6 WARNING SIGN II: OUR BODIES
the story of Mr. Yu. G.: Richard Preston, The Hot Zone (New York: Random House, 1994), 72–77; WHO Study Team, “Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Sudan, 1976,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 55, no. 2 (1978), 247–70, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395561/.
It then went through the hospital: R. C. Baron, et al., “Ebola virus disease in southern Sudan: hospital dissemination and intrafamilial spread,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 61 (1983), 997–1003, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2536233/.
Some scientists believe: Preston, Hot Zone, 49; Joshua Hammer, “The Hunt for Ebola,” Smithsonian.com, November 2012. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-hunt-for-ebola-81684905/?all&no-ist.
60 percent of all infectious diseases: Augustin Estrada-Pena, et al., “Effects of Environmental change on zoonotic disease risk: an ecological primer,” Trends in Parasitology 30 (April 2014), 205–14.
severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS): “Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),” PubMed Health, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004460/.
the effects of the disease are spread out and diluted: Richard S. Ostfeld, “Are predators good for your health? Evaluating evidence for top-down regulation of zoonotic disease reservoirs,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2, no. 1 (2004), 13–20.
drive out or kill the bats: Author interviews with Richard Ostfeld, 2011–14.
increased the presence of infectious disease: Cochran and Harpending, The 10,000 Year Explosion, 159–67.
people in close proximity for disease to spread: Ibid., 155–59.
immunity to malaria can come at great cost: Carolyn Sayre, “What You Need to Know About Sickle Cell Disease,” New York Times, June 29, 2011.
According to the World Health Organization: WHO, “Malaria: Fact Sheet No. 94,” Media Centre, December 2013, http://www.who.int/mediacentre.
fewer domesticated animals: Chengfeng Qin and Ede Qin, “Review of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching,” Virology Journal 4 (April 2007), 38; video interview, Birdflubook.com.
Francisco de Orellana: Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Knopf, 2005), 315–21.
“Wherever the European has trod”: Cochran and Harpending, The 10,000 Year Explosion, 167–69.
With these potential killers held at bay: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, “The History of Vaccines: Yellow Fever,” 2014, www.historyofvaccines.org.
Powassan virus encephalitis: Lori Quillen, “Black-legged Ticks Linked to Encephalitis in New York State,” Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, July 15, 2013, http://rhinebeck.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/black-legged-ticks-linked-to-encephalitis-in-new-york-state/.
Small mammals are much better at handing off infections: Jesse Brunner, Shannon Duerr, Felicia Keesing, Mary Killilea, Holly Vuong, and Richard S. Ostfeld, “An experimental test of competition among mice, chipmunks, and squirrels in deciduous forest fragments,” PLOS One, June 18, 2013.
fragmented forests increase disease: Ibid.
Antibiotic resistance: Robert S. Lawrence, “The Rise of Antibiotic Resistance: Consequences of FDA’s Inaction,” The Atlantic, January 23, 2012.
antimicrobial chemicals used in personal-care products: John Cronin, “Antibacterial soaps don’t work, are bad for humans & the environment,” EarthDesk, December 19, 2013, http://earthdesk.blogs.pace.edu/2013/12/19/antibacterial-soaps-dont-work/.
Common afflictions like gonorrhea: WHO, “Urgent action needed to prevent the spread of untreatable gonorrhoea,” Media Centre, June 6, 2012, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2012/gonorrhoea_20120606/en/.
currently resurging is tuberculosis: Mayo Clinic, “Tuberculosis,” January 26, 2011, http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/tuberculosis/DS00372.
These chronic diseases have overtaken infectious diseases: Lawrence, “The Rise of Antibiotic Resistance.”
“Some microorganisms are resistant to nearly everything”: “WHO Director-General addresses an expert advisory group on antimicrobial resistance,” Geneva, Switzerland, September 19, 2013, http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2013/stag_amr_20130919/en/.
7 WARNING SIGN III: SQUID AND SPERM WHALES
Santa Rosalía fishermen pursue Humboldt squid: Michael Tennesen, “Humboldt Squid: Masters of Their Universe,” Wildlife Conservation Magazine, February 2009.
low-oxygen zones in the water, a result of climate change: Lothar Stramma, “Expanding Oxygen-Minimum Zones in the Tropical Oceans,” Science 320, no. 5876 (May 2, 2008), 655–58.
