Population Change in a Marine Bird Colony is Driven By Changes in Recruitment

The population dynamics of long-lived birds are thought to be very sensitive to changes in adult survival. However, where natal philopatry is low, recruitment from the larger metapopulation may have the strongest effect on population growth rate even in long-lived species. Here, we illustrate such a situation where changes in a seabird colony size appeared to be the consequence of changes in recruitment. We studied the population dynamics of a declining colony of Ancient Murrelets (Synthliboramphus antiquus) at East Limestone Island, British Columbia. During 1990-2010, Ancient Murrelet chicks were trapped at East Limestone Island while departing to sea, using a standard trapping method carried on throughout the departure period. Adult murrelets were trapped while departing from the colony during 1990-2003. Numbers of chicks trapped declined during 1990-1995, probably because of raccoon predation, increased slightly from 1995-2000 and subsequently declined again. Reproductive success was 30% lower during 2000-2003 than in earlier years, mainly because of an increase in desertions. The proportion of nonbreeders among adult birds trapped at night also declined over the study period. Mortality of adult birds, thought to be mainly prebreeders, from predators more than doubled over the same period. Apparent adult survival of breeders remained constant during 1991-2002 once the first year after banding was excluded, but the apparent survival rates in the first year after banding fell and the survival of birds banded as chicks to age three halved over the same period. A matrix model of population dynamics suggested that even during the early part of the study immigration from other breeding areas must have been substantial, supporting earlier observations that natal philopatry in this species is low. The general colony decline after 2000 probably was related to diminished recruitment, as evidenced by the lower proportion of nonbreeders in the trapped sample. Hence the trend is determined by the recruitment decisions of externally reared birds, rather than demographic factors operating on the local breeding population, an unusual situation for a colonial marine bird. Because of the contraction in the colony it may now be subject to a level of predation pressure from which recovery will be impossible without some form of intervention.

Dynamics of convectively driven banded jets in the laboratory

The banded organization of clouds and zonal winds in the atmospheres of the outer planets has long fascinated observers. Several recent studies in the theory and idealized modeling of geostrophic turbulence have suggested possible explanations for the emergence of such organized patterns, typically involving highly anisotropic exchanges of kinetic energy and vorticity within the dissipationless inertial ranges of turbulent flows dominated (at least at large scales) by ensembles of propagating Rossby waves. The results from an attempt to reproduce such conditions in the laboratory are presented here. Achievement of a distinct inertial range turns out to require an experiment on the largest feasible scale. Deep, rotating convection on small horizontal scales was induced by gently and continuously spraying dense, salty water onto the free surface of the 13-m-diameter cylindrical tank on the Coriolis platform in Grenoble, France. A “planetary vorticity gradient” or “β effect” was obtained by use of a conically sloping bottom and the whole tank rotated at angular speeds up to 0.15 rad s−1. Over a period of several hours, a highly barotropic, zonally banded large-scale flow pattern was seen to emerge with up to 5–6 narrow, alternating, zonally aligned jets across the tank, indicating the development of an anisotropic field of geostrophic turbulence. Using particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques, zonal jets are shown to have arisen from nonlinear interactions between barotropic eddies on a scale comparable to either a Rhines or “frictional” wavelength, which scales roughly as (β/Urms)−1/2. This resulted in an anisotropic kinetic energy spectrum with a significantly steeper slope with wavenumber k for the zonal flow than for the nonzonal eddies, which largely follows the classical Kolmogorov k−5/3 inertial range. Potential vorticity fields show evidence of Rossby wave breaking and the presence of a “hyperstaircase” with radius, indicating instantaneous flows that are supercritical with respect to the Rayleigh–Kuo instability criterion and in a state of “barotropic adjustment.” The implications of these results are discussed in light of zonal jets observed in planetary atmospheres and, most recently, in the terrestrial oceans.

