- Phillies win thriller to level Mets series
- Yu bags first PGA Tour win with playoff win
- PSG held by Nice to leave Monaco clear at top of Ligue 1
- Lewandowski treble for leaders Barca as Atletico held
- Fresh Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Sucic stunner earns Real Sociedad draw against Atletico
- PSG draw with Nice, fail to reclaim top spot in Ligue 1
- Gudmundsson downs AC Milan after De Gea's penalty heroics for Fiorentina
- 'Yes' vote prevails in Kazakhstan nuclear plant vote: TV
- 'Difficult day': Oct 7 commemorations begin with festival memorial
- Commemorations begin for anniversary of attack on Israel
- 'Nothing gets in way of team,' says Celtics' MVP hopeful Tatum
- 'We will win!': Mozambique's ruling party confident at final vote rally
- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Florida braces for Milton, FEMA head slams 'dangerous' Helene misinformation
- Postecoglou slams 'unacceptable' Spurs after 'terrible' loss at Brighton
- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
As Arctic warms, caribou and muskoxen slow biodiversity loss
Rapidly warming conditions in the Arctic and the loss of sea ice caused by climate change are driving a steep decline in biodiversity, including among plants, fungi and lichen.
But a new study out Thursday in Science found the presence of caribou and muskoxen help to reduce the rate of loss by roughly half, suggesting the large herbivores have an under-recognized role as ecosystem climate defenders.
Co-author Christian John of the University of California, Santa Barbara told AFP the results showed that "in some cases 'rewilding' (reintroduction of large herbivores) may be an effective approach to combating negative effects of climate change on tundra diversity."
The paper was the result of a 15-year-long experiment that began in 2002 near Kangerlussuaq, a small settlement of around 500 people in western Greenland.
An international team of scientists used steel fencing to set up 800-square-meter plots, or about a fifth of an acre, to exclude or include herbivores and measure the impact on the surrounding environment.
They also used "passive warming chambers," which act like miniature greenhouses to raise the temperature a few degrees, to see how biodiversity might fare under conditions even warmer than today. Herbivores were given access to some warmed plots and not others.
Each day, the team hiked for miles to tally up the ungulates.
"There were a lot of demands to the job, working long hours hiking across uneven terrain, living in a tent under a sun that doesn't set, all the while with the ubiquitous whine of mosquitos in the background," said John.
"But at the end of the day, none of these challenges ever overshadowed the joy of seeing the first caribou calf of the year."
Sadly, tundra community diversity declined across the board over the course of the study, both as a direct result of warming but also changing precipitation patterns associated with melting ice, and the increasing shrub cover in the tundra squeezing out other species.
However, "tundra community diversity dropped at almost double the rate in plots where herbivores were excluded compared to plots where herbivores were able to graze," said John.
In the warmed plots, the difference was yet more dramatic. Diversity declined by about 0.85 species per decade when herbivores were excluded, whereas this decline was only about 0.33 species per decade when they were allowed to graze.
The scientists attributed this to herbivores keeping species such as shrubs, dwarf birch and gray willow in check so that other plants could better flourish.
"Efforts focused on maintenance or enhancement of large herbivore diversity may therefore under certain conditions help mitigate climate change impacts on at least one important element of ecosystem health and function: tundra diversity," wrote the team.
F.Cardoso--PC