aprisby's blog

Solutions to prevent further deforestation include several national parks including Virunga in the eastern DRC, wildlife reserves such as the Okapi Reserve in the transitional forest of northern DRC, and other heritage sites located in the Sangha Trinational area of Cameroon, Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic. Other reserves are using mixed landscapes and biosphere programs to include nature conservation and sustainable human use, and to provide additional revenue for local communities. Also researchers are working conserve mountain gorilla landscapes in the montane forests of the eastern Congo basin, through ecotourism, community projects, and park management. One of the major programs combating deforestation is the UN-REDD Program (where developed countries, pay forest rich developing countries for conserving their forests and manage forests more sustainably). Most conservation efforts are enforced by militant forces. Guards with guns stop people from entering the forests and restrict hunting.

The Congo basin is home to the second largest rainforest covering over 500 million acres, and is one of the most important wilderness areas left on earth. Some of the specific species which are endangered as a result of deforestation, exploitation of lumber, illegal poaching and trade include forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas which inhabit the forests. Logging roads (built for easier transportation of goods) have shown to increase bushmeat hunting by improving access for hunters, and by increasing local demand and facilitating wildlife trade out of local villages. And when the population of species decrease, the plant population struggles for species of trees that rely on animals to move their seeds around in order to maintain a stable population. More than 60 percent of Africa’s forest elephants have been killed in the past decade due to the ivory trade.

As a Biology major I am required to take an introductory statistics course during my undergraduate career. Personally I took AP Statistics senior year of high school and was able to test out of introductory statistics, so have not taken statistics for three years. Although I do not remember everything from statistics, I do recall main concepts that I have been able to apply to biology courses. One main takeaway from statistics I have been able to apply daily is creating and interpreting graphs. In statistics I grew in my skills in building and studying axes and graphical components. We learned how to create line graphs, bar graph, histograms, box plots, and more. We also learned how to create data sets and lists. Using these graphs and data sets we were able to compare mathematical data, and find correlations between different factors. We also learned that “correlation does not imply causation” when comparing data. In my current ecology course, we interpret data sets and graphs everyday, and apply these graphs to patterns in population dynamics and interactions between species.

    Aside from conceptual skills, I have been able to apply mathematical skills including chi square analysis and standard deviation. Chi square test for independence is used to determine if there is a significant association between two variables in biology. We used this in my genetics course to accept or reject hypotheses regarding gene linkage. Standard deviation is used to tell how measurements for a group are spread out from the average. We used this concept in basic math courses and calculus, as well as in our biology lab to see how far our observational results differed from the expected values.

Forests are the most important natural resource in the world and they cannot be underestimated. They provide the air that we breathe to the habitats of other species. The Congo which is home to the second largest rainforest in the world is facing major issues with deforestation and illegal logging. Unfortunately, these harvesting practices have led to the endangerment and close endangerment of several species. Illegal logging is harmful to biodiversity and forest dependent peoples, as it undermines governance, opens forest areas up to new human encroachment, facilitates violent conflict, and increases loss in tax revenues from logging. Causes for deforestation in the Congo rainforest include agriculture, clearing for charcoal and woodfuel, urban expansion, mining, and illegal harvesting. Woodfuel specifically is approximated to be responsible for about 90 percent of wood removals from African forests, as it is a vital resource used for home cooking. Studies have also shown that about 60 million people in the Congo Basin rely on timber exploitation as a way to make money. Despite its natural riches, the DRC is one of the world’s poorest countries, where most people are subsistence farmers with little access to health care, family planning, paid employment or education beyond primary school. The only form of wealth most of Congo’s rural residents have is their natural capital: their forest, lands and wildlife.

The first multi-panel scientific figure, Figure 1, was the figure in which the Methods section was based on. The second multi-panel scientific figure, Figure 2, was constructed using the Methods section provided. Both figures were constructed using Microsoft Word. Additionally both figures portray the parasitic interaction between the English Ivy (Hendera helix) and the Sweet Olive tree (Osmanthus fragrans) found inside the Durfee Conservatory located on the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Four main observational differences were observed between Figure 1 and Figure 2. First, Figure 2 is significantly darker in color than the original figure. Although they both contain a yellow-tinted background, the replicate Figure 2 displays a dark yellow, orange color. In contrast, I observed a light, yellow-beige color in Figure 1.

The photographs in Figure 2 have a different tone of natural light shining on the plants, the light is more apparent and golden, casting shadows. In Figure 1, the natural lighting in the photographs display a more bright, constant lighting throughout the photos without casting any shadows. Additionally in Figure 2 the arrows used on the photo “parasitism” are both angled horizontally, pointing towards the left direction. In contrast, in Figure 1 in the “parasitism” photo, the two arrows are facing opposite directions.The blue arrow is pointing in the right direction and the red arrow is pointing in the left direction. The arrows in Figure 1 have a shorter width than the arrows in Figure 2. Finally in Figure 1 the photographs size ~3.9” in height by a ~3.1” width, however in Figure 2, the size of the photographs are significantly less than this size range.

