Key tropical crops at risk from pollinator loss due to climate change and land use 

Millard et al., 2023.

Insect pollinator biodiversity is changing rapidly, with potential consequences for the provision of crop pollination. However, the role of land use–climate interactions in pollinator biodiversity changes, as well as consequent economic effects via changes in crop pollination, remains poorly understood. We present a global assessment of the interactive effects of climate change and land use on pollinator abundance and richness and predictions of the risk to crop pollination from the inferred changes. Using a dataset containing 2673 sites and 3080 insect pollinator species, we show that the interactive combination of agriculture and climate change is associated with large reductions in insect pollinators. As a result, it is expected that the tropics will experience the greatest risk to crop production from pollinator losses. Localized risk is highest and predicted to increase most rapidly, in regions of sub-Saharan Africa, northern South America, and Southeast Asia. Via pollinator loss alone, climate change and agricultural land use could be a risk to human well-being.

Response of pollinating and nonpollinating insect total abundance to the interactive effect of standardized temperature anomaly and land use.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh0756

LE SYSTÈME ALIMENTAIRE MONDIAL MENACE DE S’EFFONDRER 

George Monbiot

 

 Muerte masiva de insectos | DW Documental

 “I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties, that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the Universe.” 

I. Asimov 

Chaos and intermittent instability in ecological systems 

Tanya Rogers 

Fear of the human “super predator” pervades the South African savanna  

Zanette et al., 2023.

How do various animals react to a human voice?

Faced with recordings of human voices, 19 species fled instantly; the sound of humans triggered stronger flight responses than lions.

https://n9.cl/2hu8k  

A synergistic future for AI and ecology 

Han et al., 2023.

Research in both ecology and AI strives for predictive understanding of complex systems, where nonlinearities arise from multidimensional interactions and feedbacks across multiple scales. After a century of independent, asynchronous advances in computational and ecological research, we foresee a critical need for intentional synergy to meet current societal challenges against the backdrop of global change. These challenges include understanding the unpredictability of systems-level phenomena and resilience dynamics on a rapidly changing planet. Here, we spotlight both the promise and the urgency of a convergence research paradigm between ecology and AI. Ecological systems are a challenge to fully and holistically model, even using the most prominent AI technique today: deep neural networks. Moreover, ecological systems have emergent and resilient behaviors that may inspire new, robust AI architectures and methodologies. We share examples of how challenges in ecological systems modeling would benefit from advances in AI techniques that are themselves inspired by the systems they seek to model. Both fields have inspired each other, albeit indirectly, in an evolution toward this convergence. We emphasize the need for more purposeful synergy to accelerate the understanding of ecological resilience whilst building the resilience currently lacking in modern AI systems, which have been shown to fail at times because of poor generalization in different contexts. Persistent epistemic barriers would benefit from attention in both disciplines. The implications of a successful convergence go beyond advancing ecological disciplines or achieving an artificial general intelligence—they are critical for both persisting and thriving in an uncertain future.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2220283120

Caminábamos con Borges por un barrio de quintas, en Mar del Plata, y de pronto sentí un olor que me conmovió. Borges me dijo que los recuerdos que más nos emocionan son los de olores y gustos, porque suelen estar rodeados de abismos de olvido: hay que oler el mismo olor para recordar un olor, hay que sentir el mismo gusto para recordar un gusto (no ocurre así con imágenes y sonidos). ¡Con qué emoción volvemos a oler el mismo olor que por última vez olimos en tiempos lejanos, en lugares a los que nunca volveremos! 

Sábado, 23 de julio, 1949.     

Adolfo Bioy Casares (2006) Borges. Ediciones Destino

The land use, trade, and global food security impacts of an agroecological transition in the EU  

Schiavo et al., 2023.

The need for an agroecological transition is regularly advocated by many actors and policymakers on the European scene, but many questions arise regarding the potential consequences that this transition may have on the rest of the world. Using a world biomass balance model, in this paper we show that a deep agroecological transition in the EU, if accompanied by a shift of EU food regimes towards more plant-based diets, is not detrimental to global food security. Without increasing its cropland areas, the EU can maintain the same level of exported calories as in a business-as-usual scenario while reducing its import needs. This result holds true also in an alternative scenario in which the other world regions adopt agroecological production methods and healthier diets. In contrast, an agricultural transition taking place in the EU without a change of EU food regimes, would drastically increase EU food dependence on global markets and contribute to the expansion of agricultural land in the rest of the world.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1189952/full