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WSU researcher joins international call to halt massive insect decline

From bees to butterflies, ants to wasps, insect populations of all kinds are at risk, according to a growing scientific consensus. Their decline also threatens the many ecosystem services that depend on them, including food production.

Cheryl Schulz.
Schulz

“It’s clear that we’re experiencing massive insect declines both in species and in abundance,” said WSU conservation biologist Cheryl Schultz. “We are becoming increasingly aware that species that were once common across the landscape are now rare.”

To avert this potential disaster, Schultz recently joined more than 70 scientists from 21 countries in issuing a “Road Map for Insect Conservation and Recovery” in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

In their road map, the scientists outlined steps to slow and help reverse the decline in insect populations. They propose immediate “no regret” solutions, steps that can only help insects recover while they work to build more scientific knowledge of the problem. These immediate steps include increasing landscape heterogeneity in agriculture; phasing out synthetic pesticides and fertilizers; and enhancing “citizen science” as a way of obtaining more data on insect diversity and abundance.

Longer term actions include creating large-scale assessments of insect populations, conducting new research to better understand human-caused stressors on insect survival and starting a global monitoring program. (For the full list of solutions see the image at the link below).

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WSU Insider

Developing rice for the future gets funding boost

Asaph Cousins.
Cousins

WSU is part of an international effort to revolutionize rice production. The “C4 Rice Project,” co-led by Asaph Cousins, WSU professor of biological sciences, recently earned a five‑year, $15 million grant renewal from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Currently, more than 3 billion people depend upon rice for survival, and trends in population growth and land use mean there will be greater demand for rice and less space to grow it on: the same area of land that provided enough rice to feed 27 people in 2010 will need to support 43 by 2050.

The project, which involves seven institutions, aims to develop rice strains that are not only more productive but also more resilient. The long‑term effort, which was first conceived in the 1990s, earned its first Gates Foundation grant in 2008 and is now entering its fourth phase.

“We have learned a lot about the molecular biology, physiology, leaf development and biochemistry of C4 photosynthesis during the initial phases of this project, and it’s exciting that we have received additional support to implement this knowledge to enhance photosynthesis in rice,” said Asaphs, co‑principal investigator for the project, which is institutionally led by the University of Oxford.

Currently, rice uses the C3 photosynthetic pathway to convert light, carbon dioxide and water into energy, but the C4 pathway, which is used by crops such as maize and sorghum, is more efficient and productive even in higher temperatures and drought conditions. Both the C3 and C4 pathways are named for the type of carbon molecules that result from their respective photosynthetic processes.

The C4 pathway has evolved more than 60 times independently in plants. The C4 Rice Project aims to develop rice that uses this pathway to improve yield and endure harsher environmental conditions.

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WSU Insider

Dr. Universe: What do Axolotls eat? What species are they? Do you think they are cute?

An axolotl (ax-a-lot-l) is a creature with big frilly gills like a lion’s mane, tiny eyes with no eyelids, and a mouth in the shape of a smile. They come in lots of colors: pink, black, golden, or grey.

These animals have been nicknamed “the walking fish,” but they are not really fish. An axolotl is a type of salamander.

Ed Zalisko.
Zalisko

That’s what I found out from my friend Ed Zalisko. Zalisko earned his Ph.D. at Washington State University and is now a biology professor at Blackburn College in Illinois.

A salamander is a type of amphibian, a cold-blooded animal that has gills, can breathe air, and lives under water. We find axolotls mainly in Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco in Mexico. The species name is Ambystoma mexicanum.

Because humans need water to survive, that means there is less water left for some of the amphibians. Axolotls are actually a critically endangered species, Zalisko said.

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Dr. Universe

Searching for la belle dame

Joan Grenier-Winther.
Grenier-Winther

Where in the world had the Clumber Park Chartier disappeared to? Joan Grenier-Winther, the Marianna M. and Donald S. Matteson Distinguished Professor of French at Washington State University Vancouver, really needed to examine the fifteenth-century collection of poems by Alain Chartier and others.

After all, her critical edition and translation of an unusual poem of the era was about to be published, and the Clumber Park manuscript had a version she hadn’t yet seen.

Before printing presses were invented, manuscripts were copied by hand. Mistakes could creep into one copy, and then be reproduced by scribes in subsequent copies. Grenier-Winther had examined all the known copies, or witnesses, as they’re known by professional medievalists, of “La Belle dame qui eust mercy” she was editing—all except the one in the Clumber Park Chartier.

“From the beginning of the 20th century,” Grenier-Winther says, “a lot of people have mentioned this manuscript: they knew it was beautiful and contained the poems of Chartier. The contents were cataloged. I asked scholars in Europe if they had any clue where it was, but no one did.”

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WSU Insider

New study shows decline in legislative civility in Idaho

Civility has declined at the Idaho Legislature, but not as much as in other states or in Washington, D.C., according to a new study.

Nicholas Lovrich.
Lovrich

Researchers from 11 universities around the nation joined in the study, led by Nicholas Lovich, professor emeritus in political science at Washington State University. It was funded by the National Institute for Civil Discourse and WSU. It surveyed more than 1,300 lobbyists who work in state legislatures in all 50 states, and followed up on a survey three years earlier of legislators themselves.

The survey showed Idaho isn’t immune to a national trend toward less civility, less compromise and more polarization in civic discourse, accompanied by declining trust in U.S. government institutions.

“There’s a broad feeling that something’s wrong, that something’s broken,” Lovrich said , “that we used to do things in a way that wasn’t so nasty and wasn’t so horrible.”

The study explored whether the gridlock that’s emerged in Congress is beginning to infect state legislatures, and it found that, at least in the view of lobbyists, it has started to, but to a much lesser extent. The lobbyists who were surveyed represent a wide array of interests, from contract lobbyists for private business interests to those representing agencies, non-profits and public interest groups.

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