Gilly wonders what the long-term effects: Author interview with William Gilly, February 28, 2012.
oxygen minimum zones that reached almost 0 percent: Lothar Stramma, “Ocean oxygen minimum expansion and their biological impacts,” Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 57, no. 4 (April 2010), 587–95.
Northern California’s hake fishery: F. Chan, et al., “Emergence of Anoxia in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystems,” Science 319, no. 5865 (February 15, 2008), 920.
“White Shark Café”: Michael Tennesen, “Science Sleuths: The White Shark Café,” National Wildlife, July/August 2011.
a measurable decrease in oxygen: Lothar Stramma, Sunke Schmidtko, Lisa A. Levin, and Gregory C. Johnson, “Mismatch between observed and modeled trends in dissolved upper-ocean oxygen over the last 50 yr,” Biogeosciences 57, no. 4 (April 2010), 587–95.
Oxygen deprivation was a major source of extinction: Kenneth R. Weiss, “Oxygen-poor ocean zones are growing,” Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2008, http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-deadzone2-2008may02-story.html.
the world’s drama in their rearview mirror: John Steinbeck and Edward Ricketts, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 4.
trolled a couple of lines off the back of their boat: Ibid., 76.
The squid must have migrated: Raphael D. Sagarin, “Remembering the Gulf: changes in the marine communities of the Sea of Cortez since the Steinbeck and Ricketts expedition of 1940,” Frontiers in Ecology (2008), http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/070067.
Humboldt squid are also famously cannibalistic: Unai Markaida, William F. Gilly, César A. Salinas-Zavala, Rigoberto Rosas-Luis, and J. Ashley T. Booth, “Food and Feeding of Jumbo Squid Dosidicus Gigas in the Central Gulf of California during 2005–2007,” California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Reports 49 (2008).
encountered “huge” conches and whelks: Sagarin, “Remembering the Gulf.”
a greatly changed community of open-ocean fish: William Gilly, “Searching for the Spirits of the Sea of Cortez,” Steinbeck Studies 15, no. 2 (Fall 2004), 5–14.
when he got to San Pedro Mártir Island: Ibid.
low-oxygen water from off the North Pacific: Chan, et al., “Emergence of Anoxia in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystems.”
thought animals might dive to 325 to 650 feet: Michael Tennesen, “Deep Sea Divers: How low can marine animals go?” Wildlife Conservation, June 2005.
an adaptable breath-holding animal: Michael Tennesen, “Testing the Depth of Life: Northern elephant seals migrate farther than any other mammal,” National Wildlife, February/March 1999.
power-dive to depths of up to one mile: Julia S. Stewart, William F. Gilly, John C. Field, and John C. Payne, “Onshore-offshore movement of jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) on the continental shelf,” Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 95 (October 15, 2013), 193–96.
impacts to fish most commonly found on menus: Gaia Vince, “How the world’s oceans could be running out of fish,” BBC Future, September 21, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120920-are-we-running-out-of-fish.
8 THE END
New York’s system of waterways: Gretchen Daily and Katherine Ellison, The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002), 63–85.
That’s a lot of important functi
ons: Gretchen Daily, Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997), 4.
fifty-two thousand animal and plant species: Bill Marsh, “Are We in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction? A Tally of Life Under Threat,” New York Times, Sunday Review, Opinion Pages, June 1, 2012.
Communities relying on local goods: Daily, Nature’s Services, 295–99.
two anticancer drugs: Ibid., 263.
studying jaguar movements in the tropical forest: Michael Tennesen, “Room for the Jaguar?” dukenvironment magazine, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University (Fall 2006 Honor Roll Issue), 28–29.
The habitat of the jaguar: Dalia A. Conde, “Modeling male and female habitat difference for jaguar conservation,” Biological Conservation 143, no. 9 (May 31, 2010), 1980–88.
Guatemala has lost two-thirds of its original forested area: “Guatemala’s national forest programme—integrating agendas from the country’s diverse forest regions,” National Forest Programme of Guatemala, 2006.
Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998: “Impact of Deforestation—1998: Hurricane Mitch,” MongaBay.com, http://rainforests.mongabay.com/09mitch.htm.