Jupiter's and Saturn's convectively driven banded jets in the laboratory

The banded patterns of cloud and wind are among the most striking features of the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, but their dynamical origin remains poorly understood. Most approaches towards understanding zonation so far (also in the terrestrial oceans) have used highly idealized models to show that it might originate from dynamical anisotropy in a shallow turbulent fluid layer due to the planetary β-effect. Here we report the results of laboratory experiments, conducted on a 14-m diameter turntable, which quantitatively confirm that multiple zonal jets may indeed be generated and maintained by this mechanism in the presence of deep convection and a topographic β-effect. At the very small values of Ekman number (≤2 × 10−5) and large local Reynolds numbers (≥2000, based on jet scales) achieved, the kinetic energy spectra suggest the presence of both energy-cascading and enstrophy-cascading inertial ranges in addition to the zonation near twice the Rhines wave number.

An optical study of multiple NEIAL events driven by low energy electron precipitation

Optical data are compared with EISCAT radar observations of multiple Naturally Enhanced Ion-Acoustic Line (NEIAL) events in the dayside cusp. This study uses narrow field of view cameras to observe small-scale, short-lived auroral features. Using multiple-wavelength optical observations, a direct link between NEIAL occurrences and low energy (about 100 eV) optical emissions is shown. This is consistent with the Langmuir wave decay interpretation of NEIALs being driven by streams of low-energy electrons. Modelling work connected with this study shows that, for the measured ionospheric conditions and precipitation characteristics, growth of unstable Langmuir (electron plasma) waves can occur, which decay into ion-acoustic wave modes. The link with low energy optical emissions shown here, will enable future studies of the shape, extent, lifetime, grouping and motions of NEIALs.

Effects of solar wind magnetosphere coupling recorded at different geomagnetic latitudes: Separation of directly-driven and storage/release systems

The effect on geomagnetic activity of solar wind speed, compared with that of the strength of the interplanetary magnetic field, differs with geomagnetic latitude. In this study we construct a new index based on monthly standard deviations in the H-component of the geomagnetic field for all geomagnetic latitudes. We demonstrate that for this index the response at auroral regions correlates best with interplanetary coupling functions which include the solar wind speed while mid- and low-latitude regions respond to variations in the interplanetary magnetic field strength. These results are used to isolate the responsible geomagnetic current systems.

Wave-driven wind jets in the marine atmospheric boundary layer

The interaction between ocean surface waves and the overlying wind leads to a transfer of momentum across the air–sea interface. Atmospheric and oceanic models typically allow for momentum transfer to be directed only downward, from the atmosphere to the ocean. Recent observations have suggested that momentum can also be transferred upward when long wavelength waves, characteristic of remotely generated swell, propagate faster than the wind speed. The effect of upward momentum transfer on the marine atmospheric boundary layer is investigated here using idealized models that solve the momentum budget above the ocean surface. A variant of the classical Ekman model that accounts for the wave-induced stress demonstrates that, although the momentum flux due to the waves penetrates only a small fraction of the depth of the boundary layer, the wind profile is profoundly changed through its whole depth. When the upward momentum transfer from surface waves sufficiently exceeds the downward turbulent momentum flux, then the near-surface wind accelerates, resulting in a low-level wave-driven wind jet. This increases the Coriolis force in the boundary layer, and so the wind turns in the opposite direction to the classical Ekman layer. Calculations of the wave-induced stress due to a wave spectrum representative of fast-moving swell demonstrate upward momentum transfer that is dominated by contributions from waves in the vicinity of the peak in the swell spectrum. This is in contrast to wind-driven waves whose wave-induced stress is dominated by very short wavelength waves. Hence the role of swell can be characterized by the inverse wave age based on the wave phase speed corresponding to the peak in the spectrum. For a spectrum of waves, the total momentum flux is found to reverse sign and become upward, from waves to wind, when the inverse wave age drops below the range 0.15–0.2, which agrees reasonably well with previously published oceanic observations.

Variability of the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet stream

Much of the atmospheric variability in the North Atlantic sector is associated with variations in the eddy-driven component of the zonal flow. Here we present a simple method to specifically diagnose this component of the flow using the low-level wind field (925–700 hpa ). We focus on the North Atlantic winter season in the ERA-40 reanalysis. Diagnostics of the latitude and speed of the eddy-driven jet stream are compared with conventional diagnostics of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the East Atlantic (EA) pattern. This shows that the NAO and the EA both describe combined changes in the latitude and speed of the jet stream. It is therefore necessary, but not always sufficient, to consider both the NAO and the EA in identifying changes in the jet stream. The jet stream analysis suggests that there are three preferred latitudinal positions of the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet stream in winter. This result is in very good agreement with the application of a statistical mixture model to the two-dimensional state space defined by the NAO and the EA. These results are consistent with several other studies which identify four European/Atlantic regimes, comprising three jet stream patterns plus European blocking events.

