Climate change and a range of other human impacts are putting marine animals at risk of extinction—even those living in almost pristine marine habitats and diverse coastal regions—reports a new study by Casey O’Hara of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S., and colleagues, published September 18, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Human activities on land and sea, in combination with climate change, are degrading coastal ecosystems, increasing the risk of extinction for multiple species and threatening important ecosystem services that humans depend on. To effectively address these threats, however, it is important to understand where and to what extent human-caused stressors are impacting marine ecosystems.

In a new study, researchers estimated the impact of human activities on more than 21,000 marine animal species worldwide, taking into account their exposure and vulnerability to stressors, including fishing, shipping, and land-based threats. They then mapped the impacts across the global ocean, identifying locations where climate-driven impacts overlap with other human-caused stressors.

The researchers’ analysis showed that even relatively untouched habitats may still be home to species at elevated risk. Additionally, many coastal regions with a high diversity of species may be at greater risk than previously realized, based on earlier studies that focused on habitats, not species.

Researchers also found that the impacts from climate change—namely, elevated sea surface temperature and ocean acidification—were greater than other human-caused stressors, regardless of the ecosystem studied.

Corals were the marine group most at risk overall, with mollusks including squid and octopuses, echinoderms like sea stars and sea urchins, and crustaceans such as shrimp, crabs and lobsters also deemed to be at especially high risk.

The results from this work provide a more complete understanding of which species and habitats are at risk, and where conservationists should target their efforts. The researchers hope this data can be combined with socioeconomic information to help prioritize effective, economically efficient and socially equitable conservation actions to benefit both nature and people.

Casey O’Hara adds, “Our species-focused approach helps identify spatially defined practices and activities that most affect at-risk marine species. While blanket protections such as exclusive marine reserves are effective at conserving marine biodiversity, they also can impose economic hardship on locals and provoke political opposition.

“We believe our work reveals opportunities for politically feasible, cost-effective targeted interventions to reduce biodiversity impacts, such as focused fishing gear restrictions, agricultural improvements to reduce nutrient runoff, and incentives for shipping speed reductions.”

Scientists at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have developed hexagon-shaped robotic components, called modules, that can be snapped together LEGO-style into high-speed robots that can be rearranged for different capabilities.

The team of researchers from the Robotic Materials Department at MPI-IS, led by Christoph Keplinger, integrated artificial muscles into hexagonal exoskeletons that are embedded with magnets, allowing for quick mechanical and electrical connections.

The team’s work, “Hexagonal electrohydraulic modules for rapidly reconfigurable high-speed robots” was published in Science Robotics on September 18, 2024.

Six lightweight rigid plates made from glass fiber serve as the exoskeleton of each HEXEL module. The inner joints of the hexagons are driven by hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic (HASEL) artificial muscles.

Applying a high voltage to the module causes the muscle to activate, rotating the joints of the hexagon and changing its shape from long and narrow to wide and flat.

“Combining soft and rigid components in this way enables high strokes and high speeds. By connecting several modules, we can create new robot geometries and repurpose them for changing needs,” says Ellen Rumley, a visiting researcher from the University of Colorado Boulder.

She and Zachary Yoder, who are both Ph.D. students working in the Robotic Materials Department, are co-first authors of the publication.

In a video, the team shows the many behaviors that can be created with HEXEL modules. A group of modules crawls through a narrow gap, while a single module actuates so fast that it can leap into the air. Multiple modules are connected into larger structures that produce different motions depending on how the modules are attached. For instance, the team combined several modules into a robot which rapidly rolls.

“In general, it makes a lot of sense to develop robots with reconfigurable capabilities. It’s a sustainable design option—instead of buying five different robots for five different purposes, we can build many different robots by using the same components. Robots made from reconfigurable modules could be rearranged on demand to provide more versatility than specialized systems, which could be beneficial in resource-limited environments,” Yoder concludes.

In a temperate montane forest in southern Québec, all is quiet. But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see the landscape has a story to tell. Waterloo plant ecologist Dr. Julie Messier, alongside her collaborators from Sherbrooke, is uncovering vital insights into the changes affecting our forests—knowledge that could be crucial in safeguarding Canada’s temperate forests.

Her study derives from previous research in 1970 and 2012 that showed some species were thriving after 40 years of global change, while others were declining, and it wasn’t clear why.

“Many factors can change how favorable an environment is, and a lot of them are based on climate change and air pollutants,” Messier said. “This community experienced 1.5 C of warming since the first study and significant atmospheric nitrogen deposition, both are big changes to adjust to. In response, some species became more abundant overall, whereas others saw a decline.”

Messier and her team built on this data to answer two questions: first, how did the traits of the forest community change? Second, what traits could predict the shifts in species elevation and abundance over this period? “We wanted to test the hypothesis that some species had specific traits allowing them to do well, which we hoped would enable us to predict future changes better,” she said.

To do this, Messier and her collaborators studied the plants covering the ground in the understory layer, which is the most diverse layer within a temperate forest. For 46 understory vascular species, they measured six above-ground traits and for 36 of those, they measured five below-ground traits. The data showed that the traits of the lower-elevation communities had not changed from 1970 to 2012, but the traits found in high-elevation communities in 2012 had come to look just like the lower-elevation communities.

“As the species from the low-elevation communities moved up the mountain to find more ideal climate conditions (up to 100s of feet into higher elevations), it made the trait composition in high- and low-level communities more similar, leading to trait homogenization,” Messier said. “This has opened up a lot of new questions about lower-level communities and whether they will be able to adjust, if at all, in the future.”

Out of all the traits they evaluated, the plants that shifted the most in elevation had two traits in common: a shallow root depth and a high leaf mass fraction (the fraction of aboveground mass allocated to leaves). Those species that increased the most in abundance on the mountain had roots less extensively in symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi.

“These results are interesting because while mycorrhizal symbiosis has benefits, it can also come at a cost to the plant,” Messier said. “Mycorrhizal fungi are usually beneficial to plants when nutrients in the soil are limiting, but after 40 years, the soil is now richer in nutrients and the plants may incur a net cost. If that’s the case, then those species most strongly associated with the fungi would do worse.

“Another possible explanation is that the association could still be of net benefit to the plant, but drier conditions are bad for the fungi, so those species that depend on the fungi for resource uptake may have suffered. We don’t know which of these alternative explanations is correct and we would have to do more research to test them.”

Messier and collaborators recently published “Root and biomass allocation traits predict changes in plant species and communities over four decades of global change,” in the journal Ecology explaining their interpretation of the data, but this paper isn’t the end of their work. Messier is excited about what comes next in the field and the lab as she further explores the role of below-ground root traits.

Because it seems the response to global change largely occurs below ground, they believe getting their hands dirty to find out why these root traits are associated with change in elevation and abundance will allow them to predict which plants will win the global change challenge.

“We are very excited to see where this research takes us and what it means for the future of our temperate forests in Canada,” Messier said. “When we understand what makes a forest grow well or not, then we can take action to mitigate the impacts of global change on it and make sure future generations still have beautiful forests to connect to and enjoy.”