Ecology

After 90 years of taxonomic uncertainties, using phenotypic, phylogenetic, and population genetics analyses, the two uncultivated fungi causing skin disease in humans and dolphins, long known as Lacazia loboi8, are now placed as separate species within the genus Paracoccidioides. Early studies using phenotypic or phylogenetic data alone erroneously placed these two fungal pathogens in different genera and species3,4,5,6,7,8,12,13,15,16,17,24,25. This trend persisted for years2,13,16,17,25. For instance, recent studies using several partial DNA sequences recovered from Brazilian humans with skin disease in phylogenetic analyses concluded that the genus Lacazia, the accepted name at that time, was an independent taxon from Paracoccidioides species16,24,25. Their phylogenetic data was correct, but their analyses missed the inclusion of DNA from the uncultivated pathogen causing skin disease in dolphins. This was an understandable mistake, since the collection and processing specimens from infected dolphins is highly regulated and the fact that the etiology of dolphins’ disease was long believed to be the same as that in humans, as shown in Fig. 1 and Table 1. Although P. cetii has numerous phenotypic differences with Paracoccidioides species (Table 1, Fig. 1), in the pass used to group them in separated clusters2,3,7,8, our data showed they share several phylogenetic features in common (Figs. 4, 5 and 6). With the addition of P. cetii DNA sequences, the phylogenetic support of closely related Paracoccidioides species dramatically changed. For example, P. loboi clustered in a monophyletic group sister to P. lutzii, even with the inclusion of homologous dimorphic Onygenales DNA sequences as outgroup (Figs. 4b, 5), whereas the support of monophyletic species within the genus weakened (Figs. 4, 5 and 6). More dolphin DNA sequences from different geographical locations must be sequenced to understand P. cetii´s true evolutionary traits.Several studies reported geographical cryptic speciation among Paracoccidioides species14,24,26,27,28. In those analyses the presence of at least five species within the genus, including P. lutzii, was found14,15,24,27,29,30. Recent genome sequencing in phylogenetic analysis tend to validate these findings26,28,29. Although the DNA sequences of P. loboi were used in some of the analyses, the human skin pathogen was always placed as an independent genus from that in Paracoccidioides species16,24,25. The placement of P. cetii sister to P. americana DNA sequences in this study, indicates the use of phenotypic or phylogenetic characteristics without the inclusion of anomalous species, can lead to inaccuracies in the taxonomic and phylogenetic classification of these type of microbes. For instance, our data, using several statistical tools, consistently showed the presence of different clusters within Paracoccidioides species. In our analyses, P. americana, P. cetii, P. lutzii, and P. loboi were placed in monophyletic groups sister to the remaining Paracoccidioides species (Figs. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6). Therefore, the addition of P. cetii to the genus Paracoccidioides not only confirmed that the genus has indeed a high level of speciation but, indicates that the concept of species delimitation in this genus must be revisited12,31.Recently, Vilela et al.16, using phylogenetic analysis of five different genes, showed P. loboi shared the same ancestor with Paracoccidioides species. The results in our study support their proposal. The main obstacle of this hypothesis at that time was the phenotypic features of P. loboi (Fig. 1). However, if P. loboi and P. cetii (both uncultivated and subcutaneous pathogens) share the same ancestor with other Paracoccidioides species (cultivated and causing systemic infections), the likelihood that the ancestor of Paracoccidioides species could growth in culture, as previously suggested, is a strong possibility16. If this concept is correct, when in the evolutionary history of P. cetii and P. loboi they lost the capacity to grow in culture? What evolutionary pressure triggered such a change? Sadly, as is common in neglected pathogens such as P. cetii and P. loboi key questions such as these, remain without an answer. Interestingly, the uncultivated feature found in these two neglected fungi was also reported in a strain of Histoplasma capsulatum infecting monkeys, suggesting that an uncultivated ancestral trait in the Onygenales dimorphic fungi may be at work32. However, the evolutionary pressures that triggered such ancestral feature remains an enigma.The report of new human cases of paracoccidioidomycosis loboi acquired by traveling to endemic areas2,3,4,5,33,34,35,36, suggests P. loboi may has a similar phenotype (hyphae with conidia) to the one displayed by Paracoccidioides species in nature and in culture. Thus, it may be present in specific ecological niches in the endemic areas (around the Amazon basin and other Latin American big rivers)2,14,15,25. Therefore, it is possible P. cetii and P. loboi may have a phenotype in nature similar to that of Paracoccidioides species (hyphae with conidia). Under this scenario, both uncultivated pathogens display a mycelia form with conidia and the classic life cycle style of dimorphic fungi in nature25. As is the case in other dimorphic fungi, these