The two multi-panel scientific figures created by the original student and the second student showed several observational differences. Upon initial observation, the replicate figure is significantly darker in color than the original figure. Although they both display a yellow-tinted background color, the replicate figure has a dark yellow-orange color, while the original figure has a light, yellow-beige color background. Similarly, both figures contain the three essential images of the interaction between the Sweet Olive tree and the English Ivy. The first photo is taken of the English Ivy strand, the second of the Sweet Olive tree, and the third photo captures both species interacting with one another from a farther distance. All three photos of the replicate figure capture nearly-identical images of the original figure. However, in the replicate photos, the sun appears to be setting, as the sun is setting at a different angle than in the original photos. Additionally, the arrows used on the third photo to signify the two species from the replicate photo are both pointing towards the left direction. To contrast, in the original photo the blue arrow is pointing in the right direction and the red arrow is pointing in the left direction. The text above the actual photos is identical in both figures. However the photos in the replicate figure appear to be significantly smaller in comparison to the original figure.

In Spring 2019, as part of the Writing in Biology course at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I conducted a project in which I created a methods section for the construction of a multi-panel scientific figure, using photographs taken of an interspecific interaction involving parasitism. These methods were followed by a second student, and the observational differences between the original scientific figure and the replicated figure were recorded and compared. The purpose of this project was to observe differences in the two scientific multi-panel figures and identify the factors that caused them. I created a methods section that aimed to hold validity and  provide instruction for an experiment that could be easily replicated, while also investigating factors to control and distinguishing between observational differences and inferences. The controlled factors in this experiment were the type of software used to create the figures, time of the day, and seasonality.

Pursuing de-extinction will limit the time and resources that we could be spending on protecting current endangered species. As conservationists it would be our responsibility to handle the consequences of the released de-extinct species being integrated into the biosystems under conservation protection. The preservation of wildlife itself is composed primarily of non-profit organizations, meaning that the majority of funding comes from private donors who choose to donate to the cause. We must use these funds resourcefully to gain the best possible results for the ecosystems at stake since we are relying upon the non-hunting profit. If the wildlife conservation world already receives little financial backing, so does it truly make sense to divert the majority of necessary funding towards resurrecting species that have already past their time? De-extinction is extremely resource-intensive as it would require the use of technologies that have only recently been introduced and developed, not to mention additional conservation funds to monitor released species as well as protect their native environments. Managing healthy populations and rebuilding damaged ecosystems all require heavy funding. Pappas explains that “in almost every case, reviving an extinct species and asking the government to pay to conserve it would require deprioritizing a greater number of still-living species, the researchers found. The money used to conserve all five New South Wales species, for example, could go to keep 42 not-yet-extinct species from vanishing.” Each day that we don’t protect a current species, hundreds will go extinct each year. Spending millions to bring back one species will not compensate for the thousands lost to humanity. Conservation itself receives little funding, so we will be forced then to make a decision: do we focus all our efforts on bringing back that have disappeared? Given limited conservation dollars, bringing back one lost species would essentially cost the extinction of more alive endangered species. “For example, if New Zealand resurrected 11 of its extinct species, the government would have to sacrifice the conservation of 33 living species to pay to keep the revived species alive” (Pappas, 2017). If it is our responsibility to atone for causing hundreds of species to go extinct, is it then right to neglect the still-alive animals headed toward extinction if not supported by humans?

Delayed density dependence are delays in the effect that density has on population size. They can contribute to population fluctuations and lead to time lags. When the time lag is small, the population shows logistic growth (with no fluctuations). When the time lag is intermediate, populations show damped oscillations (fluctuations become smaller over time). When the time lag is large, the population shows stable limit cycles (regular fluctuations around the carrying capacity). A.J. Nicholson in his experiments, showed that delayed density dependence was a cause of fluctuations in blowfly populations. Additionally, these fluctuations can increase the risk of extinction. Small populations are especially at higher risk due to a number of factors: Chance events are unpredictable events, and can be environmental conditions such as temperature and rainfall. Genetic drift are chance events influence the alleles passed on to the next generation, and can cause allele frequencies to change at random. Finally inbreeding, which is mating between relatives, can make individuals too closely related, and increase the frequency of homozygotes, including harmful alleles.

The damages inflicted by biological extinction left us with a deep pain that appeared irremediable. However, in recent years, the possibility has been broached that something can be done, but at what cost? Species negatively introduced in past decades by humans have lead to the widespread loss of habitat and the killing of large numbers of endemic species. In fact, “invasive species have contributed directly to the decline of 42% of the threatened and endangered species in the United States. The annual cost to the United States economy is estimated at $120 billion a year… with the annual cost of impacts and control efforts equaling five percent of the world’s economy” (Impacts of Invasive Species, 2017). The purpose of de-extinction is a tool to bring back genetically-similar animals that went extinct to help balance the loss of the original species to ecosystems. Invasive species are problematic pests that use up resources which native species then must directly compete against; therefore we should only be introducing new species if they do not negatively influence the niches of co-existing species.