The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man (40 page)

thought animals might dive to 325 to 650 feet
: Michael Tennesen, “Deep Sea Divers: How low can marine animals go?”
Wildlife Conservation
, June 2005.

an adaptable breath-holding animal
: Michael Tennesen, “Testing the Depth of Life: Northern elephant seals migrate farther than any other mammal,”
National Wildlife
, February/March 1999.

power-dive to depths of up to one mile
: Julia S. Stewart, William F. Gilly, John C. Field, and John C. Payne, “Onshore-offshore movement of jumbo squid (
Dosidicus gigas
) on the continental shelf,”
Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography
95 (October 15, 2013), 193–96.

impacts to fish most commonly found on menus
: Gaia Vince, “How the world’s oceans could be running out of fish,”
BBC Future
, September 21, 2012,
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120920-are-we-running-out-of-fish
.

8
 THE END

New York’s system of waterways
: Gretchen Daily and Katherine Ellison,
The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002), 63–85.

That’s a lot of important functions
: Gretchen Daily,
Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997), 4.

fifty-two thousand animal and plant species
: Bill Marsh, “Are We in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction? A Tally of Life Under Threat,”
New York Times
, Sunday Review, Opinion Pages, June 1, 2012.

Communities relying on local goods
: Daily,
Nature’s Services
, 295–99.

two anticancer drugs
: Ibid., 263.

studying jaguar movements in the tropical forest
: Michael Tennesen, “Room for the Jaguar?”
dukenvironment magazine,
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University (Fall 2006 Honor Roll Issue), 28–29.

The habitat of the jaguar
: Dalia A. Conde, “Modeling male and female habitat difference for jaguar conservation,”
Biological Conservation
143, no. 9 (May 31, 2010), 1980–88.

Guatemala has lost two-thirds of its original forested area
: “Guatemala’s national forest programme—integrating agendas from the country’s diverse forest regions,”
National Forest Programme of Guatemala
, 2006.

Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998
: “Impact of Deforestation—1998: Hurricane Mitch,”
MongaBay.com
,
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/09mitch.htm
.

Guatemala has lost about 65,500 acres
: Danilo Valladares, “Guatemala: Relentless Devastation of Mangroves,” Inter Press Service, July 16, 2009,
http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/07/guatemala-relentless-devastation-of-mangroves/
.

Marshall, who grew up in Australia
: Author interview with Charles Marshall, April 4, 2012.

Las Vegas is Spanish for “the Meadows”
: Michele Ferrari and Steven Ives,
Las Vegas: An Unconventional History
(New York: Bulfinch Press, 2005), 1–127.

nature is the real treasure here
: Fernando Maestre, et al., “Plant Species Richness and Ecosystem Multifunctionality in Global Drylands,”
Science
335, no. 6065 (January 13, 2012), 214–18.

A well-developed biological crust
: Michael Tennesen, “Turning to Dust: Around the globe, grasslands are turning to desert and free-flowing bits of dirt and rock are remaking the environment,”
Discover Magazine
, May 2010.

the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas
: Emma Rosi-Marshall, “Colorado River can be revived,”
Poughkeepsie Journal
, September 11, 2011.

all-important food sources for native fish
: Lori Quillen, “Dams Destabilize River Food Webs: Lessons from the Grand Canyon,” Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, August 20, 2013.

altered the river’s ecosystem
: Wyatt F. Cross, et al., “Food-web dynamics in a large river discontinuum,”
Ecological Monographs
83, no. 3 (August 2013).

the river is rapidly losing water
: Sally Deneen, “Feds Slash Colorado River Release to Historic Lows,”
National Geographic
, August 16, 2013.

lower than the US Dust Bowl Era
: Tennesen, “Turning to Dust,”
Discover
, May 2010.

not enough water for the city to survive
: “A majority on Earth face severe self-inflicted water woes within 2 generations,”
AAAS and EurekAlert!
Water in Anthropocene Conference, Bonn, Germany, May 24, 2013.

There’s no place else for the birds to go
: Forest Isbell, et al., “High plant diversity is needed to maintain ecosystem services,”
Nature
477 (September 8, 2011), 199–202.

Las Vegas could get there, too
: Bruce Babbitt, “Age-Old Challenge: Water and the West,”
National Geographic
, June 1991, 2–3.

9
 THE LONG RENEWAL

recover from the Permian extinction
: Sarda Sahney and Michael J Benton, “Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences
275, no. 1636 (April 7, 2008), 759–65.

The explosion toppled most of the trees
: Lyn Garrity, “Evolution World Tour: Mount St. Helens, Washington—Over thirty years after the volcanic eruptions, plant and animal life has returned to the disaster site, a veritable living laboratory,”
Smithsonian Magazine
, January 2012,
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/evotourism/evolution-world-tour-mount-sthelens-washington-6011404/
.

most studied volcano in the world
: P. Frenzen, “Life Returns: Frequently Asked Questions about Plant and Animal Recovery Following the 1980 Eruption,” US Forest Service, Mount St. Helens Volcanic Monument,
http://www.fs.usda.gov/mountsthelens
.

When I visited the park thirty years later
: “Mount St. Helens, 30 Years Later: A Landscape Reconfigured,” Pacific Northwest Research Station,
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/mtsthelens/
.

explosion became international news at the speed of electronic transmission
: Simon Winchester, “Krakatoa, the first modern tsunami,” BBC, January 8, 2005.

explosive noises for almost two months
: Simon Winchester,
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
:
August 27, 1883
(New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 149–76.

what has happened to the area since the eruption?
: Ian Thornton, “Figs, frugivores and falcons: an aspect of the assembly of mixed tropical forest on the emergent volcanic island, Anak Krakatau,”
South Australian Geographical Journal
93 (1994), 3–21.

wholesale species changes
: Erwin,
Extinction
, 218–19.