propagules could then contact susceptible hosts (human, dolphins) switching from hyphae → yeast thus, causing subcutaneous infections. Perhaps due to abnormalities on the molecular mechanisms of yeast → hyphae conversion (mutations?), once the hyphae → yeast conversion occurs, it cannot longer switch back from yeast to hyphal phase. However, the yeast phase of both pathogens can infect other hosts, as had been demonstrated in accidental and experimental infection with yeast-like cells from infected humans and dolphins2,37,38,39,40,41,42. Despite attempts made by the Broad Institute (https://www.broadinstitute.org/fungal-genome-initiative/lacazia-loboi-sequencing), only fragmented genomic information is available for P. loboi, and the genome of P. cetii is yet to be sequence. We hypothesize that the genomes of both uncultivated pathogens may hide important genomic clues that could answer this and other evolutionary questions.Several P. cetii DNA sequences recovered from dolphins captured in Brazil, Cuba, Japan, and the USA are currently available in the database (Table S1)19,20,21,22,23. The complete ITS DNA sequences from Brazilian and Cuban dolphins with paracoccidioidomycosis ceti, showed high percentage of identify with the DNA sequences in this study (ITS = 100%) whereas the partial Gp43 DNA sequences from a Japanese dolphin (471 bp) had 98.62% identity with P. cetii DNA sequences from dolphins captured in the Americas. During Gp43 DNA alignment of Japanese and USA dolphins, a five nucleotides gap was consistently present in the DNA sequences of USA dolphins. Moreover, two additional 266 bp GP43 DNA sequences extracted from a Japanese dolphin (Lagenorhynhus obliquidens) with paracoccidioidomycosis ceti showing, 99.62% identity with P. brasiliensis (sensu lato). In our analyses, these two sequences (only 110 bp could be used) clustered also with P. brasiliensis (Fig. 4, red rectangle). However, the same DNA sequences clustered close to P. cetii in haplotype analysis indicating a fragile relationship (Fig. 3). If P. cetii DNA sequences from Japanese dolphins are accurate, the differences in the genetic makeup of these two populations of uncultivated pathogens is intriguing and deserve further analysis. Our data suggest P. cetii strains causing paracoccidioidomycosis ceti in Japanese and USA dolphins, likely are evolving into two different populations.According to Teixeira et al.24, the estimated time for genetic divergence in Paracoccidioides species was calculated around 33 million years. Although, others have questioned this result31, Carruthers et al.43, cautioned that the use of linage-specific data usually demonstrate approximate divergence time regardless of the number of loci interrogated. Nonetheless, according to these reports, Paracoccidioides species probably diverged from their ancestor from a fraction of a million of years (P. restrepiensis and P. venezuelensis) to 10–30 million of years (P. lutzii and P. brasiliensis, sensu lato)24,31. Conversely, dolphins evolved into aquatic mammals ~ 50 to 30 million years ago, around late Paleocene period (Eocene, Oligocene epochs)44. According to fossil records, South America at this time had a large body of water crossing from the north Atlantic Ocean to what is today Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela45, all endemic areas of these species3,4,5,24,26,29, that lasted for millions of years. A similar situation occurred in what is today the estuary of the Amazon River. The current location of Paracoccidioides species (including P. loboi), coincide with the locations of such geological periods, and then it is quite possible that during the time following these geological events, an ancestor of P. cetii first encountered dolphins entering these areas. Since humans came to South Americas only ~ 15,000-year ago46, likely the ancestor of Paracoccidioides species infected dolphin first and later humans. Whether this event had a role on the pathogenic capabilities of the genus to infect mammals is difficult to determine, nonetheless it is an intriguing possibility.Working with uncultivated pathogens infecting the skin of mammals is challenging. Not only because collecting specimens from these species (dolphins are protected species and human cases are located in poor remote rural areas) is extremely difficult, but because open lesions usually harbor numerous environmental contaminants, which in the past had led to erroneous conclusions on the classifications of these two anomalous pathogens2,8,15,16,25,47. Furthermore, these unusual fungi are not in the list of neglected pathogens, thus discouraging investigators to submit proposals to funding organizations. Previous studies using P. loboi in phenotypic or phylogenetic analyses placed this anomalous pathogen away from the genus Paracoccidioides2,4,15,16,25. This study found that the use of phenotypic or phylogenetic approaches without the inclusion of DNA from infected dolphins, likely led previous studies to flawed data15,16,25. Thus, the failure of including organisms sharing a common ancestor, based in phenotypic or phylogenetic traits alone, could result in incomplete or incorrect assessment of the investigated populations. This study showed that the interpretation of taxonomic and/or phylogenetic data could be affected by missing neighboring anomalous taxa. More