Muscle hypertrophy driven by myostatin blockade does not require stem/precursor-cell activity

Myostatin, a member of the TGF-beta family, has been identified as a powerful inhibitor of muscle growth. Absence or blockade of myostatin induces massive skeletal muscle hypertrophy that is widely attributed to proliferation of the population of muscle fiber-associated satellite cells that have been identified as the principle source of new muscle tissue during growth and regeneration. Postnatal blockade of myostatin has been proposed as a basis for therapeutic strategies to combat muscle loss in genetic and acquired myopathies. But this approach, according to the accepted mechanism, would raise the threat of premature exhaustion of the pool of satellite cells and eventual failure of muscle regeneration. Here, we show that hypertrophy in the absence of myostatin involves little or no input from satellite cells. Hypertrophic fibers contain no more myonuclei or satellite cells and myostatin had no significant effect on satellite cell proliferation in vitro, while expression of myostatin receptors dropped to the limits of detectability in postnatal satellite cells. Moreover, hypertrophy of dystrophic muscle arising from myostatin blockade was achieved without any apparent enhancement of contribution of myonuclei from satellite cells. These findings contradict the accepted model of myostatin-based control of size of postnatal muscle and reorient fundamental investigations away from the mechanisms that control satellite cell proliferation and toward those that increase myonuclear domain, by modulating synthesis and turnover of structural muscle fiber proteins. It predicts too that any benefits of myostatin blockade in chronic myopathies are unlikely to impose any extra stress on the satellite cells.

Mammal reproductive strategies driven by offspring mortality-size relationships

Trade-offs have long been a major theme in life-history theory, but they have been hard to document. We introduce a new method that reveals patterns of divergent trade-offs after adjusting for the pervasive variation in rate of resource allocation to offspring as a function of body size and lifestyle. Results suggest that preweaning vulnerability to predation has been the major factor determining how female placental mammals allocate production between a few large and many small offspring within a litter and between a few large litters and many small ones within a reproductive season. Artiodactyls, perissodactyls, cetaceans, and pinnipeds, which give birth in the open on land or in the sea, produce a few large offspring, at infrequent intervals, because this increases their chances of escaping predation. Insectivores, fissiped carnivores, lagomorphs, and rodents, whose offspring are protected in burrows or nests, produce large litters of small newborns. Primates, bats, sloths, and anteaters, which carry their young from birth until weaning, produce litters of one or a few offspring because of the need to transport and care for them.

Anthraquinone catalysis in the glucose-driven reduction of indigo to leuco-indigo

Anthraquinone immobilised onto the surface of indigo microcrystals enhances the reductive dissolution of indigo to leuco-indigo. Indigo reduction is driven by glucose in aqueous NaOH and a vibrating gold disc electrode is employed to monitor the increasing leuco-indigo concentration with time. Anthraquinone introduces a strong catalytic effect which is explained by invoking a molecular "wedge effect'' during co-intercalation of Na+ and anthraquinone into the layered indigo crystal structure. The glucose-driven indigo reduction, which is in effective in 0.1 M NaOH at 65 degrees C, becomes facile and goes to completion in the presence of anthraquinone catalyst. Electron microscopy of indigo crystals before and after reductive dissolution confirms a delamination mechanism initiated at the edges of the plate-like indigo crystals. Catalysis occurs when the anthraquinone-indigo mixture reaches a molar ratio of 1:400 (at 65 degrees C; corresponding to 3 mu M anthraquinone) with excess of anthraquinone having virtually no effect. A strong temperature effect ( with a composite E-A approximate to 120 kJ mol(-1)) is observed for the reductive dissolution in the presence of anthraquinone. The molar ratio and temperature effects are both consistent with the heterogeneous nature of the anthraquinone catalysis in the aqueous reaction mixture.