Environment

Total methane emissions from both dairy and meat cattle represent 14.5% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. To mitigate climate change, it is necessary to create solutions to reduce methane emissions from cattle. For long-term solutions, scientists are focusing on increasing feed and production efficiency via genetic selection, as producing the same amount of milk or meat from a smaller herd of cattle will reduce methane emissions. In the short term, there has been a recent surge of studies exploring dietary supplements that could reduce the emissions of cattle in existing commercial farms. This article will primarily focus on the emissions produced by dairy cattle, including in vitro experiments and in vivo feeding trials.

Maddie is a PhD candidate in her 5th year working with Dr. Rachael Bay. Maddie uses genomics, transcriptomics, and developmental biology techniques to investigate the evolutionary implications of urban stressors on marine invertebrates, using Pacific Purple Sea Urchins as her model organism.

As the Anthropocene extinction crisis unfolds, effective monitoring of what biodiversity we have left is increasingly imperative. Emerging as an unlikely ally is sound, which, with the help of new technological advances, we can listen to gain clues about the ecology of wildlife with minimal disturbance to the environment. This feature explores the world of this new art of listening–passive acoustics– and how it could revolutionize ecology and conservation.

The recent deaths of large groups of vultures in the 2020s via anthropogenic toxins have sparked concern and highlighted the need for urgent action to protect one of the most endangered avian groups in the world. Understanding the underlying reasons why vulture poisonings occur and how the decline of vultures impacts wildlife and human communities helps inform what steps we can take to protect and restore their populations. One of the most well-documented vulture declines is that of the South Asian vulture population in 2012, which primarily impacted three Old-World species of vulture endemic to the region. Understanding the South Asian vulture population collapse and the subsequent conservation efforts can help prevent the same from happening to other vulture populations around the world.

Over 100 million hatchery fish, in the US alone, are used to compensate for dwindling wild salmon populations. However, hatchery-rearing techniques result in physical abnormalities such as abnormal mineralogy of otoliths, which aid in fish balance, orientation and hearing. This review will assess the proposed causes of such conditions and discuss their impacts on hatchery salmonid health and salmonid research.

Phytopthora ramorum, more commonly known as Sudden Oak Death, is a fungal-like pathogen that affects over 130 botanical species globally. The establishment of P. ramorum in native forest ecosystems raises concerns as it creates a global cascade of ecological impacts, affecting botanical reproduction in nurseries, globally conserved gardens, and food webs across forested ecosystems. This review will examine P. ramorum’s transmission and genetic adaptability, as well as treatment strategies against both P. ramorum and its host species.

In schools across the United States, teachers are teaching subjects such as arithmetics, the Revolutionary War, Shakespeare’s plays, and, more recently, climate change. However, not all teachers teach climate change, and the ones who do may be teaching it wrong.

In this age of reinvigorated populism, it is easy to forget that with the ever-expanding population of humans that exist across the planet, we face more than a handful of problems that threaten the longevity of our species. Due to climate change, sea levels have risen and the oceans are warming. Around the world, our seas have been forced into a state of acidification due to ...