Fray Jorge National Park
: Michael Tennesen, “The Strange Forests That Drink—and Eat—Fog,”
Discover
, April 2009.

Barren land free of all vegetation gradually began to disappear
: Erwin,
Extinction
, 221.

dominant vertebrate animal in the early Triassic
: Ibid., 235.

they weren’t the second-best predator of the day
: Randall B. Irmis, Sterling J. Nesbitt, and Hans-Dieter Sues, “Early Crocodylomorpha,” in
Anatomy, Phylogeny and Palaeobiology of Early Archosaurs and their Kin,
edited by Sterling J. Nesbitt, Julia Brenda Desojo, and Randall B. Irmis (London: Geological Society, Special Publications, 2013).

A colossal phytosaur looking like a diesel truck
: Scott Wing and Hans-Dieter Sues,
Mesozoic and Early Cenozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), xii.

there were mountain lions from his study nearby
: Michael Tennesen, “Can the Military Clean Up Its Act?”
National Wildlife
, October 1993.

The Korean demilitarized zone
: Tom O’Neil, “Korea’s DMZ: Dangerous Divide,”
National Geographic
, July 2003,
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/asia/north-korea/dmz-text/1
.

the perfect wildlife sanctuary
: Tim Wall, “War of Peace May Doom Korean DMZ Wildlife,”
Discovery News
, March 18, 2013,
http://news.discovery.com/earth/what-would-a-new-korean-war-do-to-dmz-wildlife-130318.htm
.

reproductive rates are much lower in Chernobyl birds
: A. P. Moller, et al., “Condition, reproduction and survival of barn swallows from Chernobyl,”
Journal of Animal Ecology
74 (2005), 1102–11.

brains of the local birds are 5 percent smaller
: University of South Carolina, “Researcher finds birds have smaller brains,” February 10, 2011,
http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=1562#.U-1S9kjbaot
.

radiation effects will diminish over time
: University of Portsmouth, “Wildlife thriving after nuclear disaster?”
ScienceDaily
, April 11, 2012; J. T. Smith, N. J. Willey, and J. T. Hancock, “Low dose ionizing radiation produces too few reactive oxygen species to directly affect antioxidant concentrations in cells,”
Biology Letters
(April 11, 2012),
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/04/05/rsbl.2012.0150
.

10
 TROUBLED SEAS: THE FUTURE OF THE OCEANS

lowers the pH of ocean waters, which is bad for krill
: Michael Marshall, “Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean,”
New Scientist
, November 25, 2012.

decreases the ability of whales to hear the mating calls of others
: Yifei Wang, “A Cacophony in the Deep Blue: How Acidification May Be Deafening Whales,”
Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science
, February 22, 2009.

a ring of male humpback whales
: Michael Tennesen, “Tuning in to Humpback Whales,”
National Wildlife
, February/March 2002.

ocean was doing a good job of taking in CO
₂
all by itself
: Andrew Revkin, “Papers Find Mixed Impacts on Ocean Species from Rising CO
₂
,”
New York Times
, August 26, 2013.

Acidification of ocean water is bad for krill
: Australian Antarctic Division, “Krill face deadly cost of ocean acidification,”
Media News
, October 13, 2010.

As the ocean gets noisier, whale sounds may get muffled
: Keith C. Hester, Edward T. Peltzer, William J. Kirkwood, and Peter G. Brewer, “Unanticipated consequences of ocean acidification: A noisier ocean at lower pH,”
Geophysical Research Letters
35 (October 1, 2008), L19601.

unable to get their gills back
: Author interview with Hans-Dieter Sues, April 16, 2012.

“Atlantification” of the Arctic
: Curt Stager,
Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2011), 150.

the worst thing about McMurdo is the food
: Author interview with Gretchen Hofmann, February 27, 1992.

the bounds of natural pH fluctuation
: Gretchen E. Hofmann, et al., “High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison,”
PLOS One
, December 2011.

Curt Stager, author of 
Deep Future
: Stager,
Deep Future
, 156–58.

CO
₂
vents off the island of Ischia
: J. Garrabou, et al., “Mass mortality in Northwestern Mediterranean rocky benthic communities,”
Global Change Biology
15, no. 5 (May 2009), 1090–103.

“Elvis Taxa”
: Erwin,
Extinction
, 237.

the loss of coral
: Rebecca Albright, Benjamin Mason, Margaret Miller, and Chris Langdon, “Ocean acidification compromises recruitment of the threatened Caribbean coral
Acropora palmata
,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
107, no. 47 (2010), 20400–4.

Acidification there dissolves the shells of sea snails
: Marshall, “Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean.”

The development of the frozen food industry
: Callum Roberts,
The Unnatural History of the Sea: The Past and Future of Humanity and Fishing
(London: Gaia, 2007), 201–2.

armorhead fish around seamounts off Hawaii
: Ibid., 290.

a full-scale assault on the fishery
: Ibid., 291.

harvesting deep-sea sediments for their rare-earth metals
: Author interview with Craig McClain, April 11, 2012.

“Jellyfish Gone Wild”
: National Science Foundation, “Environmental Change and Jellyfish Swarms,”
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/jellyfish/
.

one of their favorite haunts is Jellyfish Lake
: Pamela S. Turner, “Darwin’s Jellyfishes,”
National Wildlife
, August/September 2006.

refrigerator-sized Nomura’s jellyfish
: Blake de Pastino, “Giant Jellyfish Invade Japan,”
National Geographic News
, October 28, 2010.