Estimating the causal effects of a spatially-varying intervention on a spatially-varying outcome may be subject to non-local confounding (NLC), a phenomenon that can bias estimates when the treatments and outcomes of a given unit are dictated in part by the covariates of other nearby units. In particular, NLC is a challenge for evaluating the effects of environmental policies and climate events on health-related outcomes such as air pollution exposure. This paper first formalizes NLC using the potential outcomes framework, providing a comparison with the related phenomenon of causal interference. Then, it proposes a broadly applicable framework, termed weather2vec, that uses the theory of balancing scores to learn representations of non-local information into a scalar or vector defined for each observational unit, which is subsequently used to adjust for confounding in conjunction with causal inference methods. The framework is evaluated in a simulation study and two case studies on air pollution where the weather is an (inherently regional) known confounder.

Weather2vec: Representation Learning for Causal Inference with Non-Local Confounding in Air Pollution and Climate Studies

ImageNet-1k is a dataset often used for benchmarking machine learning (ML) models and evaluating tasks such as image recognition and object detection. Wild animals make up 27% of ImageNet-1k but, unlike classes representing people and objects, these data have not been closely scrutinized. In the current paper, we analyze the 13,450 images from 269 classes that represent wild animals in the ImageNet-1k validation set, with the participation of expert ecologists. We find that many of the classes are ill-defined or overlapping, and that 12% of the images are incorrectly labeled, with some classes having >90% of images incorrect. We also find that both the wildlife-related labels and images included in ImageNet-1k present significant geographical and cultural biases, as well as ambiguities such as artificial animals, multiple species in the same image, or the presence of humans. Our findings highlight serious issues with the extensive use of this dataset for evaluating ML systems, the use of such algorithms in wildlife-related tasks, and more broadly the ways in which ML datasets are commonly created and curated.

Bugs in the Data: How ImageNet Misrepresents Biodiversity

The topic of Climate Change (CC) has received limited attention in NLP despite its real-world urgency. Activists and policy-makers need NLP tools in order to effectively process the vast and rapidly growing textual data produced on CC. Their utility, however, primarily depends on whether state-of-the-art models can generalize across various tasks in the CC domain. In order to address this gap, we introduce the Climate Change Benchmark (ClimaBench), a benchmark collection of existing disparate datasets for evaluating model performance across a diverse set of CC NLU tasks systematically. Further, we enhance the benchmark by releasing two large-scale labelled text classification and question-answering datasets curated from publicly available environmental disclosures. Lastly, we provide an analysis of several generic and CC-oriented models answering whether fine-tuning on domain text offers any improvements across these tasks. We hope this work provides a standard assessment tool for research on CC text data.

ClimaBench: A Benchmark Dataset For Climate Change Text Understanding in English

For marine species with complex life cycles, a critical question concerns the response of larval stages to warming. In species with feeding larvae, warming and food limitation may result in negative (additive or synergetic) effects on growth and survival. We experimentally evaluated the combined effects of temperature and food limitation on larval performance of the invasive crab Hemigrapsus sanguineus (local population of Helgoland, North Sea, German Bight). We then compared the performance of H. sanguineus with the native competitor (shore crab Carcinus maenas). Within the studied temperature range (15-24 °C) and under the conditions of food limitation (access to food for 6 hours a day), the primary driver of survival was temperature (low temperatures decreased survival especially at the more advanced stages). Food limitation decreased survival and growth at all temperatures but larvae metamorphosed to megalopa at all food limited conditions. The response of H. sanguineus differed from that of C. maenas where effects low temperatures have little impact on performance but high temperatures enhance the negative effects of food limitation. Hence, these two coexisting species appear to have different larval responses to warming and food limitation, with warming leading to a higher performance of the invasive relative to the native species.

