Red List concerns
Rachel Nowak’s challenging article on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (14 March, p 8) raised a number of concerns, but left out one arguably obvious one 鈥� the consequences of climate change.
What climate change means for the application of the Red List is not clear. To be fair, the IUCN has recently recognised this and is now progressing the development and application of criteria that will help to access species’ vulnerabilities to climate change itself. They then plan to use this in conjunction with the Red List. Meanwhile, we are left with Red List assessments that do not take this into account and I feel that this makes them of limited use.
This is the case, for example, with the assessments of whales, dolphins and porpoises concluded in 2008, in which predicted and observed changes in key habitats, notably at the poles, were not taken into account. Consequently, existing assessments may make these animals seem more robust than they really are.
The challenge to many species and populations from climate change will be whether they can adapt to the rate of change, and perhaps this is also now true of the Red List itself: can it adapt to be a useful tool in terms of assessing vulnerability in a rapidly changing world? Will it be swift enough to respond to the sometimes unpredictable, but undoubtedly important, changes that will increasingly affect species, or do we need a new approach?
From Holly Dublin, IUCN Species Survival Commission, African elephant specialist group chair; and Julian Blanc, former African elephant database manager
The assessment of African elephants for the Red List did require the pooling of data of varying quality. However, the statement in Rachel Nowak’s article that we “opted to pool all the data [we] had no matter how shaky” is misleading. The listing of the African elephant is highly sensitive, and we take great pains when conducting the assessment to remain consistent by leaving out the most unreliable estimates of population size, such as extrapolations of assumed elephant densities over assumed range, while retaining a sufficiently large sample size to avoid spurious conclusions.
A substantial proportion of the first comprehensive continental population estimates, attempted in the 1970s, were known to have been largely speculative. Therefore, in assessing the African elephant we are left with a choice between pooling spotless and blemished apples together or making no comparison at all, which would lead to a “Data Deficient” listing. The latter would be unacceptable to the global conservation community for a species as relatively well known as the African elephant.
We are aware of the controversy around the Red List: whether it is overly cautious or not precautionary enough in assessing species, in particular for those species that are long-lived, widely distributed and known to have radically different conservation status in different parts of their range. The manner in which the Red List deals with uncertainty is the topic of extensive debate, and the confounding of these healthy, ongoing debates with misleading statements does a major disservice to 鈥� and is an unnecessary distraction from 鈥� the important work needed to conserve the most vulnerable populations of African elephants.
Cape Town, South Africa
Societal drinking
Andy Coghlan is to be commended for bringing to our attention the dangers of “passive drinking” and its impact on our environment, economy and society (28 March, p 22). However, the problem has reached such proportions that it cannot be solved simply by increasing the price of alcohol. A multi-pronged approach is urgently needed, requiring all stakeholders to share responsibility. Parents need to ensure they pay enough attention to their children’s behaviour, the advertising industry should take a key role in highlighting the perilous repercussions of binge drinking, and the government should address the issue by offering better job stability, improved education and healthier places for teenagers to hang out, such as sporting facilities.
Astral experience
We read your two-part series on out-of-body experiments with interest (14 March, p 33, and 21 March, p 36). We were surprised that you did not mention our method, which uses two mirrors to create within seconds the experience of standing outside oneself (). This 2007 paper was the first to report a method to perceive being outside of one’s body.
Specious selection
I was pleased to read that the gene-centred view of evolution is increasingly being challenged (7 March, p 36), because for me it has never made sense.
If one wants a reductionist theory of evolution, surely the DNA nucleotide is the basic unit. By focusing on the gene 鈥� a set of imprecisely defined nucleotides, some of which may contribute to more than one gene 鈥� Richard Dawkins and others implicitly acknowledge that selection operates at a particular level of interacting units.
If selection can operate at this level, why not at higher levels, such as species or ecosystems?
Skinny-dippers
I was delighted to see that the aquatic ape theory got a small mention in the profile box of Elaine Morgan’s article on the similarities between orang-utans and humans (7 March, p 26). The theory is considered by some to be a non-starter, but if we wait for palaeontologists to procure the fossil evidence of aquatic evolution along ancient, long-lost coastlines, we’ll be waiting longer than Darwin had to wait for the fossil and DNA evidence to support his theories.
There is biological evidence: the “scars of evolution” as Morgan so aptly entitled one of her books. Our most singular human features, such as hairlessness, bipedalism, language, menopause, tear glands, breath control, obesity and endocrine glands, are features shared only by aquatic mammals or mammals with some kind of aquatic history.
Finally, perhaps we should consider that the aquatic ape theory may be relevant to more than just our past. If global warming continues to turn most of our habitable zones into desert, we may have no other recourse but to turn, once more, to the sea to survive.
Essentials first
Debora MacKenzie advises that “it is not a good idea to be sick in a poor country”, and this is undoubtedly true (28 February, p 22). However, the majority of illness in developing countries has nothing to do with a lack of pharmaceutical availability; medicines don’t make a population healthy. The countries that support UNITAID are lobbied continuously by pharmaceutical companies to ensure they don’t lose their developing markets.
If those countries want to encourage healthy populations, why don’t they allocate more of their budgets for clean water, sanitation, healthy food and the other essentials of life?
Suicidology
Robert Pool reports a “grand theory” of suicide (28 February, p 37), but his article rather misses the mark. A theory without any reference to what is known about the biology and the epidemiology of suicide is more grandiloquent than grand. Ilkka Henrik M盲kinen’s 1997 statement still stands: “Neither the individual-level causes nor the general-level correlates of suicide have been clarified to a satisfactory extent” (Social Science and Medicine, vol 44, p 1919).
Evolving backwards?
Though I much enjoyed the review of Jack Horner’s new book, How To Build A Dinosaur (28 February, p 44), I have to say I was a little disappointed that the reviewer, Jeff Hecht, continually made the common mistake of referring to a “reversal” or “rewind” of evolution.
Has he forgotten the number of evolutionists who are completely against the idea of evolution going any other way than forwards? Modifying a chicken to become more like a dinosaur would be less like making a traveller go back the way he came, and more like pointing him towards his original destination.
Significant figures
Regarding your calculations on the salt content of Walkers crisps, how can the one significant figure in 0.4 grams per pack lead to four significant figures in 4.444 grams per day (Feedback, 14 March)? We spend a lot of time explaining the significance of significant figures to students, and professionals need to set an example. The result of a calculation should not give more significant figures than were included in the input.
The editor writes:
鈥� You’re absolutely correct. Indeed, numerical accuracy is as important to the well-being of our youth as their salt intake. Perhaps Walkers’ confounding statistics could be used in schools as an example.
Injelititis
Mark Buchanan’s reference to Parkinson’s law (10 January, p 38) prompted me to read the entirety of C. Northcote Parkinson’s treatise where it originated.
Of particular significance is his ground-breaking discovery of “injelititis” 鈥� the chemical reaction within organisations when the concentration of incompetence and jealousy among senior management reaches such a level that the whole organisation becomes moribund.
The illness seems to have been particularly prevalent among the banking industry’s non-executive directors.
For the record
鈥� Kairbaan Hodivala-Dilke works at the Institute of Cancer, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London (28 March, p 12).
鈥� Phil Rasch works at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state (21 March, p 6).
鈥� The DOI in our story about “baby butter” should have been (28 March, p 15).