Heaven's Zoology Blog

Simon Maddock from the University of Wolverhampton came to Bangor to talk about his project in the Seychelles on the Caecilian (Apoda) species.

What is a Caecilian?

There are 3 types of amphibians:

• Anura – Frogs and Toads
• Caudata – Salamanders
• Gymnophiona – Caecilians

Caecilians occur throughout the tropics in South America, Mexico, central Africa, across western and eastern Ghats and south-east Asia. There are just over 200 species discovered across the world.

They come in a range of colours including brown, orange or yellow. They have very small eyes which are not very functional. In many species a bone has grown over the eye making them completely blind.

Due to the very poor vision they have a chemosensory tentacle which is located between the eye and the nostrils.

Grey and yellow stripped species of Caecilian

Brown species of Caecilian

Orange species of Caecilian

Their bodies have rings around them called annular, underneath they have scales which are thin and overlap. This is assumed to increase surface areas to allow more oxygen to pass through the skin.

They range in sizes with the largest one reaching 2m and the smallest less than 5cm.

Did you know they are the largest lungless vertebrate

Caecilians are carnivorous meaning they have an extensive amount of teeth. Due to the amount of teeth they have a criss cross muscle mechanism that means they can close their jaws

The study in the Seychelles

The Seychelles is a series of islands located between India, Africa and Madagascar. It contains ancient endemic species as it split from India 75 million years ago. Most of the islands are underwater but they all connect 60 metres under sea level.

Close up map of the Seychelles showing islands under water

Beach at the Seychelles

Forest and lake at the Seychelles

Map of Africa showing where the Seychelles is located

To survey this species they had to dig extensively as they are found underground.

The aims of his study were:

• To build capacity within Seychelles for Caecilian biology and conservation
• Develop survey methods
• Determine Seychelles caecilian diversity and distribution
• Study disease
• Assess the taxonomy and evolutionary history

With help from the public over 200 hours of active searching took place and they located new areas where they occur.

The species is under threat from:

• Disease
• Habitat loss and alteration
• Pollution
• Lack of knowledge
• Invasive species
• Climate change

They started running workshops to give people a better understanding of their distribution, identification and conservation.

17 units across 5 islands were set up to monitor climate change. They record temperature and relative humidity to keep track of the changes in local climate.

1 species was found to be extremely threatened by climate change. Hypogeophis Montanus may go extinct at any time as they are only found right at the top of 2 mountains.

All the species there are at threat from Chytrid fungus. It has not yet reached the islands although almost every country in the world harbour this fungus already. The islands have not had many new diseases for 75 million years. The species may not be able to cope with the disease as they haven’t evolved with it.

My opinion and thoughts on the lecture content 

I am very interested in reptiles and amphibians although before this seminar I knew very little about Caecilians. They are a very different species both in the way they look and how they survive. It also made me very much want to visit the Seychelles as it looks beautiful. They seem to be doing a great deal to conserve this species and a lot of research and physical energy went into this study.

This has shaped my career plans as I definitely would like to go visit the Seychelles not to just have a holiday but help with the conservation efforts there. As many of the species are epidemic and its very species rich it is an important place to conserve, many factors would cause species loss there. If I had the opportunity to go and help do conservation reasearch there in a future career I would not turn it down.

Chris Clark from the University of Sheffield came to Bangor to give a seminar on how the demise of the last British-Irish ice sheet. This blog post is a summary of that seminar.

Around 27,000 years ago there was a large ice sheet which covered the whole of Ireland and large parts of the UK. The extent of the ice-covered an area of 1,120,000 km3. This amount of ice was sufficient enough to cause a sea level rise of 2.5m when melted.

There have been attempted digital reconstructions of this ice sheet to investigate the retreat. One of the first attempts was in 1982 by John T Andrews.

How can an ice sheet be reconstructed?

There are 3 different ways in which an ice sheet can be reconstructed, these include:

• Glacial geology– Glacial deposits and glacial erosive features on a landscape
• Modelling (Glaciology)– The behavior and role of land ice in the climate system. Model forecasts of deglaciating polar ice sheets.
• Glacial isostasy– The response of the solid Earth to any changes in the planet’s ice sheets.

