Forestry and uncontrolled fires destroyed 1.5 million football fields of Russian strictly protected boreal forests just in 20 years

A new study clarifies uncertainties surrounding strictly protected areas in Russia and shows that logging and wildfires are the drivers of deforestation even where they should not happen Although forest degradation, logging, and wildfires are well-known major threats for tropical forests, they also affect boreal forests and significantly contribute to global greenhouse gases emission. In…

COVID-19 and other pandemics are the effects of our negative impact on the diversity of the total environment

There is increasing awareness that the COVID-19 pandemic is the consequence of environmental and societal crises. A new paper just published in the scientific journal Science of the Total Environment by international research fellows of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI), an Austrian independent center for advanced studies in the life and…

Not only dogs, also wolves show signs of self-cognition with the sniff-test

A new experiment provided significant clues of wolves’ self-awareness Self-awareness has always been a central theme in philosophical and biological research since ancient times. In the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the exhortation “Know yourself” is inscribed in Greek, an invitation to men to understand their own finitude, to understand their limits. Then René Descartes…

Protect wildlife now to protect us from future pandemics

A new paper published in Biodiversity and Conservation by biodiversity experts from the Tomsk State University (TSU) in Russia and the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLU) in Austria suggests that this pandemic situation requests a correct understanding of our impacts on wildlife conservation, which would also provide benefits for our species.…

Economic growth models are profoundly inadequate because they ignore niche emergence

A group of evolutionary biologists, ecologists, economists, and complex system analysts proposes a new niche theory arguing that economics – like ecology – autocatalytically emerges and strongly depends on cooperation Jane Jacobs in “The Nature of Economies” wrote that “development without co-development webs is as impossible for an economy as it is for biological development”…

Pollution is strongly related to COVID-19 deaths in Italy

A new study reveals, with very high accuracy thanks to artificial intelligence, how prolonged exposure to air pollution (especially to fine particles) has contributed to SARS-CoV-2 mortality and infections in Italy That air pollution can increase the risk of respiratory diseases by enhancing susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections is nothing new. Some studies have…

Certified “sustainable” palm oil replaced endangered mammals habitat and biodiverse tropical forests in the last 30 years, a new study suggests

Researchers confirm that palm oil certification does not ensure “environmental sustainability” Global concern has raised around the “sustainability” of palm oil in terms of global exportation and the impact on the environment in recent years. Therefore, stakeholders from the different sectors of the palm oil industry including oil palm producers, retailers, banks, investors, nature conservation and developmental…

Sustainable palm oil: certifying forest destruction

A case study of the pattern from deforestation to certification (RSPO and POIG) to sell “sustainable” palm oil Our recent scientific paper entitled “Sustainable palm oil may not be so sustainable” raised an interesting debate on the actual sustainability of certified palm oil and received much appreciation from the public opinion and some conservation organizations.…

Gaia, our planet, is alive and we are its spermatozoon, a new study suggests

Prof. Roberto Cazzolla Gatti proposes that human beings will reproduce Earth’s biosphere   A novel intriguing and provocative idea by an Italian biologist suggests that even without invoking teleology, so without any foresight or planning, our planet can be considered the same as a coevolutionary system analogous to a multicellular body: a super-unit of selection.…

Self-awareness in dogs needs no mirroring

How neglecting original scientific research and claiming for (re)discovering brings us back on animal cognition [Riassunto in italiano sotto] Dr G.G. jr Gallup and Dr J.R. Anderson recently published an interesting paper in Behavioural Processes entitled “The “olfactory mirror” and other recent attempts to demonstrate self-recognition in non-primate species” (Gallup & Anderson 2018). Generally, I agree…

The sniff test of self-recognition confirmed: dogs have self-awareness

A new research used the alternative approach to the ‘mirror test’ to confirm the hypothesis of self-cognition in dogs as proposed by Dr. Cazzolla Gatti A new research carried out by the Department of Psychology of the Barnard College in the USA, in publication on the journal Behavioural Processes (Horowitz, A., Smelling themselves: Dogs investigate their own odours…

Biodiversity is 3-D

A new study sheds light on the relationship between diversity and 3-D space as a global ecological pattern [Italian version below] The species-area relationship (SAC) is a long-time considered pattern in ecology and is discussed in most of the academic Ecology books. Its implications are relevant for many ecological, evolutionary, conservation and biogeographic purposes. Conversely,…

Evolutionary biology: two new studies confirmed the “endogenosymbiosis” hypothesis

Endogenosymbiosis (from the combination of the words: endo-geno-symbiosis), such as the capacity of “gene carriers” (viruses, retrovirus and bacteriophages) to share parts of their genome in an endogenous symbiotic relationship with their hosts, was proposed in 2015 by Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Ph.D., associate professor in ecology and biodiversity at the Tomsk State University (Russia), in…

Cooperation, not struggle for survival, drives evolution

An empirical experiment confirms a new hypothesis on the evolution of life Many theories and hypotheses suggest that competition tends to differentiate ecological requirements after repeated interactions and allows biodiversity. Even if the mechanisms that allow species to evolve, coexist, compete, cooperate, or become extinct are becoming more and more understood, the factors that allow…

Western lifestyle spells the end of biodiversity

New research identifies the historical trends that suggest we should be worried about the planet’s future Contrary to what many economists suggest (see, for example, an article in The Economist entitled Hang On, published in September 2013) “development is not always good for Nature”, a biologist at Tomsk State University argues. It is broadly accepted…

Об экологических эффектах климатических изменений

On the ecological effects of climate change (video in Russian with English subtitles) Interviewed by Andrey Sokolov (for English subtitles – click on “CC”) Roberto Cazzolla Gatti (Associate Professor at Biological Institute -Biological Diversity and Ecology Laboratory and Researcher at Bio-Clim-Land Centre of the Tomsk State University, in Russia) explains what are the observed ecological…

Selective logging causes long-term changes to forest structure

by Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com – February 18, 2015 Logging in Gabon. Photos by Rhett A. Butler Selective logging is causing long-term changes to tropical forests in Africa by facilitating the growth of weeds and vines, which reduces plant diversity and diminishes carbon storage, reports a new paper published in the journal Ecological Research.  The paper,…

Indonesia: the kingdom of beauty and hell

By Roberto Cazzolla Gatti Photographs by Roberto Cazzolla Gatti Translation by Mauro Cazzolla A razor cut to the heart: there is no other way to describe what you feel when you observe from above the archipelagos that look like peeled potatoes. They have been deprived of their luxuriant vegetation and amazing biodiversity just to make…

Evolution is a cooperative process: the Biodiversity-related Niches Differentiation Theory (BNDT) can explain why

Published on Theoretical Biology Forum 104 (1), 35, 2011 Author(s): Roberto Cazzolla Gatti [1] [1] Department of Forest Resources and Environment (DISAFRI), Via San Camillo De Lellis, University of Tuscia, 01100 Viterbo, Italy Summary: A. McFayden[1] and G.E. Hutchinson’s[2] defined a niche as a multidimensional space or ipervolume within the environment that allow an individual…