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AS systems display many novel and a high fraction of shared virusesWe used metagenomic sequencing of 30 Gb of sequences per sample to characterize the composition of viral concentrates across six WWTPs (see Methods). After assembly and mapping of reads, 24–34% of the total sequence information could be classified as viral using two different identification pipelines (see Methods). By combining the results of these two pipelines, the final data set consisted of 50,037 viral contigs with an N50 >20 kb. To evaluate whether our sequencing effort sufficiently sampled the viromes, all six WWTP samples were subsampled iteratively to evaluate the saturation dynamics. Rarefaction curves of the number of viral contigs, reached a plateau ~15 Gb of sequencing data for all six samples (Fig. 1a), indicating adequate recovery of prokaryotic viruses in these AS systems at the sequencing depth (30 Gb per sample) in this study.Fig. 1: Compositional variation in viromes among wastewater treatment plants.a Rarefaction curve of each sample. b Rank-abundance curve of each sample. c PCoA analysis of viromes based on the relative abundance of viral genera. d Relative abundance and appearance of dominant viral genera in each WWTP. White color denotes no appearance in this WWTP. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.Full size imageViral contigs were further classified into 8756 viral clusters (VC, equivalent to viral genera) using vConTACT2 by calculating the gene-content-based distance between viral contigs (~40% proteome similarity)11, and each VC was assigned an ID for identification (mean length = 15.2 kb, mean genera size = 3). Compared with the current number of viral sequences from AS systems, our sequencing data increase the AS virome database (N = 2103 in the IMG/VR database v.2.0)10 by 12-fold at the genus level and by 23-fold at the species-level (95% identity, 80% coverage). Comparison with NCBI RefSeq viral genome database showed that across the six AS systems, only 0.4–1.6% of total viral contigs (coverage percentage) could be assigned to a known viral family. Similar to previously described viral metagenomes from the soil, freshwater, and marine system7,12,13, this limited annotation highlights substantial uncharacterized viral diversity in AS communities. Among these recognizable viruses, members of the family Podoviridae (short-tailed phages from the Caudovirales order) were the most prevalent, comprising on average 41.3% of these viral contigs (coverage percentage) across the six WWTPs.All samples displayed high but variable diversity of viral genera with Shannon’s diversity index H’ ranging from 5.22 to 7.14 and Pielou’s evenness index J’ ranging from 0.71 to 0.86 (Supplementary Data 1). These differences are evident in rank-abundance curves, which show that each sample has different viral frequency patterns (Fig. 1b). Most viruses occurred at low frequency with the relative abundance of individual genera diminishing below 0.1% after counting the top 138 viral genera.Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) of the Bray–Curtis dissimilarity based on the relative abundance of viral genera suggested that most samples are divergent from each other (Fig. 1c), with only two pairs of AS viromes, ST and STL as well as SK and SWH, displaying higher similarity to each other.The overall variability in the viromes is also reflected in different dominance patterns. Each AS sample yielded a different dominant viral genus, and while these were also abundant in some WWTPs, they were below the detection limit in others (Fig. 1d). Although high relative abundance across all WWTPs indicates linkage to consistently abundant hosts, highly variable occurrence suggests that host populations are also more dynamic.Although the viromes appear overall variable in rank abundance, many viral genera were shared across the WWTPs. Fifty-three viral genera were detected in all samples and were thus considered to be common members of the AS viromes, accounting for 1.7–5.4% of viral contigs (coverage percentage) in each WWTP (Fig. 2). Thirteen of these common viral genera were also present in AS viromes in the IMG/VR database v.2.010. Of the total of 8756 unique viral genera collected across samples, STL and ST contained the largest fraction (5245 and 5149 genera, respectively) and shared most viral genera (N = 2885) with each other, far exceeding the number of all the other shared or unique viral genera (Fig. 2). These two WWTPs also had only 45 and 64 site-specific viral genera, consistent with the pattern in the PCoA virome profile. On the other hand, SWH possessed the most unique viral genera (N = 323), making up 11.0% of the total (Fig. 2). In fact, only relatively few viral genera were found exclusively in one of the WWTPs.Fig. 2: Shared viral genera in each WWTP.The UpSet55 chart shows the total number of viral genera and their sharedness in each WWTP. The bar chart on the top right shows the distribution of predicted hosts for common viral genera in all WWTPs. Shared viral genera between ST and STL were labeled orange and shared viral genera in all WWTPs were labeled red. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.Full size imageOverall, these results suggest that the virome across WWTPs consists of many shared genera. The lack of detection of some viral genera in the AS virome of one WWTP may be primarily due to the biological variation in the grab samples and/or the technical variation. Hence, if such technical and biological variations are taken into account, the virome shared among all AS maybe even more diverse.Viruses infect a broad spectrum of bacteria and archaeaTo examine putative host associations of all 50,037 viral contigs in the six WWTPs, we amassed a database of approximately three million CRISPR-Cas spacers from the NCBI prokaryotic complete genomes and metagenomes database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/assembly/). Host prediction was performed by matching CRISPR-Cas spacers at a sequence identity above 97%, sequence coverage over 90% in length, and mismatches 1000 ORFs in each sample were found in the following categories, L: replication, recombination, and repair, M: cell wall/membrane/envelope biogenesis, and K: transcription, confirming that the main functions sustain viral reproduction and transcription. It is noteworthy that viruses encode on average 541 ORFs (1.4% of annotated viral ORFs) in each sample in category G: carbohydrate transport and metabolism. After removing redundant viral ORFs, most unique ORFs (N = 1610) were classified into the glycoside hydrolases (GH) module24 (Fig. 5b). These GHs may be involved in the digestion of capsules to allow the viral tail to reach its membrane receptor on the host. The high representation of this function may be explained by the prevalence of biofilm formation among AS microbes and has previously also been noted among mangrove sediment viruses25.Fig. 5: Distribution of auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) relevant to the carbon cycle and nutrient removal.a Boxplot of the overall gene profile for six WWTPs was summarized both as viral ORF hits and viral ORF relative abundance (ORF hits to each COG function class/total ORFs that have hits to eggNOG database). Data in a are presented as mean values (center) and 25%, 75% percentiles (bounds of box). The minima and maxima represent the range of the data. b Number of unique viral ORFs related to each CAZy function class was shown in a descendant order. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.Full size imagePrevious work has shown that many prokaryotic viruses carry auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs), which can modulate host energy metabolism to provide an energetic advantage during viral genome and protein synthesis26. Broadly speaking, AMGs refer to all metabolic genes in lytic phages27, i.e., all genes in categories C, E, F, G, H, I, and P. Though only about a quarter of the viral ORFs have annotations in the eggNOG database, our data reveal a large repertoire of potential AMGs in the AS viromes (Fig. 5a). For example, 72 ORFs in total are potentially involved with carbon fixation pathways and 35 of them annotate as photosynthetic carbon fixation pathways in KEGG28. Moreover, 10 viral ORFs belong to CobS genes, which are essential for the biosynthesis of cobalamin. Cobalamin biosynthesis pathway is usually not complete in bacterial genomes29, and these viral encoded CobS genes could possibly assist the host metabolic capability. Seven viral genes encode adenylyl-sulfate kinase (CysC), which could facilitate host’s assimilatory sulfate reduction. By modulating host metabolism during infection, AMGs could alter the specific functions of their hosts in WWTPs and therefore influence carbon cycling and the removal of nutrients.Viromes are shared between WWTPs and the water environmentTo investigate whether the WWTP viral genera also occur in other habitats, we compared all viral sequences recovered here with the IMG/VR database v.2.0, which consists of 735,112 viral contigs predicted from metagenomic data10. Viral sequences from five ecosystems (AS, AD, solid