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Malay Mail
a day ago
- Science
- Malay Mail
Rare Gombak firefly not seen in Malaysia for over 100 years rediscovered in Bukit Kiara by student, prompts new questions about species survival
KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 — Discovering something rare is exciting but it becomes truly memorable when it happens unexpectedly. That was exactly the case for Tan Wei Jack, 24, a research assistant and master's student in environmental science at Monash University Malaysia. He never imagined that a routine firefly survey at Taman Persekutuan Bukit Kiara here on Oct 23 last year, would lead to the unintentional 'rediscovery' of a rare species last seen in Malaysia a century ago. His discovery — Pteroptyx gombakia (P. gombakia) or the Gombak bent-winged firefly — turned out to be the third known specimen of this particular species, and marked the ninth known firefly species identified in the Bukit Kiara urban forest, Malaysia's first federal park which is managed by the National Landscape Department. P. gombakia was officially named in 2015 by entomologist Lesly Ballantyne at the Natural History Museum in London, based on the first specimen of the species collected in 1921 from the area now known as Genting Sempah in Gombak, Selangor. Tan said the firefly specimen he collected last October was initially assumed to be of a species from the genus Colophotia, which is commonly found in Bukit Kiara. But later when he examined it closely on Jan 9, it looked different. 'So I took some photos through the microscope and sent them to my academic supervisor Dr Wan Faridah (Akmal Jusoh). After discussions, we found out it was actually a bent-winged P. gombakia (from a different genus),' he told Bernama recently. Tan said he, together with Dr Wan Faridah — a firefly taxonomist and senior lecturer in Biodiversity and Conservation at Monash University Malaysia — returned to Bukit Kiara to do more research. 'Whenever we saw their flashing lights (usually at twilight), we would catch the fireflies, observe their features, record their species and then release them,' he said. Mangrove species According to Wan Faridah, who is also the co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission Firefly Specialist Group, P. gombakia belongs to the genus Pteroptyx, which is usually found in mangrove habitats and known for its synchronous flashing displays in large congregations. She added there is a group of Pteroptyx called 'bent-winged' fireflies, named after their folded wings, which are also mostly found in mangroves. She said she was surprised when Tan showed her the specimen collected from the Bukit Kiara urban forest as it was 'the first bent-winged Pteroptyx ever found outside of mangroves'. 'This suggests that the species can actually survive outside that ecosystem,' she told Bernama. Wan Faridah also said she did not realise Tan's specimen was the bent-winged Pteroptyx until she examined its microscopic images. 'The difference (between P. gombakia and the more common Colophotia) was spotted in the (P. gombakia) firefly's light-producing organ called the 'lantern', which is located in the insect's abdomen,' she said. She explained both P. gombakia and Colophotia have bipartite light organs, meaning the structure is divided into two distinct sections. However, P. gombakia lacks a median carina, a ridge that separates the organ into two halves. 'Indeed, it's truly magical we have this rare group of fireflies living in the heart of our city,' she said. She also said out of the 14 known bent-winged Pteroptyx species, nine are found in mangrove ecosystems. The habitats of the remaining species, including P. gombakia, remain unclear due to a lack of ecological data. Firefly taxonomist and senior lecturer in Biodiversity and Conservation at Monash University Malaysia, Dr Wan Faridah Akmal Jusoh (left), and research assistant and environmental science postgraduate student Tan Wei Jack (right), displaying firefly specimens during an interview. — Bernama pic Types of fireflies Fireflies belong to Lampyridae, a family of insects within the Coleoptera order, which includes bioluminescent beetles. Wan Faridah said globally, more than 2,600 firefly species have been identified. In Malaysia, over 60 species have been documented so far, with at least 10 of them found in mangrove swamps. She said one of the main characteristics distinguishing territorial fireflies from mangrove forest fireflies is their behaviour: the former typically fly alone while the latter — also known as congregating fireflies — gather and display their light in groups. Of the nine Pteroptyx species found in mangrove forests, four have been listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 'Usually, two to three species can be found congregating in a single mangrove tree, and these insects require suitable water levels and temperatures to ensure the survival of their species,' she said. Wan Faridah noted that most fireflies found flying in both mangrove and terrestrial habitats are males while some females are flightless, remaining on the ground while the males fly and use light signals to locate and attract them. While congregating fireflies in mangrove swamps are well-known as ecotourism attractions in Malaysia, Wan Faridah said solitary fireflies also exist in other forest types. The Bukit Kiara urban forest, for instance, is now home to nine firefly species, including Lamprigera - the world's largest female firefly species — and the latest discovery P. gombakia. Wan Faridah said unlike most Pteroptyx species, the bent-winged firefly species recently discovered in Bukit Kiara does not appear to congregate in large numbers. 'We don't have enough data about this species and we still have many unanswered questions. 