Guatemala has lost about 65,500 acres: Danilo Valladares, “Guatemala: Relentless Devastation of Mangroves,” Inter Press Service, July 16, 2009, http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/07/guatemala-relentless-devastation-of-mangroves/.
Marshall, who grew up in Australia: Author interview with Charles Marshall, April 4, 2012.
Las Vegas is Spanish for “the Meadows”: Michele Ferrari and Steven Ives, Las Vegas: An Unconventional History (New York: Bulfinch Press, 2005), 1–127.
nature is the real treasure here: Fernando Maestre, et al., “Plant Species Richness and Ecosystem Multifunctionality in Global Drylands,” Science 335, no. 6065 (January 13, 2012), 214–18.
A well-developed biological crust: Michael Tennesen, “Turning to Dust: Around the globe, grasslands are turning to desert and free-flowing bits of dirt and rock are remaking the environment,” Discover Magazine, May 2010.
the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas: Emma Rosi-Marshall, “Colorado River can be revived,” Poughkeepsie Journal, September 11, 2011.
all-important food sources for native fish: Lori Quillen, “Dams Destabilize River Food Webs: Lessons from the Grand Canyon,” Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, August 20, 2013.
altered the river’s ecosystem: Wyatt F. Cross, et al., “Food-web dynamics in a large river discontinuum,” Ecological Monographs 83, no. 3 (August 2013).
the river is rapidly losing water: Sally Deneen, “Feds Slash Colorado River Release to Historic Lows,” National Geographic, August 16, 2013.
lower than the US Dust Bowl Era: Tennesen, “Turning to Dust,” Discover, May 2010.
not enough water for the city to survive: “A majority on Earth face severe self-inflicted water woes within 2 generations,” AAAS and EurekAlert! Water in Anthropocene Conference, Bonn, Germany, May 24, 2013.
There’s no place else for the birds to go: Forest Isbell, et al., “High plant diversity is needed to maintain ecosystem services,” Nature 477 (September 8, 2011), 199–202.
Las Vegas could get there, too: Bruce Babbitt, “Age-Old Challenge: Water and the West,” National Geographic, June 1991, 2–3.
9 THE LONG RENEWAL
recover from the Permian extinction: Sarda Sahney and Michael J Benton, “Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time,” Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences 275, no. 1636 (April 7, 2008), 759–65.
The explosion toppled most of the trees: Lyn Garrity, “Evolution World Tour: Mount St. Helens, Washington—Over thirty years after the volcanic eruptions, plant and animal life has returned to the disaster site, a veritable living laboratory,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 2012, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/evotourism/evolution-world-tour-mount-sthelens-washington-6011404/.
most studied volcano in the world: P. Frenzen, “Life Returns: Frequently Asked Questions about Plant and Animal Recovery Following the 1980 Eruption,” US Forest Service, Mount St. Helens Volcanic Monument, http://www.fs.usda.gov/mountsthelens.
When I visited the park thirty years later: “Mount St. Helens, 30 Years Later: A Landscape Reconfigured,” Pacific Northwest Research Station, http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/mtsthelens/.
explosion became international news at the speed of electronic transmission: Simon Winchester, “Krakatoa, the first modern tsunami,” BBC, January 8, 2005.
explosive noises for almost two months: Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 149–76.
what has happened to the area since the eruption?: Ian Thornton, “Figs, frugivores and falcons: an aspect of the assembly of mixed tropical forest on the emergent volcanic island, Anak Krakatau,” South Australian Geographical Journal 93 (1994), 3–21.
wholesale species changes: Erwin, Extinction, 218–19.
Fray Jorge National Park: Michael Tennesen, “The Strange Forests That Drink—and Eat—Fog,” Discover, April 2009.
Barren land free of all vegetation gradually began to disappear: Erwin, Extinction, 221.
dominant vertebrate animal in the early Triassic: Ibid., 235.
they weren’t the second-best predator of the day: Randall B. Irmis, Sterling J. Nesbitt, and Hans-Dieter Sues, “Early Crocodylomorpha,” in Anatomy, Phylogeny and Palaeobiology of Early Archosaurs and their Kin, edited by Sterling J. Nesbitt, Julia Brenda Desojo, and Randall B. Irmis (London: Geological Society, Special Publications, 2013).