Satellite images and elevation models can now be used to map the glacial models. 3 of them mapped the whole of Britain and Ireland.

There was no data on the sea floor, to over come this they used core logging. Deep samples of sediment from under water were collected to carbon date items. Sampling was across 914 sites, 18000 km of marine geophysical data was collected.

To investigate offshore ice retreat, cosmogenics was used which is looking at the age of boulders found, and luminance dating of the sand by ages at which the sand grain last saw the sun.

Complications

Differing models gave a range of sea level rise, which model if any are correct?  Previous studies have rushed into making predictions when the models aren’t ready. To improve the models more geological history of ice sheets is needed.

It was thought that previously created maps could be used of a time when the ice sheet existed, although they all look different and do not fit together.

How did the ice sheet shrink?

Ice sheets reduce mass by shrinking steadily due to the melting and calving of lce burgs. Although sometimes they just suddenly collapse. Increased air and sea temperture may have been a cause.

Marine ice sheet instability- When the ice sheets grow on sea beds they are prone to not being stable meaning they may collapse if ice retreats to an unsuitable area of the sea bed.

It is now the most studied ice sheet in the world. Click here to find the online map which was created from the data during the study and click here for the paper written.

My opinion and thoughts on the lecture content 

I had never personally thought about what Britain may have looked like in the past during colder temperatures. I did not know Britain and Ireland used to be covered by a huge ice sheet extending over land and sea. I was very interested in this topic and found this study engaging to listen to. I enjoyed learning how an ice sheet from many years can be reconstructed and what data is needed to do this.

This has shaped my future career because I feel it is interesting to think that at one time Britain was covered in ice, it makes me wonder what kind of animal species lived there at that time. Looking back to how the world looked hundreds of years ago and how it has shaped present day I feel is important and very interesting to me, I could see me going to this kind of research in the future.

Sarah Papworth from the Royal Holloway University of London came to Bangor to talk to us about how hunting different species of Monkey has effected their behaviour, not only hunting but human presence in general.

She wanted to study in very remote areas which have little to no human influence. Although it was quickly noticed that even in remote areas there is still human presence. Due to this primates have had to adapt to human interaction and live along side them.

Problems Primates Face

• Hunting
• Pet Trade
• Ecotoursim

How do they respond to these encounters with humans? 

There have been many theories to explain how and why they react to humans.

Risk disturbance hypothesis

This describes the way primates react to humans. The theory had been based on studies done by ungulates. They found that the flight distance (how close an animal/human can get before the animal runs away) for these species is the same for humans and predators.

This means they react the same to humans as predators. Could that be it? Primates think of humans as predators.

Threat-sensitive Predator Response

This theory is that prey alter their response depending on the magnitude of the threat. This would explain why some primates react differently to all humans as this is very costly. They will react more to a hunter than a fisherman using visual cues like weapons and attention the human pays to them.

Anti-predator Response in Primates

Primates have different ways they evade predators. Some tactics they use include:

• Increase group size, more individuals to be vigilant.
• Fleeing from the predator.
• Freezing, not moving at all in the hope they are not seen.
• Vocalisation in reaction to presence of predators

In Woolly Monkeys when a male spots a leopard it will run down and call to alert the others and show the leopard it has been seen. With a raptor, males will call and the others will run down the tree onto the ground.

Click here for her paper-https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2008.0299

They tested these on Woolly Monkeys in Ecuador where they encounter humans daily and are heavy hunted. They found in areas with high hunting pressure that amount of calls decreased with the hunters and gathers to not draw attention. The calls increased in response to researchers.

The Human Shield hypothesis

Humans may not be all bad for primates, this theory suggests that human presence protects prey from non-human predators due to the noise, their presence scares away predators. Although another explanation is the:

Distracted prey hypothesis

Primates attention is finite, humans could be distracting them from other threats like predators causing them to get eaten more.

None of these have been proven to cause change in primate behaviour but they are a big step into understanding how human interaction may affect them in their natural environments.

My opinion and thoughts on the lecture content 

This lecture gave me lots to think about. Which is the most plausible hypothesis to understand how monkeys react to humans and hunting. I enjoyed this topic very much and was interested to do my own research into this and explore other papers. I believe that hunting is a big pressure on these species and that it would drastically change their behaviours.