'What worries us is that we may have discovered a species (P. gombakia) which is on the brink of extinction. So currently, we are racing against time to find the answers,' she said. According to Wan Faridah, threats to P. gombakia include habitat loss due to urban development and artificial lighting at night, which causes light pollution and disrupts the flashing signals fireflies use to communicate with each other. 'Every rediscovered firefly species is evidence that extinction is possible but it can still be prevented if we act. 'If more people become aware of these endangered fireflies, perhaps more efforts will be made to protect their habitats,' she said. Wan Faridah also said despite the potential of fireflies as ecotourism assets, one of the main challenges for researchers in Malaysia is the lack of a proper species inventory and natural history collection, which would serve as a valuable archive of insect diversity. She said research on fireflies in Malaysia is limited, making conservation efforts more difficult. 'I had no intention of becoming an entomologist until I discovered kelip-kelip (fireflies) in 2006 during a final year project field trip to Kampung Sepetang, Perak, when I was an environmental science undergraduate at Universiti Putra Malaysia. 'I became curious and told my supervisor I wanted to study fireflies... but due to the lack of local studies (on fireflies), I had to start from scratch — building my own database by collecting species across Malaysia,' she said, adding her research focuses not only on biodiversity but also on the natural heritage of fireflies. She also pointed out that due to colonial-era practices, many specimens originally from Malaysia are now stored in foreign institutions. 'Due to the lack of facilities in Malaysia, as part of my research projects, I need to travel to countries like the Netherlands, France and England to visit their natural history museums to compare reference specimens of fireflies that were collected during the colonial era,' she said. She added that the process of recognising and verifying new firefly discoveries takes at least two years, and requires both funding and facilities. 'In Malaysia, very few firefly studies have been carried out. Even when discoveries are made, it is difficult for us to confirm whether they are new or just duplicates of existing species,' she said. Wan Faridah also hopes to build an extensive species database and discover new species of fireflies. 'I want to reconstruct the data so we can have a comprehensive list of what species we actually have here in Malaysia. 'My goal is to develop a national species inventory so that future generations who want to study fireflies can refer to it, so we can continue the legacy of protecting Malaysia's firefly biodiversity,' she said. — Bernama
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Unity Environmental University celebrates largest graduating class ever with Neil deGrasse Tyson
May 21—NEW GLOUCESTER — Once a small college struggling with declining enrollment, Unity Environmental University is bringing in astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson as its commencement speaker to help graduate its largest-ever class this Friday. The president of Unity Environmental University, formerly Unity College, says the school has evolved in response to the challenges of higher education and its 10,000-person student body is now mostly online. "Our purpose at Unity is to offer quality environmental science and sustainability-based degrees, for everything from traditional students to working adults, so they can make an impact where they are," President Melik Peter Khoury said in an interview Wednesday at the school's new campus at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester. "But anything else is basically a construct." Unity is now the second-largest university in the state based on enrollment, behind only the flagship public University of Maine with 12,000 students as of this fall. On Friday, more than 1,000 students will graduate with bachelor's and master's degrees in environmental fields; about 200 are expected to walk in-person at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, joined by more than 1,000 guests. Tyson, the famed astrophysicist and science communicator, is just the latest in a line of notable commencement speakers: Khoury said primatologist Jane Goodall and the zookeeper TV star Steve Irwin have both given the address in the past. "With this invitation from Unity Environmental University, I am reminded that some institutions of higher learning have taken the shepherding of our precious Earth seriously enough to embed it into everything they preach and everything they teach," Tyson said in an announcement from the university. TRANCENDING TRADITION More than a decade ago, Khoury said, Unity's board of trustees took a look at the college's problem of declining enrollment, which was below 600 students in 2012. Their conclusion was that environmental science degrees were in demand, but often too expensive or exclusive for most of the students interested in them. "I was brought in to try to figure out, how do we transform the institution to really become a little bit more accessible," Khoury said. "So our mission transcends tradition." The school began experimenting in 2016 with institutional changes, like adding hybrid programs and graduate degrees. Then, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Khoury said, the university made the decision to close its residential undergraduate college in 2020. The school relocated administrative operations to Pineland Farms, where it offers in-person classes to about 200 students, and put its 225-acre campus in Unity up for sale in 2023. The institution changed its name that same year. Now, the vast majority of students, 800 graduate students and 9,200 undergrads, complete