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By turning to ancient poetry, a Chinese research team became creative to save an endangered species. Scientists concluded over 700 ancient Chinese poetry of the Tang Dynasty through the Qing Dynasty, referring to Yangtze Finless Porpoise, to find out where and when the poet saw the animals because little is known about the history of the population.
Yangtze Finless Porpoise (the world’s only freshwater polywise) has faced an extreme decline in numbers over the past 40 years. Less than 1,300 people remain in the wild, and scientists in eastern China have made great efforts to better understand the range of animals’ past habitats to better inform future conservation initiatives.
The survey results were harsh. Data suggest that the most extreme reductions have been made over the past century, bringing the historic range of finless rats down by 65% over the past 1, 200 years. The team published the findings of the Journal Current Biology survey on May 5th.
“Some older fishermen said they often see mice in areas where they have now completely disappeared,” researcher Zhigang Mei told CNN via email. “It really sparked my curiosity. Where did these mice live historically?”
Youngz only lives in the Yang River Basin, a central shunt in eastern China. From the early 1980s to the 2010s, a 2014 survey showed that a combination of illegal fishing in adjacent lakes, industrial pollution in waterways, dams and sand mining caused a sharp decline in population by 60%, according to a 2014 survey.
Hard science data on mice has only existed for decades, so scientists understand their spatial distribution very narrowly. This raises a problem known as the shift in baseline syndrome, explained MEI, a professor at the Institute of Hydrogenology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan.
“(This study) answers important questions about what constitutes a healthy population,” he said. “Without a historic baseline, we risk moving our expectations down for generations and accept what is affirmed as “normal.” ”
They were surprised when May and his colleagues plunged through the archives in search of answers. Official records such as the local official gazette and the county chronicles did not provide information on only terrestrial megafaunas, such as mice and elephants, about species that frequently oppose humans.
In contrast, mice are less likely to have close encounters with humans. (There are no dramas, no records.) Instead, sightings were usually from locally uneducated anglers and wealthy tourists. They got a glimpse of the elusive rat while traveling the Youngtze River by boat, but it was not officially recorded.
In the face of this dead end, scientists realized that ancient poetry can be useful.
“We were surprised,” May said. Researchers strive to explore documents written through literature.
The author sorted hundreds of poems dating back to the AD 830 It referenced Polpoise. For each poem, scientists looked for evidence of the location, including an explanation of the unique geographical features of the Yang River Basin. The team then investigated the period of the poem and the personal history of each poet to ensure accuracy. Approximately half of the poem contained accurate location information, allowing the team to map sightings from each dynasty.
The author explained that ancient Chinese poetry is often non-fiction and includes first-person explanations of everyday life and observations of nature. As such, the poem served as a reasonable indicator of finless rat sightings throughout the river basin.
“Emerald seals jade green tiles as spots of Idol Dawn Cloud’s drift/Porpoise, where Idol Dawn Cloud disappears between swift lifts of waves,” reads one Qing Dynasty poem called “Crossing the river in the rain, crossing the river looking at Jinshan.”
“In fact, it’s beautiful,” said Paulo Corti, a conservation ecologist at Austral University at the University of Chile, who was not involved in the research. “They did something great with some very simple information.”
It is not uncommon to use historical materials for science – especially in paleontology and archaeology – to study wildlife, Corti said.
“This is a very useful tool, especially when you improve your analysis and incorporate those qualitative data into quantitative (data),” he said.
Poem data only provides estimates. But that’s a research The author’s best source for devising how the distribution of Yangtze Finless Porpoise populations has changed before modern times.
Such research needs to be conducted with caution, Kolti adds. Corti has written a magazine article about his responsible use of historical records for wildlife research after he realized that some scientists were using such data inappropriately.
One of the major limitations of cultural records is human error, he explained. Fishermen and hunters, for example, are more reliable observers than foreign explorers who may misinterpret similar animals. Therefore, the research authors studied the background of each poet, including where they lived and traveled, to validate their observations.
Youngtze’s finless mouse appears clearly, with short noses, dark gray colours and lacking signature dorsal fins.
Jiajia Liu, co-author of Jiajia Liu, a professor of biodiversity science at the University of Fudan in Shanghai, said mammals need to surface for the air. And he added that since the terrible rats had not retained historical cultural significance, it is unlikely that the poet would write about them without literal observation.
For these reasons, researchers trusted the poems of the data.
That said, the author acknowledges that some historical references to the river Popiwards can be confused with the now-creative Baiji, a freshwater dolphin that lived in Youngtse. However, the species was much larger, lighter in colour and promoted long noses.
Certainly, Baiji serves as a warning story for awful mice. Freshwater dolphins became functionally extinct in 2006 from many of the same threats.
The extinction of Finless Porpoise would remove ecosystems from balance, Liu explained. As top predators, mice eat fish that eat aquatic grass. Rare mammals are also ecosystem engineers by promoting a process known as nutritional cycling. By traveling over long distances, finless mice carry nitrogen and phosphorus from the bottom of the river to its surface, and from downstream to upstream.
With evidence that finless mice lived not only in major rivers but tributaries and lakes, scientists are thinking better about where they have historically flourished and whether they could thrive again in those places.
With breeding, a process in which endangered species are kept in captivity and returned to the wild, in a process that is ongoing since 1996, the author hopes that their new discoveries will help future conservation efforts, including identifying areas where they can be released.
But it’s important not to jump to conclusions, Corti warned. He said that using such information for modern wildlife management requires a complete understanding of species behavior, morphology, diet and other factors. “You can make many mistakes,” he added, estimates historical observational data to inform future management decisions.
“If you’re trying to see what happened with a species in the past, you need to know what’s going on right now,” Corti said.
Importantly, the study created a link between endangered species and culture, which stated that it could attract public attention. If Yangtze Finless Porpoise could become a flagship species such as Panda, it will help improve their conservation, he said.
Over the past few years, the rat population has grown for the first time thanks to conservation policies such as the ban on fishing.
“Conservation isn’t just about (for scientists),” May said. “It’s about everyone, it’s about our culture.”
