Quirks and Quarks

Mar 29: Moving forests to save the butterflies, and more...

On this week's episode: Whale pee, fungal economics, shark sperm samples, and a solar system is born

Whale pee, fungal economics, shark sperm samples, and a solar system is born

View of a gray whale in the Pacific Ocean in Los Cabos, Baja California state, Mexico on February 21, 2024. (Photo by ALFREDO ESTRELLA / AFP) (Photo by ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty Images)
A gray whale in the Pacific Ocean in Los Cabos, Mexico. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty Images))

On this week's episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald:

One whale's waste is an ocean organism's treasure

The nutrients in the ocean are not evenly distributed. Resources tend to be rich around coastlines and near the poles, and are often poorer in the open ocean and the tropics. A new study has explored how urine from migrating baleen whales is a significant way that nitrogen and other nutrients are circulated in the oceans. Joe Roman is a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont. He led the research published in the journal Nature Communications. He is the author of Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make our World.


The underground economy: Fungi and plants trade have a network under our feet

Scientists have used a custom robot to track the growth of a complex underground supply-chain network that forms between more than 80 per cent of the plant species on Earth and symbiotic fungus. This allowed them to trace the flow of carbon and nutrients across this network,  that draws about 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the soil each year. Toby Kiers, from Vrije University in Amsterdam and the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks led the work, published in the journal Nature.  

Tiny thread-like filaments branch off from each other to create an intricate web-like network.
A new study has revealed how plants and fungi construct networks that operate as hyper-efficient ‘supply chains,’ moving billions of tons of CO2 underground. (Loreto Oyarte Gálvez/VU Amsterdam/AMOLF)
Researchers capture wild sharks to get sperm samples for captive breeding

In a world-first, a team of marine biologists and veterinarians collected semen from endangered wildsharks in an effort to maintain a population of genetically healthy sharks. Christine Dudgeon, from the University of Queensland and the Sunshine Coast and the Biopixel Oceans Foundation, used some of that sperm to artificially inseminate captive females. 

Three people in scuba diving gear hold a shark that's upside down where two are holding the shark by its fins and the other is doing something with its posterior end.
Scientists put wild male leopard sharks off the coast of Australia into a trance-like state called tonic immobility so they can collect their semen for rewilding conservation efforts. (Mark Erdmann/ReShark)
Watching planets form in a baby solar system

370 light years away, around a newborn star only five million years old, two planets are forming from the disk of gas and dust still orbiting around the star. Canadian researchers are using instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope to observe this process and understand how the nascent planets are competing with the star for material as they grow. Dori Blakely, a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, was the lead researcher on this article published in The Astronomical Journal. 

A multi-wavelength view of the PDS 70 system reveals the dynamic interplay between its forming planets (PDS 70 b & c) and their surroundings. The red-yellow glow, based on JWST model data, reveals the growing planets and light scattered off tiny dust grains on the surface of the disk. These dust grains are so small they scatter light mostly forward, which is why we can’t see the far side of the disk. The faint blue ring, captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), highlights cooler emission from larger dust grains located throughout the disk. At the heart of the system is the hidden central star, while dashed circles mark the predicted locations of the planets based on earlier, ground-based observations. Credit: JWST/ ALMA / Dori Blakely (University of Victoria/NRC)
A multi-wavelength view of the PDS 70 system reveals the dynamic interplay between its forming planets (PDS 70 b & c) and their surroundings. The red-yellow glow reveals the growing planets. The faint blue ring highlights cooler emission from larger dust grains located throughout the disk. At the heart of the system is the hidden central star. (JWST/ALMA/Blakely/University of Victoria/NRC)
Butterfly populations are declining. Meet the people moving a forest to save them.

A new study is bringing hard data to help us understand how butterfly numbers have declined steeply in recent years, due to the combination of habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide exposure. The research, co-led by Elise Zipkin, found that overall, across the United States, butterfly numbers are down 22 per cent over the past 20 years. The research was published in the journal Science.

A different group of scientists is hoping to fix at least one of these problems for one species, by moving an entire forest in Mexico. The sacred fir trees, where monarch butterflies spend their winters, are struggling under climate change. Recently a team of researchers planted a thousand sacred fir trees at a new location at higher elevations to kickstart a new, future-proof forest for the butterflies to overwinter. After a few years, the researchers report the trees are doing well, in a recent paper published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

Quirks producer Amanda Buckiewicz spoke to Cuauhtémoc Saénz Romero, a forest geneticist at the University of Michoacán in Mexico, and Greg O'Neill, a climate change adaptation scientist with the BC Provincial Government in the Ministry of Forests.

A branch of a fir tree, densely packed with orange and black monarch butterflies.
Monarch butterflies gathering on a Sacred Fir tree in Mexico. Millions of butterflies spend the winter months clustered together on these trees for protection from extreme weather. (MARIO VAZQUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)