their degrees online. Rather than studying in semesters, the academic year is divided into eight terms, which Khoury said helps with retention and graduation rates, because students don't fall far behind when they need to take time off. Angelica De Hoyos and Javier Montanez, a married couple from southern New Jersey, are both graduating with a master's of professional science in environmental geographic information science on Friday. De Hoyos is a surveyor with the Army Corp of Engineers, and Montanez is a supervisor at the Atlantic City International Airport who got his bachelor's degree at Unity. They also have two kids, a 10-year-old and 6-year-old. When they decided to go to grad school, they said Unity's flexible and remote programs made sense. "With two full time jobs, barely having time to actually spend with the kids in the afternoon and evening, we decided that distance learning was the best fit for us," De Hoyos said. Montanez is hoping the degree will open the door to new professional opportunities that allow him to use his passion for the environment, and De Hoyos said she was motivated by her constant desire to learn and her industry's move toward using more GIS technology. She also wanted to show her kids that at any point in life, they can chase a new goal. When they drive eight hours to Maine to walk across the stage at Merrill Auditorium Friday, it will be their second time ever visiting the state. NON-TRADITIONAL CHANGES Khoury said Unity's transition hasn't been without difficulty and has involved trial and error. Many alumni and former faculty criticized the decision to eliminate the traditional campus. But while small residential environmental colleges like Green Mountain College in Vermont and Northland College in Wisconsin have shuttered in recent years, he said Unity has a graduating class this year that's larger than the school's entire population was when he first started in 2016. He believes American higher education is still stuck on a vision of college as an experience that involves four years of full-time commitment and living on campus. But he said that just doesn't match the reality of who wants degrees: often it's adult students with full-time jobs, sometimes with children. The average age of a current Unity student is 29. "Are we confounding an American coming-of-age experience with the need for for education?" Khoury said. "I think we need to uncouple those two, and we need to look at one for what it is, which is: How do we want to transition our young adults into adulthood? And then we need to look at the other one as: How do we get people educated, no matter where they are in life?" Copy the Story Link
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Michael Allaby obituary
My father, Michael Allaby, who has died aged 91, was an influential figure in the development of green philosophy. Co-author with Edward Goldsmith of the key ecological text A Blueprint for Survival in 1972, he later also collaborated with James Lovelock, with whom he had an enduring friendship. Michael wrote an astonishing number of books on the environmental sciences – more than 100 in total. At the heart of his work was a firm belief that scientific objectivity is key to the survival of humanity. Born in Belper, Derbyshire, to Theodore, a clerk, and his wife, Jessie (nee King), he was passed around between various relatives during the second world war while his mother suffered from the long-term effects of Spanish flu. After attending the George Dixon grammar school in Birmingham he became a police cadet (1949-51) and then enlisted in the RAF (1951-54), where he became a pilot of Vampire and Meteor jet fighters. On leaving the RAF he spent a decade as an actor, appearing in Doctor Who on television and in The Mousetrap on stage. During that period he met and married Ailsa McGregor in 1957. Michael's career in the environmental sphere began in 1964, when he joined the Soil Association in Suffolk (1964-1972), editing its Span magazine. He also became an associate editor of the Ecologist magazine from 1970 to 1972, and then its managing editor, relocating with Ailsa and their two children, Vivien and Robin, to Wadebridge in Cornwall. His first book, The Eco-Activists, was published in 1971, followed by Who Will Eat? in 1972, about world food problems. A Blueprint for Survival first saw the light of day in a special edition of the Ecologist in early 1972, and was later published in book form, selling more than 750,000 copies. In 1973 Michael decided to become a full-time freelance writer, focusing on raising awareness of environmental and sustainability issues with further books such as The Survival Handbook: Self-sufficiency for Everyone (1975), Inventing Tomorrow (1976) and The Politics of Self Sufficiency (1980). A meeting of minds with Lovelock lifted his attention to the planetary scale, and with Lovelock he wrote The Great Extinction (1983), looking at what killed the dinosaurs, and The Greening of Mars (1984) a novel exploring the science behind the potential terraforming of Mars. He then became an early contributor to the climate change debate with books such as A Guide to Gaia (1989) and Living in the Greenhouse (1990). He also called out the rise of anti-scientific sentiment as a serious threat in Facing the Future (1996). In his later life Michael dedicated himself to writing scientific textbooks and various Oxford dictionaries, including the Oxford Dictionary of Ecology (2010). He also wrote many works on weather systems and was awarded the Aventis Junior Prize in 2001 for his book DK Guide to Weather (2000). Animated, articulate and funny, Michael was an inspirational figure to many, and much of his work now seems especially prescient. He is survived by Ailsa, me and his grandchildren, Jemima, Joe, Isaac and Jed. Vivien died in 2024.