waste, freshwater, marine) were included for comparison. For AS (N = 2103), AD (N = 8580), and solid waste (N = 5760), all viral sequences were subjected to our viral clustering pipeline, whereas for freshwater and marine environments, we each randomly selected 50,037 viral sequences to match the number in our samples (N = 50,037).Results showed that viral genera in our samples were shared among multiple environments. There was considerable overlap between WWTPs and freshwater (N = 402) and marine (N = 172) environments (Fig. 6). Moreover, 200, 273, and 244 viral genera were shared with AS, AD, and solid waste, respectively (Fig. 6). This represents a higher number than with marine viromes, and if normalized against the dataset size, there is also a larger fraction of connections than with freshwater viromes. When hosts were predicted for these shared viral genera, Proteobacteria was the most shared host phylum, followed by Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Cyanobacteria (Supplementary Data 2). At the genus level, Bacillus was the most abundant between our samples and marine, AD, and AS environments, while Streptomyces displayed a higher prevalence between our samples and freshwater and solid waste environments (Supplementary Data 3). Although it is difficult to identify the source and sink dynamics, AS and AD are typical processes in WWTPs, and solid waste viral sequences mainly stem from compost and leachate microbial communities. The considerable sharing of viromes between WWTPs and marine water may be caused by Hong Kong’s extensive application of marine water for toilet flushing, causing the influent sewage of WWTPs to contain a sizable amount of marine water. These data thus suggest that viruses are extensively shared and that the same viral genera may manipulate microbial communities in these different environments.Fig. 6: Connections between viral genera in AS samples and in five ecosystems from IMG/VR database.Pairwise connections were shown in a Circos56 plot between samples and different ecosystems, including AS, AD, solid waste, freshwater, and marine water. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.Full size imageHi-C validation of virus–host interactions in AS systemHigh throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) method was used to validate the virus–host connections predicted by our CRISPR-based methods using an additional sample in December 2020 at ST WWTP, by referring to viral contigs and host genome bins obtained from direct sequencing using Illumina and Nanopore metagenomic sequencing (Fig. 7).Fig. 7: General workflow to validate the precision of CRISPR-based methods in the present study.For Illumina data, 91% precision was observed. For Nanopore data, 94% precision was observed. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.Full size imageAs for Illumina metagenomic sequencing, 4578 viral contigs were identified and 1695 of them were deconvoluted in Hi-C data to have virus–host interactions with 197 host bins (Supplementary Data 9). To compare the Hi-C results with the CRISPR-based methods, 21 viruses were predicted by BLASTn-short to link with spacers in eight bins (Supplementary Data 10).As for hybrid assembly using both Nanopore and Illumina reads, 2593 viral contigs were identified and 989 of them were deconvoluted in Hi-C data to have virus–host interactions with 144 host bins (Supplementary Data 11). To compare the Hi-C results with the CRISPR-based methods, 28 viruses were predicted by BLASTn-short to link with spacers in 10 bins (Supplementary Data 12).Results show that CRISPR-based results have very high accuracy. For Illumina data, of the 21 virus–host connections predicted using CRISPR spacers, 11 are simultaneously found in Hi-C data and 10 are not detected in Hi-C data. Of 11 detected connections, only 1 is different in Hi-C data and 10 are the same (91% precision) (Supplementary Data 13). Also for the Nanopore/Illumina hybrid data, of the 28 virus–host connections predicted using CRISPR spacers, 16 are simultaneously found in Hi-C data and 12 are not detected in Hi-C data. Of 16 detected connections, only 1 is different in Hi-C data, 15 are the same (94% precision) (Supplementary Data 14).It should be noticed that some of the predicted CRISPR-based virus–host interactions are undetected in Hi-C data. CRISPR spacers represent a collection of memories regarding past virus invasions, whereas Hi-C data provide a snapshot of ongoing virus–host interactions. Also, Hi-C crosslinking may not be 100% efficient and might miss some of the virus–host interactions. More