This has shaped my future career prospects as I would consider researching more into this topic in the future. As there is yet no clear answer to how humans are affecting primate behaviour I would be interested in looking into it further. I am considering going into animal research as I enjoy the practical side.

Stuart Marsden from Manchester Metropolitan University came to Bangor to do a talk on wildlife exploitation. He was a very passionate person and had a lot of personal experience on this topic. This is an overview of his talk.

There are many words to describe exploitation:

• Hunting
• Harvesting
• Trapping
• Poaching
• Offtake
• Culling
• Direct exploitation

How do some of these words make you feel?

Foxes killed during hunt

Male lion hunted and killed

A trapped Coyote captured to be killed

Large selection of horns harvested from wild animals for the ivory trade

The word harvesting makes it sound like we should be doing it, the person has done something which makes them deserve to take an animal or plant out of the wild. Whilst poaching doesn’t sound as good, people think badly of poachers when they may be doing the same thing as the harvesters.

On the other hand, the work culling gives some kind of scientific legitimacy. It makes you feel like it’s for the animals own good.

Animal exploitation has been happening for 10’s of thousands of years. Lots of the worlds megafauna started to be hunted to extinction during the late Pleistocene, from around 125,000 years ago till present day.

Animal which are seemly abundant can be at risk of extinction. The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was seen is extreme numbers endemic to North America. They were all hunted to extinction which the last dying in 1914.

There can be benefits to hunting, many people who hunt big game in Africa pay large sums of money to hunt these animals which can be used in conservation. They may kill one animal but the money can be used to save many.

Even the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) agree with some kinds of animal trading.

The people who know most about these species are the ones that hunt them. Hardly anyone knows about the Pangolin (Manis) to help conserve them. Although the people who hunt them know much more. Could we work with these people? Change how they think and turn them into conservationists.

A lot may think making these practices illegal is the best way forward and I agree but once it is made illegal, tracking and getting information about the practice is much harder. It is more difficult to control what is happening.

It isn’t just the volume of trade we need to look at but other aspects like the age groups targeted and how the animals are caught, these all affect the future for that species.

In Java one bird is in captivity for every 2 people. This is 75 million birds!

Stuart believed there are more birds in cages in Java than in the wild. Although the overall message he got through was that Westerners should not point the finger at people but should help them to change for the better.

My opinion and thoughts on the lecture content 

I believe that trying to turn hunters into conservationist is a great way forward. It gives them jobs and they can use the extensive knowledge they built from hunting the animal. I do not agree with hunting as a sport but it can be beneficial in a way to gain money for conservation efforts. I struggle with what to agree with but my main opinion is that I do not agree with hunting and would like to see education efforts to change the way they think.

This has shaped my future career as I have always wanted to go into animal conservation, the more I hear about people’s experiences with working in that industry and what they found whilst there just makes me want to join even more and help these species in need.

Recently Sarah Elton came in to talk about Red Colobus Monkeys (Piliocolobus) at Bangor University. Her talk was about work she had done on this topic and scientific papers she has written with research and findings on this Species. Distribution and cranial size were heavy researched in the Monkeys which are located around “the moist lowland forests of west, central and east equatorial and tropical Africa”.

The Species

The Red Colobus is an old world monkey. They are herbivorous and can be found in large groups of around 20-80 individuals. They have very strong stomachs to digest plant material meaning they spend a lot of their day resting and digesting.

The distribution of this species has been impacted by geological factors. This has played a role in the morphological variation and taxonomic complexity seen in the Red Colobus Monkey.

The populations around Africa are in close proximity but are separated by rivers and mountain ranges. You will not usually find this species in Southern Africa due to the fact there is not enough day light time to complete digestion.

Due to these barriers, different populations have been breeding in separate areas around Africa and not meeting to interbreed. This has caused variation in cranial size as each group evolved independently, their bodies have been shaped to better suit the environment in which they are situated.

Method

Three-dimensional coordinates were taken at different areas of the skulls to create a 3D scan used for analysis.