A colossal phytosaur looking like a diesel truck: Scott Wing and Hans-Dieter Sues, Mesozoic and Early Cenozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), xii.
there were mountain lions from his study nearby: Michael Tennesen, “Can the Military Clean Up Its Act?” National Wildlife, October 1993.
The Korean demilitarized zone: Tom O’Neil, “Korea’s DMZ: Dangerous Divide,” National Geographic, July 2003, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/asia/north-korea/dmz-text/1.
the perfect wildlife sanctuary: Tim Wall, “War of Peace May Doom Korean DMZ Wildlife,” Discovery News, March 18, 2013, http://news.discovery.com/earth/what-would-a-new-korean-war-do-to-dmz-wildlife-130318.htm.
reproductive rates are much lower in Chernobyl birds: A. P. Moller, et al., “Condition, reproduction and survival of barn swallows from Chernobyl,” Journal of Animal Ecology 74 (2005), 1102–11.
brains of the local birds are 5 percent smaller: University of South Carolina, “Researcher finds birds have smaller brains,” February 10, 2011, http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=1562#.U-1S9kjbaot.
radiation effects will diminish over time: University of Portsmouth, “Wildlife thriving after nuclear disaster?” ScienceDaily, April 11, 2012; J. T. Smith, N. J. Willey, and J. T. Hancock, “Low dose ionizing radiation produces too few reactive oxygen species to directly affect antioxidant concentrations in cells,” Biology Letters (April 11, 2012), http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/04/05/rsbl.2012.0150.
10 TROUBLED SEAS: THE FUTURE OF THE OCEANS
lowers the pH of ocean waters, which is bad for krill: Michael Marshall, “Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean,” New Scientist, November 25, 2012.
decreases the ability of whales to hear the mating calls of others: Yifei Wang, “A Cacophony in the Deep Blue: How Acidification May Be Deafening Whales,” Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, February 22, 2009.
a ring of male humpback whales: Michael Tennesen, “Tuning in to Humpback Whales,” National Wildlife, February/March 2002.
ocean was doing a good job of taking in CO2 all by itself: Andrew Revkin, “Papers Find Mixed Impacts on Ocean Species from Rising CO2,” New York Times, August 26, 2013.
Acidification of ocean water is bad for krill: Australian Antarctic Division, “Krill face deadly cost of ocean acidification,” Media News, October
13, 2010.
As the ocean gets noisier, whale sounds may get muffled: Keith C. Hester, Edward T. Peltzer, William J. Kirkwood, and Peter G. Brewer, “Unanticipated consequences of ocean acidification: A noisier ocean at lower pH,” Geophysical Research Letters 35 (October 1, 2008), L19601.
unable to get their gills back: Author interview with Hans-Dieter Sues, April 16, 2012.
“Atlantification” of the Arctic: Curt Stager, Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2011), 150.
the worst thing about McMurdo is the food: Author interview with Gretchen Hofmann, February 27, 1992.
the bounds of natural pH fluctuation: Gretchen E. Hofmann, et al., “High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison,” PLOS One, December 2011.
Curt Stager, author of Deep Future: Stager, Deep Future, 156–58.
CO2 vents off the island of Ischia: J. Garrabou, et al., “Mass mortality in Northwestern Mediterranean rocky benthic communities,” Global Change Biology 15, no. 5 (May 2009), 1090–103.
“Elvis Taxa”: Erwin, Extinction, 237.
the loss of coral: Rebecca Albright, Benjamin Mason, Margaret Miller, and Chris Langdon, “Ocean acidification compromises recruitment of the threatened Caribbean coral Acropora palmata,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 47 (2010), 20400–4.
Acidification there dissolves the shells of sea snails: Marshall, “Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean.”
The development of the frozen food industry: Callum Roberts, The Unnatural History of the Sea: The Past and Future of Humanity and Fishing (London: Gaia, 2007), 201–2.
armorhead fish around seamounts off Hawaii: Ibid., 290.
a full-scale assault on the fishery: Ibid., 291.
harvesting deep-sea sediments for their rare-earth metals: Author interview with Craig McClain, April 11, 2012.
“Jellyfish Gone Wild”: National Science Foundation, “Environmental Change and Jellyfish Swarms,” http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/jellyfish/.
one of their favorite haunts is Jellyfish Lake: Pamela S. Turner, “Darwin’s Jellyfishes,” National Wildlife, August/September 2006.
The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man Page 30