CBS News
13-05-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Baltimore area waterways rated poorly for water quality, report shows
The water quality in several parts of the Baltimore region was extremely poor in 2024, according to a yearly report from Blue Water Baltimore. The water quality monitoring program uses samples from 51 stations in Baltimore-area waterways to determine water health. Monitoring water quality in the Baltimore region Blue Water Baltimore measures different components of water health and uses those samples to determine water quality based on a scoring method created by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. This year, for the first time since 2014, the organization chose not to assign letter grades to the scores. The organization categorizes the region's waterways into four sections: Baltimore Harbor, Gwynns Falls, Jones Falls and Tidal Patapsco. The 2024 water quality report shows that most of the waterways in the Baltimore region had an overall score between 0% and 39%. A score of 0% to 19% indicates that water quality is very poor, leading to poor conditions for fish and shellfish. A score of 20% to 39% means that some health indicators are being met, though conditions for animals are still considered poor. Report shows declines in ecological health According to the data, all of the waterways in the Baltimore region have slightly declined in ecological health since 2023. Water quality at the Baltimore Harbor, Gwynn Falls and Patapsco River regions has continued to decline between 2013 and 2024, while the quality in the Jones Falls region has slightly improved, data shows. Water quality at the Baltimore Harbor, Gwynn Falls and Patapsco River regions has continued to decline between 2013 and 2024, while the quality in the Jones Falls region has slightly improved, data shows. Blue Water Baltimore According to the report, chlorophyll levels were poor in most of the waterways, with a score of 18% in the category. The levels of chlorophyll can indicate different types of algae in the water. While algae provides food for fish and other animals, too much of it can kill fish and become toxic to people and wildlife, Blue Water Baltimore explains. The organization describes the category of conductivity as a "humanity was here stamp," as it shows if a waterway has been damaged by pollutants that were introduced into the water by rain. In 2024, the average conductivity score was 9%, according to the report. "The long-term data trends are telling us that these problems are getting worse over time," Blue Water Baltimore said. Recommendations to improve water quality Blue Water Baltimore shared several recommendations in its 2024 report, saying, "Our streams should be fishable and swimmable, capable of sustaining thriving natural ecosystems for generations to come." The organization is pushing to reach water quality goals that were outlined in the federal Clean Water Act (CWA), which was enacted in 1972. The CWA aims to control water pollution levels and "restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Nation's waters," according to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The law outlines how much pollution can enter waterways across the country and allows the Environmental Protection Agency to implement control programs and water quality standards. The Blue Water Baltimore report offers the following suggestions to improve ecosystem health in the region: Increase investments in environmentally friendly stormwater infrastructure Fund sewer infrastructure projects and maintenance for systems Continue tracking water health with long-term monitoring projects Pass legislation to eliminate trash pollution and allow the community to hold polluters accountable Low air quality in Baltimore region In April, a pollution report from the American Lung Association provided a similarly low score for air quality in the Baltimore region. The report, which monitors smog levels and pollution, gave Baltimore County an "F" grade and named the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington metro region as the 36th worst in the country for ozone smog. According to the report, Baltimore City has maintained several years of "A" grades for low particle pollution.