This species shows strong sexual dimorphism, meaning the males and females will have high levels of variation in cranial size even if they are from the same social group. The analysis of the skulls was done using spilt-sex samples.

Different measurements of the skulls from each location were taken to establish if they show any variation due to geographical placement.

Results

Significant variation in cranial size was found both in females and males. 60-70% of the variation was shown to be due to geographical effects. These were the results showing size throughout Africa:

• West Africa- Intermediate
• Central equatorial Africa- Large
• East Africa- Small

Males showed an increase in size from the West to Central equatorial Africa. Although females size increased from Senegal to Cameroon, than decreased in Western Congo and increase again in Eastern Congo and Uganda. Both sexes showed a decrease in size in East Africa.

Cranial size could be related to habitat productivity. The species present in areas with lower levels of rainfall had smaller cranial sizes. Another theory is that it could be due to predictability of food sources.

My opinion and thoughts on the seminar content 

This seminar was informative with information on the project and the species. She explained how it was completed, the results and potential explanations to support findings. There were lots of figures and tables to help us understand the data. The only bit that made me think is did they have to kill the individuals to get the skulls, or did they dart and use live monkeys? She did not say during her talk.

I feel this could help with my future career because I have seen how to complete a project like this which I may do in research. She covered software’s to use and opened up some more questions which I could look into, for example have these species interbreed in the past?

You can view the paper yourself using this link- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2008.00432.x

I attended a seminar by Paul Kay. His talk was based on his experience as a marine photographer exploring Scotland’s Western coasts by diving. He has specialised in underwater photography for 35 years and has dived in many different locations, he has seen a wide range of marine species.

Why is Scotland so species rich?

Due to the position of the country and the tides, it has a very high level of biodiversity. This is due to the North Atlantic Drift which brings warm water to the west coast whilst cold waters are pulled into the Northern isles. The geology and huge differences in the landscapes around the West coast allow for a huge amount of different marine species to thrive.

A reason which is more unusual is that there are many wrecks around the Scotland’s coasts due to the weather, rocks and quite often drunk people sailing boats.  These wrecks have given many species shelter and a home to flourish.

Wreck of Nazi Germany’s most advanced U-Boat on the Irish Coast

Unknown shipwreck in Greece

What species are present?

There are over 8000 species in Scotland’s waters but here are a few mentioned during the talk:

• Jelly fish (Compass Jelly and Cyanea)
• Anemones (Fried Egg- image below)
• Barnacles
• Limpits
• Starfish (Bloody Henry and Spiny Starfish)
• Corals (Dead Man Fingers)
• Various species of Goby
• Sea Fans
• Crabs (Velvet Crabs)
• Lobsters
• Worms (Sea Mouse and Football Jersey Worm)

Fried-egg Anemone (Actinothoe sphyrodeta), West Scotland, UK

Beneath a kelp forest at the Fastnet Rock, Ireland (Kelp, sagartia anemones, dead mens fingers, sponges, starfish, etc.).

What affects species richness there?

Other than tides and location of the country other variables affect the species there. Shallow waters have many species of Anemones and Barnacles. Once you swim below the Kelp layer there is a huge array of species to be seen.

You may even find the smallest fish in Europe which is the Guillet’s goby. It measures in at only 24mm long. One of the fastest Starfish which can move at 30-40cm a minute could also be found there. (Pictures of species below)

Guillets Goby in Scotland taken by Paul Kay

Seven Armed Star Fish

Mud is a driver of species biodiversity. Different mud’s contain different species which can only survive in that type of sediment. One includes burrowing mud which is ideal for many Sea Pens, borrowing mega fauna and some Anemones like the Firework Anemone.

Overall there is a huge array of species which you might not have thought was there, I certainly didn’t.

My opinion and thoughts on the seminar content 

Before this Seminar I never really thought of the Scottish Coast to be very species diverse. I was very mistaken, the sheer amount of species there is surprising. The seminar was very picture heavy which I enjoyed and Paul went into lots of detail about the habitats and species around that area.

I learnt a lot about not just the species but marine photography which I am personally very interested in. I feel this would help my future career because I have a better knowledge of more local marine wildlife and marine photography which could be a potential career path for me.

Here is a link to his website- http://marinewildlife.co.uk