Larval performance of the exotic Hemigrapsus sanguineus under increased temperature and food limitation

Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) invaded the Laurentian Great Lakes in the early 20th century and remain a threat to fisheries in the largest freshwater ecosystem of the world. Nowadays, population growth is restrained by a highly successful control program that mainly relies on the application of the lampricide 3-trifluoromethyl-4’-nitrophenol (TFM) to streams infested with larval sea lamprey. Recent work shows that the effectiveness of TFM is affected by temperature, with the toxicity to larval sea lamprey decreasing with increasing temperature. As such, we set out to unveil the thermal breadth of larval sea lamprey using intermittent-flow respirometry. To do so, we calculated thermal performance curves for this life stage using two approaches: First, we acclimated larvae to 7, 13, 18, 21, 25 and 28°C and tested their aerobic scope at the respective acclimation temperature. Second, we acclimated larvae to 6, 13 and 21°C and subsequently performed acute exposure tests (6, 10, 13, 15, 18, 21, 25, 28 and 31°C), with a temperature increase/decrease rate of approx. 0.1°C/min. Our results show a wide thermal tolerance, consistent with the plasticity required to become a successful invasive species. Further, sea lamprey larvae show a thermal optimum nearing 28°C, indicating that their tolerance to TFM will likely continue to increase as water temperatures in the Great Lakes continue to rise due to climate change.

Effects of temperature acclimation on thermal performance for sea lamprey larvae

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) – the rate of energy use needed to perform basic, life-sustaining functions – is a universal measure of metabolic rate allowing for comparisons of energy expenditure between species. Many animals inhabit a vast array of challenging environments, an example being living in confined spaces where oxygen levels are likely to be low. Previously it has been shown that species can exhibit both geno- and phenotypic adaptations in metabolic rate to exploit such unique niches. Living for extended periods of time within an enclosed space – in a burrow, den or crevice – will likely require certain physiological and morphological adaptations, and thus influence the biology of the species that occupy them. In this study we are taking a global look at the mammalian kingdom to understand the relationship between BMR and burrow use (fossoriality) in mammals. In particular, we aimed to determine if there was a trait within BMR associated with fossoriality, versus species which live above ground. We used pre-existing data for mammalian BMR and body mass, and 24-life history traits. To account for variation in body size, residual BMR was used (RBMR), controlling for any phylogenetic trends through a phylogenetic least squares model (PGLS) and an MCMCglmm, to account for inter- and intra-specific variation. Overall, mammalian metabolic rate is dictated primarily by environmental temperature. Only aquatic mammals had a detectable trait in RBMR and there was no significant differences in RBMR of terrestrial, fossorial and subterranean mammals, suggesting that species occupying a subterranean niche do not pay any baseline metabolic costs on account of their burrowing lifestyle. This may possibly explain why certain species can live above ground whilst also occupying an underground shelter at night or during other periods of the day. Aquatic mammals, however, had a significantly higher RBMR to all other groups apart from flying mammals. This significantly high BMR may also be due to the energetically demanding thermoregulatory need to maintaining a constant body temperature in cold water, particularly the Arctic/Antarctic waters that the large aquatic mammals in the study will be visiting seasonally, if not occupying year-round. This study has shown that environmental temperature is an important factor when exploring differences in mammalian BMR. Temperature can be used to predict BMR and therefore strongly infers whether a mammal is physiologically suited to living in a particular place or habitat. Changes to the environmental temperatures that these species are experiencing are likely to have knock on effects and alter population spread and change, as well as persistence of populations in certain areas. This highlights the importance of climate change and the largescale effects that small changes in environmental temperature may have on the diversity and distribution of mammalian species on the planet.

No evidence for a signal in mammalian basal metabolic rate associated with a fossorial lifestyle.

Rising temperatures pose a significant threat to the survival of ectothermic animals. Thermal physiological traits, including upper thermal limits, are proven useful traits to assess the vulnerability of ectotherms to changing temperatures. For instance, one may use upper thermal limits to estimate current and future thermal safety margins (i.e., the proximity of upper thermal limits to experienced temperatures), use this trait in coercion with other physiological traits in species distribution models, or investigate the plasticity, heritability and evolvability of these traits for buffering the impacts of changing temperatures. While datasets on thermal tolerance limits have been previously compiled, they often report single estimates for a given species, do not present measures of data dispersion, and are biased towards certain parts of the globe. In this project, we systematically searched the literature in seven languages and produced a dataset of over 3000 heat tolerance estimates for 616 amphibian species. I will first present how the dataset we compiled can be used to address various questions in ecophysiology, and its limitations. Indeed, despite its scope, this dataset also suffered from geographical biases and captured less than 10% of described amphibian species. Here, I will demonstrate how we can fill the missing parts of this puzzle using powerful imputation procedures and estimate the heat tolerance of most described amphibian species. I will then demonstrate how we used this comprehensive database to estimate the vulnerability of the worlds’ amphibians to current and projected temperatures. 

Finding the missing pieces of an ecological puzzle to assess the climate vulnerability of amphibians

The genus Primula L. (Primulaceae) represents approximately 430 species, distributed all over the Northern Hemisphere in temperate to alpine regions. It is an important floristic element of the Himalayan flora and is considered an ecological indicator of the high-altitude vegetation. Many Primula species show two morphs (pin and thrum) based on style length. The stigma of pin plants is positioned at the entrance of the flower, exhibiting a long style, while in thrum flowers, the style is much shorter, leaving the stigma around halfway up the floral tube. Among these species, Primula denticulata exhibits a large extent of occurrence in a broad altitudinal range (2096-3700 m). A study was undertaken to understand the frequency, morphological and phenological variations between two morphs of the species along an altitudinal gradient in the Western Himalayas. We recorded the numbers of pin and thrum flower morphs at three different elevations (2337m, 3000m, and 3700m) during 2021 and 2022. Our results indicate variation in morph frequency at middle elevation i.e., 3000m, while at lower and higher elevations, both the morphs have an equal frequency. A delay was observed in the onset of phenological events with increasing elevation. We observed more numbers of floral visitors at lower and middle elevations than at higher elevations. The stigmatic surface of pin and thrum morphs were found to be different under Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Along with these morphological and phenological observations, genetic diversity analysis of P. denticulata is underway with 290 samples collected from different populations along the altitudinal gradient and 100 primer pairs designed from Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs). As a result of this study, the correlation of morphological and phenological studies with genetic variation existing along the altitudinal gradient can be observed. The study will show the impact of changing environmental conditions on the diversity of the plant along the altitudinal gradient.
Keywords: Primula denticulata, Morph frequency, Altitudinal gradient, Morphological variations, Phenological variations, Changing environmental conditions








Effect of morphological, phenological variations and morph frequencies on population genetic diversity along an altitudinal gradient in heterostylous Primula denticulata

The progression of climate warming will expose ectotherms to transient heatwave events and temperatures above their tolerance range at increased frequencies. It is therefore pivotal that we understand species’ physiological limits and the capacity for various controls to plastically alter these thresholds. Exercise training could have beneficial impacts on organismal heat tolerance through improvements in cardio-respiratory capacity, but this remains unexplored. Using juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), we tested the hypothesis that exercise training improves heat tolerance through enhancements in oxygen-carrying capacity. Fish were trained once daily at 60% of their maximum sustainable swim speed for 60 min. Tolerance to acute warming was assessed following three weeks of exercise training, measured as the critical thermal maximum (CTMax). CTMax measurements were coupled with examinations of the oxygen carrying capacity (haematocrit, haemoglobin concentration, relative ventricle size, and relative splenic mass) as critical components of the oxygen transport cascade in fish. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that exercise training did not raise the CTMax of juvenile Chinook salmon with a mean CTMax increase of just 0.35°C compared to unexercised control fish. Training also failed to improve the oxygen carrying capacity of fish. Exercise training remains a novel strategy against acute warming that requires substantial fine-tuning before it can be applied to the management of commercial and wild fishes. 

Does exercise training improve heat tolerance in Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)?

Ocean acidification and warming caused by increased anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions poses a tremendous challenge to marine calcifiers such as intertidal bivalves. The approach to studying acclimation potential or adaptation to climate change are often conducted under artificial conditions where food is provided ad libitum and do not consider tidal emersion. These limitations present problems for extrapolating results to natural ecosystems. For instance, food provisioning and regular emersion can enhance or limit acclimation capacities of marine organisms. Here we investigate the physiological response of young Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas exposed for 3 months to ambient and future (+3°C, -0.3 pH unit) climate scenarios under two food regimes (ad libitum vs restricted) and two tidal levels (subtidal vs intertidal, emersion twice daily) under laboratory conditions. Oysters were sampled for biometric and physiological rate measurements (respiration and food intake), biochemistry (energetic reserves and enzyme assay) and histology to evaluate their reproductive status. At the end of the experiment, oysters were further challenged with a viral disease to investigate the physiological cost of acclimation to these conditions and their immune response. Preliminary analyses suggest that food level was the most influential factor, followed by climate scenario and tidal level. We indeed found that growth, food intake, reproduction and disease resistance of oysters were negatively affected by food restriction. Future conditions enhanced oyster physiological rates and sexual maturation, particularly at high food levels. Finally, tidal level had no major effect on these variables, suggesting physiological compensatory mechanisms during emersion. Our study suggests that the oyster is robust to future climatic conditions, even when feeding was restricted. A detailed analysis of the results will be presented at the conference.