BOOK REVIEW
13 September 2021

Marauding elephants, menacing macaques and epicurean bears

As humans encroach on the habitat of wild animals, is it any surprise that they advance upon ours?

Josie Glausiusz

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Josie Glausiusz

Josie Glausiusz is a science journalist in Israel.Twitter: @josiegz

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An adult male elephant wanders through the town of Siliguri, India, in February 2016.Credit: Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law Mary Roach W. W. Norton (2021)On 8 September 1488, the French fiefdom of Beaujeu issued an unusual order. Curates were charged with warning slugs three times “to cease from vexing the people by corroding and consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart”. Mary Roach cites this episode in her introduction to Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law — eliciting the first laugh of many in a book in which she turns her deft wit on the destruction and death that results from human–wildlife conflict. It is a fitting sequel to her previous ‘science-ofs’: Stiff (about cadavers), Spook (the afterlife), Bonk (sex), Gulp (eating) and Grunt (combat).Beyond medieval proceedings against slugs, caterpillars and weevils, Roach addresses more modern resolutions to our rivalry with species that “regularly commit acts that put them at odds with humans”. Travelling from the alleyways of Aspen, Colorado, where epicurean bears forage among restaurant dustbins, to “leopard-terrorized hamlets” in the Himalayas, she investigates how wild creatures from cougars to crows menace humans, their crops and their property.Fundamentally, she asks: when we encroach on the habitat of wild creatures, is it any surprise that they advance on ours? Perhaps nowhere is this collision clearer than in the Indian region of North Bengal, where, each year, dozens of people die after elephant attacks. Elephants there forage at night and sleep by day in patches of teak and red sandalwood trees, the remnants of forests that once stretched from the state of Assam to the eastern border of Nepal. This elephant corridor was fractured by imperialist-era tea estates and more recently by military bases. As the population of elephants in the remaining pockets spikes, the animals are wandering into villages, eating crops and grain stores.
The long goodbye
A bull elephant in must — the periodic hormonal tumult signified by frequent erections and ogling eyeballs — is highly aggressive and can crush people. Roach accompanies researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun to visit “awareness camps”, where they teach villagers to stay calm and call the local Elephant Squad so that rangers can herd roving elephants back into the forest. Even better, conservationist Dipanjan Naha tells her, would be to install seismic sensors to warn of approaching elephant footfalls. But, as one officer notes: “We are disturbing them.”In India, where in Hindu tradition elephants are the incarnation of the god Ganesha, it is customary to offer compensation to the families of those killed by elephants, and by leopards. In the United States, by contrast, the focus is not on compensation but on euthanizing the few bears who attack and kill humans. With bears, too, habitat fragmentation as well as climate change appear to play a major part in the conflict with humans. Major highways on the US–Canada border might restrict the movement of black bears. In California, drought is pushing bears into urban areas and, during a record-breaking heatwave earlier this year, into the waters of Lake Tahoe.

Pushed into urban areas by encroaching development, bears raid bins for food.Credit: Tomas Hulik ARTpoint/Shutterstock

Once upon a time, bears in the forests around Aspen, Colorado, dined well on acorns, chokecherries and “the outrageous fecundity of crabapple trees”. Roach watches them in the wee hours gorging instead on crab legs and cabbage leaves, tossed out by the city’s restaurants. Stewart Breck at the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, argues that limiting the availability of human food can reduce the need to kill or ward off marauding bears. But replacing busted bear-resistant dumpsters, hiring staff to enforce bin-locking laws, and issuing tickets to restaurants and “alpha residents” who ignore local waste-disposal ordinances isn’t easy: “the county is home to about as many billionaires as bears,” Roach writes.Complex trade-offsOften, it’s our meddling that created the threat in the first place, as when humans introduce animals that inflict unbridled harm upon native species. Case in point: carnivorous stoat (Mustela erminea), that were shipped from Europe to New Zealand in the late nineteenth century to control rabbits, themselves originally imported for food and sport. Stoats, which are agile climbers and swimmers, now prey upon New Zealand’s birds, eating eggs and chicks of tree-trunk-nesting mohua (Mohoua ochrocephala), kākā (Nestor meridionalis) and yellow-crowned kākāriki (Cyanoramphus auriceps), as well as coastal-dwelling endangered hoiho (Megadyptes antipodes).
Conservation: Backyard jungles
New Zealand launched the Predator Free 2050 programme to protect native biodiversity by eradicating stoats and two other invasive predators, rats and brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula). The effort relies on humane trapping as well as helicopter drops of a biodegradable toxin called 1080. The programme has led to some small predator-free havens such as Tiritiri Matangi island, but 1080 also kills deer and native kea birds (Nestor notabilis).Such trade-offs are complex, and Roach does a fine job of weighing human needs against those of pests and predators. After all, it can be ruinous for Indian villagers to have their granaries looted by elephants and dangerous for people in Delhi to be attacked by hordes of macaques. (Roach is at her most entertaining when she attempts to track down Ishwar Singh, chief wildlife warden for the Delhi government and an expert on macaque contraception. He finally answers her call with two words, “laparoscopic sterilization”, before slamming down the phone.)But the biggest pest is clearly us. As a 2020 report by the conservation group WWF shows, populations of wild mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have dropped by 68% on average since 1970, and one million wildlife species are in danger of extinction, because of burned forests, overfished seas, and the destruction of wild areas. There’s no mirth in that.

Nature 597, 325-326 (2021)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02484-9

Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.

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