. She hopes that this study is only the first in a long line of similar research projects mapping the chemical composition of the ground and the effect it has on animals. Thanks to technological improvements we can now detect even very low concentrations of such elements. Usually, studies tend to focus on the pollutants or the major elements like carbon and nitrogen, but here we look at the essential smaller components - trace elements such as copper and selenium – as well. From a geochemical perspective it’s interesting to look at essential and non-essential elements together. She’s also one of the researchers behind the study. Hansson, a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Toulouse, France. The study is the first time that the chemical composition of the ground has been coupled with the reproductive success in animals.īecause of better technology for measuring very low concentration of these elements, it’s now possible to do these kinds of studies, explains Sophia V. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |