CHANS-Net organized a series of events at the 98^th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) at the Minneapolis Convention Center Aug. 4-9. The events  brought together CHANS-Net members, including the 2013 CHANS Fellows.

CHANS-Net Events

August 7

Remains of endangered Hawaiian petrels -- both ancient and modern -- show how drastically today’s open seas fish menu has changed.

A research team, led by Michigan State University and Smithsonian Institution scientists who also are CHANS-Net members, analyzed the bones of Hawaiian petrels -- birds that spend the majority of their lives foraging the open waters of the Pacific. They found that the substantial change in petrels’ eating habits, eating prey that are lower rather than higher in the food chain, coincides with the growth of industrialized fishing.

CHANS-Net researchers have discovered that humans are passing antibiotic resistance to wildlife, especially in protected areas where numbers of humans are limited.

In the case of banded mongoose in a Botswana study, multidrug resistance among study social groups, or troops, was higher in the protected area than in troops living in village areas.

Strictly protected areas such as national parks and biological reserves have been more effective at reducing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest than so-called sustainable-use areas that allow for controlled resource extraction, CHANS-Net scientists and their colleagues have found.