Physiological and immune response of oysters to climate change as a function of diet and tidal regime

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is widely used as a signalling molecule. It is critical to measure H2O2 with a high spatial and temporal resolution to better understand its role as a messenger. The most frequent approach to detect H2O2 has been using chemical probes, which have the disadvantage of limited specificity and cannot report any dynamics or spatial information. Genetically encoded probes have made significant advances to overcome these limitations. Probes of the HyPer family consist of a circularly permuted yellow fluorescent protein (cpYFP) core and a sensing domain from a bacterial H2O2-activated transcription factor (OxyR). These, however, have a pronounced pH sensitivity. Other H2O2 sensors, such as roGFP2-Orp1, have shown to be pH-insensitive but lack the responsiveness to detect low nanomolar H2O2 changes, possibly due to the strong reducing effect of the glutathione redox potential (EGSH). A new ultrasensitive HyPer7 fuses the OxyR of N. meningitidis to an optimized cpYFP largely pH-independent. Here, we have generated and characterized stable Arabidopsis thaliana plants expressing a cytosolic version of HyPer7 and prove that the reduction of this sensor is mostly EGSH-independent and highly responsive to externally imposed oxidation via H2O2 feeding. Furthermore, HyPer7 could sense stress-induced H2O2 in live-cell plants exposed to herbicides, such as methyl viologen or the flagellin-induced apoplastic ROS burst, much better than the previously mentioned H2O2 probes. HyPer7 sensitivity also allowed us to see that the laser light used for excitation is sufficient to induce H2O2 release from chloroplasts in amounts only detected by this ultrasensitive sensor.

The latest HyPe(r) in plant H2O2 biosensing

Land plants cover their epidermis with a specialised protective layer called the cuticle, a feature which is crucial for surviving the perils of a terrestrial environment, including desiccation, UV damage and pathogen attack, dangers which may worsen with our escalating climate crisis. Several cereal staples such as barley and wheat show further epidermal specialisation with a distinctive, glaucous wax bloom on reproductive stage tissues, a feature associated with improved drought tolerance. Understanding the mechanisms underpinning wax bloom development may help breed more climate resilient varieties. To date, studies on barley eceriferum mutants have identified several enzymes involved in cuticular wax biosynthesis. However, little is known about the upstream regulation of this process. My research addresses this knowledge gap by exploiting genetic resources to identify a key regulatory player in barley cuticle development. Here, I will discuss how I used high density genotyping, comparative gene expression and wax compositional analyses to identify a gene essential for wax bloom formation and the expression of cuticular metabolic genes in barley.

Underline digital video library

Weather2vec: Representation Learning for Causal Inference with Non-Local Confounding in Air Pollution and Climate Studies

Bugs in the Data: How ImageNet Misrepresents Biodiversity

ClimaBench: A Benchmark Dataset For Climate Change Text Understanding in English

Larval performance of the exotic Hemigrapsus sanguineus under increased temperature and food limitation

Effects of temperature acclimation on thermal performance for sea lamprey larvae

No evidence for a signal in mammalian basal metabolic rate associated with a fossorial lifestyle.

Finding the missing pieces of an ecological puzzle to assess the climate vulnerability of amphibians

Effect of morphological, phenological variations and morph frequencies on population genetic diversity along an altitudinal gradient in heterostylous Primula denticulata

Does exercise training improve heat tolerance in Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)?

Physiological and immune response of oysters to climate change as a function of diet and tidal regime

The latest HyPe(r) in plant H2O2 biosensing

Identification of a key regulator controlling cuticular wax in barley

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